DAY 4 at the WCCC

Same group as last time, one of the Pre-K groups. Unfortunately, there was no birthday party this time, so I didn't get a chance to peek into the interaction between parents and their children. Oh well. Also, Jared (the male college student that works there) wasn't there this time, and the difference was substantial. Almost ALL of the children seemed very comfortable around me, mostly the boys, and especially one boy we'll call Kara. Since there aren't a lot of male teachers at the WCCC, the boys are probably very excited when they find a teacher that they can identify with (gender-wise). Him and a few others were most obviously securely attached at a young age, because they had no problem being around me, he even sat in my lap during story time, despite being around me for 4 hours tops. Kara and the other boys he was playing with showed signs of precausal reasoning, especially when they were playing with grippy-block toys (at this point almost all of the play they do is pretend/symbolic play), in which he put them together and apparently it was supposed to resemble a ship. Upon "blast-off", one of the kids asked Kara where the fire is on the ship, and Kara responded by saying that this ship doesn't have fire. And then they both started arguing whether or not fire came out of a spaceship. The kid incorrectly reasoned that all spaceships spew fire, and Kara, because he was pretend-playing, didn't really respond with good arguments, just kept on repeating, "this spaceship doesn't have fire!". Johnny apparently did a good deed, which I had no idea what it was, and was able to tell me he had a sticker on his cheek as he pointed to himself in the mirror, as he should be able to according to mirror studies about self-recognition.

Then for the rest of the day, the kids just went off and played outside, since it was SUCH a nice day. Gender segregation didn't seem to set in, although boys did boy things when they were playing house, (ie, they were using pinecones as hammers to fix the roof, the girls and Kara were making a cake/pie/food(they couldn't make up their mind) out of grass and twigs and such). But other activities, such as hide and seek, tag, and just general play seemed to be enjoyed by both genders. Except one pretend play where the girls collected flowers to make a salad of sorts, but those girls belonged to the older, 4-5 year old class, where gender segregation seems to rear its head.

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