Scaffloding preschoolers' early writing skills

Providing young children with rich writing/drawing experiences lays good foundations for literacy learning. Scaffolding preschoolers' early writing skills is of paramount importance. But the diversity of skill levels can sometimes present a challenge. Some children are still at the stage of scribbling while others are drawing neat pictures from their imagination. Some are still colouring or drawing while others have started making "signs" or formed "letters". So what could I do to encourage my children, support their development level and shape their learning experiences? I took a step back and observed the children in my classroom. One little girl, one day, was playing with a small Montessori numeral rod a wooden box turned upside down. She told me she was drawing! And it hit me. Diversifying writing materials as often and as much possible was a must. Crayons, paint, markers, chalk are a great start but what about the canvas? It doesn't always have to be paper or card. Just gather materials, present it to the children and let them use their imagination. Let them use the materials whichever way they want without preconceived ideas or expectations. Then the possibilities are endless, really, and so are the learning experiences.

10 timid Little Ghosts - Props

We have been reading 10 Timid Ghosts by Jennifer O'Connell for the past 2 weeks in the classroom. The children love this story. I guess the story has mesmerised them because it represents everything scary about Halloween: witch, ghosts, cats, rats, vampires, skeletons etc.. It is spooky without being frightening and it got their attention straight away. The rhyming and repetitive prose is catchy and easy  to memorise making it fun, while the illustrations are really colourful and detailed. 

Naming clouds...

As we were berry picking the other day, a little boy stood quite still in the middle of the field, looking up to the sky. I asked him what he was looking at. He said he could see a funny cloud shape in the sky. I looked up and asked him what it was shaped as. He simply said it looked like a big marshmallow!! Other children joined in when they saw us and we all had a game of "guess what my cloud looks like"! We saw dogs, circles, superheroes etc...Imagination had no limit. The following day, at circle time, I showed the following video to the children. It is based on a book called "it looks like spilt milk" by Charles G. Shaw. The children loved it as it was an extension of what we had done the day before. 

We are going on a bear Hunt

One of the children's favourite books in our classroom is We are going on a Bear Hunt. They love the chanting rhyming tone of the text, the pictures, the repetitive and therefore predictive actions.. So we often use this story to introduce our topic on bear and hibernation. Here are a few examples of our classroom's activities based around the book.

Language /Communication:  Using props 

At circle time, once the children were familiar to the story, we introduced the props to add another twist to the story telling experience. 

                     

The Hundreds Languages of Fabric

Two years ago, we have introduced the Reggio Emilia approach into our classroom and our curriculum. I didn't really know if it would work.. It has! Don't get me wrong, I am still learning and there are many errors along the way. Things I thought would be a great hit among the children turned out to be an "epic failure" (as my own children would say!). Activities that never really appealed to me became so so popular... It has left me baffled at times. The main thing is not to have any preconceived idea, I guess. Try everything and you will eventually get there. 
What I can say now, is that you will notice centres of interest. And I assume that these interests will differ or evolve from year to year as new groups of children pass through your door or as children grow older (never a dull moment in teaching!). So far, thanks to the Reggio inspired teaching method we are using, two interests have emerged from the children, one being a serious love of glue and the other being an equally intense love for fabric. I took these two interests and planned possibilities and provocations.

Children have developed new skills since September and used many different media to communicate their understandings of the world around them, their emotions etc.. As an adult, we may not always get "it". I often see Mams winking at me when their child show them proudly the "blob" they painted earlier on. Mams may ask "what is it honey?". And the child gets frustrated and sighs, explaining what he tried to convey on paper. I taught many parents to comment on the composition of the painting or the colours used when they are not sure what it is representing. The child usually automatically forwards a clue of what it is but his feelings have been saved and he/ she feels valued by the praise they received. Children are quite good at using many "languages" to express themselves. The possibilities for dialogue are endless then, as long as we (teachers and parents) provide them with appropriate tools and means. And I believe that it is my privilege as an early years teacher to support the children who come through my door in discovering, appreciating and mastering the different "languages" available to express themselves and convey their ideas. 

Berry picking and cupcake baking!

We read "Rufus and the Blackeberry Monster" by Lisa Stubbs to the children last week.

Shortly after, 2 little girls got very inspired and decided they were going to bake a pie too, just like Rufus's Mam in the story. I watched them getting busy in the home corner.

Teaching kids to use scissors

Teaching children how to use scissors. Hmmm...  This can be quite tricky at times. A few children were struggling and didn't to improve on their skills. So my assistant got an idea and drew these little faces on the children 's thumbnails  and told them that the little faces needed to be looking at them all the time while cutting. If the children use the scissors incorrectly, their thumbs usually twist under their palms and away from their body. By keeping that little face drawn on their thumbnail in sight, they automatically use the right position for cutting with scissors .

The children reacted very well to the idea of a little man looking up at them. they held their scissors properly and were able to cut small strips of paper by themselves.They felt empowered and ask for more cutting. 
This was a good exercise to refine their fine motor skills and increase their control of movement (Aistear principles / WB, Aim 1, LG 2 & 3)

To enhance further learning, I will add extra cutting strips with pre-drawn lines. And why not making the cutting exercise seasonal to spark up their interest with halloween just around the corner? I had made some for Easter before. So why not about Halloween?

If you can walk, you can dance. If you can talk, you can sing (Zimbabwe Proverb)

It was a very rainy day today. Horrible day really. We really couldn't go out, so we asked the children after snack time, what they thought we should be doing now. And they all agreed that they wanted to dance and play fun games with the music.  So that's what we did. 

