Little Voices: Familiar Words

I brought back a few new ideas to the classroom after attending a literacy workshop at NAEYC in Dallas titled:

Wow your crowd with a read-aloud: 10 Strategies to increase engagement and interaction 

By Deb Stewart of Teach Preschool and Vanessa Levin of Pre-K Pages. 

I learned a lot of great ideas, but a couple pointers that I found helpful were:

Do not put books on the book shelf until they have been read aloud to the children.

If they don't "know" and love the books, than they are less likely to care for them and actually examine them on their own. We have a much younger and newer crew this year and there have been many injuries to our books. The children often pull them off the shelf, but rather than look at them they just stand or sit on them. I realized that I many of the books on the bookshelf had no context to them. They didn't know the story. I have a lot of books that are special to me. Those are my favorites to read. Unfortunately I have them all on a special shelf so they don't get ruined. I read them and then put them away. These are the stories the children would love to hold, because I love to read them. I have decided to start investing in second copies of all those books for them to have on their shelf. 

They also reminded me of the importance to read the children books over and over again. 

I know the importance of repetition for their language skills. I know the importance of them learning a story so thoroughly that they are able to retell it. However, it is easy to get into a routine of reading new books, because as adults we get bored with reading the same books over and over again. Children want to hear the same stories over and over again!

When I got back to the classroom I took all the books off our forward facing book shelf. I decided to start simple. I started reading them all our board books. I put the board books on the shelf. I knew these would be the easiest books for them to handle, but also the easiest books to memorize.  I am not talking about texture and lift-a-flap board books. Many great classic stories can be found in the form of board books. Three all time favorites from our board book collection are Jamberry, Brown Bear Brown Bear, and The Three Bears. 

Part of our daily routine is to clear from lunch, use the bathroom and then choose a book. They bring the book and their nap bag over to their mat and get everything settled. They read their books alone. Once children have settled into the school year a little bit, we occasionally have "book sharing."

I will invite children to another child's mat to share their books with each other. I felt the difference this week. Everybody is finally settling into the routine. I knew they were ready to give sharing a try.

I remind them to sit next to each other. I encourage them to hold one book on two laps, because that is the true meaning of sharing. The child who chose the book off the shelf is the "reader." Then they switch books and readers.  I was not only amazed with their interest and new ability to sit next to each other and share their books, but I heard something new.

As I walked around peaking at them, I heard them repeating the words to the books that I had recently read. Success. :)

Just a few of the things they are learning:

Language Skills

Sharing space with others

Building friendships

Similarities: Noticing they both have books about bears.

Explaining proper book handling
to our younger friends. 

Bottle Babies

Over a year ago I created a Facebook group without ever realizing that it would turn into such an amazing resource for many educators. A year later there are hundreds of Early Childhood teachers participating in conversations and photo sharing from all over the world. 

One of the many things that I learned through this group was about "Bottle Babies." 

This is concept that can be found in a book titled The Out-of-sync Child Has Fun. An excerpt from the book can be found here. 

This great open-ended play resource was first introduced to the Facebook Group by another teacher named Lesley, who works at  Takoma Park Cooperative Nursery School and has been a huge inspiration of ideas. 

The idea behind the bottle babies is for children to have "heavy work,"which is great for developing motor skills and coordination. 

Although the book focuses on children with sensory processing disorders, these concepts are great for any child.

What kid doesn't love to feel strong and grown up? 

"Quick! Save the Babies!!!"

They are very heavy and carrying two can be quite a challenge.

The kids also love "collecting" objects and the Bottle Babies are a perfect opportunity for carrying, collecting, and pulling things around in the wagon.

Having a lot of the same material always seems to bring the kids together into more social and imaginative play.

You can see some other kids using 

Bottle Babies at the links below:

Pre-School Play

Learning for Life

Happy Hooligans

Rigorous Curriculum

There has been a lot of people getting all worked up over Obama's State of the Union Address. It took me a week or so from when I started seeing comments to actually look into "The Plan."  I was seeing a lot of negative reactions from Early Childhood professionals from all different types of programs. Their reasons for being upset were all different and I started to get VERY confused. Not to mention its impossible to find a non-biased source. 

