Lunch!

The children are really settling back in after having a couple of long breaks with the holidays and the snow days (that were technically cold days), and one of the easiest way to see this is how well they follow the lunch routine. The children are dismissed to wash their hands, grab their lunch box and find their name tag in the lunch room. The name tags are a relatively new addition to ensure that the younger children end up at a table they can reach properly.

At the beginning of the year we send a note home with parents giving them some specific instructions for their child's lunch. We are a nut free school and it's important that parents do not send peanut butter sandwiches or trail mix to avoid this. We also request that they specifically pack a protein, vegetable and fruit in their lunch box. The children are taught which food is which and eat them in order to ensure that they get enough healthy and filling food. This is super important because we have some children who stay until 5 o'clock and not having a full stomach can make those last few hours miserable. The children are also in charge of cleaning up their own spot, sweeping or wiping with a sponge as needed, and packing everything back in their lunch box.

Today all the children where in the lunch room in under ten minutes. They remembered which food they needed to eat first (after all it takes some willpower to eat that chewy sandwich before those sweet strawberries) and generally sat nicely in their chairs. We have really been focusing on having them sit properly at the table and they have been really responsive to the point where it only takes asking "Could you scoot in?" to have them turn forward and eat over their place at the table.

The best part of this? When the children are settled and focused at lunch they eat faster, which means they get dressed earlier and we get more outside time. Recently we had a group sled dog race, I explained a little bit about the Iditarod and then paired younger and older children to be sled dogs and mushers. The children loved it and it's been hilarious to see them continuing the game independently during the recess free time. All this because they have a good lunch routine that fills them up, and still gives time for playing.

Daddy help! (but really, don't)

D came in to school with his twin brother and dad this morning, same as just about every other day (sometimes mom drops them off). I said good morning and reminded them to take off their boots at the door, a habit we're trying to develop before the snow flies and creates a terrible mess of puddles in our school. D sat on the bench without uttering a single complaint and began swinging his feet and kicking at one boot with the other foot.

"It might be easier if you sit on the rug, just like after recess, remember?" I asked him. "Yeah, rug!" he exclaimed, sliding off the bench and settling himself on the floor. Meanwhile his brother A sat on the bench, looking a little less motivated to come in and dad stood in the doorway watching. D pushed at his boot from the ankle, mainly just squishing it down rather than pushing it off.

"Can you push on the rubber part D?" I cued him, pointing to the harder part of his boots so he could slide it off his heel. His twin hadn't yet made any effort with his boots dad began prompting him to try too. Hearing this D looked up and began whimper, "Too hard daddy!" Dad said basically the same thing I had, about which part of the boot to push on. D made a pretend effort, moving his hand back up to the soft part of the boot and pushing again. "Daddy help!" he cried, hiccuping a little bit. Daddy knelt down, showing him were to push again and giving the boot a nudge so it slid off D's heel. D kept up his whimpering until dad helped him with the second boot too.

Not bad acting for a three year old huh? And I know it was an act because here's what happened later today at lunch.

D finished pretty early and was carrying his lunch box into the coat room to put it away and get dressed just as I left it. In less than 5 minutes he came out to the rug to get his boots, fully dressed in his snow pants and jacket with mittens in hand. I took the first group of children outside and 5 minutes after that D came waddling outside, bundled up for the cold with boots and mittens fastened securely.

10 minutes total. 10 minutes for a three year to get all his winter outdoor gear on, including those boots that had given him so much trouble in the morning. Oh, and that 10 minutes includes waiting for a teacher to fasten his mittens over his sleeves, something that even our kindergarten students have trouble mastering (and actually I as an adult sometimes struggle with!)

Oh, and when we went back inside after recess? It took him maybe 2 minutes tops to get those boots off. And I didn't hear a single whimper after reminding him that it was easier to sit down on the rug instead of the bench.

So yes daddy, help....but not with those boots.

