Circle time is probably my most favorite time of day. This is the time where I am able to get to know the children the best. The reason for that is because we have conversations during this time. This is how I find out about their fears, if they understood the lesson from the day before and if they are having fun. This is an important part of my routines and transitions because it is the door that leads to our day. If we have a bad circle time and we are not able to get back on track, the rest of the day could suffer. Circle time is my time to address all the issues that could lead to a melt down later on during the day, remind them of the rules in the classroom and encourage the use of manners. I love circle time so much I presented on it at the NAFCC conference this year in Atlanta. I wanted to help others know that circle time does not have to be a 45 minute affair with the children sitting and listening. It can be a fun start to the day that encourages participation and a space to tell what they think about what they are learning. It is a time to practice their manners and how to listen to others like they want to be listened too. One of the most important things to remember about circle time is that you need to tailor it for the children in your program. It is very important that children are able to feel apart of the process of developing a classroom system that works for them. Not just something that works for the teacher. Take for example, the Circle time board I created for my classroom from the Mother Goose Time materials (pictured above), I have changed that every year for the last seven years. Depending on the focus of the children I will adjust where it lands in the classroom. This year I chose a board that can be removed because I wanted to make sure that there were not too many things left on the walls. I wanted to make sure that my classroom is not as bright as it was in prior years so that I could create a calmer environment. As it turns out, this was a good idea. While, I do have days that seem to be filled with hyperness and extra crying, more often than not, the days are calmer and easier to manage. Circle time is not a time for sitting quietly for us. The very first thing we do is sing and dance. For my afternoon session I have to adjust because they have trouble listening and waiting their turn to speak. So we first play the quiet game. The differences between the days we do not play the quiet game and have our morning dance and the days we do is like night and day. This is just an example of some things I have in my classroom that helps with classroom management. I have also made sure to take into account the ages of the children in the circle time. This year my mornings has a couple of brand new two year olds or children who have not attended a preschool program before. So what I end up doing for those children is our circle time consists of just the morning dance and a story. They are still able to learn the art of following directions and listening, but it does not require so much time and attention that they begin to lose their composure. I have so much to say about circle time and why it is an important part of my routine, and maybe I will speak about it in another blog post. If you have any questions about how I do circle time or would like to see an in depth video of how a circle time with various age groups would be run feel free to send me an email! Live Long and Keep Teaching Ms. Tessie The title is probably making you flash back to someone flipping over a game board in a fit of rage because they thought someone cheated. It is true, playing board games with small children is taking your life into your hands. There could be melt downs, epic tantrums and sore losers. Then you have the behavior of the children to the mix :). Ok, just kidding. Well, a little bit. Because there are certain behaviors you have to be aware of when it comes to children and playing board games with them. Not being able to lose without crying, complaining because they have to give up a turn or bragging to their other classmates about winning. This is the perfect storm. Which is why I am a big fan of Mother Goose Time board games. Most of them are co-operative games. Which takes the win/lose melt downs out of the equation. But it still helps them learn how to take turns, works on counting, colors and letters. This month the game was about Friendship Keys. They needed to gather all the keys they had to go to the park together at the end of the game. This required patience, something most small children do not have. But it worked! They loved the game and they learned something very important in the process. How to be kind. You do not hear that very often when you speak of board games. It is very true in this case though. The children were paired in a way that someone who was experienced with playing board games was paired with a new friend who was not use to it. This led to the more experienced player helping the other child count and look for the key they needed. They were not mean about helping their friend. They were in fact very sweet. They wanted to make sure their friend got to the end of the game. It went beyond just helping their friend. They also cheered for their friend as they got another key, comforted a friend who did not roll the die so that they could get the key they were looking for. The game made them attempt to act out the keys they were trying to find. Which were, all some aspect of being a kind and caring friend to those around you.
