In the realm of public school early childhood education many teachers are told what to teach or told to use a scripted curriculum. I am not against all curriculums. We use The 95% Phonics Group curriculum and have seen huge improvements in the kids reading skills since we’ve started it. But some curriculums I wonder if they consulted any early childhood educators at all when they wrote it. I have to do what is best for my students and give them the best education possible. Those curriculums won’t do that, in fact, they will make many students see learning as a chore. I want them to realize tha ..read more

The first weeks of Kindergarten are spent figuring out what we need to do in order for us to create a learning community that works and plays together in harmony! We are learning the purpose of school, what our goals and passions are and how we are going to achieve our goals! Part of this is learning what it looks, sounds and feels like to be safe, respectful and responsible in our meeting area, in the hallway, in the cafeteria, at our tables and in our exploration areas!  We use a lot of different tools in all of the areas of our room! I use what we call “The Mystery Box” to introduce t ..read more

Before the kids come, I need to turn a bare space into an environment that will encourage exploration, wonder, creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and a desire to learn no matter where they choose to go! I need to create an environment where they will want to use the reading, writing, and math skills we learn in whole group lessons in natural and authentic ways. Where the kids use those 21st Century skills and academic skills without knowing they are actually practicing the skills they have been learning! It is no small task but one of my favorite challenges!  I divide the roo ..read more

It all started with the kids finding and bringing every rock they found in our playground area to us as if each and every one was the coolest treasure ever found!  They loved scrubbing the dirt off to see the beauty underneath! Some started bringing in their own precious rock collections to share with the class! Since we teach based on the students interests, we grabbed on to this opportunity! My amazing student teacher, Miss Abby set up an area with a few rocks for them to document what they see and notice! Because this group was so interested in the different kinds of ro ..read more

In the early Fall, we noticed that the kids were very interested in trees so we took them out to observe one as scientists and see what they notice. They took this work very seriously and looked closely, but we noticed they were more focused on something other than the attributes of the tree! They were noticing the evidence of things that lived in the tree! Nests, cicada shells, webs, daddy long legs, were added to their observations of leaves, bark, color and texture. They learned about the leaves and how they change in the Fall and fall off of the trees. We looked closely at them an ..read more

For Thanksgiving we learned about how things were different in the past compared to the present, but our main focus was on the concept of gratitude. We discussed how we can have positive or negative attitudes and that gratitude is a positive one. Having an attitude of gratitude is being grateful for the things we have and being satisfied that we have the most important things such as family, love, shelter and food. We also discussed how when things are not going our way, we can stay positive by having an attitude of gratitude. We started out the week creating Gratitude Boxes as a gift for our ..read more

The kids and their families collected all kinds of wonderful Autumn nature items for us to explore as we continued to study the Autumn Season and the changes that were happening around us! These two friends helped categorize everything into groups. Then I organized it into an invitation for them to look closer, notice, explore, wonder and document! They used tempera paint, water colors and collage to show what they noticed happening with the colors of the leaves on the trees!  After exploring the materials they used creative thinking skills to create with natural items inspi ..read more

I get many questions on how I work play into a public school setting. In our room, play is the priority and everything else works around it. The reason for this is that play is how kids learn about the world around them and where they practice skills naturally. One way to foster play is to create an environment where play experiences are set up for them to use as they want to and where they can see, think and wonder. They will practice not only academic skills, which do get used constantly in very authentic ways as kids play, but also the life skills they need in order to be successful in any ..read more

After we have created an amazing learning community, we focused on continuing to grow an inquiry mindset! We look at the world around us, notice, wonder, try to find out answers and document what we see and find out! I brought in a sunflower for them to investigate. They loved using tweezers to take out the seeds and it was a good exercise to strengthen fine motor skills! It took them a while to figure out where the seeds were since they were only seeing the tops! Our digital microscope is one of their favorite science tools to look closer! We also used watercolors, oil pastels an ..read more

At our Early Childhood Center, we had an Outdoor Learning Committee that was dedicated to creating outdoor learning experiences that gave children the opportunities to explore their environment, build core strength, connect with nature, and use collaborative, critical and creative thinking skills! Outdoor play was not looked at as a break from learning, but rather a natural way that kids learn about the world around them. For example, they are learning  social skills as they play and create games together, learn how to problem solve as problems arise during those games, and learn how to g ..read more