Games we like to play

I don't want to give the wrong impression that in a Montessori environment that the children never do anything as a whole group. On the contrary we do a lot of things as a big group: birthdays, holiday celebrations, lunch, recess, and outdoor games. Outdoor games are probably the most consistent group activity and all the children who stick around for lunch participate. About ten minutes before the end of recess I'll call out that it's time to clean up and the children know that that's their cue to run their toys to the big blue bin and dash to the side of the school so they can get their 'favorite' spot. The older ones are especially keen on standing in a particular spot,

Normally our games are pretty simple. Things like 'Fishy, fishy may we cross your ocean?", Red light green light, and moving like an animal. We did crab walking the other day and most of the children thought it was hilariously funny, though a few others needed encouragement to even try. All the games we do have very simple rules since even red light, green light is a bit confusing for our younger students.

Photo courtesy of Amazon
(all our domes were picked up by the children
 before I could take a picture!)

And today we had a brand new game to play. Ok, so it really was just Simon says using these colorful domes but the kids thought it was a great new game. After all, it's so much more fun to find a purple dome than it is to touch your nose. And it's even MORE fun when you get to find the purple dome that your best friend is also standing at. And then the teacher asks you to find your favorite color and you not only get to choose but change your mind (just in case you know). Plus what child doesn't want to run around after keeping themselves at a walking pace for the entire morning? Answer: None of the children in our classroom!

They all really enjoy playing, even those who don't fully understand it and those for who it is really easy. We try to keep it non-competitive, not because we don't want them to try hard and feel like they've done a good job, but it should be obvious that there is no way a three year old could keep up with a six year old. Amazingly though children seem to realize this and it's not uncommon for the older ones to handicap themselves. In tag I've seen our biggest and fastest boy purposefully miss the flag when chasing a younger child. In our school they spend enough time with the younger ones to realize that they need to help them, and that if they play too hard they may cause the younger ones to cry. They've learned to give the younger ones a head start, or help them if they fall, and even give them second chances. Mostly without any adult intervention.

I spoke too soon

So this post is a bit late but with good reason. (there's always a good reason isn't there?) Anyways, my previous post was about pumpkin carving, and how trying to have even just one organized activity made the day a lot longer. Well the day after that the head teacher of our classroom was gone for the day to get her son in for a long overdue doctors visit. So after a long Wednesday I found myself playing at head teacher the next day. So yeah, get ready for another me centered post rather than one about the awesome children I work with. Don't worry though, they'll return soon!

Don't get me wrong it went great. The kids were very well behaved, and a few of our youngest children were out sick so the day wasn't quite as busy as it normally would have been. Because it was Thursday the children also had French. For this they go out of the classroom for about 15 mins for the younger children, and half and hour for the older. While the rest of the morning was pretty smooth, it was nice to have the class size reduced by about 10 when French began.

Next came our recess time adventure. Recess is a part of my normal schedule, but dogs jumping the fence into our play yard is not. There's a Shepard/Collie mix in one of the yards behind our school who gets really excited when the kids come out and start running around. We're talking excessive barking, pacing and putting front paws up the fence. Well this particular day the dog got so excited that he used the wood pile as a vaulting block and ended up in our play yard.

Then he must have decided he really didn't want to be where all these screaming kids were and that's when he discovered he couldn't get back over the fence. Of course all the children were so excited about the dog, some were nervous but most just really wanted to go and pet it. Luckily they all respond really well when I yell "Line up at the school" since that's the phrase we use every day to start our game. So we got the children all corralled in one part of the yard and with the help of the neighbor got the dog back over the fence. The children could hardly talk about anything else the rest of recess.

Then the afternoon rolled around. My normal afternoon is pretty relaxed. After getting the younger children into the nap room I have almost an hour to take my break and prep any materials we need in the classroom (usually cutting paper or designing artwork). Then when the first group of nappers gets up I go back into the classroom to help with the children who are awake. With our regular teacher gone I was busy all afternoon. The extended day children (those who stay awake all afternoon) kept themselves busy brainstorming ideas for 'we missed you' cards for our missing teacher (there was a decided Halloween theme!) while I helped get the nappers ready.