When I finally had a chance to sit down and read the Address, I was even more confused. I didn't really see anything to get worked up about. In fact, I didn't really see more than a couple paragraphs about Obama's Universal 4 Year Old Program. I realized there was a Fact Sheet that accompanied the address. 

I don't tend to be a very political person, but this was something I needed to understand for the future.  I still can't really tell you what it said or what the implications might be. I still don't know how I feel about most of it, but I did see two words that made my stomach flip-flop.

Part of the plan for the 4 year old plan outlined included a, "RIGOROUS Curriculum." 

Gulp.

Takoma Park Nursery School in Maryland has been posting photos on Facebook, displaying perfect examples of learning through play with captions that said things like, 

"Hopefully by "rigorous 

curriculum for 4-year olds", 

they mean protecting the selkies from

 sharks using launchable magic ring

 while Siamese cats build a perch." 

Takoma Park also had a great guest post on their blog titled 

The Need to Play.

Here is some of the Rigorous Curriculum we have been working on this week.

This has been one of those weeks that leaves me feeling all warm and fuzzy inside. The kids were so engaged in activities that they have created, that it was hard to interrupt them for my own agenda. I could link every single one of these photos to at least two or three early learning standards

.

Young children work hard at play. They invent scenes and 

stories, solve problems, and negotiate their way through 

social roadblocks. They know what they want to do and 

work diligently to do it. Because their motivation comes 

from within, they learn the powerful lesson of pursuing 

their own ideas to a successful conclusion.

Crisis in the Kindergarten



Nurture.

Shhh.. The baby is sleeping.

Adventure.

Life Skills.

The dogs meet the horses.

Focus.

Explore and Create.

Another article I found:

NY Times: The State of the 4 Year-Olds

Building Our Town

Day One

This month we will be creating an imaginary town. We began with an empty plot of grass and a group of citizens who wanted us to turn it into a town. We brainstormed about all the things a town would need. The first thing they added was a playground :)  We had great conversations about all the things we needed. The children mentioned that we would need money. When I asked "where do people get money?" The two responses were "the store" and "work." Which resulted in them adding three stores for places to work. A food store, a clothing store (for bathing suits for the pool) and a treat store. Later when we were reading a book (featured below), we realized that we needed to have a trash truck and place for it to bring the trash.  I suggested a Town Office for us to hold our meetings in. No matter how much more I questioned and encouraged them, they ran out of ideas to add to our map. 

This is my artistic talent, not that of the children. Theirs would probably put mine to shame.

We used the construction vehicles to build roads, bridges, and ramps.

DAY TWO

On day two we added a few more places to our town. We added a train station, which meant we also needed to add tracks. We added a fence around the pool and discussed who could work at the pool to keep people safe.  We added pear trees to the apple orchard. A parking lot at the top of the map for all the construction trucks to park in. 

It started in complete chaos.

Soon I realized they needed to have "foundations" to build on.

When they got tired of building a couple of the "workers" went back to the office to draw up some blueprints. We haven't used rulers much at preschool in the recent past, so this was a very fascinating activity for them.

DAY THREE

The kids suggested that we add a fire station and police station to the map. We talked about how important those are and what would have happened in the town without them. We voted to hire 6 fireman total. Three that work at night and three that work during the day. We also decided that we would start with three policemen.  

Our new green felt, which is perfect for grass to build and drive on.

We also sang:

Wheels on the Fire Truck
Wheels on the Fire Truck go round and round, round and round, round and round
Wheels on the Fire Truck go round and round all around our town.

Sirens ...wee-ooo, wee-ooo, wee-ooo
Heroes ... "Here we come! Here we come! Here we come!
Ladders... up and down
Hoses... spray, spray, spray


Twinkle Twinkle Traffic Light
Twinkle Twinkle Traffic Light
Twinkle twinkle traffic light
Shining on the corner bright
Red means STOP, Green means GO, Yellow means go reeaallly slloww.
Twinkle Twinkle Traffic Light
Shining on the corner bring.