June 20th: Rowdy Squires

 

Today was a lot rougher than any of our past visits to LTISD Summer Squires. The kids across the age groups were high energy and very rowdy. It was a test of patience and flexibility for sure. Some of the teachers were helpful as I redirected the kids’ attention back to the story and then reminded them all to listen, raise hands, etc. Other teachers were not as they just sat in the back talking which didn’t help the kids’ ability to focus. As whole, I spent a lot of time on waiting for kids to get quiet and giving many many gentle reminders about good behavior. 

We started each group with talk about the library and returning books. Since the kids were so high energy, I let each group vote between two books in hopes it would help keep their attention. After the story I would explain how to create our shark newspaper craft. Each kid would glue several precut pieces-head, mouth, teeth- to the blue paper of their choice and then design the rest of the shark with colored pencils. However, one group was so rowdy and very squirmy in their seats. So for this group-the youngest- we nixed the craft and played charades after the story instead. All the other groups got to play charades or “Guess the objects” during craft and bookmobile visits. 

This time, I did facilitate checkout on the bookmobile while Ms. Karen B ran the program for all the kids inside the hallway for one of the groups. I wanted an experience managing kids in the bookmobile, verifying if they had a library account, getting free books or checking out library books, and such. That part went pretty well and I now have a better idea of how many kids to send at time.

Overall, today was a bit more draining trying to manage the extra rowdiness but still enjoyable too.


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