Daily routine for Daksh

On Tuesday the 21st of December, one of my children was absent from nursery. I phoned his mother as she had asked me to do to talk to her about the trouble they were having at home regarding his sleeping patterns (or lack there of). His sleeping late and waking up late was causing Mum to have to take unnecessary time off work. I thought the best way to deal with this issue was together as a team. I offered to write up the updated routine of what Daksh does during the day at nursery, and suggested that they stick to the routine at home as well. I've asked for feed back so we can assess if it works, or if it doesn't what we need to change.
Fingers crossed...

Amusing songs outside

I don't see any reason why there needs to be a formal 'mat time'. I'm more of the opinion that 'gathering times' can happen informally any time or anywhere. This was a perfect example of that. What had started as a time to explore outside ended up being a small group singing session. By showing respect and creating a welcoming environment, the children choose to come and participate and the programme just grows from there.

This is an example of dimension 14 - engages students in learning; and dimension 23 - demonstrates flexibility and adaptability.

Personality types

Nakita came in to Natural Steps for a professional development workshop (22nd November). In a group of three I went in to see her, not sure what it was going to be about. After being handed a sheet of paper, we were asked to circle what words we felt described ourselves the best. I went through and circled my words, and then after gridding and counting, discovered that I was predominately a 'peaceful personality' type of person. When handed the chapter printout from the book 'Pressing the Right Buttons' by Allison Mooney , I read through and it made me literally laugh out loud. A lot of the statements were describing me directly, and I had done a few of the examples during the previous weekend - such as writing a list and doing what I thought were the stink or hard jobs first. One description in the chapter was that peaceful personalities will complete all tasks. "You will be amazed sometimes how much they can get done in an hour". This brought back memories of school homework and my Mother 'nagging' me about not having finished homework. I know this has always been and will always be an issue in some households, but I always completed every job. At least now I feel validated in that it is just my personality - but with that in mind, it is something I want to work on as I know it can be frustrating for others. At least now I have a better understanding of my capabilities and strengths (and weaknesses), but also the opportunity to know the other staffs personality types. Hopefully I can use this knowledge to better communicate with them and work together as a team (and not leave to the last minute???) I'm also going to use this new way of looking at others to plan appropriately for the children's personality types. Although I am in Nursery one and the children are young, they are beginning to show individual personalities. After discussing this with Sharron, we were able to pick out a couple of children's personality types - and thankfully we both thought the same types for the same children. This workshop helps me to meet dimension 2o -contributes to the life of the learning centre Pressing the Right Buttons Allison Mooney Publisher: Random House September 2007