Five Little Ducks

I was teaching my little emperors again ... and it was the second class of the day.

The kids in the first class were brilliant. I had told the story of "Little Red Riding Hood" to this amazing class of four year olds. One little girl was actually wearing a little red jacket with a red hood, so I chose her to play the main part. I had masks on sticks, and I got kids to come up and act it out, repeating simple sentences - these kids are so good. They loved it when the big bad wolf had to growl, and it was even better when Little Red had to scream. And then 'the worker' in the forest heard her and came running ... I couldn't afford to let him get too violent so he had to say, "Go away, Wolf!" - and they thought that was amusing too.

Then I took a little break in the hallway - I was exhausted after an hour of enthusiastic teaching, and my voice was nearly gone. It sounded like a riot was happening in the class I was headed to next. The 'B' class of four year olds. Last time I took that class I ended up just sitting there staring at them - after teaching them "Open, shut them" (which they found highly amusing) all my other tried and tested ideas had failed on them and I was unable to think of anything else that would "work". And the teachers in this classroom didn't seem to understand what I said, so I couldn't say, "Could you explain to the children that they have to stop laughing and screaming if I am to tell them a story."

I went into the classroom - some of the children were seated ready for me, but there were some boys fighting in the corner, and another little boy was crawling under a bookshelf in the reading corner. I said, "Hello!" as cheerfully as I could muster, and they all laughed, some of them falling off their chairs onto the floor to do so. I sighed and sat down on the tiny wooden chair at the front to wait for the teachers to settle them down. Then I launched into my Red Riding Hood story, with pictures, that had gone down so well in the other room. I couldn't get more than a few words out before the riot started again. I sat and waited, and when things were quieter started again. After several attempts, I thought maybe I'll just shout my way through this ... but my voice just cracked and no one paid any attention. So I sat and thought some more.

I decided to move onto the next part of my lesson. I would try to teach the song

Five Little Ducks

I had some finger puppets in my bag, five little white 'ducks' - well, actually one of them was a bright red parrot, but I figured they might not notice. I slipped the puppets onto the fingers of one hand, held them up and started to sing. To my amazement, things began to quieten down. When the ducks went "over the hill and far away", I put my hand down behind my back, and then while everyone was now watching my other hand being "Mother Duck said, 'Quack! Quack! ...", I flicked one of the puppets off my fingers onto the floor behind my chair. When I brought my hand back out in front with "Only four little ducks came back!" I had everyone's rapt attention. Even the teachers. I realised this may be the first time they had understood me.

One of the teachers said something to the others and came down to the front of the room. She leaned over and peeked behind my chair, and then nodded at the others - clever girl, she had worked out where the other duck went!

I had to repeat the whole song several times - they seemed to enjoy it just as much every time. And then I chose some children to each have a puppet placed carefully on their tiny grubby finger - they seemed incapable of doing it themselves, they expected me to do it for them - and another child who could prove herself capable of saying "Quack!" correctly got to be "Mother Duck". I sang the song and led them around the room and 'far away' where I persuaded one of them to stay (the class teachers soon got the hang of this and came and stood to hold onto the lost ducky) while the others 'came back'. Of course this scenario had to also be repeated several times to allow as many children as possible to have a turn.

I had survived another lesson at the Kindy. Next week its the five year olds. Then its the May holidays. So I don't have to face that class for another three weeks!