The 4Kers were c.r.a.z.y. today. Like tackling each other, screaming, crying, not listening at all kind of crazy. The morning class had to sit at their tables with their heads down twice today. I had them do that once at the beginning of the year and they hated it. Usually I can remind them of "that time they had to sit quietly with their heads down" and this little light bulb goes off in their heads and they are like, "oh yeah, that wasn't fun. I'll be a better listener." Not today. The heads were down two times.
It's not really my style to have them do things like that. I'm pretty good about figuring out why they are acting differently and then coming up with a solution that solves the problem.
Sometimes they have a ton of energy to burn off so we do some dancing, yoga, or some sort of action game. Tried it. All of it. They still had energy to tackle each other football style during story time. How that happens, I don't know.
Sometimes they need to get out of the room for a little while- have a change of scenery and come back ready to learn. So we took a bathroom/water break. It didn't help. One kid spit at the dean of students, another kid couldn't find her walking feet anywhere, and another kid kept locking stalls and then crawling under them so they would be locked with no one in them.
They could not calm their bodies down after multiple attempts at singing songs, jumping around, and trying to read a story, so they got to rest their heads on the tables (almost) silently. It helped for about 10 minutes.
Sometimes they are hungry- easy problem to solve- we eat snack a little earlier. Tried it. Snack ended up all over the floor and then there were tears because they had to clean it up. At least picking up all of the tiny little pieces was a fine-motor building activity.
Sometimes they are overtired and get super silly like overtired little kids do, so we sing a song to focus, read a story or two, and move on once we are calm. We couldn't get through a song or story- not even their favorites. I tried yoga again (they love yoga) and some slow, deep breathing. Nope.
So we had read-to-self time. They were awesome for the 5 whole minutes (we've built up from 4!) that they had to spend quietly reading to themselves. We're working on building our reading stamina- they can't handle more than 5 minutes yet and start getting really antsy at about 6 minutes.
Then we tried to move on to math time.
It didn't work. I had an interactive smart board game planned that would normally be super engaging. Today the only thing that was engaging (other than 5 minutes of read-to-self) was breaking rainbow loom bracelets into millions of little pieces and sprinkling them all over the carpet. Heads-on-table-time #2 started now.
At the end of the day, I was tired from their craziness, but I also thought it was hilarious. I had to let go of being frustrated and just go with it. On my way home, I was still trying to figure out what was up with them and if there was something else I could try tomorrow. I was almost home when I made a turn and saw the cause of their craziness:
A full moon.
There was absolutely no other reason for the way they were acting. I should have realized it earlier, especially because it's happened before. Next time, I need a warning and then I need to change my expectations from getting things done to just making it through the day without constantly wrestling or crying. Hopefully tomorrow will be slightly more low key :)
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