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Could you please check your child’s backpack weekly, if you can’t manage daily? Do you remember back in October when we met at your parent conference and I asked you politely to keep checking your child’s backpack? It makes me sad when I see your child’s
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Two of my new students are now gone, just like that. To be honest, my life is easier without them, but still. ARGH. Why would you put your child in a preschool class for a month, and then pull him/her out without even saying goodbye? One family pulled
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Yesterday our bus driver, an immigrant man who is great with the kids and delightful to talk to each day, reported that on Thursday, when he got to my new student’s stop, there was no one there to collect him. The bus driver waited for ten minutes until
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One of my developmentally delayed sweethearts is a little boy who knows all the letters, and a lot of sounds. He knows numbers, colors, shapes, and that sort of thing. It’s obvious that he has difficulty with verbal communication — he will repeat what
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I haven’t named any of my students so far this year, with the exception of Little One with her large personality, so it is high time. I will start telling tales about this year’s class, and will name them all after colors. When I arrived this morning,
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My parent conferences are over, and they went extremely well. Everyone showed up except for one, and I think they were home with a sick kid. Almost everyone (including Little One’s mom) reported that their children love school so much they want to come
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I like the fashion blog She’s Still Got It , so I visit it at Cafe Mom fairly regularly. While there this morning, I stumbled upon this article: “ 6 Lies Parents Tell Themselves About Preschool ,” by Amy Reiter . Here’s what she had to say, prompted by
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I have a girl in my class whose parents are from an Asian country (although I’m not really sure if Dad is still in the picture). Her mother, who has limited English, brings her to class each morning and stands over her as she signs in, making her use
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I have written about this topic before, but thought I would address it again, this time not just as a teacher, but as the mother of a child who skipped a grade. (Keep in mind that going to kindergarten early is a grade skip.) *********** My husband is
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Enlightened selfishness is one of the philosophies that keeps my life ticking along. It is the art of being able to think of your own needs even while meeting the needs of others. It works for me as a woman, a wife, a mother, and a teacher. As a woman,
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The mother I’ve been talking about is kind of a wreck. However, she is a good mother, in lots of ways. Her children have about 500 books. No, she doesn’t read to her children (I’m guessing, as of yesterday, that she can’t), but their father does, sometimes,
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NPR did a report on the Meaningful Differences work that Hart and Risley did. It’s fascinating, and well worth reading. The article talks about their experiences as educators, trying to teach four year olds vocabulary to put them on par with rich kids
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Today for small groups, we had two independent reading stations, an ABC station, a rhyming station, and a vocabulary station. I was in charge of vocabulary, and decided to use some picture cards that have four pictures on each, with the question, which
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So I read a shocking article in the New York Times last week. Apparently, picture books are losing favor with parents, because they want their kindergartners and first graders reading chapter books! The picture book, a mainstay of children’s literature
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Our theme for September is All About Me (Miss Mellow and I decided to heed the advice we were given at a workshop — we are going to do fewer themes, better ), and this past week our focus was on ourselves, namely, our bodies and our feelings. I did some
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