Weird Things I Say At Work

I say a lot of things at work that would sound really weird if heard out of context, and so I thought I would share every now and again.

Back story for todays: At work we have a family wall in our Nursery room. It's basically a magnetic board with individual photos of all the children and their parents and siblings. It's a real comfort to a lot of the children, and just plain cute. Anyhoo, Harry was walking around looking a little sad, so I asked what was wrong and he held up the body of his dads picture and the head of his dads picture and said "Daddy..." to which I replied the above and went and got him a spare daddy we had made incase these sort of things happened.

Work Stories

I haven't shared work stories in forever! So...where to start?

- One of the kids at work is very good at animal noises. She is also very good at "uncle" noises. If you ask her "What noise does uncle make?" She will fake a burp. It's so awesome, and one of my favourite things to ask her.
- We got these gorgeously comfy rugs for work which the kids love lying and rolling around on. We also like to lie down on these gorgeously comfy rugs, which turns us into awesome climbing frames for the kids. My colleague makes a good climbing person, and I as it turns out make a good practicing balance person. One child in particular like to stand himself up on my bum, steady himself and then try to walk. When he falls he gives out the biggest laugh, and tries again.
- The child that would cry all day long, and only sit with me, has settled. Yay! I do not come home feeling like the need to cry anymore!
- A little boy in the Toddler room has come in wearing a tutu quite a few times now. I love that no staff member or parents made any negative comment about this. I also love that his parents are supportive of this. Go world!
- I swear one of the kids at work who is only just starting to babble says "potato", she says "potato" a lot.

Work is going pretty awesome, and I am enjoying it so much more now that I am not studying as well. (First Aid this weekend and I'm done!)

Getting Crafty

This weekend has felt pretty awesome.
Yesterday, James and I rented a car and did some shopping at Ikea and Bunnings. I got a rug and plant for work, and we went in to set them up. The room looks SO much nicer now. I am a lot happier. :) We also found the perfect piece of wood to replace the bit that was broken by our dividing wall blowing open and ripping the old piece apart. We also picked up some new flowers for the apartment, James' idea. :)
I have also made some pretty bunting for the Nursery room, some birthday balloons, and flowers to display all the children in our room.
We've also been through most of our cook books and picked out the recipes we love, and watched the whole first season of Suits.
To some, it may sound like a rather mundane weekend, but to us it was pretty perfect. :)

In 2014 Our Room Shall Be...

Yesterday was our set up day at work. A day to sort out our rooms and do some fun questions set by our regional manager. Due to the wall between my classroom and cot room not having moved yet, it was kind of hard for me to set up my room properly. They'll be moving the wall this weekend, so putting things on the wall was pointless, and my room plan for the larger room was quite squished in our smaller room. It's only for 4 days. After room set up the Nursery and Toddler room staff had to sit down and run through some questions, that I was then supposed to be running through with my boss today...but I'm not in work. The final task was to create a statement for the room, we chose to do this for both rooms, that was something we could hold ourselves and each other accountable for, something casuals could see and work towards, and other stuff I don't remember. We decided instead of a statement to list out things we wanted our room to be for 2014, and since I have to stay home today and tomorrow because of my rash (doctors don't know what it is, and don't want me to be around babies) I thought I would use this time to make our statement something beautiful that we can proudly display on our walls. The above is the result. I am really happy with it. :)

Now I have to find something else to do with my day...

Ass-aur

Yes, when I previously told the story about the unique way to say 'dinosaur' it was 'ash-aur', but it has since changed to 'ass-aur', which is worse. Not only that, but this child seems to like asking for dinosaurs ALL the time, with no dinosaurs in his hands, and no dinosaurs in sight. He has also taken to calling quite a few other animals 'ass-aur's'. Yesterday a mum was dropping off her child when her 'ass-aur' child approached her with a tiny tiger toy, he raised it up to her face (she was crouching) and send in his very loud voice 'ASS-AUR' (did I mention he does a pretty mean looking face when he says things loudly?)...her face went red. She didn't know what to say.

I can only imagine wondering around in town with this child yelling 'Ass-aur! Ass-aur!!' is quite embarrassing. We're doing our best to teach him 'dino'.

So: dinosaur, firetruck and clock. All interesting words to ask children to say.

