Sept. 23, 2011

This morning was the preschool activity.  And, naturally, I got lost on my way there.  It was pretty confusing and hard to find, but I got there!!  It was huge!  We met with the professor who was coordinating the day, and she just sent us off to our assigned rooms.  Without telling us what we were supposed to do.  I had no idea if I was supposed to be playing with the children or just observing them.  I was in a room with two children and one adult (not really sure of her title....), so I just kind of watched the little ones play for a bit, and then joined in.

I never really had the babysitting experiences when I was growing up, and I had no younger siblings to look after, so I admit I'm a little uncomfortable around children mostly because I don't really know what to do.  But, these two were so sweet and non-scary, that I couldn't help but to have fun!  We played blocks and then cleaned up so they could have breakfast.  Then, I read them a story, and they both wanted my lap to sit in.  And, because there were only two, we moved to another room across the hall that had 7 children, so then there were 9 total.  And once again, my lap was very desirable here too.

It was amazing to see how the children interacted with each other and how different the genders were.  Gender roles at that age (I think my group was all 3 year olds) are already distinguished.  Although I will say that one of the little girls, who had 3 older brothers, behaved much differently than another little girl who just recently became a big sister.

I spent the rest of the day working on homework for my professional nursing class.  I love how this class makes me think about all aspects of nursing that perhaps I didn't think about before.

Do you know how the pinning ceremony for nurses came about?  Florence Nightingale received the medal of Red Cross for her service during the Crimean War.  Following the war, she wanted to extend this honor to the most outstanding students at her school for nurses, and thus the pinning ceremony was born!  That's a fun factoid for the day!!

Oh, and I got my clinical assignment for tomorrow.  I panicked at first because I didn't see my name... until I read at the top that said they were going to send me to the ICU unless they got admissions overnight.  So, I went to sleep worried about what would happen tomorrow, not knowing what kind of patient I was going to have, if I was going to be in the ICU or not....  Kind of looking forward to going to the ICU!