Search results matching tags 'preschool' and 'happy'

Count Basie helps us clean up every day

Anonymous — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 11:26:56 GMT

A few years ago, clean up time was starting to bug me. It was getting harder to get the kids to finish cleaning their stuff to come sit down. I thought about using some clean up song on a kids’ music cd, but decided that would be too irritating to listen to a few times every day.

So I chose my favorite song by Count Basie, “On the Road to Mandalay.” It has been one of my favorite songs since that year in my twenties when I decided to have fun New Year’s resolutions, and vowed to learn more about jazz. It makes me feel happy, and it even compels me to dance a little bit, every time it’s on. I’m smiling, the kids are smiling, and we always try to “beat the music” so that we are all sitting quietly in the meeting area by the time the ending notes play. Clean up time is almost a joy these days.

You can listen to it here, if you’re curious.

My New Cast of Characters

Anonymous — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 18:35:01 GMT

This has been, as I’ve mentioned, a slightly more difficult start to the school year than I’ve had in recent years. However, it feels like it’s about me rather than the kids. This class is very sweet, with no major behavior problems, unlike last year. I think it’s time to start introducing you to them. (I will be naming them after colors this year.)

First off is Royal Blue. He is confident, happy, and melodramatic. He is quite fond of me already, and has kissed me at least twice. (Both times I had my arm on the table, sitting next to him, and he impulsively leaned forward and kissed my arm.) I’ve talked to him about the “no kissing at school” rule, and he is trying to remember it, but yesterday he flung his arms around me and almost kissed me on the neck. I love it that he is so affectionate, but we have to work on that.

Here’s an exchange I had with him last week on the playground:

Me: Evergreen, why are you crying?

Evergreen (in Spanish): He wouldn’t play with me!

Me: Royal, why wouldn’t you play with Evergreen?

Royal (in Spanish): Because my dad is dead. (sad face)

Me: Honey, that is not true, and that is not why you didn’t play with him.

Both boys ran off before I could go on, and I started giggling. Some days Royal tells me that his mom is in the hospital and going to die, and then she stops by the next day to pick up some paperwork, and she is as healthy and vital as ever.

Evergreen, meanwhile, is a serious, happy boy who always follows the rules and is always doing the right thing. He’s pretty awesome.

I’m in the right place

Anonymous — Sat, 19 May 2012 21:04:27 GMT

One morning, not long ago, one of my brightest little boys made my day. His bus arrives early, so every morning he peeks in through the window on our door, sometimes jumping up and down with excitement. If he sees one of us moving around the room, getting it ready, we can hear him crow, “I see Mrs. X!”

Finally, we opened the door. He flew in, pumped his arms, and said, “Whoo hoo!”

Because he was at school.

I really love this job.

the checklist: what we are supposed to learn

Anonymous — Fri, 11 May 2012 11:58:16 GMT

Yesterday during morning meeting I commented on how well the kids have done with learning the alphabet. “That was your job this year, and you did it!”

Then a very serious boy raised his hand and said, “did we do all that stuff up there?”

“What stuff, honey?”

He pointed to the list above our bulletin board. “That stuff.”

I turned, and looked, and said, “well, let’s see.” I started to read the items on the list. “Write your name. Do you know how to do that?”

“Yes!” chorused the class.

“Name body parts? Name capital letters, and lowercase letters? Numbers to 10? Count to 31? Count to 100?” and so on. We went through the whole list, and found that we had accomplished all of it. (Okay, with some exceptions concerning children with special needs.)

A boy who came to my class in September with nothing but enthusiasm and an inability to stop interrupting me called out, “That’s because we are so smart!”

Yes, honey, you are. You all are so smart.

Valentine’s Day party in preschool

Anonymous — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 21:36:33 GMT

We made the heart handprints, and they turned out wonderfully. We started making them on Monday, but even the ones we did Tuesday dried quickly enough to be able to write down the children’s quotes for their mothers, and send them home that day. I used cardstock for the paper, which made the handprints look nicer, I think. I had a plate of pink paint, and one of red, and used a wide paintbrush to paint the children’s hands. One hand was pink, then I held the hand to make a print with it (I figured letting the kids do it alone would result in lots of smudging), and then I painted the other hand red and did the same thing. For the quotes, I wrote little hearts between the sentences instead of using periods.

