The success of our NYC unit and a heavy interest in art led to a unit on NYC museums and famous artists.
Sunday, June 30, 2013
NYC Theme
Living in a borough of NYC means we have one of the greatest cities at our fingertips. So when my kids started showing an interest in things they saw in books related to the city, I quickly planned the following week around NYC. My kids enjoyed it so much that we ended up learning about NYC for two weeks.
We learned about a couple famous landmarks, put on our own Broadway Show, took a “subway ride” with our own metro cards, “walked” across the Brooklyn Bridge and took a ferry to Staten Island.
My kids quickly learned to tell the difference between the Empire State Building and The Chrysler Building. We focused more on the ESB painting a giant cardboard model and making our own individual ESBs.
The Brooklyn Bridge was teacher created, but then we made taxis to go on it, a river and ferries to go under it and the Statue of Liberty to be seen from it.
This group was very interested in the Subway after reading the book Subway by Christoph Niemann. So we studied a NYC Subway map, made our own subway car out of a huge box and made our own subway system on the wall of the classroom with individualized subway cars.
Parents were coming into the classroom over the weeks that followed this theme telling me that their child would yell and get excited when he saw the ESB for real and they were so proud of him it cemented the fact that we had done our job well in teaching this unit!
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Ambition
I don't know about anyone else but I'm always overly ambitious about something and then end up making other plans the same night as something else that absolutely has to get done.
Take tonight for instance: my class is having their end of year party tomorrow and it is Gruffalo themed, so right from the start I knew I would be making Gruffalo cupcakes for them. As this week progressed and I had a million things to do (and my assistant was still out sick) I also made dinner plans for tonight, the night the Gruffalo would come to life on 14 little cakes! So by the time I dragged myself home, preheated the oven in my already sweltering apartment I was overheated and exhausted.
3 hours later I am finally finished and know these cakes will bring 14 little smiles with them.
The work of a teacher is never done!
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
When Everything Doesn't Go Right
I am choosing to express my deep dislike for days when your classroom is thrown into upheaval and things don't go your way. That's right, I'm talking about when your assistant teacher is out sick for several days. As a head teacher you, of course, have high hopes and KNOW that everything will run smoothly. Man oh man how wrong we are! Every. Single. Time.
I consider myself to be a fairly flexible teacher, I have no problem moving things around in my day to accommodate something else or throwing a project out the window and doing something completely different. I can go with the flow with the best of 'em, but when you have a floater who doesn't know anything about your schedule (no matter how many times they have worked in your room) it makes the entire day choppy. I can't just do circle time, I have to do calendar and then stop to give direction to whoever happens to be in my classroom, then I do weather and have to stop again to give a different direction. And so it goes through the entire day and I end up accomplishing next to nothing and knowing that the next day will be equally as bad because then I will be two days behind instead of one.
Now I have nothing against floaters they work with what they are given, but there is something to be said about having your assistant right there to help make the day run smoothly. With 12 two and three year olds this is a necessity and not just me being picky. Although I have been told I am very picky as well!
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Welcome to my Classroom
I have blogged before, mainly about traveling, but I have never blogged about teaching. I love to write and as I love to teach, I figured this would keep me engaged in a blog longer than one about traveling while I am staying put. I am moving up to the 3 year old class with my current children and figured I would share what we are up to (and random stories and thoughts that pertain to preschool) since I love reading about what other preschool teachers do with their classes. Sit back, relax, grab a cup of coffee and prepare to be entertained!
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