Little Paws Preschool Open for Business

For the next three weeks, GHS students from the Assistant Child Care class will become teachers for preschoolers ages three to five three days a week for an hour. The students have created their own classroom, organizing it to be ready the preschoolers.

Senior Jessica Rymarz describes the preparations their class has been doing.

“We have been taking a lot of notes in class on safety, classroom organization, lesson planning, etc., and also we have done observations of preschool classrooms,” she said. “We have put in a lot of time to prepare our classroom by organizing furniture, decorating our classroom, sanitizing all of our toys, and just making sure everything was perfect for our preschoolers.”

Junior Samantha Swenski adds that high school students have been learning how to respond to and control children’s behaviors.

“This class prepares us for how to plan the lessons and how we should respond to their behaviors,” she said. “In the class we also did observations, where we went to other preschools to observe how the teacher handled different situations.”

Rymarz is very excited to be a teacher and looks forward to working with the “Little Paws.”

“I am honestly so excited! I love working with kids, and I have been waiting all semester for this project!” she said. “I am excited to work with the preschoolers, and help them learn some things about themselves, help them make some friends in our classroom, and help them all feel special and proud of what they can accomplish in our classroom.”

Swenski is also excited, but nervous as well.

“I am very excited to be a teacher. I have worked really hard to prepare for this experience. One thing that I am nervous about it keeping the children’s attention. Because they are so little, their attention span only lasts so long,” she said.

Assistant Child Care teacher Kayla Correll describes the task the high school students complete.

“Students are assigned a day to be a lead teacher and a day to be an assistant teacher. On days they are a lead teacher, they have to prepare a full lesson plan with educational activities to fill the full preschool class for that day,” she said.

Swenski plans on what she has planned for the Little Paws.

“Each day a new group will present a lesson that they created for the themed week. In my lesson, I planned an art, reading, and science activity that will get all the kids involved,” she said.

Rymarz plans on having the students color the first letter of their name.

“My day is about ‘My Special Letter,’ so we will be doing activities with letters, especially the first letter of their name. We will be reading a pop-up book about the alphabet, kids will be decorating the first letter of their name, and this will show them that they are all different, and special,” she said. “We will be doing a science activity with watercolors, where they can reveal their name (it was written over white paper with white crayon, so the paint reveals it); this will teach them that as you mix colors, you can make new ones!”

Correll explains how the activities relate to what the Little Paws will be learning about in the future.

“All of the lessons being taught tie to traditional school subjects of math, science, reading, social studies, music and art. The activities are just tailored to teach the basic concepts through an age-appropriate activity,” she said.

Correll hopes that this experience for the high school students will persuade them to continue to pursue a teaching career.

“I hope that my high school students will discover the joy of teaching. That they may apply all of the learning that has happened this semester into creating and carrying out their own lesson plan and also grow in their ability to interact with children,” she said. “In the end, I hope they have more direction for their career path and their future.”