As I begin my journey into education, one thing I must do is observe and engage within the learning environment as a guest to the classroom. Within my EDEC 4561 Field Experience class, we are placed within classrooms at the Family Development Center at Governors State University. For my field experience, I was placed within Mrs. Siville’s pre-K classroom. Within the classroom, I was meet by many interesting children. At the beginning of the day, Mrs. Siville’s students meet within the gym to start the morning with movement and games. The students go through an obstacle course and continues socialize and play with one another through their time within the gymnasium. Before leaving the gym, the instructor always counts and acknowledge the presents of each student in order to ensure that she has all the students that were left in her care. After a while within the gym, the students are taken to their homeroom class where they have breakfast: cereal, a glass of milk, and applesauce. Within the class, the students have a system of how to clean up after breakfast. The students will get up and push in their chairs, the grab their cup and take it to the trash, then the bowl, then the apple sauce container and their spoons and napkins; this is done in order to reduce the amount of accidents from students carrying too much stuff as well as reenforce behaviors when it comes to cleaning up after oneself and ensuring the environment is how it was before breakfast.

After breakfast, the students then go to carpet time. During carpet time, the students engage in activities such as greeting everyone. After this is complete the instructor then has videos that are ready for students to watch and dance along to such as the alphabets, counting videos, and more. Once this is complete, the teacher uses a “Wish You Well” board, that is make from a cooking pan and magnets in order to take attendance. Within this board there are magnets with the students faces and a heart in the middle. If a student is absent from school on that day, the teacher will acknowledge them and put the magnet with that student’s picture in the center of the heart and say, “We wish you well!”

As class progresses, the students then close carpet time with taking magnets and openly expressing how they are feeling for the day by placing the magnets on the pictures of emojis or faces with different emotions on them. When a student picked an emotion, the teacher will then ask them what is making them feel that way and why. After the child places their magnet, they are then allowed to go to a center of their choice as long as it is not already a certain amount of students within that area; each area has a sticker with the number of students that can be within the center that child generally acknowledge. By time it was time to leave the classroom, I had a general idea of the different kinds or personalities that where within the classroom and how the class is conducted. I simply can not wait until my second day of field experience in order to engage and observe more interesting and developmental classroom activities in order to enhance my education and knowledge that is necessary to be an Early Childhood Educator! Until next time!