Chris Sinagoga | Monday, November 2, 2015 at 10:00AM Believe it or not, I have been meaning to write another Day Care Diary post since June. I just kinda put it off until November for whatever reason. It was the same routine just about every day and the kids were making very noticeable improvements. In fact, we had a bunch of 3-5th graders with us during some of the days they didn't have school, and I was surprised to see that some our 4 and 5 year olds managed to jump further and throw harder than the older kids. But there was really one event that opened my eyes a little more and gave me another activity for them.
We already had Spontaneous Basketball Combustion. Now we got Spontaneous Parkour Combustion. As usual, it was the kids' idea, not mine.
...........
We left off last time in March. And we had not been outside in four months. The kids were running amuck and it was getting to the point where I was starting to dread going there. But I distinctly remember the day in April when the weather broke and we got to go outside for the first time.
After some jumping inside, the 5 year-old group lined up by the door chomping at the bit to venture into the outdoors. I opened the door and they nearly ran me over like an angry mob or Purple Minions screaming and running towards the end of the alley (reference Day Care Diary vol. 4). But as they ran towards the fence, I noticed the craziest kid, Anna, was not slowing down. And moments later, she jumped up and started climbing. I walked over to investigate.
Me: "Anna... uh, what are you doing?"
Anna: "AHHHH!! I'M ESCAPING!!"
Me: "Excellent."
/she climbed to the top of the fence
Anna: "Oohh okay, I want to get down now..."
Me: "Okay, so get down."
Anna: "I can't."
Me: "Well, figure it out cuz I'm not helping."
The other teacher tried to stop her but I kinda wanted to see if Anna could make it all the way up and back down without help. And she did. Once the other kids saw I allowed Anna to climb, they naturally tried.
The next day I was there, the rain prevented us from going outside. But during their chaos free time at the start of the class, I turned to see our best athlete - Joseph - sitting on top of the 4-ft. tall big green mat standing up against the wall. Not gonna lie, I was a little startled.
Me: "Joseph!! How in the world did you get up there?"
Joseph: "I don't know!"
Me: "Can you do it again?"
Joseph smiled, slid down, ran back across the room, and did a parkour wall climb to arrive seated on top of the mat again. And much like the fence incident, the rest of the kids followed. But as I watched them line up across the room and run at it one-by-one, I saw every movement pattern we covered rolled into one activity: running, jumping, pulling, and pushing. I immediately scaled the height so every class could have a shot at the parkour.
Finally, it was also the culmination of me letting the kids show me what they wanted to do. In most cases, they would be yelled at for not following directions. But stepping back and observing instead of immediately intervening led us to what became their favorite thing to do.
Unfortunately, I am not back at the Day Care this year. But I did take a lot of things I learned and applied them to all of you guys. Plus, we got The Babies session up and running again. Last time we did it was Summer 2013, and it was a lot of formal coaching.
This time around, it looks a lot different. Here's some highlights from yesterday's session.
