Thursday, January 28, 2010

Practicum!!

Today was my first day at my practicum site! This semester I am working in a center that is for children from 3 years old to 6 years old and they are freaking adorable.

To begin with the educational system over here is 180 degrees different from the system back in the states. Children don't start school until they are 7 and they are in "kindergarten" from 3 to 6, but it's more like preschool.

When I get there I take off my shoes and put on slippers and I meet these little kids. (First off the only thing I can really say is "jeg hedder Jessica" or "my name is Jessica.") Those of you who know me are like "why jessica?" well you see they had posters all over the place that had my picture and my "real" name on them so that the kids would know who I was and I didn't think it would be nice of me to screw over everything they had learned about me, so I am now Jessica.

They show me around the place and the "school" is broken into three areas and each area is broken into three rooms. Basically there are 3 classes with 20 kids in each. The three rooms within each class are:
  • a general main playroom which has like a kitchen area, a jungle gym thingy that hangs from the ceiling, a cd player, a couch, a table, a reading area etc.
  • a room with tables to color, do puzzles, draw, or eat at
  • a room that adults are not aloud in...each class has a different one of these and one has laptops, one is full of big bean bag chairs and blankets to go to sleep, and one is set up like a house

The kids are aloud to eat their lunch whenever they feel like it, go outside when they want to, change the music in the cd player, sit on tables, jump from the jungle gym thing, and there is also three nintendo ds's for each "class" and there is a wii for the entire "school".

The children are aloud to roam to whatever classroom they feel like.

The kids butter their own bread with knives when they have hot tea and freash bread for snack time.

They go on field trips whenever they want to, no permission slips or anything...they just leave.

So basically I was thrown into narnia today and I don't even know anything about children anymore because my world has been completely turned upside down.

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