With our new music teacher, who has now been with us for three years, we finally have a more multicultural feel.  One of the new songs is the African Noel, which uses the African drums to maintain the beat, while the lyrics are a simple, “Sing noel”.

Another great song is the Chinese song “Go A Tin”.  The children use rhythm sticks in between verses.  We also added “Feliz Navidad” this year, as well as doing our Hanukkah songs.  Also, to represent our children from India, one of the mothers taught our children the Diwali song.

Following their half hour sing-a-long (which I did this year instead of a performance because they are so little), we had refreshments in our classroom.  The parents were great, and brought prepackaged cheese, crackers, fruit, veggies, and cookies.  This was a slight change from the past few years, when our children actually prepared all of the food ahead of time.  But as I discussed before, we have had to keep the food preparation activities out this year, as a precaution against the H1N1 virus.

What amused me the most about my children this year is that they came back into the classroom, simply grabbed one cookie, then all went to choose work!  One poor child wanted to do a map, but there wasn’t enough space for him to do it.

So now, my party ended 1 1/2 hours ago.  Most of the children went home, but a few are sticking it out for the rest of the day.  We’re going to cheat and put on some movies.  I can guarantee they may almost all fall asleep!

How do you celebrate the holiday?

Because it was the end of the day on Friday, I started singing along and dancing a little bit while straightening the room.  The kids, who for some reason have been obsessed with whether or not I am married today, told me that I needed to “Marry that man” because he made me so happy.

Good kids - I have trained them well!

Alas, Eddie proposed to long-time girlfriend and mother to his two daughters, Jill McCormick, this week, so I guess that fated trip in Albany wasn’t stirring enough on his end.

They’re really stinkin’ cute and child-driven!

Kudos to Karen!! 

The most jaw-dropping of them all comes from a young boy who turned 3 years old just a few weeks ago. He is very sweet and very verbal, and we were warned from the beginning that he had developed a tendency to drop a couple of choice phrases here and there.

He started out by screaming, “G*dd@mm!t, I want my mommy!” when having one of his daily bouts with separation anxiety. Then, yesterday, he came over to the story writing table and started straightening the papers that were in front of me.”Hey, Miss Coventry, I’m f***ing straightening your papers!” I could not believe what I had just heard him say, so I asked him to repeat it, which he did, clear as a bell.  I kept hoping that he was really trying to say something else, so I did ask him two more times.  When I asked him to tell my assistant, he suddenly changed his phrase, dropping the adverb completely.

Today, he simply said, “What the hell?”

Another one of my three year-old boys came up to me yesterday and said, “Miss Coventry, I am going to fart on you!”  I simply said, “No, you’re not,” and went to turn away.  He replies, “But I have a fart in my butt!”  I walked away.

My favorite story, though, is the cleanest one, and honestly the funniest.  When I shared it with her parents at our conference, the three of us honestly had tears streaming down our faces.

One of my kindergarten girls comes into class a couple of weeks ago, stomping angry.  She marches up to her best friend, also a K, and says, “I’m very mad at you, because you didn’t answer when I called you on my imaginary phone last night!”  The other child nonchalantly replies, “I’m sorry. I didn’t hear it ring.”

These are the moments that keep teaching interesting……

I sent out observation sign-ups at least 2-3 weeks prior to them being held, which meant that conferences were sent out over a month in advance. The actual conference tends to be more popular than the observation, as going over that written report sounds more serious than watching the child interact in the classroom. (Actually, you learn more about your child in the classroom by actually observing, so as long as there aren’t any concerns about the child, observation can be more important.)

Sadly, only a few parents actually signed up for the observation. And about a quarter of my parents didn’t sign up for a conference, despite numerous reminders and the fact that the sign-up sheet is constantly posted outside my classroom door.

Eventually, they have all either arranged for a meeting or a phone call conference. It’s just frustrating. Also, the conference days are listed on the the calendar that goes home in August prior to school even starting.

Short of physically walking up to every parent and making them choose then and there (which didn’t even work in a couple of cases) or spending hours on the phone, what other ways can we get their attention?  I’d love to hear…..

My first school had detailed checklists for each area, specifying skills and certain works within each.  Progress was noted with the Mastery Triangle.  Each “grading period” over the three-year period used a different color, so that you could actually see the child’s progress over the years.  I found it to be a very visual way to keep track of a child’s progress.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to keep a blank copy to use, and have never been able to recreate it.

I did have a similar version that we used at my second school.  Unfortunately, when I left, we were in the middle of having to realign our curriculum with the new state standards, so the last copy in no way resembled the original.

Other methods I have seen are literal checklists.  Notations for progress include P for progressing and M for mastery.  I think it is an I for introduced, and the date is to be included with each entry.  For a visual person such as myself, I feel that the mastery triangle is a better technique.

