And I'm back! Between winter break, snow/cold days and weekends we have had only 2 days of school over the last 2 1/2 weeks. It's gotten to the point were not going in to work feels more normal, and the sleepy children today convinced me that it was true for them too. The classroom volume level was higher than normal too, with a few children even coming and telling me it was too loud for them to concentrate. I made an announcement to the entire class the first time, and then encourage the children to go and speak with specific children who were being extra loud. They were....semi-successful.
Not that there wasn't any work happening. N was painting at the easel and requested that I get him some red and white paint so he could make an American flag. Not only did he do the stripes and blue field, but he painted on a few stars as well. After getting him the paint I told him to come find me when he was done and I'd show him some new work to do with flags.
Now most children love getting presentations, working one on one with an adult is really special to them. N is no exception, but he usually doesn't continue the work for too long after the adult leaves.
I worked with his younger cousin for a little bit, showing her the constructive triangles. Part way through N wander over, done with his painting and clean up. He had not only remembered that I wanted to show him something, but he was excited to. I took N over to the flags and had him choose one. I helped him get set up with paper and colored pencils to make a replica while I checked in on his little cousin working with the triangles. When N showed me his colored flag we went to work looking it up in the new flag book.
Now this flag book was brand new, N was the first child to use it. I had made it over the break because our original flag book from the store didn't have some of the flags we have in our classroom. It also just had a lot of dry facts, or historical facts of the flag that really weren't interesting to the children. So I had made a small booklet that had just the flags we had in the room, and wrote just a short paragraph with some facts. Things like what the color represent and how the flag was designed and has changed over the years. Over the cold days when there was no school I had bound the laminated pages and was getting really excited to have the children use it.
Well, N used it and we discovered that I had missed a flag. Oops. Of course it would have been the one that he chose. Oh well. He managed to find it in the big book and we wrote the name down. Then N decided that he wanted to do another flag.
That was awesome. Like I said earlier, N isn't one to keep working on something new without an audience. And I had left him to work independently for a good chunk of the flag work. N successfully made an American flag and then brought me over the book to read the story of it. The fact that not only did he work alone, but wanted to continue showed me how interested he really was in the flags.
Now I just need to figure out how to turn that interest to helping work on his handwriting.....
Now most children love getting presentations, working one on one with an adult is really special to them. N is no exception, but he usually doesn't continue the work for too long after the adult leaves.
Anyways, we were busy making stationary this morning. While we know that not all of our families celebrate Christmas, most do and so it's a good season to make a little extra gift to send home. Each child got to decorate the headers of 4 little pieces of stationary with all manner of art things. Before we started I explained how we were making stationary and needed to leave the bottom part blank for them or their parents to write little notes on. Overall I was pretty impressed with how well they respected this rule, most kept their stickers and pictures and stamps above the line and it actually looks like stationary.
They independently chose their stickers, peeled them and put them on, and also glued on their own clip art pictures. I helped with the glitter application (as previously discussed) and added the final touch of a line of glitter glue from the hot glue gun. The children then made sure their finished stationary stayed with the correct envelope, cleaned up the paper backs from stickers, and helped me store the extra supplies back into their bags. They pushed in their chairs and went back into the classroom and back to work.
