Kindergarten!

I substitute taught for Hess Kindergarten on Friday, Monday and Tuesday. It was an interesting expereince... the English-teacher led part of it goes from 9-11:30, then they eat & nap and do stuff with the Chinese teacher the rest of the day. That means I have to leave home by about 7:20 to get there early enough. Friday I came home and took a nap before my evening classes but yesterday & today I had to do training stuff in the afternoon at the Language School so I stayed in Fong Yuan all day. So I am really really tired now.

The kids I taught are 3 years old (American years). They are supposed to only speak English but that's not very practical. There are times when the CT wasn't in the room and I was glad I could understand their Chinese! There are 20 kids in the class which seems like a lot.

Each day they have exercise time, then "sharing time" where we talk about the weather, day of the week, and how they feel. So they know I feel happy/ sad/ angry/ pretty etc. It's pretty funny because sometimes a kid will come up and be like "Teacher, I feel angry!" and you can be like, OK, go sit by yourself for a minute. It's pretty cool that they can do that though, at all much less in their non-native language. There was one kid who cried for about 2 hours and he said "Teacher, I feel sad!" And I was like, you sure do, kiddo.

After that they have a snack which is a pretty long process, then English time where we do flashcards (they learned submarine and motorboat!) and sing songs, then an activity. Like one was cutting along lines. So that takes about 45 minutes. Then get ready for lunch.

They have a little duffle bag that has bowls & spoons for their food. So they have to get out a certain color bowl for each meal. Afterwards they "clean" their stuff which involves them wiping out the bowl with a kleenex. I think that's all the cleaning the bowls ever get. I tried to teach them about washing your hands after you blow your nose but it didn't really stick. I guess I should be happy they wash their hands after they go to the bathroom.
Overall it was fun and there wasn't as much preparation as there is for my other classes. I don't think I would want to teach it regularly because it just destroys your day. But it's nice to do once in a while.