It's a Sign!

Signing to Success in the Classroom

     In school, I chose French as my language to learn when I had to pick one in high school and I continued throughout college. It's shown that knowing and practicing a second language is beneficial to learning in general, but why wait until middle or high school? Early childhood is arguably the most important time during a child's educational life, so I say let's put the two together! 

     I've started incorporating sign language into my 4K class by using the ol' classic, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle and my kiddos love it!

     

     Sign language is easy for kids to successfully learn quickly and they feel so accomplished when they can remember the signs! I love sign language because it incorporates sight and movement, along with the sounds of the words that they mean. So if you have English Language Learners, or even just some who learn better through sight rather than just hearing, everyone can be signing and learning! (It's also a great way to quiet your room for a bit if you feel like it's been a loud day!)

     So start off small with single words and build up to combinations and sentences. Also, get ready to see signs they may or may not have made up! So creative!

Be safe and sweet, y'all

The Freeze!

Today we froze!

Well, only when the music stopped. 

 
      Greg & Steve's song titled "The Freeze" has been formally introduced in our classroom and they love it! I've used the freeze game in my time as a gymnastics coach when we would have the entire open floor for us to roll, jump, and run around but using this song in the classroom was almost just as fun. (Especially the part after, when all my kiddos had gotten rid of those pesky wiggles).

   

     

     Instead of just running around all crazy-like, our class made a circle around our group of tables and marched, monkey-walked, fish-swam, giraffe-tip-toed, and a bunch of other things around said tables. It worked out because there was no line leader (or caboose which has become another desired position for some reason) and we changed movements pretty quickly so it was always engaging. 

     The song tells you when to freeze and isn't terrible to listen to multiple times (speaking as an adult), so I'd recommend it to anyone! You can listen to it here (it's number 10 on the list). 

Be safe and sweet, y'all.

Thanksgiving Planning

Whew!

     It's already November! 

     ...which means it's almost Thanksgiving, which means it's almost Christmas, which means the school year is almost halfway over, which means soon the school year will be over!! I know that's jumping ahead a bit but I'm not convinced that I'm wrong! It seems like this year just started, but it also seems like the beginning of the year was so long ago.

    Anyways, the point of this post is to remark on a few thoughts I had while planning my month of November. Yesterday and today I had a MUCH smaller class size than normal (about 1/4 of a normal class!) so I was able to plan just about all of November! Being a first-year solo teacher, I get to decide what I want my students to learn and in which ways to learn it. This is a curse and blessing. Mainly I'm referring to the whole "First-Thanksgiving-was-or-was-not-actually-a-totally-friendly-experience-for-everyone-involved-controversy". 

     There's so many teacher resources that depict the first Thanksgiving timeline as a quaint and happy sequence of events between "Pilgrims and Indians". But we also see that in the early grades, talking about the less amiable aspects of the first Thanksgiving or even forgoing them is not the norm. As we learn in higher education, that isn't the whole story. Now my schtick is that I don't like lying to my class because that's not fair to them or even to me later when they come back and say that someone else told them something different and then it becomes me against them and not about the actual topic and whatnot. 

     So thanks to a history lesson and research on my part,  I've chosen to include all the basic principles of the event and season. I don't want to fill my kids heads with historical jargon and miss out on the more important and relatable aspects of the holiday. The holiday is about celebrating what we've got. I choose to focus on family, friends, food, a home and even things beyond basic necessities such as toys or vacations. We'll talk about how Thanksgiving started and why it was first celebrated (i.e. the first settlers had a tough time living in the new land, they received help from native peoples and then celebrated their harvest), but discussing and practicing the concept of being thankful is more important than learning an abstract history lesson for my four year olds. 

Be safe and sweet, y'all.