I enjoyed watching the children make friends and have fun. These games have taught us valuable lessons and I hope that they keep coming with the Mother Goose Time Curriculum. Live long and Keep Teaching! Ms. Tessie In my last post I talked about how to connect stories to real life experiences in order to help children relate to the story. Mother Goose Time sent black beans for the art project and I decided that the left over beans should be for a science experiment. So I used some small cute jars I got from Hobby Lobby and I mixed math with science and off we went! We took turns putting 10 beans at a time in the jar that had water added to it. That way we would be able to practice counting by 10s while conducting our experiment of how many beans would need to be added in order for the water to rise enough for a crow to drink with his beak. Turns out, it was 64 beans for the entire experiment. But it morphed into ANOTHER experiment after we were able to raise the water level. I corked the beans to move on to the next activity intending to dump them when we noticed that the beans were bubbling. We voted to leave them in for the week and to come back and see what happened after that. We smelled the jar of beans after we uncorked it and it was GROSS! But the best part of the experiment was pouring the beans into a bowl and feeling how soft they got and watching the children explore and talk about how they changed and what made them change. This is the best example of expanding a lesson. I highly encourage educators to expand lessons anytime they can. Breaking from the made out plans you have set for the day can reinvigorate the children's curiosity.
I hope this inspires you to try this experiment out with the story the next time or just to add an experiment if possible to the story you pick out for the day. You won't regret it. Well the mess...but not the fun :) Live Long and Keep Teaching! Ms Tessie The fables we have learned about in the month of August with Mother Goose Time did more than just teach the children about long ago stories, they taught the children how to look at their actions and to see what they might do differently. It was fun watching them find the common link between them and the story of the lion and the mouse. I ended up reading the story several times to the classroom because they loved the way the story ended and couldn't get enough of how nice the mouse and lion were to each other. It led to a conversation about what we could do to make our friends happy. Much of it revolved around food and sharing toys. But the fact that they were even thinking about ways to help their friends meant that the lesson helped them to make real life connections. Which is something that is very important when it comes to teaching children abstract information. We want to make sure they can carry it over into their real life. So how do we do that? well, when introducing such abstract materials we start the conversation with them. "What can you do to help a friend feel better?" "What makes a friend happy?" "Can helping people make you happy?" Starting out the story with these questions meant that the children went into listening with an active intent on understanding how this story will relate to them. It may inspire them to be a little nicer when sharing their toys, or to think about others before they act. I have love Aesop stories since I was a child and it was great being able to share the stories in a more toned down way with my students. Live Long and Keep Teaching! Ms. Tessie Last month was insane! It began with me preparing for a new schedule this month for the preschool. I added three classes to my day with 2 new children coming in everyday. It SOUNDS like a lot of work but it's not. It turns out it's lovely. I have it set up for my younger children to come in the morning and my older pre-k/preschool children come 1030-130 and 230-430. This allows me more one on one time with the children and I am in an even better position to individualize their learning goals. I have found that Mother Goose Time is perfect for the new way I am running my classroom. The last two weeks of August we began working on learning about Fables. It was so awesome reading Aesop's Fables with the children. They loved the meanings behind the stories. They have also taken to talking about the lessons they have learned throughout the day. It's very cute. I used the fables during the morning circle time for the young children to help with language skills and to help them learn how to listen while sitting in a group. The art projects were imaginative and fun for the children. They had so much license with what they could do creatively that it made the projects that much more fun. I even had a child invent an entire story around the art projects they designed. They began to create lessons that they could learn during play time. The way the stories were written in the Mother Goose Time made sure that they could understand them and even try to relate them back to their own lives. Such as the tortoise and the hare story. For the rest of the day the children were very focused on making sure their friends knew that not everything was a race and that it was ok to take their time. Learning about Fables is something I never thought to introduce to preschool children. But the way Mother Goose Time worked it into their curriculum made it so that I could introduce it to my younger children. They were able to enjoy the stories even if they did not totally get the lesson that was attached. I am so excited to start the new school year and so far with the help of some well placed Fables...we are off to an excellent start. Live Long and Keep Teaching! Ms. Tessie |