Myself and the older children read a chapter from the boxcar children and made cards, then got back down to serious work. The older children have these checklists they are supposed to complete during the day. These checklists are just to make sure that they do a writing work, another type of language work, and a math work. It also helps prepare those who are going in to Elementary where they will plan their own projects and make the deadlines for them. Right now though only two of our children are confident readers, the others need help reading the options on their checklist. And I made the mistake of just reading the lists aloud without seeing what was on there. That was how I ended up trying to give three new presentations as well as trying to deal with the normal mishaps that come up in the course of the day. Oh, ad did I mention that soon after starting this I had the newly awakened nappers come join our classroom? Luckily there were only two who didn't sleep. But still, it was a far cry from a normal afternoon when there are two adults in there for the majority of the afternoon.

So yeah, while it went well I was pretty exhausted by the end of the day. But I'd already told some friends I would go climbing with them. Waiting for them to get to the gym all I could think about was doing this-

Oh, and then on Friday one of our other staff left at 1 o'clock instead of 3:30 like normal. So I was in charge of taking out all the garbage in the school (it's amazing how much we generate, mainly from paper towels) and extra daycare duty after school. Nothing that I haven't done before but it was a good thing that it was Friday. A day of pumpkin carving, having our regular teacher gone, then filling in for yet another staff member wiped me out. Hopefully next week will be more normal....except for there's Halloween....I better rest up.

What happens at home, doesn't always stay at home

Even as an adult it's sometimes hard to leave the troubles of home there rather than bring them to work (and vice versa), children have the same problem. A lot the kids come in, either really excited for the day or sad and dragging, wanting to go home. Sometimes their parents can tell us what's bothering the child when they drop them off. The other day one girl was in a pretty foul mood because she was only allowed to have one flavor of yogurt instead of mixing all the containers together. Yep, that was it, yogurt. Yogurt led to an extremely scowley face and stomping feet.

Sometimes though we don't get to know what's up. This morning I shook hands with lots of happy children, a few who were even jumping they were so excited to be back at school (yeah, my job's usually pretty nice huh?). But there was one hand I didn't get to shake and I didn't even realize it until about halfway through the morning. Some kids get louder, act out or cling to adults when they're feeling off; this girl clammed up and kept to herself all morning. It was such a change from her normal, chatty demeanor that I flat out asked her if she was feeling ok, thinking that she must be sick. A lackluster nod didn't make me feel much better so I invited her over to the conversation area, hoping I might be able to figure out what was bothering her.

Unfortunately I didn't find out anything. We chatted about the other children's bins, discovered that almost all the pictures on them were things you could ride, etc. Not really any helpful hints for me, especially since this is usually a very verbal child with lots to share. So I let invited her to work with me and we practiced identifying and tracing the sandpaper numbers. She perked up a bit and was really eager to try writing the numbers on a chalkboard.

I wish I could say that cured her for the rest of the day, but it didn't. She was pretty reserved at lunch, entirely missed recess because she couldn't focus enough to get dressed, and repeated this lethargy through snack and afternoon recess-even with a 2 hour nap! Sometimes you just can't push the right buttons to get the child perked up, and just hope that tomorrow will be better.

On the opposite side of the spectrum was another girl who is usually so hyper she can't contain herself, gets in trouble for it, and then gets upset. Today she came in laughing and eager to work, and though we teachers had to remind her a few times to slow down or quit bothering her classmates she had a relatively calm morning. But most amazingly at recess she managed to sit quietly on the bench when asked. The bench is somewhere that is sort of like a time-out area, but we don't call it that and really only direct the children over there if they really need to calm down. Usually when she's sent there this girl will whimper, whine, bounce and constantly ask when she can get up. Today she sat so quietly that I almost forgot she was there and actually ended up thanking her for doing so.

