The pat plan

Mom wanted me to share this one from work today:
Wyatt started in the older room on Monday so he's still transitioning/adapting... he was very fussy the whole time I'd been there (a little before lunch) so the other teacher made sure to lay his mat out and get him to lay down first. He never falls asleep without being patted though, but she was putting down mats and I was changing diapers so it was gonna be a little while till we could get to him. Next I know i look over and Avi is sitting next to him patting him and he's gotten quiet and calmed down- then i look the next time and there are 2 other boys helping her! I said "wow this is a great plan- get the ones who'll fall asleep quickly to pat the other kids and then by the time we're ready we'll have a lot less to pat!".... not too long after that I see that Avi has stopped patting him and is now basically sitting on his head!! ( she kinda does that- esp with the babies that moved up a few weeks ago that crawl, she feels the need to ride them from time to time) "ok so the plan's not so fool-proof afterall," I noted. hahaha

First Post- paint disaster

While looking for crafts to entertain preschoolers in an after school care program for a few hours I found a project using fingerpaint to make a tree picture. Since this was just last Fri, I had them make it into a Fall-colored tree. I got to the center early to take an inventory of possible supplies. They didn't really have much actual fingerpaint but everything they had was washable. I grabbed 1 black & 1 orange tub of paint, a box of individual paint sets, empty bowls filled half with water, some brushes of varying sizes, different color construction paper, & a little red fingerpaint tube. I laid down a long sheet of like a thick paper to cover & protect the table from the paint. I drew a really quick, messy pic of an ordinary tree as an example for the kids. I waited until more towads the end of the day to start painting in hopes that there would be less children to make a mess by then. ONly 1/10 had left though. I had a bowl of orange in the middle on one side of the table & 1 bowl of black (lack of enough brown for the trunk of the tree) on the other side. I made sure each kid had a paper and a brush if they wanted one, & that there were enough indiv. paint sets spread throughout the table for if they wanted brown or another color not in a bowl.

Needless to say by the end paint was everywhere, including the actual paint sets, ......