for you, the parents

After several conversations with parents who mentioned wanting access to more parent resources, I am providing several links to high quality family education websites. You will find everything from resources on supporting your child's emotional development to understanding more about early literacy. You can always ask me for resources as well and I will do my best to find what you need.

The Fred Rogers Company provides information on a wide range of topics, from school readiness to working with emotions. The articles are very readable and have helpful hints.
http://www.fci.org/new-site/parents.html

The Center on the Social Emotional Foundations for Early Learning provides substantive information about supporting your child's emotional development. I highly recommend browsing this site.

http://csefel.vanderbilt.edu/resources/family.html

One of my favorite resources, the Illinois Early Learning project has videos available to view models for reading aloud with your child and other great tips. If you explore the links on the left side of the website you will find great information in the "tip sheet" section.
http://www.illinoisearlylearning.org/videos/parenting-videos.htm

Early childhood resources covering an array of topics from the University of Maine.
http://www.ccids.umaine.edu/ec/growingideas/

I hope you find these resources helpful, please give me your feedback.

the elevator update

As I mentioned earlier, the project began because of interest in making elevator keys. Some traced Mrs. Lee's key...


Others explored the ruler, using it to measure Mrs. Lee's key and then make their own.


We had many ideas about how elevators work, from thinking gears work to spin the elevator chains to wondering if the wind blows the elevator up and down. I brought in a small model of an elevator (thanks to my dad), which used a pulley to lift the elevator car up and down. The children agreed that the pulley would be a good choice to use when building our larger scale version.



After several trips up and down in the elevator, the group decided that the elevator should be gray. We learned that black paint mixed with white paint makes gray paint!


V came up with the idea of painting the elevator rainbow colors...which also allowed it to become a magic elevator. The group agreed and spent quite a bit of time mixing and painting to create the authentic rainbow effect.


All complete with people to ride in the elevator we are ready to share the work with the class through block center and dramatic play.

blame it on the rain

Here's our ice cream project update...the project is a goner. I'm going to blame it on the rain causing two canceled trips to the Red Mango shop. As I mentioned at the Back to School night, we work with several broad themes, ours being: relationships, communication, and self-expression and then the smaller projects emerge from the children. As interest emerges it is really our duty to pick up on it and help the children run with it. So that sort of explains why the ice cream project died, we couldn't run with it in the rain.

On a brighter note, I noticed that over the course of three days last week C, K, A, and H showed a great deal of interest in the elevator across the hall from our room. First K asked if she could make an elevator key, she used Mrs. Lee's key as a model and she cut, hole punched, and decorated her own key. Soon after that, there were little voices asking if they could make elevator keys as well. Each day, the one or two children who made their keys were able to use them by taking a trip in the elevator with Mrs. Lee. It occurred to me on Friday...why not pursue an elevator project. Below is a beginning web for the project. this is really just my initial brainstorm to help me as we begin the inquiry. The font looks pretty small, but if you click on the web it will open in a larger window.



If any parents out there are natural builders, lend a hand! We can use all of your expertise. I have limited experience with exploring pulleys so I've found some great inspiration at Teacher Tom's blog, http://teachertomsblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/pulleys.html and from a pulley tutorial by my father.

sculptors from the beginning

My affinity for sculpture and building has been thriving this year, as the class is full of natural sculptors and builders. Here are a few photos of clay, wire, and tape sculptures from this week. It is truly remarkable to watch children work for a full hour, fully engaged in creating something from their imagination. Children always explain their work and sometimes their explanation turns into a magnificent story. J's sculpture, directly below, will really capture your imagination. He told his story to Mrs. Lee in Mandarin, and Mrs. Lee translated his story in English for me to read.


"There are a lot of people playing the slides (the wires are the slides). The slides will bring people up to the sky or the planets. Everyone enjoys playing the slides and feels so happy. There are some cushions (the blue tape) that protect people from getting hurt. There is also a pond (the blue coloring on the cardboard). There are some big and small fish in the pond. People swim inside and are happy. Sometimes fish jump out and play the slides as well. If there is a bad guy - tries to destroy all of these - the slide will become a machine gun and protect everyone. This is a place created by a robot. He lives in the egg, (the white clay) his name is play dough robot."