Who knows why these two girls were so contrary to their normal behavior today. I don't know what they did over the weekend, how much sleep they got, what they had for breakfast, if the snow on the ground disturbed them. All I know is that each day they're going to be a little bit different.

What were they thinking?

This blog comes in two parts today to answer the question, what were they thinking? Please enjoy in any order.

A child's story-

So I talked in an earlier post about how we have some job slips for the kids to draw at the end of the day so they can help tidy up the classroom. Now I don't expect them to get the job done perfectly, but every little bit does help. Usually it's great, the 'dust a shelf' job slips have been especially popular, which is great since dusting is pretty low on our teacher to do list and the children do a great job of it. Another job we have is 'check for dull pencils'. The child is supposed to pull the dull pencils out of the color coded holders and put them with the regular pencils to be sharpened. Well this is what I found today when I went to sharpen the pencils-

Now I'm not sure if the girl who checked the pencils just has really high standards for sharp pencils, didn't quite understand the word dull, or just really liked taking each pencil and placing it the big container. Either way, she did take out the dull pencils and they did get sharpened...so mission accomplished right?

An adult's story-

It was recess, I was spending the last half-hour of work playing four square with the few remaining elementary students (tough job isn't it?) when a car pulls up. A dad for one of the elementary students had arrived and the student quickly ran inside to get her lunch box and homework. Instead of just standing by the fence and waiting, the dad gets in line for four square and asks how to play. I don't know who was more shocked, the children who explained the rules to him, or his daughter when she came out and saw him playing with her friends. He stayed and played for a good 15 mins to her absolute delight. Four square isn't a hard game to learn or play, but when the area you are playing in is bigger it helps to have longer arms and legs. This student may have been one of the younger ones, but having dad there more than made up for the difference.

I still don't know why he decided to come and join our game, what he was thinking. But the elementary children were very impressed and stepped up their game to keep up with him.

Children who love to clean! (yes, really!)

In my blog post yesterday I mentioned how our play yard was currently under construction and was in pretty rough shape. Well today we found out that it was going to be at least a week until the new permanent fence was put in. Unfortunately in the meantime the playground is still a mess. A temporary, plastic orange fence, a messy pile of dirt and roots and sticks scattered everywhere....lots and lots of sticks.

Now I'm proud to say that I think a lot of schools would have continued to avoid the yard until everything was 100% back together, but we figured our children were smart enough to handle the mess. Before going outside I made an announcement at lunch that we were going to play in our normal play-yard, but that the fence was not to be touched, and the pile of dirt was not for playing. Simple, to the point and I am proud to say that I only needed to remind one child to stay out of the tempting pile of dirt.

We adults were a little bit more worried about the sticks though. We generally have a rule that the children do not play with sticks that are longer than 5 or 6 inches so there is minimal chance of their accidentally (or occasionally on purpose) hitting someone else. Usually the play yard is pretty well swept clean of these off limits sticks, but after some serious tree trimming yesterday they were scattered all over. I started gathering some of the large ones, intending to get them out of the yard before they were discovered and turned into toys. But with my first armful I found that I had several helpers with their own arms full of sticks. Expectantly they looked at me. "I'm going to put these in the truck* so no one pokes themselves." (*this is an empty plastic sandbox shaped like a dump truck in our yard). There was a chorus of children exclaiming that they were going to do that to. I kept hearing little voices talking about how they didn't want anyone to get poked and screeching a bit in excitement as they found another stick. And with all those eager to help (I didn't ask or make anyone pick up sticks) in about five minutes we had basically all the sticks cleaned up.

And they kept going. Several of the children kept searching for sticks even when all they kept coming back with were little twigs that almost got lost in their hands they were so small. I thanked them as profusely for these little slivers as I did over the larger branches. After all, who doesn't appreciate some extra help while cleaning, especially with the added bonus of enthusiasm while doing it!

