out of the mouths of babes

Hello Friends,

Well, January has definitely hit, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that school has most definitely hit. I find that teaching doesn't seem to leave me with a whole lot of head space, or capacity to talk in sentences that make sense, which is why things have been a little quiet around these parts. All I can say is that I am thankful for the delete button on my laptop so that I might at least make a little bit of sense here. 

I don't talk much about teaching on here, mostly because of the need for privacy & protection, but today I wanted to share a couple of lovely moments with my children. For those of you who don't know, I teach in the Nursery Class of a Primary School, so I have 30 children in my care (including triplets & twins. Truly brilliant.) 

Today we went to visit the new chickens. It was very exciting being in such close proximity to four flapping chickens, with 9 children & myself in a space that was less than 2 metres square. I asked the children what they thought the chickens should be called. One boy thought for a moment and then said,

'Cocky....yes, Cocky, and Rocky, and Locky and...........Socky!' 

{little hand drawing the window of Rapunzel's parents' house}

As we walked back to our classroom, he bobbed his head from side to side, with his curls bouncing as he went, saying in a sing-song way, Cocky, Locky, Rocky, Socky, over and over. Can you tell he's just discovered rhyming?
At the end of the morning, we sit down as a whole class and sing, or read a story. My twins had requested that we sing Great Big God, but miraculously, the cd had disappeared when we came to singing, so I had to belt it out acapella. You have to have a level of boldness when it comes to Early Years teaching, as singing is something we do daily, and there is no room for timidity in singing if you need to be heard. Thankfully, the children are very forgiving, and would never tell you if you were a bit out of tune. 

Back to Great Big God. I told the class the name of the song, and one of the triplets asked, 'Who's God?' So I gave them a 30 second run down on who God is, then taught them the first action of the song, which is to point upwards, as though we are pointing to heaven, because this is where God lives. One of the other triplets then said, 'Like where Lola is?' 
I had to try very hard not to laugh at this point, as Lola (not her real name) has not died, but she has moved to Devon, so can no longer come to our Nursery. 

Of course, this provided a great teaching opportunity to talk about rhyming words, as heaven and Devon rhyme, and gave us a good chuckle once the children had gone home. I can just imagine the conversations that happened when the children went home and told their parents, 

'Mrs King told us about heaven today, where Lola's gone.'

Children are brilliant. The End.

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