the 100th day of preschool February 22, 2011

It was the 100th day of school recently.  We made glasses in the shape of a “100″ and we made crowns.  We also made special hats with ten strips of paper with ten fingerprints on each, that we stapled to a sentence strip that said “I am 100 days smarter.”

But the most hotly anticipated part:  eating 100 snacks.  I had been telling them about it for a week — “On the 100th day of school, guess what?  We get to eat 100 snacks!” — and a few of them were worried.  “I think I will get a tummy ache.”  But most of them were thrilled and mystified.

Here’s how we did it.

I asked the parents to send in tiny snacks, things like M&Ms, chocolate chips, Cheerios, Apple Jacks, goldfish, etc.  We had one bowl of each item for every table.  We also had a 100 grid for each child.

The children started placing little pieces of food on each square.  Some did it randomly.  Others followed a pattern.

Some kids worked very carefully.

Others were a bit muddled.

But a wonderful 100th day was had by all.

Counting to three January 20, 2011

You would think that wouldn’t be so hard, right?  I mean, this class counts the days of the month, every day, in English and in Spanish.  They count the days we’ve been in school, every day.  Okay, so lately I’ve been lazy and we’ve been counting by tens to 80, and then by ones after that (it takes a long time for this class to count to 80).  But we do count, every single damn day.

As I mentioned, Monkey can’t count to two, let alone three.  He’s a special case, so I’m not going to beat myself up about that.  But several other kids were having trouble with it yesterday and today, and it is blowing my mind and bumming me out.

There is a boy in my class whose mom likes to dress him in really preppy clothes; he turns up each day all crisp and cute in a colorful polo shirt, ironed jeans, and bright white tennies.  He loves to play games; if the Matching Game were high-stakes poker, he’d be rich.   Let’s call this boy Squirrel; he’s quick and smart and tricky.  Squirrel and two other boys sat down at the games table with me at centers time yesterday to play a makeshift board game I will call “Count to Three!”

I set out plastic color tiles in a long meandering path across the table, gave each of us a plastic teddy bear counter in a different color, and got out my number cube.  We started at one end of the path, took turns rolling the cube (which had only the numbers 1, 2, and 3 on it), and moved our bears as many spaces as the number said.

This was much harder said than done.  Repeatedly, one of the children would roll a 3, crow “three!” excitedly, and then move their bear two spaces.  Or roll a 2 and move ahead one space.  Or they would count the space they were already on, or they wouldn’t count the tiles that already had a bear on them…

Squirrel alone could do it.  However, his luck ran out and he rolled mostly ones.  Since he could tell he wouldn’t win, he gave up halfway through and moved to the writing center, leaving me to ponder how I could have failed so miserably in the simple job of teaching all my students to count to three.

art with Monkey January 18, 2011

At art class today, the children were asked to make bugs out of a variety of construction paper shapes.  They did pretty well with it, and the resulting mural is just lovely.  I hope the art teacher puts it up in the hall near our classroom so we can enjoy it.

Monkey struggled with it, without ever knowing he was struggling.  He found a circle for his “ladybug,” then started trying to figure out how to put legs on it.  He wasn’t really sure what to do with the glue stick, so I showed him how to put a stripe of glue along one side, and then put the little legs on top of that, sticking off the body.  Then I went to help other children.

While I was gone, Monkey got some legs stuck to his fingers, instead of to the bug.  When he tried to get the legs off his hand and onto the paper, he got more glue stick goo on his fingers.  He added more glue to the body of the bug.  Finally he gave up on the legs and just smeared glue on his hands.

By the time I got back, the bug was covered in glue stick goo, had two legs, and Monkey was crowing, “Look!  Sticky!” and holding up his hands for my inspection.

I sent Monkey to the sink to wash hands.  Then we worked on the legs together.

“How many legs do you have so far?” I asked.

Monkey looked blank.

“Let’s count,” I said.  ”One….”

Monkey didn’t respond with “two.”  He just grinned at me happily.

“What number comes after one?  One, …..”

Nope.  No “two.”  Monkey cannot count to two.

But he sure had fun with the glue.

Mapping the year September 6, 2010

Miss Mellow and I met at a coffee shop on Saturday morning to plan out our year.  We worked for an hour and a half and could have easily gone for another hour.  We were in the “flow” and having a great time discussing curriculum, how to balance all our frameworks and expectations (and all that is expected of us), and what really matters in preschool.

We plotted out the themes for the year, and each one will last for a month, which is different from what I have done in the past, with my 2-3 week themes.  We started fleshing out different things to focus on during each week of our themes, and realized that we need to ask guiding questions for each theme.  What is it, really, that we want the kids to know at the end of each month?

I went home exhilarated, and have been working on typing up my list so we can get it all down on paper and then share it with the rest of the preschool teachers in our district.  I’ll post it here, too.

Awesome deal for teachers and parents; wonderful wall art August 2, 2010

Check out jasmere.com today — they are offering great deal on posters and wall cards for parents and teachers from Children Inspire Design.  I think I will get the number cards in Spanish, and the alphabet poster in English.

I also love the farm cards.