During the party, one table was set up with laminated cards for sorting candy hearts by color. After the kids sorted the hearts, they got to eat them. Yum!

At one table we used heart stamps that I bought from Oriental Trading to dip into white paint for stamping. When the red strips were dry, we used them to make hats for everyone.

At another center, we used cut-up straws as beads, and hole-punched paper hearts twice to string necklaces.

Gingerbread Day

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 12:35:05 GMT

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

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:50:16 GMT

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.

free boots and mittens fall out of the sky

Anonymous — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 20:10:35 GMT

During morning meeting today, the phone rang, and it was for me. My Americorps volunteer took over with the class, while I talked to a woman from a non-profit organization. I applied for a grant there earlier in the fall, for bus money and outdoor clothing money for my class to have outdoor learning days, but was turned down.

The woman who called said that they have $200 left over which they could use to buy my kids some mittens and boots! So wonderful.

I have to measure the kids’ feet, and get an idea of what sizes to order. The boots we will keep at school, so that on any outdoor learning day, anyone without boots can still be toasty warm. The mittens she will buy from the guy who has a kiosk at the mall each winter, and makes wonderful thick fleece mittens on a string. He always gives me a discount, so I think he will give it to her, too.

(One of my students has a pair of pink mittens — no longer on a string — that look exactly like the ones I buy each year. They must be hand-me-downs from a former student. Nice to see they are still being used.)

Why being a preschool teacher is great

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 20:18:38 GMT

1. You get to wear silly hats.

2. You get to do things like wear purple every day for a week (it’s Purple Week!).

3. It’s never blood on your hands; it’s always marker.

4. Hugs. Lots of them.

5. You get to read awesome, funny books out loud every day.

6. You are famous, you are loved, you are TEACHER, you are their School Mommy, you loom large in their lives.

7. Valentine’s Day lasts for months. You will get a lot of homemade valentines. Maybe a hundred.

8. You are magic. You make puppets become REAL. You can wave your magic wand and they will believe.

9. You can make a huge difference. By the end of the year, you will see tons of growth, and feel a real sense of accomplishment.

10. Did I mention the silly hats?

we are on a roll

Anonymous — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 23:18:16 GMT

Last year I felt frustrated about my low increase in scores on vocabulary, so I started making vocabulary cards, using Google Images. (I make two for each word, so that they get used to seeing different images of the same thing for each word.) So far this year we have introduced one vocabulary word each day. Some of our words so far: dolphin, sea horse, zebra, snake….This month we are learning about Fall (and Firefighters), so our words have been leaves, fall, and autumn (the photos for fall and autumn were identical, as they mean the same thing). We will soon be learning apple, acorn, pumpkin, and scarecrow.

The kids love the cards, and are proud to show off the words they know. (I mentioned that 16 of my 20 kids speak English as a second language, right?) In addition to the vocabulary words, we have been learning the colors, with one color celebrated each week. This week was yellow week, and on the Wednesday of each color week, we all wear the special color. I looked fetching in my husband’s oversized yellow polo shirt. I looked particularly fashionable when I topped it off with a crazy yellow crown I made at morning meeting, to inspire the kids to choose the art center today. It worked — pretty soon the room was full of kids with crazy yellow crowns.

So, we know new vocabulary words, and we all know red, blue, and yellow. What else? Well, last week we started learning a letter of the week (I know, I know, many people don’t do that), and so far we know the names and letter sounds for Ss and Oo. The kids practically fizz with excitement about showing me how they know the letter sounds, using the hand motions I taught them.

And the mornings are going smoothly; they know how to listen, how to follow directions, how to take turns, how to clean up, how to line up, and so on. They don’t always do those things perfectly, but they are lovely little citizens all the same.

Phew! One month in, things are looking up. I’m so glad I’m here, and not back there.