Perspectives

My Youngest daughter was in a play called "Up the Down Staircase" this past week. I had no idea what the show was about, so I went in not sure what to expect. Watching the young girl playing a new teacher in a classroom of adolescence was interesting and brought back so many memories of my first year teaching. The contrast ended there though as I taught a classroom of 4 year olds. The story was touching and one line in it really got me thinking about the children I see every day. The seasoned teacher told the new one to look past what the students were saying to hear what they were actually saying. In PreK we need to look past the actions to find out what our students are saying. Since our students are just learning to express themselves with words, they express themselves best in actions. Looking on my classroom it made me think differently about how I can best teach them and the tools I need to provide to help them learn to express themselves. As I am thinking and brainstor...

I woke up to see this light on my bedroom door. It was fairly large about 6" tall by 2' wide. I kept staring at it and trying to figure out what it was.  Was it a burgle in the house? The flashlight just holding steady and reflecting on my bedroom door? All these crazy thoughts were going through my head. Then I put on my glasses. The reflection changed, it was only about 1/2" tall by 4" wide. I got up to investigate and found one of the kids had left the speakers in their bathroom and the little pin LED light was being reflected off of my door. It suddenly hit me. How many times have I in my teaching lost focus? How many times have I looked at a something in my classroom and it seemed ginormous? Too many to count actually, if I'm honest. Sometimes our problems seem so big and overwhelming and then we put on our glasses and focus. Well, actually something like what just happened to me makes you stop, step back, and take a minute to focus and see the problem is no...

I'm wondering what everyone does at cleanup time. How do you get your class to stop play and clean up at the end of center time? Her are some thoughts that I have tried and seen in other classes and am trying now. 1.  Use a song to signal clean up time is here. It gives the auditory signal for your auditory children that there is a change coming in our day. 2.  Turn on overhead lights to give a visual brightness of the time to clean up. ( we keep our lights low for normal class time. I saw one of my team mates do this and loved it. She also does number 3 that I plan to try ) 3. Use a magic wand to tap children on the head or shoulder that gives them permission to clean up and assign a specific job to them ( Please pick up the paper off the floor) 4.  Have pictures on shelves if you want things put back in a specific place.  5. Have mini lessons with items from around the room and have children return the items to the correct center during this time. 6. Have children ...

I tweeted a thought I had earlier today the tolerance is temporary, acceptance is permanent and we should all strive to be accepting. I'm not sure why, but this thought has been on my mind for a couple of days now. I think of life in general and how sometimes we tolerate actions of those around us. Sometimes those actions irritate and annoy us, but we tolerate them in hopes that the actions will go away.  In the classroom, we need to learn acceptance. A child comes in on the first day with all he/she is. It is our responsibility to accept that the child will have faults just like we as adults do and our responsibility to accept the child's faults and build on the child's strengths. To do this we have to build a community in our classroom. Make our classroom a safe environment. By a safe environment, I mean a place where the child feels safe to be who he or she is and feels comfortable talking to you as the adult. In this community, it becomes possible to find our the child...

Ideas were passed around at my last team meeting about creating a calendar through the year that was meaningful to the kids and parents. We wanted something that parents could look at when they drop off and pick up their children. We all decided that in the hallway outside our doors we would have a place for each month of the school year. We will choose 2 pictures that represent what we learned about or was special that month and we would have the children create a piece of artwork to display under the pictures. We are hoping that this will be a way for us to build community in our families and classrooms throughout the year.  What are some of your ideas that you use for building community? 

Thoughts on calendar in an early childhood classroom are all very different. Some people have a lengthy calendar time, while others just say what day it is and move on. What are your thoughts?  Some of the research I have seen support a linear calendar to make the concept of time not quite so abstract to the young children. I personally like using a linear calendar, but I see benefits of exposing children to the traditional calendar. I like to have my linear week of Sunday through Saturday and then transfer it to another place in the classroom after the week is over to build the month. Or better yet I have built the calendar day by day and week by week on the smartboard.  How do you do calendar? What are advantages and disadvantages of how your calendar works? 

This is my current crochet project I'm working on. Hopefully I will finish it by the beginning of next week :)

I was going through my things and came across an idea by Teaching Strategies I thought was neat. The basic idea is have a place for Students and Teachers to write on a note other students they notice being kind. For younger students writing the friends name and drawing a picture of the kindness they saw their friend do is sufficient. I have been looking for ways to promote kindness in my classroom and I'm thinking this will be in my class this year :)

I'm thinking of lamps for my classroom and while I have some I'm always looking for new ideas. I saw this bamboo one at a furniture store and thought it would make a great lamp bringing light to the place where children play, on the carpet. I refuse to pay much for it so I would like to attempt making my own. Any ideas? I'm thinking bamboo sticks, hot glue, half a lamp shade and a light kit from a craft store. I can make it for less than the clearance price of $49.95 right?

Thoughts of next school year are never far away in the summer. Especially this summer for me. I will be at a new school in the fall, so this summer is being spent organizing and purging my school things. I'm finding it is not as easy to do as I thought it would be. Going through a box of math manipulatives I find a use for every item. Sigh. So I have had to use this list to determine what to keep and what to say goodbye to: 1.  Is there a purpose for this item? Could it be used for teaching a lesson or independent practice in centers? 2. Have I actually used this item the past 2 years? Even if it is useful if I haven't actually used it then it needs to go. I give it a 2 year window because sometimes you can't use something because of certain children or the children's interests did not support the use of that item this year.  3. Does it fit in the environment that I create in the classroom? This year I can only use natural baskets, shiny metal plates and containers or t...