Kai woke up in sort of a grumpy, whiny mood. He wasn't "hopping to it" with his schedule with any form of enthusiasm. He was resisting every form of work. I went to put Koa down for his morning nap and just sat and prayed for a minute. I prayed for a strategy of how to turn this day around and make it a good one. I immediately felt that I needed to let go of the schedule and do some fun, creative stuff with our unit on Ocean we've been doing.
So I gathered the boys around and did the good day cheer. Then we played "Dive Under the Ocean." To play I put some sea creature toys under a sheet and called a child's name, "Jude, dive under the ocean." He "swam" under the sheet and picked one ocean toy and named the animal he picked. We did this several times and they would have kept playing all day!
My next suggestion was to use the new paints that my mom brought us. So we each picked an ocean creature to paint.
Next we did a really fun craft. We sat and tore up little sheets of construction paper. We put them into a trash bag. Then we cut out a sea animal shape and painted it with glue. We dropped the gluey creature into the bag and shook it up. They had a lot of fun shaking the bag up. Then we pulled the creature out and were amazed at how the little papers stuck to the creature so perfectly.
Then we made this little project - you fill a bottle half way with blue colored water. Fill the rest with oil. It makes waves in the bottle.
After all the crafts and games we went outside to have a snack and story. This is "Quiet Fox." He has his ears up and his mouth closed! My friend Ellen, a second grade teacher taught me this one! It works!
And after story a good run with the ball - kicking it soccer style, or futbol as we say here, before the rain came.
I think everyone felt refreshed after this morning and the next day Kai was ready to get back to his schedule with renewed energy and enthusiasm!
