dinosaurs with horns and spikes, oh my

We want our children to wonder, to explore the world with natural curiosity. We want this but do we nurture it through infancy, early childhood, primary school, and beyond?


This is of course something I want for each child in my class. I also want that sense of curiosity to stay with them through adulthood. Recently someone mentioned that we adults - at least many of us - have lost that sense of wonder. This statement had a deep impact on me. We want our children to move through their days wondering, reflecting, hypothesizing, and problem-solving but do we do that? If we want this for our children, active minds, then we need to insure that we (parents, caregivers, and teachers) provide a place for that at home and at school.



This year as we commit ourselves to working and learning through project based learning I see the layers of inquiry unfold as children make sense of the information they come across. It's inspiring to listen to their conversations. Today in the art center, Ms. P worked with a small group interested in working on a dinosaur class book. As the four children first sketched a dinosaur from the book and later painted a dinosaur a back and forth conversation began.

V: He's scary.
Ms. Annie: Why?
V: It has a scary face.
Ms. Annie: What about the dinosaur is scary?
V: His teeth.
V: How come this one has horns and one doesn't?
A: I don't know.
V: How come one has spikes and the other doesn't?
A: Some has horns because they can fight each other.
Ms. Annie: Do you think they have horns to fight?
A: Yes, I do. The ones that have no horns - how can they fight?
Ms. Annie: Why do you think they fight?
V: They fight for their underpants. (reference to the book we read yesterday)




This conversation shows a natural sense of curiosity. Ms. P also naturally asks children questions to deepen their thinking. These are the moments we want and that we want to encourage at home and at school. For us, this may be a great beginning for deeper inquiry...how did dinosaurs protect themselves?

well I forgot my camera...

I did forget my camera and I do really prefer photos to go along with my ramblings so instead I will share the books and DVD's I bought today. I get very excited about new books...hopefully this is deemed less nerdy as I am a teacher. In our pre-k program, we are incredibly lucky that we determine where the money should be spent each year. Aside from needing a ton of photo paper and an eternal supply of art materials we really don't need much more. So today I went on a professional development spree. Here are the books I bought. The random photo of Vivian Paley represents a 3-DVD set about storytelling in the classroom. Very exciting!

Have you read, watched, used any of these resources? Have any other early childhood favorites?

use your words not your hands and other thoughts

Patience is a virtue. Not only for us adults, but for the kids as well.

A few children in class have been going through a real rough patch the last few weeks when it comes to knowing what to do when a problem arises with a friend. One of the reasons this may appear to be surfacing as a bigger issue may be that my expectations have changed (and I'm just now making this connection). Since we are coming to the halfway mark for the year, my expectation is that all of the modeling, reinforcement, and work that we have done on developing our social skills will be evident in the way children interact with one another throughout the day. Well, I've realized after two weeks of wondering "what the heck is happening?" that simply because I am ready to remove the scaffolds and expect to see sharing and turn-taking happening spontaneously and eloquently that....well that is just not where some of the children are right now. They still need language support to negotiate with their peers when problems arise and they still need prompting to think about how their actions make others feel. How did it take me two weeks to figure this out?!

Today a problem did arise in block center. One child took a block from another child's structure without asking and before you know it he meets his punishment...being hit in the head with a block. Immediately Mrs. Lee and I get the story in English and Chinese. Both children are removed from block center and spend two minutes in "thinking time" and a talk with me. You have to think quick in moments like this and I decided that the rest of the time remaining during centers, these two would spend together. I escorted both boys to the light table and gave them the box of magna tiles. The instructions: They were to use the materials together. The light table is a relatively small space and really requires negotiating space, materials, and hopefully ideas.

I stood back to watch and immediately an issue arose. So, I plopped myself down and with a bit of trial and error we came to a fruitful activity that gave both boys a successful encounter with sharing and turn taking. What I came to realize was that neither of the boys were going to be successful without assistance. It's basic Vygotsky but still took me a moment to realize what was needed. The photos below tell the story.


I asked both boys what they would like to build and was met with two very different responses, an airplane and a castle. So we decided to build both, one at a time. I held the box of tiles in my lap and one at a time we each took a turn adding one tile to create the airplane.


I was so impressed after one of the boys placed the triangle on top of one of the wings - the other child chose a triangle and did the same to the other wing. This immediately earned a compliment from me, "wow, that was so nice how you paid attention to what your friend added to the wing."