Mundane Midweek

Charlotte, over at Charlotte's Web, has begun a lovely little series called Mundane Midweek in which she talks about her run of the mill, midweek day. The idea has taken off and lots of people are doing it, and I have been enjoying reading about people's everyday life, so I thought I'd share as well. I've been wanting to for two weeks now...I just haven't, I don't know if that's a sign of how lazy I am, or busy, or exhausted. You can be the judge. Here is my Thursday.

Today I woke up at 7:30, the joys of being on the late shift. I woke to find James had already gone off to the gym, so I started my late shift morning routine. I turned on my laptop, then the kettle to make my coffee and made myself a bowl of Coco Pops. I then snuggled into the sofa and did my morning computer browse: check e-mails, check facebook, check blogs, pinterest, see if Anthropologie has new stuff, check Daily Mail. Whilst browsing Daily Mail I came across Miley Cyrus' new music video. I did not like. It reminds me a lot of Rhianna. I don't like Rhianna. I then put a playdough recipe onto my work usb, looked through photos on our nursery room usb for cute ones of M and H, who are both moving to the Toddler room next week (I am making a sad face as I type this, I love my babies too much). James got back from the gym at about 8:20. He had a shower as I was finishing up work stuff. We both got ready for the day and headed out together, me to work, him to the grocers.

I walked to work. It was an uneventful walk. On Tuesday I almost stepped on a hand sized spider. No such excitement today.

I got to the street our center is on and the whole pavement in front of our entrance had been taped off with signs saying 'Use other footpath'. I didn't. There was no other way to get into work. The taping off was because today they installed a new bell tower (at least that's what I understand) and were setting up the crane to do so. Our center is in a council building. They've been doing work on it since January. It has not been ideal. I kind of started work 10 minutes early because we all had to go to the preschool yard whilst they did crane stuff over the other side of the building. The bell tower is apparently so heavy it would crash through all three floors is it fell, so we moved to the other side of the center. I had some cuddles with M. I then noticed that J was in today (he'd been gone the rest of the week) and went and gave him a massive hug, because I adore my J. He was pretty excited to see me too. One of our kids, who has a dairy allergy, tripped and grazed her chin so I had to fill in an accident form. This led me to realise I know her mums mobile number by heart because I've dialled it enough due to allergy stuff.
We then had to move back to our room whilst they did crane work over the preschool area. I did my nappy round. I don't like nappy changes at the moment. We have this trial with an air-freshener thing, and it smells like someone who has too much perfume on. I really don't like it.
After nappies we did a Hooray for Fish group painting. It turned out pretty awesome. The kids painting with different shades of blue and green and then stuck fish from the book onto the painting.
I went on my lunch break whilst the kids had their lunch, and got back to find most of them asleep. Awesome lunch breaks. I worked on making goodbye cards for M and H. I was interrupted briefly to help get S to sleep because she was having tantrums with my colleague. I gave her a cuddle, lay her down and she went to sleep. Magic powers! I finished the goodbye cards and printed them off. J woke up and then fell asleep again in my arms.

I now feel like I'm going into way too much detail...

The afternoon felt pretty dull. We did some more painting with cars (they 'drive' the cars through paint and then on the paper). K, one of my favourite children, doesn't like getting paint on her hands, but REALLY likes painting. She had issues with one of the cars because the paint was a bit thicker, so whenever she tried to grab the car she would get paint on the tips of her fingers. She would then wipe off the paint on her smock, and go to grab the car again only to get paint on her fingers again. She again wiped it off, and continued the cycle a few more times until she decided she didn't like it and pushed the plate away saying "no" and shaking her head.
We had afternoon tea.
I did my afternoon nappies. Poo. Poo. Wet. Wet. Wet. Wet. Thrilling.
We combined with the Toddler room. M got super clingy and insisted on sitting on my lap, or being in my arms ALL the time. Kids got picked up. I got to go home.
I called James for our daily "Katie is on her way home" phone call. My phone needed to be topped up with credit before tomorrow, so we decided to meet at Broadway. So I walked to Broadway (which is on my way home) and met James. We topped up my phone credit and went to Gloria Jeans for a nice drink. We chatted and decide neither of us felt like cooking tonight.
We got Oporto. Mmmmm, chicken burgers. We got it to take away. After debating for a while whether to take the bus home or walk, we chose to walk. So we walked home.
At home we ate our dinner and watched the Block.
I then showered whilst James made hot chocolate.
Now I am typing this ridiculously long post whilst we watch the Footy Show.

