Gingerbread Day December 21, 2011

Yesterday we celebrated Gingerbread Day in our classroom, and the children were delighted. We read three versions of the classic story (over two days), and then we decorated gingerbread men with squiggly white frosting. (One girl said, “this is my mom” as she carefully made two frosting breasts on her cookie…..) They were messy and happy as could be. The room smelled yummy, and everyone liked their cookie except for my one very shy boy, who wouldn’t eat his. A trip to the office for a Spanish translation helped me to understand — he just wasn’t hungry.

On another note, I’ve been thinking about the progress we’ve made so far. One thing that I have been really successful at is the classroom climate. The children are calm, focused, happy, and kind. The room runs smoothly pretty much all the time.

BUT. Have they learned as much as they could? Or, in other words, have I done a good enough job of teaching them? I think I need to focus again on assessment with individual children to make sure they are on track, and get my small groups going again to address specific needs. So that is what I will do once we get back to school in January.

triumph in the block corner December 14, 2011

Almost every day, I have been sitting in the block corner at centers time with my little blocks-challenged friend. (On the days when I haven’t been there with him, my special ed teacher has been.)  And each day, he has learned a little bit more.  Let’s call him Crow, because yesterday, crow is what he did.

“Teacher, let’s make a train!”

“Okay, that’s a good idea.  What are you going to do with those blocks in your hands?”

“Make a train!  Yeah, make a train!”

“Okay, honey.  Put the blocks down on the floor, yes, just like that.”

“This one goes here!”

“And I’ll put this one here.  Do you want to go get some more blocks?”  And so on.

Pretty soon we had a train.  Crow could not stop grinning.  ”My train!  It’s a train!”  And jumping for joy.  ”I made a train!  I love my train!  I love Mrs. X.!”

After a while, it became clear that he didn’t know what to do, having built the train.  (Knocking it down and starting over would have been stressful.)  So we carefully took it apart, block by block, and Crow managed to put them all away in the right places.  Then he went off to the dramatic play area, his second most favorite thing to do.

Today he came in uncharacteristically quiet.  My assistant, who goes to get him off his bus each morning, was worried.  Usually he chatters all the way to class, but today he was silent.  I asked him if he wanted to sit on my lap, and he nodded.  So we had a little snuggle, and a conversation about what we had each eaten for breakfast.  After that, he was his usual self, except for the fact that he wanted to sit on my lap at least two more times, and before today, he had never been affectionate toward me.

At centers time, I rigged it so that he got to go to blocks again, and once again, he built a train.  It was joyful, all over again.  He was so proud of himself, and so happy that his teacher was proud, too.