Then we cleared our palette and began to build the castle. One at a time we took turns adding a piece. There were a few hiccups, with pleas of "no don't do that" but we dealt with each one in the moment and really practiced negotiating our differing ideas.




I'm not working under some false reality now - where every child is ready to use their words to solve their problems. Some are not and that is okay. By the end of the year I do think we'll all have gained quite a bit of patience.

a monster of a tale

A small group of boys and girls wrote quite an imaginative tale today. I wrote their words and then we acted the story out. There was really only one star of the show (T-Rex) and when I asked who wanted to be T-Rex all five little hands flew up into the air - so we reenacted the story five times to be fair.

"One day there was a T-Rex in the market and he eat all of the dinosaurs and the food. They eat all the building and the people. And then he has nice sharp claws and sharp feet to stomp and kill all the big dinosaurs. All eat! There will eat the car and she throw out the wheels. He walk and walk. The dinosaur can't see the people - the people make a shower to put on dinosaur but he was angry so he roars "raaaaaaa!" He bump his knee on the floor, it bleeding. She dies. No she go to the doctor and the doctor just did a big injection to him. And the dinosaur didn't be sad, he is happy. The end."

A pretty fun story, especially when being acted out. We found some pretend food, made blocks into buildings and cars, and had toy dinosaurs for the actors to "eat" on stage. Afterward, to continue weaving in thinking about each other, the six of us sat in a small circle and each child gave one person a compliment. The compliments impressed me because they spoke directly to each other's performance. Like J telling S "I like the way you eat food." Or to Z "I like when you throw the building."

Do you weave storytelling into your day? If so I would love to hear how - I'm always looking for new ways to encourage speaking and dramatic play into our day.

making my thinking visible

Previously I mentioned we were trying out the topic of real versus pretend. We spent time exploring what makes something or someone real and conversely what makes something pretend. This exploration is important in the process of beginning a project. The focusing activities provide common experiences for the class and allow the children to build a shared perspective.

That being said, my job is to decide if it would be appropriate to continue the project. I was anticipating the real versus pretend concept could be applied to robots, real robots being used, for instance, by NASA and pretend robots like transformers. I thought it would be interesting to create some sort of simple robot as a culminating project. The Young Investigators planning guide lays out several questions to think about when determining whether to delve deeper into a project and here they are...

Is it a topic that
__ Is more concrete than abstract?
__ Involves an abundance of first-hand, direct experiences and real objects that young investigators can manipulate?
__ Is easily related to their prior experiences?
__Has related sites nearby that can be conveniently visited and even revisited?
__ Young children can research with minimal assistance from adults? Can it be researched without relying only on secondarysources like books, internet or video?
__ Children can represent what they know and learn by using skills and techniques appropriate for their age?
Is culturally relevant to the children and their families?

I wasn't convinced that the potential robot project would meet several of these needs. The talk and artwork about robots all but vanished as well and in it's place came a great deal of talk about dinosaurs. During our two weeks of exploring the world of real and pretend the topic of dinosaurs was discussed nearly every day by children. The children most inetersted in all things dinosaurs are also children learning English this year. For this reason I really want to show them that I hear them and value their interests.

That being said a study of dinosaurs is definitely more abstract than concrete. In fact many of the questions to think about when planning a project would be answered in the negative - no a dinosaur project would not be ideal for in depth inquiry. I can not bring first hand materials into the classroom and we would be reliant on secondary sources to gain understanding.

Weighing the pros and cons I feel that language production is one of the primary needs of the class. As many children are just beginning to use expressive language in English it would be beneficial to engage in a study of interest to increase their motivation to speak. We may begin with the idea of dinosaurs but as I was reminded by a professor last night there are modern day relatives of dinosaurs that could be used as further inquiry and available for first-hand experiences. We'll see where it all leads - but I will be trying to balance the known interest with the potential for deeper inquiry.

complimentary art

This week has been a turn around week (hallelujah). If you remember I mentioned that there were some issues arising in the kindness department and we have been very serious about dealing with it. "Dealing with it" sounds a bit stern - We've really just been embedding the idea of thinking about one another into our day naturally. That alone is proving to be powerful.