So there is my Mundane Midweek Day.

Transformation of the Very Hungry Caterpillar

Last week we did a group painting with the children, inspired by the Very Hungry Caterpillar. We've been reading the book a LOT...like a LOT. I don't know it as well as I know 'Hooray for Fish', but I'm getting to know the book very well. We read the book, talked about the colours and then let the children paint. Above is the beautiful product of six of our children, ranging between 13 and 22months old. I LOVE it. It's about 1mx1m in size. Love it. So proud of my little children.

In work related news, one of our kids has learnt a new word: Ash-aur. The first couple of times I heard 'ash-aur' I was a little shocked, it sounded rather rude. The child using the word wasn't pointing at anything in particular, and just kept repeating 'ash-aur, ash-aur, ash-aur'. Eventually he was holding a dinosaur and saying 'ash-aur', that was when it all made a bit more sense. I still smile when he say 'Ash-aur'.

What Colour are You?

One of the children in the Toddler room at work was carrying around three pegs. When I asked why, he replied "This is Mama, this is Papa and this is me." pointing to the two blue pegs and then the orange peg. This prompted me to ask if his mum and dad were blue, to which he said "yes!". I then asked if he was orange, and again he said "yes!". He then wandered off.
Another child, who was sitting at the table whilst this happened, then told me he was black (he's caucasian). We then had the following conversation:
Me: "What colour is your mummy?"
Him: "Blue."
"And what colour is your daddy?"
"mmmmm...White!"
"What colour is Katie?" (that's me)
"No."
"No?"
"No."
"What colour is Katie?"
"mmmm...No."
"What colour is A?" (I feel weird using the children's full names, so you'll get letters)
"Orange."
"What colour is N?"
"Pink."
"What colour is J?"
"Black."
"What colour is L?"
"Black."
"What colour is Katie?"
"No."

I was both fascinated with the assigning of colours...and the fact that either he didn't want to give me a colour, or I had no colour. Children fascinate me so much.

Arvo Tea and Bibops

I love working with children. I love that the children in my room are learning to speak and so pick up a lot of things from us, or create their own words.

We've been teaching most of our older children, 16-20month olds, to say 'ta' when we give them their food etc. They've not only picked up saying 'ta' in these situations, but they also like to use it when they want us or other children to take things. The most common time for them to say 'ta' is after they have wiped their hands for meal times. Our youngest child, now 12 months, has recently begun to say 'ta' too, and it is so adorable. His parents have also begun to gel his hair up, which looks so adorably funky.

Another phrase I've been trying to teach the children is 'Arvo Tea'. We have a morning tea and an afternoon tea at work. Most of the children can say morning tea, and excitedly chant "morning tea, morning tea" when they see the food tray come to our room. They also chant 'morning tea' when afternoon tea comes to the room. I started trying to teach them 'afternoon tea' but quickly decided 'afternoon' was too long for them to pick up so switched to 'arvo tea' as arvo means afternoon in Aussie.  I wasn't seeing much success in this approach until yesterday when one of our children started chanting "Arvo tea! Arvo tea!" in the afternoon. It made me pretty happy.

The child who picked up the phrase 'arvo tea' is one of our better speakers. She has an adorable word for lollipops (which we like to make with playdough and popsicle sticks), calling them 'bibops'. Today I was trying to correct this to lollipop asking her if she could say "LOLLI-pop", the best I could get out of her was "lolli-bibop". Too cute.

Highlight of Work Today

We know one of the children in this ad, so we all got quite excited when the ad was e-mailed to our director. It's also a pretty funny ad. :)

Onesies

Around November/December time we had to take staff photos at work. We had to take silly staff photos at work. It was decided at our centre to take the photos in out PJ's. This led me to realise that I do not own fun, kid friendly PJs. I have kind friendly stuff, but it's all grey and black...doesn't exactly scream "childcare". A lot of other centres I have worked at have also had PJ days, where everyone comes in in their PJs...so I've sort of made it a mission to find some fun, childcare PJs. So far this mission has been a fail, mainly because I want to like the PJs. I then remembered seeing some awesome onesies on the internet and decided they could easily be passed off as PJs. I know have my sights set on owning one (or two, or three), it's just a matter of deciding which one. Currently I am loving the ones above (the bunny is only because Easter is soon, and a crazy part of me wants it to wear for our Easter Egg Hunt). James quite likes the Emperor Penguin onesie, which makes me tempted to get the Penguin onesie, because penguins mate for life. :P I also like the idea of the Kangaroo, since we are in Australia, plus you get a Joey too. Eeyore is just awesome, and I love Winnie the Pooh. Ah! The choices!

