Let's make Friends!

          This week our theme was "My Feelings". Each day of the week we are working on learning to identify and listen to our feelings. This is good for children, because often they have a hard time recognizing that some of their actions and words can cause their friends to feel a certain way. 

The way I do Mother Goose Time, is by setting up the activities in centers. I have the children work in pairs so that they can learn to have conversation, share and how to work together for a common goal. I have found that centers with children 2-5 are very useful. Very draining for the teacher, but the benefits they exhibit are so rewarding, that it makes the tiredness of having my name called every 20 seconds worth it. I mean I can just mainline coffee and it will be all good! 

I noticed that each day we have examined a feeling that the children spent time with their friends during free time asking if they were ok. For example, today we worked on Sad.  During free time the children decided I was a baby and they had to take care of me. 

          During their efforts to take care of me, they began to ask me if I was O.K. and if I needed anything. What is most important about their interactions is that they asked me if I was Happy or Sad. They would then adjust what they needed to do for me according to the way I was feeling. If I expressed I was sad, I was given hugs and asked how they could help me feel better. I love that exploring feelings is leading them to caring about the feelings of others and that on their own they want to figure out how to make someone feel better. 

I also noticed that centers have run much smoother in the last couple of the days. The activities have led them to have more open ended conversations with each other. They ask each other why they are using certain colors, if they have other favorite colors, WHY it's their favorite color. They are also asking each other for help. But not from me, they are asking for help from each other! I am so excited! AND THEY ARE HELPING!! During the quilting activity they spoke to each other about who they were making the quilts for, about people they miss when they are gone and they helped each other cut papers and find glue to use. When someone wanted paper that was a certain color they would help their friend find it. 

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I am in awe over how much the children have grown during this week when it comes to working and playing together. We learned about the country of Italy this week and I had them work together and build the leaning tower of Pisa. This really could have gone all wrong but, the laughter as they knocked over the blocks together and helped each other learn how to measure their structures has shown me that they are really taking away much more than I ever anticipated from the lessons on feelings. 

I do believe though that the favorite activity of the week had to be the shadow puppets. It was a bit touch and go putting them together. By that I mean it was not very preschool friendly because I had to put it together for them in order for them to have shadow puppets, and they were not excited to color their puppets because they were all black and I have noticed preschoolers are not huge fans of black paper. But once they were able to see the shadows it was a game changer!