Having a kindergarten just next to the office where you are pretty much all day, Monday to Friday, is an amazing thing.
When the weather is warm and the children are playing outside, you can hear their joyful voices and their childish games. And that gives me a happy state, like all my worries, sorrows and fears are vanishing. The joyful sounds coming from the other side of the window, and the warm sunbeams can take me to another world.
But back to this world, two days ago I had the opportunity to have an activity with the children from group 4-5 years old, at that nursery. I decided for the craft type of activity. I am not the mosthandy person out here, so I chose something easy, but fun in the same time. I searched for ideas on Pinterest, and I found so many funny and great ones. I decided for a cat made of hearts. I chose the paper hearts as a material because the activity was scheduled around the Valentine’s day week. Unfortunately it had to be rescheduled, and I ended up having the activity in the last day of February. But, as I like to think, better late than never.
So, in the morning of 28th February I went to the nursery ready to have a great learning time with the children. Before going, I made up a story about some friends that I have: Jimmy the frog, Mickey the Mouse, Elli the fox and Danny the snail, using some paper animals that I did (with ideas from Pinterest, as well) and I presented them to the children. After that I introduced to the children, my best friend, Maisy the cat , I told them that Maisy is a bit upset because she does nothave any cat friends, so they can help her become happy by creating some for her. And so they did. We had a great time sticking the ears, the nose and drawing eyes, eyelashes and whiskers for making the kitten’s face. At the end, I asked the children to name their cats. One of the students named his cat Talking Tom. That’s so funny!
I need to mention that the activity was possible because of the teacher there. He translated for me, because my Bulgarian is not that advanced.
When working with children, we think that we are the teachers, the adults that figured all things and have so much to offer. But I think that while teaching them, we should listen and be open to what they are teaching us. Over the time, I learned so much from children, while working with them. And two days ago, I learned from those “little” humans that you can’t make a cat only in one way. Even if I showed them an example of how the cat should look like, they chose to do it in their on way. And that made me happy! I realise once again that each person is unique and that we live in a world of such great diversity, and this is not something that should scare us, because diversity is beautiful.