This isn't unusual to get such eager help from the children at school. I think one of the main reasons it happens is because we rarely demand that they help clean up. The children are responsible for a mess that they personally make, but a lot of accidental or bigger messes usually draws a crowd eager to help. Often if I find something messy in the classroom (like something one the floor) and don't know who is responsible I will just ask the nearest child to help me clean it up. The key word here is ask. Usually they help out without even thinking twice, or if they hesitate I mention how we want our room to be clean so we can find the materials and work with them and that usually convinces them. If they really don't want to help I do it myself, repeating aloud the mantra about keeping our classroom clean.

One of the best thing about working with young children is how eager they are to help out. At the end of the day in our classroom we have a small basket with slips in it that have different jobs written on them. Today I had made some new job slips into the basket and the children were extremely excited to to not only see what new jobs there were, but to find out if their favorite old job was still an option! Spray and wipe tables is always a favorite, as is using our new carpet sweeper.

The best part is that it is usually the youngest children who are eager to place the classroom back in order. We have a set of twin boys who are not yet 3 and they are always the most eager to start picking jobs. Since they can't read yet they have to bring the slip to a teacher and it always makes me smile to see how quickly they hurry to choose a slip and then the eagerness with which they seek out an adult to reveal its secrets. Then they set off with a determined look on their face to take care of their important job. And that is even more important than that the job actually gets done.

As simple as going for a walk...or not

A beautiful fall day. The kind of day where the leaves are just starting to fall and change but it's still warm enough to walk around in a t-shirt. Add a slight breeze to make the leaves go skittering across the pavement and rustle together and you've got a great day for a nature walk. Especially when there's the added excuse that the normal play yard is currently under construction to trim back some trees and put in a new fence. Now the children in the classroom were more than excited to watch the men cutting down trees and tearing out the old fence. They were even more excited when the miniature bobcat drove around the corner to help cart the debris away, but it definitely was not a safe place for recess. So we planned a nature walk for recess instead. Unfortunately that wasn't as simple as it sounds.

Our normal recess schedule begins when the first group of children finish lunch and change into their outdoor shoes. Usually these are the older children who are quicker at eating and cleaning up due to years of practice. While an adult takes this first group of children outside, another helps the younger ones finish cleaning up their lunches and changing shoes/putting on jackets. Normally this is about a 20 minute process (there's quite a spread between a 6 year old who is racing to put on their velcro shoes, and a 2 year old still trying to figure out the zipper on their lunch box).

Then today with our plan for a nature walk we added in a new kink in the system- a bathroom break. Normally in a Montessori environment the children are responsible for realizing when they need to use the bathroom and reminders from adults are kept to a minimum. The only instance where an entire group is actually brought to the bathroom by an adult is right before nap time (for what should be obvious reasons). But since we were not going to be near a bathroom we needed to get 21 children to at least try and go before we left. Now that is a long process. All in all, by the time each child was ready to go we had about 5 minutes left of recess.

Now I don't want this to  seem like I'm complaining. When I actually think about it, that's quite an impressive feat. 21 children have eaten their lunches, packed them up, cleaned their table and swept (if needed), changed their shoes and put on coats, and stood in an orderly line. Oh, and remember, they are all under the age of six AND did all of this with little adult intervention. That means that while we might have helped them snap shut a tricky container, even the 2 year olds put them into their lunch boxes and zipped it up on their own.

So after all that work, for a nature walk we went. Hand in hand the older children helped direct the younger ones to the safe areas in the grass or sidewalk. We walked in the sunshine, listened to the rustling leaves, and even picked a few flowers. Then we reached the end of the block and turned right back around. Ok, so we only made it one block from school, but did the children mind? Nope, not in the least. A few did ask why we weren't going further, but they completely understood when we explained that recess was over. Dr. Montessori recognized that children are process oriented, not product oriented. While an adult might have felt disappointed to not really achieve the product (the walk) the children were happy simply taking part in the process (getting dressed, lining up, etc.). Though as an adult, I still hope we can go a little further tomorrow!