Jasmere is a great site that offers one amazing deal each day on a different internet “hidden gem.”  If you buy a voucher before tomorrow at noon eastern, you will spend $9 for $22 worth of products from Children Inspire Design.

Happy 100th Day of School! February 22, 2010

When I greeted the children this morning, I was wearing paper glasses in the shape of a “100,” and a crown that said “Happy 100th Day of School.”  Pumpkin couldn’t stop pointing and giggling.  We had two parent helpers, so were able to have a center for making 100 necklaces (string 100 Froot Loops on a piece of yarn), a center for making 100 glasses, one for making the 100 crowns, and also a center for putting 100 fingerprints on a blank 100 grid.

After our morning meeting, and some photos of the class in their 100th day finery, we ate one hundred snacks!

Seriously, we did.

The children had 100 grids, and bowls of small foods on the tables.  They carefully covered up each number with a mini marshmallow, a chocolate chip, an M&M, a Teddy Graham, a Goldfish, or a Froot Loop.  When everyone was done, they got to eat.  Zucchini had brought in juice boxes — because they all said “100% Fruit” on the sides — and everyone was happy.

And the floor was covered in Froot Loops.

counting with Pumpkin January 20, 2010

So, on a lighter note, I tried working with Pumpkin today on the numbers 1-10.  I haven’t written about him much lately, because he is really growing up and is doing so well in school.  He is much less likely to interrupt, much less likely to start to scream because someone took his lego, and unfortunately, much less likely to say really wild and creative things.

However, he is not too firm on the numbers 1-10 yet, so at centers time I pulled him from the sand table, and had him work with me in the empty block corner with big laminated number cards that I made.

First I flipped over one card at a time and asked him, “what number?”  He knew all of them except 9 and 10, and one other small number, I forget which one.

“Great!  Now, let’s put them in a line in order, because they are all mixed up.  Which number comes first?”

He smiled at me.  No clue.

“When you start to count, which number do you say first?”

“Two!”  He crowed.

“We start with two?  Are you sure?”

“Yeah!”

“Okay, how about you count my fingers.  We’ll see which number comes first.”  I held up my hand.

Pumpkin reached out and touched a finger.  “One…”

“That’s it!”  I said.  “We start counting with one!”  Pumpkin laughed delightedly.  “Okay,” I said, “let’s put the one in the first place.”  He was able to find the one card and put it down.

“What number comes after one?”  He had to count my fingers again to figure out that it was two.

“Now what number comes after two?”  Pumpkin grinned at me, but again, no clue.

“Okay, honey, count my fingers again.”  He pointed to my ring finger and said, “One…”

I interrupted him.  “Let’s start with my pinkie finger for one.”

He pointed at my pinkie finger and continued, “Two…”

“Oops, no, honey, start over with one.”

Finally he counted to THREE.  I was practically sweating at this point.

*****

After getting through five, I asked, “What number comes after five?”  He didn’t know, so I held up two hands so he could count.  He counted the fingers on one hand, and then stopped.  When I indicated that he should keep counting, using my other hand, he pointed to the thumb of that hand and said, “One…”

He really had no idea that after five comes six.  So I walked him through the numbers to ten, and finally, finally we had them all on the floor in order.  Then I asked him to step on the number I said.  He thought that would be great.

“Three.”  Pumpkin went and stood on the number eight.  Eight and three do look a lot alike, but Pumpkin wasn’t able to think about the fact that three is a small number, and that it is near the beginning, not too far from one.  I don’t think he has any sense yet of the numbers in relation to each other.

*****

Pumpkin had a wonderful time, and he did get some more, much-needed exposure to the numbers.  I was tickled by his enthusiasm, and a little tired when I thought about how far we have yet to go.

More about what we do all day January 6, 2010

In the comments for my last post, jwg said:

I’m curious. Are there art materials available for the kids who don’t want to color in the lines? Are there other math materials in the math center or do they have to do the project? Is there sand or water play? Can they chose to write about something other than Under the Sea? Is there a Dramatic Play area where the kids choose the script? I think you see where I’m headed here. As you decribe your day it sounds as if the children have choices of where to go, but few choices of what to do when they get there. I hope I missed something.

Here’s my reply:

Point taken.  You didn’t miss anything, because I missed some things.  Here’s what was missing:

The art center has a specific activity about every other day, and on other days all the materials (large scraps, small scraps, ribbons, hole punches, stickers, glue, scissors, markers, crayons, etc.) are available for the children to do whatever kind of art they’d like.  Some of the kids in my class are thrilled to color pictures, and I offer that kind of activity for them from time to time.  The ones who want to draw when the art center is booked for something else usually go to the writing center, which is always open for free exploration, even if there is a specific activity being offered there.  (The writing center has pencils, crayons, markers, colored pencils, envelopes, several different kinds of paper, and little blank booklets in addition to alphabet magnets and whiteboards.)  They can write about whatever they’d like to, but usually are interested in the theme.  We have a big pocket chart with word and picture cards for the theme, and the children like to use them to draw pictures and write words in their journals, or at the writing center during centers time.  Today Pumpkin took a blank booklet and made a book with pictures of a princess, a whale, an octopus, and a tuna fish who was a bad guy, complete with pretend writing.  It was awesome.

