First day of school: Settling in

 As an early years practitioner, I've survived a couple years settling in screaming preschoolers.

I've seen it all!

The quiet- resistant ones who do not want anyone close to them or speaking to them, the ones who bolt through the door and run out screaming "MUMMY!" the ones who throw themselves on the floor screaming at the top of their lungs, and, my favourite, the ones who walk in ready to have an adventure!

The truth is, even after a handful of years, it is still a challenging process. What helps is the confidence I've gathered from experience, knowing that the children will settle with consistent support.

Here are a few tips to help both parents and practitioners:

PARENTS:

1. It helps to start preparing your child a few weeks before. You could go shopping for school supplies and talk about how excited you are about school.

2. Attend parent evenings or open days with your child to get them familiar with the setting and the teacher

3. On the day, if your child walks in confidently, great! If they don't, you may stay for a bit longer if the setting permits and after you comfort your child. Give them a firm hug, say goodbye with a kiss, hand them over to the teacher and walk away. DO NOT PANIC; your child is in safe hands :)

TEACHERS:

1. Prepare a routine for the first week of school. It should be a flexible routine, very open, but reasonably structured so that children start understanding how the school will run from the very first day. Meal times, playtime and carpet time are examples of activities to add to your routine.

2. Depending on the policy of your setting, be confident and firm in telling parents when it's time for them to let the children settle in. Agree on the next steps should the child fail to settle in after a certain period. This could include calling the parent for an early pick-up or asking for their comforter (snuggly toy or blankie).

3. Be their friend. It's an overwhelming experience for the little ones, ALWAYS. Take time to comfort, get to know them and win their trust.

I hope you have a smooth first week of school!

Don't forget to take a breather every now and then :)

Learning Objectives:Creative vs restrictive

During mathematics class in the first term of FS 2 (reception year), I had an interesting experience with a mathematics activity sheet. The Lesson objective was to correctly count to 10 showing one to one correspondence and the task was to colour in 8 circles out of a 10. There were several rows of circles where the children could colour in different numbers ranging from 5-10.
It looked like this:

                                                           source: mininghumanities.com

Most of the children could do this easily, however, there was a little boy who for some reason would colour in only two circles leaving 8 uncoloured when it got to number 8.
I explained the task again to him, we counted the circles together and then I asked if he would try to do it again, to colour in 8 circles.
When I went over to him, he'd done the same thing again. He was working in reverse for number 8.

We went over the instructions the third time, but he did the same thing when we got to 8.
So, I let that pass and proceeded to reflect on what exactly my learning intention was.
He was showing one to one correspondence but differently. In fact, he was showing it uniquely because no one else did that! He was showing me that if he coloured in only 2 circles out of 10, he'd have 8 circles left.
I thought about how often we try to box in children or program them to produce a certain type of result (consciously or unconsciously).
How restrictive are our learning objectives as teachers? especially as early years practitioners.
Do we often focus on our instruction and the outcomes of our instruction or do we leave enough room for a creative expression of the same objective?
Granted, we as teachers may be restricted by the curriculum, long-term/mid-term planning and line managers. Perhaps it is this restriction that we pass down to the children. I believe that if the creative outcomes from our lesson show the uniqueness of each classroom and each child, we can convince the senior management to make a restrictive curriculum more creative.

As the world evolves, we need more creativity, more children who go against the grain and more uniqueness. More than ever, we have a role to play in harnessing that creativity and not suppressing it.

Pre- literacy skills

Pre-literacy skills are those that little children need before they begin to read and write, for example, drawing curvy and straight lines, sound discrimination, and recognising a few phonemes.

A few early years settings already require children to begin writing in books even before they acquire the correct pencil grip.

I would like to advocate for progressive transition into literacy (writing) for young children.

Air writing, finger painting, threading, cutting with children scissors, beading are a few exercises to help children gain mastery over their fine motor skills.

The goal should be equipping children with skills for flexible wrist movement for handwriting.

The Joy of learning

Traditional classrooms have evolved in the 21st century; we no longer have dull coloured tables neatly lined up in rows with a teacher pointing a rod at the chalkboard. On the contrary, teaching and learning today is TRENDING!
From flipped classrooms to project-based learning, classes are taking on colour and, yes, FUN!
Teaching and learning today is a different paradigm from what it used it be. We’ve moved from rote and performance-based learning to teaching children the skills that they actually need for life. We have started to focus on other aspects besides the curriculum that actually influences a child’s learning and development like Social and emotional wellbeing. We have realized that for effective learning to take place, the learner will have to be an active and engaged part of the process.
Schools have evolved to reflect this paradigm shift in education. They include Morals, Happiness and Wellbeing as a core part of their curricula. School structures also reflect more children's work and children’s voice.
They say you can tell a lot about a school by just taking a walk through the hallways. I find this to be very true. It’s wonderful to look into classrooms and find colour and creativity. To see the same standard expressed differently as each classroom takes on their own personality.
Learning is a process that involves experience, study and teaching. Therefore, the best approach to learning is one that is holistic. One which creates experiences and opportunities for the learner to explore, One which requires the learner to be an active participant and one which challenges the learner to think critically.
A good teacher is one who makes learning a joy! S/he employs different strategies to target each child
Using a variety of methods to ensure that each child is acquiring new knowledge and skills.
The hope is that the learner understanding of the world around him/her is deepened leading to new or refined perceptions, values and behaviour.
School is not just about getting good grades, it is truly about equipping a child with all the skills s/he needs to live a quality life.

Play dough and faces

I love the blank face template from twinkle!
In our room, we laminated them and are using them as play dough mats to create different faces as we learn to label emotions.
This child made a worried face :)

Play dough and numbers

Children ages 2-3 can try to roll out playdough to the shape of numbers on a mat.
You can pretend to make a wiggly worm that likes to curl into numbers :)

Learning with dinosuars

Children love dinosaurs! They really make a great classroom theme for  2-3 year olds.
Here are a few ideas that I tried and my kids enjoyed.
1)Dino world off course:
Here we also focused on construction so we added in wooden blocks and logs to let the children build towers and bridges for their dinosaurs.
If you're looking for a short term, easy-to-clean-up set up then this is perfect! We used empty boxes, moss balls, tissue paper, wooden logs and ...voila!

 The children learn about what dinosaurs eat and how they live. I heard all sorts of suggestions, like dinos should eat cars and planes :). Also some said trees and lives. We also created dino eggs and talked about how baby dinosaurs hatch from eggs.

2) Literacy with dino bones: In this activity, we painted hard paper white and cut them into bones. Besides trying to build up a dino skeleton. We thought we would build shape and letter skeletons. Look, someone made an 'A; skeleton!

3) Problem solving; How will Mummy get to baby dinosaur?
 Two dinosaurs separated by a river (you could put a blue cloth to be the river) and two boards. The children need to think about how to get across... In this case, make a bridge.

4) We printed labeled dinosaur pictures and tried to match the plastic ones to the pictures.

What are your fun dino ideas?