Painting and Stories

That was pretty much my first morning at the new job. I'm currently doing two mornings a week with the 3-4 year old children, and then after Easter I'll also be doing two afternoons a week with the 2-3 year olds.

Yesterday was a bit unusual because the children were helping to make pancakes so it was less timetabled than it will be normally. I started off doing painting with some of the kids. Even at that age you can see which kids are actually thinking about what they're doing and which others just want to "paint everywhere" (one little boy's answer when asked what he was painting a picture of). I was also amused by one girl - "I'm painting a dinosaur. He's got lots of teeth. It's actually a girl. She won't eat people. She's friendly." What a relief. My picture was the most girly - I painted a rabbit.

Supervising garden play gave me a chance to chat to another of the supervisors (who happened to have been on the same marriage-prep course as us last year). We had a really nice talk about God and church. She really wants to know more. Alpha would be perfect for her...(again - why has my church stopped doing Alpha?!).

Next I sat and read stories to some of the children. I love how interested they were. I was sitting on the floor and by the end of book one my audience had gone from one child to six and they were all leaning on me to see the book. We read about five stories in the end.

The hardest part so far is learning all their names. There were eighteen and I know who about nine of them are for sure. There are about another ten who weren't in though so I'll probably be confused all over again on Friday.

Question of the day as I was sitting with the last child to be collected - "When will your Mum come and pick you up?"