The house corner is always open, and is usually just a house, although sometimes I change it to go with the theme.  (We’ve had a bear cave and a pizza restaurant, for example.)  The sand table is always available, and blocks are almost always open.  Sometimes instead of blocks we’ll have the train set or a big tub of Duplos in blocks instead of our wood blocks.

The math center is like the art center — it has a specific, directed activity (usually taken from the curriculum, but sometimes teacher-created) about every other day.  On the alternate days, the kids can choose.  We have two separate bookshelves full of math manipulatives.  I find, however, that the kids like the math center better when there is something new or a special activity.  They spent a lot of time doing free exploration of the manipulatives in September and October, and they’re kind of over it.

So there’s the missing information about our centers time.  I will say this, however — I do not have a 100% child-centered classroom.  That’s probably obvious by now to any regular reader.  This is a conscious choice on my part:  I think a completely child-centered classroom can be a terrific place for learning, but while it is possible to do it well, it’s also very difficult.  The 100% child-centered classroom doesn’t fit my personality or my teaching style, and I think that there is some value in having some of the morning be teacher-directed.  I’ve got more to say on that subject, but think I will save it for another post.

sorting December 16, 2009

Our math curriculum had us sorting recently.  For those of you who aren’t preschool teachers, sorting is part of learning math when you are four — you need to be able to figure out how to organize things into sets based on one or more attributes.  Or, as I tell my class, “put the things that are the same into groups.”

The above picture shows that the child working with these bears figured out how to put them into groups by color.  However, this was after we had been working on sorting for a while.

I’ve never had such a tough time teaching sorting before.  This class, as wonderful and smart as they are, was really stumped by sorting.  It took us a week of sorting people (“girls over here, and boys over here” or “red shirts/not-red shirts”) and sorting our shoes and me modeling sorting over and over before it started to sink in.  Miss Slinger would laugh at me when the morning was done because I was practically pulling my hair out.

For example, I had the class sit in a circle, and then everyone who wanted to took off a shoe and put it in the middle in a pile.  Then I sorted the shoes different ways, talking out loud as I did it, with the children’s help.

We sorted the shoes by color, by type (shoelaces here, velcros here, boots over here), and by size (my shoe in one pile, all the others in the other pile).  Then I sorted the shoes according to a sorting rule that they had to guess.  The shoes were in two piles, and any observant kindergartner would have noticed that all the shoes in one pile had pink on them.  “Okay, guys, there is something the same about all these shoes, ” I said, pointing to the pink shoe pile.  “Can you figure out what it is?  What is my sorting rule?”

Chutney said, “it’s big and small.”

I showed her that in one pile, there was my big shoe next to Pumpkin’s small shoe, and that in the other pile, there were shoes both big and small together.  “It can’t be big and small, can it, if there are big ones and small ones in the SAME pile, right?”  Chutney looked at me, uncomprehending.

“Is it big, big, small, small?” she asked.

“No, honey, that sounds like a pattern.  Patterns are cool, but we’re not doing them right now.  Look again at these shoes over here.  Do you see something that is the same about all of them?”

Nope.  I ended up having to explain my sorting rule — pink and not-pink.

After a few more days, they started to get it, so we did sorting stations.  I had four kids at each table, each with a work tray (they used to be airline food trays!), and a different manipulative at each table.

This child sorted attribute blocks into two piles:  thick and thin.

This child sorted them by shape — and was able to ignore the size and color while he was at it.

And this child sorted teddy bears by size, although it is a little difficult to tell from the picture.

By the end of the sorting theme, I was exhausted.  Also a little curious — with a class this bright, why was it so difficult?

student in free fall November 21, 2008

I visited a second grade classroom, and a boy I remember from my visits to first grade last year was there.  I was shocked by his deterioration.

Last year he had an attitude, and sometimes didn’t pay attention, but he was clearly smart and he eventually did his work.  No big deal.  Yesterday was different — he had somehow lost control of himself and his body.  He couldn’t sit still, so I sat behind him and touched his back gently, and whispered his name.  With most kids that would work but it seemed to rile him up more.  Soon he was leaning on the kid next to him or flopping on the floor, instead of sitting up in the circle.  I eventually moved away as it seemed I might be making things worse.

The poor teacher was trying to give directions for the math activity but I never once saw this boy look at her or give any indication that he heard a word she said.  He made his hands into guns and “shot” the kids around him.  He was in his own world. 

Then an older woman I realized was his grandma stepped up, and she tried and tried to get him to pay attention.  She was whispering to him lovingly and even guided his head so he’d be facing the teacher, and she didn’t have any luck either.  It was almost like listening or focusing was beyond his abilities.

Later, she sat next to him to do the activity, and instead of listening, he built guns out of manipulatives.  It was like someone had shot him up with ADHD poison, and he was completely lost in his own hyperactive world.  I mean, it looked like he couldn’t even look at grandma and have a conversation with her.

It made me so sad for the rest of the day.