NZ Teacher

Towards the end of the school year I took an easel and chart paper into the classroom. It wasn't for me to use.  The classroom belongs to the children and (almost) everything that can be seen is for the children to use.  That includes the easel and chart paper. The artist in the room spent hours at the easel drawing her creations.

"OK everyone. It's time to stop playing." "We're not playing. We're making." When we listen to the children we hear the truth.  The truth is that play is important.  It's through play that children make, create, communicate, problem solve, and so much more.  We just need to listen to the children and we hear the truth about play.

How do we stop someone touching what we've made?  We can make a stop sign.  I modeled how to make one and then some of the children made their own. Stop is such a great word. Great phonics. Great purpose. Great meaning.

Last year I introduced ceramic dishes into the home center - some  old plates,cups and bowls. One day a bowl fell off the shelf and broke.  Someone said, "You broke it."  "I  didn't break it, it dropped," said the kid who was playing with the bowl. And from that we learn that there is no point in blaming someone for breaking something.  Things break. Usually when they're dropped.

There is a fabulous carpet in my classroom for the children to sit on during whole group time. It's the alphabet arranged in a grid. There are enough spaces for each child to have their own letter of the alphabet to sit on. I can assign spaces, which is what I did last year. I did that until one of the children asked if she could sit on a chair, and not the carpet, during whole class time. Why not? This led the children to write labels for their chairs.  After sitting on their chairs for a few weeks most of the children decided to return to sitting on the carpet again.  I'd like to start this year by not assigning children seating spots on the carpet. Hopefully we can use it as a time to problem solve any disagreements about where they want to sit. If not, I'll assign spaces. At least to start with. And then I'll see what happens after that.

There is a calendar in my room. It hangs like a regular calendar in a house.  The calendar has the children's birthdays marked on it.   We write on any special events or something we want to remember to do tomorrow. J ust like we do at home.   We don't talk about the calendar as a class, it's more on an individual basis as children become interested in it or ask, "Is this my birthday?" when they see their name on their birthday month.

For now, I have a plan of the year. I have a list of every week of the year with the social-emotional curriculum focus, the books I'd like to read during the week, the songs and rhymes that I plan to introduce, the math activity, what I'll do for literacy, for cooking, for craft, the handwriting focus and what I plan to put into the sensory tray. I consider it a draft plan or a list of ideas which I can pick and choose from as the year goes by. I do not stick with the plan but I use it as a list of possibilities. Maybe the books will change, depending on the interests of the children. Maybe they show no interest in one of the books so it won't stand a repeated reading.  Maybe someone will start to talk sing one of the songs I have listed for later in the year. We'd sing it then, no need to wait.  The math activity is based on a sequence of objectives from the engageny curriculum. We use engageny as a resource, not a program that we follow. We use their outcom...