The bee dance

I asked the children to follow the rhythm: they had to pretend to be little bees. When the music was fast, they had to dance fast ; when the music slowed down, they had to slow down too. They LOVED it!! They had so much fun, it was amazing. 

Musical statues

We also played musical statues and I chose tunes which went very quiet and suddenly very loud: Flight of the Bumble Bee by Rimsky Karakov, In the Hall of the Mountain King by Edvard Grieg  or The Return of the Animals by Danny Kosarin. The children had to concentrate a lot. At the beginning, they thought I had paused the music and froze, when the music had only really got quiet. It took them a while to get it right and adjust their movements to it but this was part of the fun! How wonderful it is that with very little effort, a teacher can bring such happiness to children each day just by providing the opportunity to do a little something with music. 

Adapting our classroom to the needs of the children

I have just realised I haven't posted any pictures of our classroom for quite some time now. And things always change in the classroom. I can't push the walls but I surely can adapt the layout to the needs of the children year after year.

This September,  I am opening my doors to  a larger number of 2.5 to 3.5 year-old preschoolers. They will form our "caterpillar" group. The "veterans" (over 3 and a half year old and going to primary school next September 2017) will be called the "butterfly" group.  I wanted to strike the right balance between the 2 groups and accommodate each of their needs, keeping in line with the Montessori method of education and the Reggio Emilia approach. 

Here is what our classroom looks like today: 

Creating Naturalistic play spaces- PART 2: ADDING FUN FEATURES TO YOUR GARDEN

Creating a natural playscape for a childcare setting can be quite an investment. As tempted as we may be by all the ideas swarming Pinterest, the reality is that many of us cannot afford such fantastic features or don't have the time nor the skills to design them. That's why I've started writing about easy, simple and cost-effective ways to implement outdoor play ideas using mainly natural materials or recycled materials.

Welcome to Part 2 of our new series "Creating Naturalistic play areas": Adding fun features to your play area.

Reggio Emilia: HOW TO GET STARTED IN YOUR SETTING

I am sharing with you today an unusual tutorial video for all of you wishing to redesign your classrom according to the principles of the Reggio Emilia approach. It's straight forward and it gives you lots of examples. 

Click on the link below or watch the video directly from this blog.

YouTube video: "Reggio Emilia: How to get started"

Reggio Emilia and Playful Maths ideas - Part 1

Those for have been following on this blog will know that I love creating or thinking of new activities using open-ended materials such as pebbles, shells, sticks, buttons etc... following the ideas of the Reggio Emilia approach.

This year, I added two activities on our shelves.

Associate Numerals to Quantity

The first one is an activity helping children to associate numerals to quantities. The manipulatives are very appealing to the children.

A new title to our blog: The Guilletots Playful Learning

So, I have been thinking.... And thinking...

Those of you who read this blog regularly will remember when in 2013, I found myself wishing for more room to manoeuvre within the Montessori curriculum, wishing for more flexibility .... Wishing for more freedom!!

Creating naturalistic play areas - Part 1: ADDING SAND AND GRAVEL

Creating a natural playscape for a childcare setting can be quite an investment. As tempted as we may be by all the ideas swarming Pinterest, the reality is that many of us cannot afford such fantastic features or don't have the time nor the skills to design them. That's why I've started writing about easy, simple and cost-effective ways to implement outdoor play ideas using mainly natural materials or recycled materials.

Welcome to Part 1 of our new series "Creating Naturalistic play areas": Adding sand and gravel.

Creating naturalistic play areas

We all know that letting children play outside is a must.

Learning French in the classroom

Over the past few weeks, I have started teaching a few words in French to the children in my classroom. The response from the children was actually quite amazing and I never expected them to take to it so well and so easily. I used the format of our circle time to start teaching them how to say hello, good-bye, "my name is.." and at the moment we are learning numbers.

To make it more interesting and to enrich the learning experience, I started researching the web for resources or ideas And I thought "why not sharing it with you all"?

Free download - spring flowers 3 part card game

And because today's weather was glorious but exceptionally cold for a 29th April, I felt like sharing one of the 3 part-card game we are currently using in our classroom for our study on Spring. The children line up the cards then need to match pictures to pictures (remembering the names of each flower if possible). For those a bit older, we add another difficulty by matching the word cards to the pictures. So just click right here to view file for free. And please, if it doesn't actually work, please let me know in the comments below. I am quite new at that "game" and I am a slow learner as far as technology is involved.

daisies

daisies

Transition bags (also called "quiet" bags)

Transition times in our classroom have always been an exercise that required tact organisation, patience and swiftness. What are transition times I hear some of you ask?Transitions are those periods of time when the children are moving from one activity to the next. In our setting the main transition causing chaos is usually the one after snack time when we need to clean up the tables and help the children putting their snack boxes away in their bag and put on their coats in preparation for our outdoor activities. Well, let me tell you that kids at that time especially get quite excited about going outside.

Geometry in Art & Craft

  

In our classroom, children regularly use the Montessori Constructive Triangles Boxes. These boxes contain various triangles of different colours and they are used to form plane figures. They help children to refine the discrimination of geometric form and prepares them for geometry. I wrote a great post a few years ago about geometry and you can check it out right here if you re interested in knowing more about how children learn about shapes in our setting.

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Animal Atlas

Over the past few weeks we have introduced the children to the map of the world. They have learned to differentiate land shapes from oceans and have learned the names of each continent. Each continent is colour coded in a Montessori classroom. This helps the children to remember which is which a lot easier and they now can point at each of them on the map at circle time without any hesitation. The next step was to teach them some characteristics unique to each of the continent.