We’ve finished learning the alphabet, and some of my little friends actually know the whole damn thing, so we’ve been celebrating our accomplishments with some spirited readings of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. On Monday we made a mural, and each child did his or her own little chicka tree, using templates I found here.
Now the children keep going around muttering, “chicka chicka boom boom,” and they are fighting over it in the reading corner.
Now that we’re in the home stretch, our theme is “Ready for Kindergarten,” and all the books on our shelf are about kindergarten and school. Z. commented that some of them looked familiar, and I told her that we’d had a bunch of them out at the start of the year. I was impressed, but not surprised, that she remembered.
Yesterday at storytime I didn’t have enough time to introduce our new “special story” (the repeated interactive read-aloud), so I grabbed Miss Nelson is Missing off the shelf.
(For those of you who aren’t familiar with the book, Miss Nelson’s class is the worst behaved in school. They never listen to their poor, sweet teacher. One day she goes missing, and in her place is the substitute, Miss Viola Swamp. She has an ugly black dress and is perhaps a real witch. She is strict and mean and scary, and everyone buckles down. Finally, when they are exhausted from working so hard, Miss Nelson comes back, and from then on the children all appreciate her, do their work, and behave beautifully. No one ever knows that there is an ugly black dress in Miss Nelson’s closet….)
I had never read this book to any of my preschool classes, and I wasn’t sure how it would go. However, with all their practice discussing books this year, they loved it and had a lot to say. With a little guidance, they even figured out the true identity of Miss Viola Swamp at the end.
When I closed the book, I asked, “Why were the children so happy to see Miss Nelson at the end of the book?”
Z. said, “They missed her.”
I asked, “How do you know they missed her? Why do you think that?”
Z. replied, “Well, when you are gone, we all miss you. So I think Miss Nelson’s class missed her the same way.”
Zing! My heart melted. It is so nice to be appreciated, especially by four and five year olds.
There was an article today about what children read most often, listed by grade level. I was surprised by how prosaic the list was, and realized that these are the books that teachers (and children) are so familiar with, we hardly notice them.
Green Eggs and Ham, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, Are You My Mother?….I read all these books to my students. But I realize that I rarely spend much time actually thinking about them. These are the fruits and vegetables, the necessities of a healthy reading diet. I admit I am more likely to spend time on the dessert — Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! and No, David! and Punk Farm and Traction Man is Here! (Note all the exclamation points? That says something right there.)
So hooray for the classics, the every day, working-hero books. I was glad to be reminded of how much children love them.
Friday morning started off poorly. My younger child is struggling in school this year and I was feeling sad about it. So when the children arrived for class and I still wasn’t in a good mood, I decided I would put myself in a good mood.
When it was time for morning meeting, I gathered together a large stack of our favorite books, and put them on my red chair.
“Are you giving those to us?!” asked K., her eyes glowing. (She was clearly remembering all of our RIF giveaways this year, each of which began with a stack of books on my red chair.)
“No, sweetie, these are our favorite books. If I give them all away we won’t have them to read anymore.”
We went through the pile, talking about each one — “Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! I LOVE that one!” “Ohhhh, Stellaluna!” “Doctor Desoto — remember when he tricked the fox with glue?” “The Gingerbread Man!” “Chrysanthemum!” “Swimmy!” “Look, that one has a Caldecott!” “No, David!” “Farmer Duck: how goes the work?”– and glorying in our wonderful books.
Then each child carefully decided on a favorite book and took it to the table with a “my favorite book” page. Most of them were able to write their own names and copy the title of the book, and then page through the books to find the best picture to draw.
Their finished work was wonderful, and it will be a much-loved class book when we laminate it and put it together on Monday. And…I felt much better.