Several other people I know have a chart with every child’s name and age on it.  In each square, they write down the activities and lessons given to each child.  If the page is used more than one day, different colors are used each day.

I am personally more of a fan of keeping notes by child instead of by day.  I despise having to flip through numerous pages of notes to find the activities used by one child.  It’s also easier to see which lessons have been presented, and how long it has been.  I used to keep handwritten notes in a notebook or a binder.  I can sit anywhere in my classroom, and jot down what I see, when I see it.

This year I updated a little bit and I now keep track on my laptop.  I make it my goal to sit down at least once a day and go through the list of children, keeping track of activities they have done, things that have ben said, and lessons given.  I find that because I type faster than I can write, I have more copious notes on each child than I have in the past, and I can do it in the same amount of time that I used to spend writing.

I do maintain a separate binder for reading, upon which I record which readers the children have done with me, as well as which ones they have taken home to practice with their parents.

What kinds of record-keeping methods do you use?

We start with just the kindergarteners on that first Wednesday.  Wednesdays are half-days, with options for enrichment in the afternoon, starting the second week of the school year. 

On Thursday, the four year-olds who stay full-day (Extended Day) join the kindergarteners.  Friday is the day for four year-olds who are remaining half day, as well as starting the three year-olds who had been in the toddler program the previous year.

The Monday and Tuesday of the following week usually inclue the three year-olds who are new to the school.  So, each day, there are new children.  After one week, all children have usually started.

There are pros and cons to any method of orientating children to the classroom:

Having returning children be in the classroom first allows them to automatically be role models for the newer children. 

For some three year-olds, it is overwhelming to visit the classroom with no children, only to suddenly have 20 other children with them on their first day.

Parents of multiple children have a great deal of difficulty with children starting on different days, and after school care is not available until your child’s first day.

It can be difficult to adjust as a teacher to starting with children who know what they are doing, then suddenly having new children with different needs each day.

While Montessori lessons should be repeated, it can be difficult to show new works each day to a new group of children coming in each day.  You want to be careful how much you put out at once, yet don’t want them to be bored.

You can better focus on ground rules with small groups at a time.  New children each day force you to go over them and over them and over them, thus allowing for a better chance of the children normalizing.

Other schools have done different methods for orientating children.  I will get into other methods I have tried later. 

What does your school do?

Meanwhile, my assistant is bonding with the child.  Honestly, she will be spending more time with that 3 year-old, as she redirects him around the room, reinforces the ground rules, and assists in the inevitable potty runs.

In other classroom, the teachers orchestrate multiple children visiting during one session, so that the child automatically has a familiar face on her first day of school.  To each their own!  Each teacher uses her own system to her advantage and it works well.

The biggest issue encountered today was, of course, the potty-training issue.  To parents who have not yet mastered the art of potty-training, you have 6 weeks to do it, according to our policies! 

How does your school introduce new students?  Do you have a chance to meet with them one-on-one beforehand, or is a blind first day on both sides?

We are, unfortunately, currently located in an old Catholic school building.  Only one of the classrooms is fortunate enough to have running water in a sink.  The rest of us are forced to either send children down the hallway (my girls go around the corner) to the bathroom, or to wash hands the old-fashioned way in a bowl.

To keep my children in the classroom as much as possible, I encourage my children to use the “handwashing station” any time they need to wash their hands.  They put a pitcher of warm water (from the thermal container) into the bowl, scrub their hands with soap, rinse in the water, then empty the dirty water into a bucket of waste water.

Children know to wash their hands every time they want to eat snack or do a food prep activity, any time their hands get dirty while doing a work, or if they become somehow unsanitary from typical kids picking at….well…you know….And my children are pretty well-trained in this aspect.

Snack and food prep are also very big in my classroom.  Along with that comes washing dishes.  So many skills are acquired through these processes, that these activities have become the crux of my Practical Life curriculum. 

The children also use cloth towels (to cut back on paper waste), and they enjoy washing them on the washing board.  (They  are laundered by parent volunteers each week.)

Due to concerns about the H1N1 virus, we are being asked to use solely paper products, and to eliminate the handwashing station from our classroom.  I have to admit that I am not comfortable sending my little ones out of the classroom to wash their hands that frequently.  I don’t like to use that much hand sanitizer (because it doesn’t actually wash your hands, though it kills the germs).  And I have a strong conviction that if we don’t teach the children hygiene skills, how can they prepare themselves for handling sickness?

One activity that we have all decided to implement is washing dishes that are not used for actual eating, so that they can learn the process.  But I haven’t yet figured out how to teach the handwashing, without having to sanitize the bowl every single time it is used.  My assistant can’t quite stand over the bowl to wipe it out every time it is used (like 40+ times per day), and I’m not about to let the children use Lysol wipes.  (Not to mention those are not OSHA-approved).  I still have a few days to figure it all out….

How are you having to change your methods in anticipation of the H1N1 outbreak scare?