Today in art center, four children paired up and created a portrait of their friend. We've worked quite a lot on self portraits throughout the year so it seemed a natural step to turn outward at this point. I found the inspiration for the style of portraiture we created on the creative blog Teach Kids Art.

Since we've done a good deal of self portrait work I wanted this experience to be a bit different and the idea of creating a colorful portrait in the style of Paul Klee was inviting. Here is a link to the work Teach Kids Art has done in the style of Paul Klee. where I modified the idea was to invite each child to draw the friend sitting across from them and when they finished their artwork I had a short conversation with each child asking them to really think about their friend and tell something special about them. These portraits are now hanging up in the classroom, with the quotes from each artist hanging with the painting.

When two of the art center children shared their work with the class, most of the other children began immediately telling me that they wanted to make one too. I don't often extend an art project over days but since the interest is their I can't refuse. In the end it looks like we will have a visual reminder of many children along with a little written reminder that they are each unique.


After drawing their friend's portrait using a Sharpie, the tissue paper came out.


Some made neat rows of colored tissue paper and some stacked layers and layers...leaving me curious about all of that color mixing and what would happend after removing the tissue paper.


Whether one layer or ten they were all bright and beautiful. After this I spoke with each child and asked them to think of something special about the friend they created a portrait of. This took a little bit of rephrasing...I think the concept of recognizing a trait of a friend is difficult. The idea of being friendly, kind, funny, etc. may be too abstract. The words they came up with were all true and it was definitely a moment where each child was pushed a bit to think, really think about another person.


"I like P. P is cute"


"T, she eyes beautiful."


"I like H because she's nice."


"I like the day S and me build a house in the light center."

a compliment a day

Along with the dark clouds that have hung over our city, dumping snow and ice upon us each winter week - a little cloud seemed to hang over our classroom for a few days recently, bringing an unusual amount of meanness. Over the course of several days Mrs. Lee and I overheard much bickering and unkind words thrown back and forth by some of the children in class. I was shocked. Mrs. Lee was shocked. We both wondered what to do.

I left school on Monday wondering where I went wrong as a teacher. The social emotional development of a child is so vital in pre-k, in part because there is no other time after pre-k when it will be addressed so directly or indirectly in most school settings. Once children find themselves in kindergarten and beyond there are rigorous academic pressures and as sad as it is to say, social emotional development becomes more of an afterthought. Children are expected to come to school at that point knowing how to share, take turns, and use their words to express their feelings, needs, and ideas.

We make it an important part of the curriculum...or so I thought to focus on these things. Building a sense of community with our rituals, our whole group meetings, read alouds, and daily interactions was enough (I thought). This obviously could not be the case though, or I wouldn't overhear children using hurtful words among other things. So I went home to do some soul searching and some blog reading, wouldn't you know I came across a blog post that spoke to the issue of social emotional development directly by Teacher Tom and here it is. It was the shot of motivation I needed.

I thought about how we could tie compliments into our daily routine naturally. I decided that after our work in centers, when we rejoin on the rug to share our experience and work, would be a fitting time to practice thinking about others. On this day children made pretend self-portraits, which lent itself nicely to complimenting the work of one another. Some children were naturals right off the bat and others seemed hesitant but I think it was a good beginning practice in thinking about others. I asked each child how they felt after receiving a compliment from a friend and they would inevitably grin and say happy. That's really what it's all about. Realizing that, as Teacher Tom says our words are powerful and we can use our words to make others feel good.

Here are some of the compliments below, a great beginning if you ask me.


I really like that you have so many eyes.


I like the blue on your face.


I like your black hair.

The children seem to be taking to compliments and adding it to their repertoire. Today when we came together to share our experience in centers and I made a call for compliments the children surprised me, making their own decision whether to ask a question or give a compliment and they did both in a way that was meaningful and real.

In addition to the compliments Mrs. Lee and I are being vigilant in honing our listening skills, insuring that we deal with any beginnings of conflict in the moment. Insuring that each child leaves our class this year with the tools to solve problems as they arise in the world (as they always do) and with their peers is an imperative.

I've been hearing kind words and witnessing helping hands a lot in the last two days. We just have to remember, as adults, to keep this at the forefront of our thoughts each day. Parents, if you would like any reading material regarding social emotional development of your child, let me know I have a lot and can point you in the direction of great online resources as well. As with all areas of a child's healthy development this needs to be supported at home and at school.