I have, however, decided that Pedobear would definitely be the wrong choice for childcare PJs, no matter how funny I think it is.

The Best Bits About Work

I am loving work at the moment, and these are some of the reasons why. 

Getting the tightest hugs ever from some of the kids. It's not just any hug, it's a super-tight-i-love-you kind of hug.

When the babies learn how to blow kisses, and will do so whenever you blow them a kiss. Melts my heart.

Smiles from babies who are still unsure of this new place they are being left.

Giggles. I love children's giggles.

The general amazingness of children. They are so much smarter than I ever gave them credit for, and it is amazing watching them discover the world and grow. 

Christmas Goodies Breakfast

One of the perks of working in Child Care is that you get a whole bunch of goodies at Christmas. This years goodies all came in the form of unhealthy foods. That's not to say they weren't all absolutely delicious. We ate a few as a scrummy breakfast this morning. (We didn't eat all that is displayed. We shared the gingerbread man and had a cupcake each.)

'Clock' is Not an Easy Word to Say

I haven't shared a work story for quite some time (unless you count the occasional complaining, but I don't), so I thought it was time for a little work story.

Yesterday I discovered 'Clock' has an unfortunate mispronunciation if a child has difficulty pronouncing the 'cl' sound. One of the little boys was sitting with me during the afternoon and noticed my watch to which he very excitedly announced "Cock!". I wasn't quite sure I heard him right, but he then quickly began to proclaim "Katie's cock! Katie's cock!", and I assume his Mum has a watch too because he also added "Mummy's cock!" whilst pointing at the door. I tried my best to keep a straight face and get him to say 'cl' or 'watch', but he was very insistent on using the word 'clock'. Children are so sweet and innocent.

In work related news, my beautiful reindeer head from earlier collapsed yesterday. The cardboard wasn't strong enough to stay rigid. I have since cut the antlers in half and created two reindeer profiles on the wall. :)

Getting Ready for Christmas

So, I decided to go for it and spend a little money every month so I can share photos. Yay. I am happy with the decision. I've been missing being able to post things here, plus I have plans, small plans, to slowly start making my blog feel more 'me'.

If you didn't already know, it's December. In my world that means only one thing: CHRISTMAS! I am a HUGE fan of Christmas, I don't know if I've made that at all clear the last couple of years, but it's my season, it's my holiday. I love it. It is happiness. So, naturally I have been Christmas-ing it up at work. I have been told a couple of times by the room leader to pack away my the Christmas craft I was doing with kids so that they can eat, or have so staff can do some serious tidying before the holidays...but Christmas activities are way more important in my book. I've tried to cram in as much Christmas crafting as possible into the last two weeks so that our room can look super awesome and festive, and it turns out to have been a good idea because I have been told 'no more crafts'. Lame. Anyhoo, this week we made my favourite craft: A Christmas Reindeer Head. The template is from here, and the result is awesome. I cut out the cardboard and let the kids go to town with some coloured paper, stars and feathers. I am in love with the outcome. Our little reindeer head has since been given a tinsel scarf and some the wall has been decorated with festive words. It's a wonderful little corner.

I've also created Christmas CD's for work. I said I was Christmas-ing it up. I made both an upbeat, fun CD to play whilst the kids are having fun outside, and a sleepy CD for when the kids are napping. Even though it's summer outside it is starting to feel quite Christmasy now. :D

Continuing with the Christmas theme. I put my name in for the Secret Santa at work. I got Angela, the room leader in my room. She's very much a closed door. It's very hard to figure out what she likes, people who have worked with her for 5 years have no idea what to get her. I've been struggling to come up with something, but this Friday I noticed she kept turning off my Christmas music and seemed to enjoy having the kids sitting quietly in the book corner reading books with her, so I decided she liked quietness...so maybe she likes quiet, relaxing baths? We went the Broadway and in Target found the beauty below. I think I won the lottery with this one, we have a budget of $25-30, and this fit into it. The stuff is supposed to be valued at $107, which I may not entirely believe, but I do believe that for $30 it was a steal. I am super chuffed with it. Fingers crossed she likes it. :)

In other news we went apartment hunting this weekend. It was a bit of a failure. The one apartment we really wanted to see had been leased Friday afternoon, and the other apartments were either tiny or had no natural light. We're hoping next weekend will offer better options, and already think it might. :) We were supposed to meet an old friend for a coffee catch up after the apartment viewings, but we'd both developed some seriously bad headaches (walking in the sun with limited water, no bathrooms and no sunscreen is NOT the best idea...I felt like I was going to faint at one point), so we had to cancel and went home and slept most of the afternoon.