Here is A's cupcake sculpture.


This is B's airplane.

Another great article from the Sunday Times, about a man who built his own home from fallen trees and rocks in North Carolina. This first building project started him on his journey as a sculptor. Take a peak at the slideshow if you have the time.
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/10/06/garden/20101007-TWIG.html

where's the empathy?

This is a great article on mean behavior, found increasingly in younger children from the Sunday Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/fashion/10Cultural.html After reading the article I perused the comments of readers online and found it astonishing that some people find the behavior common place. Increasingly in the news we hear of teenagers and college age students enduring incessant bullying. No child should feel they are unsafe, or a target at school. It is the responsibility of teachers and parents to insure each child understand what every human being craves - happiness. That is really it. It comes down to such a simple concept, we all want to live with as little suffering as possible and as much happiness as possible. For every child to know that concept may make all the difference in the world.

Empathy is something that begins to emerge in young children and should be reinforced at home and at school. When a child says something hurtful to another child, rather than forcing them to "say your sorry" it is more meaningful to ask the child to think about how the other child feels and how they would feel if somebody said hurtful words to them. Developing empathy is so necessary in this era - when we are increasingly in our own world of tv, media, and video games. It is so vital to remember there is a world beyond ourselves and that how we interact with that world matters.

Empathy is something we will be working on each day in the classroom. We will work to develop care and understanding for each other during the daily ups and downs that inevitably occur and more directly through curriculum.

Waiting For...

I just spent my Sunday evening watching the "Education Nation" debate that aired on MSNBC all week. There was a lot I agreed with...and a good deal I didn't agree with. The important part is that a national conversation is taking place because change is necessary. I posted the teacher town hall video and a link to more dicussions from the week.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

http://www.educationnation.com/index.cfm?objectid=3BB6A7B0-A41C-11DF-A44E000C296BA163&categoryid=86AD96F0-B080-11DF-943D000C296BA163

A note about the inspiration for this national media coverage - if you haven't heard already - there is a recently released documentary "Waiting for Superman" which takes a look at the public school system in America. I have not seen the documentary yet, but hope to very soon. From the clips I have seen and from what I have read about it I am worried that it portrayed charter schools as the silver bullet to fixing our flawed education system. Education in America needs to be overhauled on a national, state, and community level. There is no silver bullet, a complete restructuring is needed. Hopefully, this new national interest and conversation in education will result in change. We shall see. If you have any thoughts maybe you would like to share them here...our own community discussion.

Oy the bathroom!

Bathroom time seems to be a trial every year. It becomes a place where cleanliness goes out the window and somehow, behind one little door, rules become meaningless. This year, the bathroom and how we use it has been on my mind a lot. Why do the children feel it is not a place that deserves respect and what am I doing to condone that feeling? Today I decided to tackle the issue of disrespecting classroom bathroom.

Inspired by our trip to Tribeca Community School, a Reggio-inspired school. http://www.tribecacommunityschool.com/tribeca-community-school-photos I followed an idea they had, they created a rules group to discuss and think about the rules their class needed to be safe and learn. The rules group meets twice a week and the project will likely last several weeks.

So today I asked the children who would be interested in being a part of the bathroom group. I was surprised to see 6 hands rise immediately. Our dialogue began with a discussion about cleaning the bathroom. K thought somebody, like her mom should clean the bathroom. While V thought we should clean it ourselves. P mentioned that if you see a lot of paper, pick it up. I asked the children what their bathrooms looked like at home, we decided that our bathrooms were more beautiful at home. This led me to ask them if they thought making our bathroom more beautiful would inspire us to keep it more clean. The consensus was yes. From here, the bathroom group split into two groups. P, A, and H made the artwork to beautify the bathroom. K, V, and A worked together to draw a picture showing how to use the bathroom correctly. Their drawing turned into a jail, which you can see right here...




As the group explained their jail bathroom diagram to me, I picked out the key ideas: use the toilet (actually I think they said pee in the toilet) and flush the toilet. With this we made the three rules, to be posted in each stall. I wrote first...

Then they copied my rules, writing on their own...


And artwork was hung in the bathroom.



We'll be meeting again this week to discuss the impact our changes have made if any.