sometimes ya just gotta roll with it

i got 4 new kids in my class on wednesday. i was pretty excited because these new students (in addition to the 3 that i got the week previously and others that i've gotten since the beginning of the year) were bringing the age level of my class down significantly...from "about to turn 3" to "just turned 2". this is a huge difference in kids at this age.
so i was trying to be super prepared and had worked out this whole new teaching technique involving a lot of puppet use (more on that later). i even went in early on wednesday to get super prepared for the day.
well, wednesday came 3 out of the 4 were crying (screaming). i was trying to do lesson, introducing the new puppet, over all the crying. a student came in late which broke up the vibe. and some of the students wanted to run over to the latecomer to say hello. blahblah. so i turned to my assistant and said, "let's just do some songs, and then play with toys."
thursday came and again they were crying. this time, the one who wasn't crying at first on wednesday was throwing a complete fit and banging her head on the floor, presumably thinking that if she hurts herself, mom will come get her (mom later told us that she's done this before). so i decided that we needed to play with playdough instead of having a formal lesson time.
and then i thought it wasn't a bright idea to try to start them on the lesson routine on a friday so today we did puzzles and counted blocks while making towers and seeing how high before they'd fall down.
i think it's important when teaching kids so young that you learn to be flexible in these ways. i had been excited to do the things that *i* wanted to do, but i knew that it wasn't what the kids needed right then. they needed to learn to feel comfortable in the classroom. to feel comfortable with all these new people who were going to be taking care of them.
and it's just as fun for me to spend this time playing with them.