We're feeling much better, and now own a small portable tube of sunscreen. :) Time to make some peppermint playdough whilst listening to Christmas music! Love this time of the year.

Bubble Flowers

The kids at work have been loving the bubbles we've been blowing outside. I love how excited they get when I pull them out. They have all also been super keen to try and blow the bubbles. Since we haven't done much art in the room I thought I would build on the bubble blowing to make some bubble art. I found this on pinterest, and thought I'd give it a test drive this weekend before trying it with the kids (the pin hole in the straw is a pretty nifty tip). I couldn't find any tempera paint, so I don't know how well that paint works, but ordinary washable paint didn't seem to have much affect on the bubble's colours. It is possible I needed to use more paint than I had available. However, food colouring did work. For the best effect I blew a whole bunch of bubbles and then dropped in the food colouring, it had the added bonus of looking super cool too!

I think this one may be worth trying with the kids this week. :)

Cutest Ghosts Ever

I've been feeling very crafty recently, and was feeling that all the stuff I did over the weekend just wasn't enough to make our nursery a Halloween wonderland. So, on my walk home I popped into K-mart to pick up some super bouncy balls, some elastic bands and a 3XL white t-shirt. The result is a collection of the cutest ghosts ever. I LOVE them! I'm keeping one at home just incase they get played with beyond repair at work. :)

Preparing for Halloween

Halloween is next week, and as I explained yesterday I have taken it as an excuse to organise all sorts of fun activities for the kiddies in the Nursery room next week. I was hoping to make some gloop/slime as a textile exploration for the kids, but unfortunately ALL of our attempts at that have resulted in something that would not be suitable for little kids. We did have a lot of fun, but none of the attempts could really be called gloop or slime. Oh well!

I did manage to make myself a Halloween costume (I'll share that later), some Monster bowling pins, a pumpkin bowling ball, a sign to remind parents we are dressing up for Halloween on Tuesday, some pumpkin spice playdough and am waiting for the orange dye to dry on some felt so I can make some felt pumpkins that the kids can arrange faces on. :D I also have some painting plans for next week too: Feet ghosts (white footprints look like ghosts when upside down) and blob spiders (the kids have been loving bubbles and so want to try and blow the bubbles, so I thought they could use straws to blow spider legs for a blob of paint). I am excited for next week. :)

Why hello there!

 Hi there!

I know it's been a while, but it's been good for me. :) I'm not completely back to where I wanted to be with my break from my blog, but I'm definitely getting there. I've gotten back to the point of wanting to share rather than feeling like I should.

So, in the past month and a half I was asked to become a permanent casual at a childcare center I'd been working at, to cover for a sick staff member. James and I have pretty much planned the furniture we'll buy as and when we have an apartment to furnish, and we've started saving up for all that. We've also started making weekends full of treats, which we are loving. :D

The center I've been working at has been going through changes, but it now has a new Director and she is doing wonderful things to improve the center. The room I'm working in needs the most change, and unfortunately the permanent staff in that room are the most reluctant to change. It's been driving me a bit crazy, but I'm coping with it. We've done barely anything creative with the kids, and I've been in the room since August. The new Director has done painting with the twice, and I've got the crayons out for them. The Director gave both rooms a playdoh recipe this week which we've made, and I am getting out every day...but we have yet to get the permanent staff actively being creative with the kids. With next weeks being Halloween I've decided to find anything and everything toddler worthy to do next week.

Today we went for a walk to Darling Harbour. We got some Gloria Jeans. We went to Broadway and did a whole bunch of shopping for my Halloween ideas. We then spent the afternoon making (and failing quite a bit) goop. Tomorrow we're going to Ikea and I'm making the rest of my Halloween crafts. :D It's a good weekend.

Wise Words

source

He was a very wise man. :)

In other news, I made a playdough pizza at work with the kids. Toppings included: mushrooms, sausages, smarties, marshmallows and lemons. Yum!!! :P