STAR
One of the things about conscious discipline is it is as much for me as it is for the kids. See, I am not teaching them STAR ( Smile take a deep breath and relax ) and expecting them at 4 years old to have self control, if I cant even have it myself. Is it always easy ? No….
This morning was rolling along perfect when all of the sudden one of the moms that was visiting said ” Oh No, Ms Debbie! ” As I turned from saying ” Bippity Boppity Boo , Im so glad to see you ” ( say it.. in your best fairy godmother voice ) I saw water a LOT of water running over the handwash sink onto our new wooden floors. STAR. Its ok. Lets get some towels. The water was cleaned up. I am not really a yeller or screamer so the thought of punishing the child never entered my mind really. But STAR’ing did help me move past that incident onto the next .
We had a few children today that were a little stubborn. STAR —- Do we really want little robots that have no personality or spunk ? No, we want them to keep that drive and determination but harness it just a little to get send them in the right direction. One of the ways we do that is offer two clear choices but both are choices that get the same end result. Clean you room is a little too broad and over whelming for a four year old but they can handle ” Do you want to pick up the blocks first or the cars ?
At small groups today we read a book about ” how we are all the same on the inside ” and made a graph of eye color.
Remember a long time ago we had a lady come design parts of our yard which included some playspaces for the kids ? Hedges to hide behind and rocks to jump on was part of the design . We have never gotten anyone to fullfill the design. Today a company came that I think will be able to take care of this for us ! I am so excited .
At circle time today we read a book that I made that will help us learn the names of the new children in our classroom. The kids love seeing their names and pictures in a story.
We had two mommies come in today to play. Mikkiela came in and I heard some great interactions going on with the kids . She is going to school to be a teacher. I think she will make a great one. Becky also came in to fill in for Gabby today . She played a game with the kids teaching them the spanish words for body parts and also did ” Head , Shoulders , Knees and Toes ” in spanish. I am very fortunate to have moms and dads that come in to our classroom family.
I do ongoing assessments of the kids using the online worksampling system. My mentor came today to visit and give me updates on the new system. I really like it.
The Work Sampling System is designed to help teachers learn about your child’s skills, behaviors, and academic achievements in school.
Work Sampling gives teachers the information they need to work effectively with your child, build your child’s motivation and self-confidence, and report student progress to you. It is used with children from preschool through Grade 3.
The Work Sampling System focuses on seven areas of the curriculum:
- Personal and Social Development
- Language and Literacy (with performance indicators for English language learners)
- Mathematical Thinking
- Scientific Thinking
- Social Studies
- The Arts
- Physical Development, Health, and Safety
The Work Sampling System is composed of three interrelated parts:Developmental Guidelines and Checklists — Lists of age- or grade-level expectations that are used for guiding teachers’ observations about your child’s achievements in school.Summary Reports — A profile of your child’s school performance based on the Checklist observations. It includes brief comments from the teacher about your child’s progress, strengths, and areas of concern and is sent home three times per year. The Summary Report replaces report cards.
As you can see it has been a busy day. The upload button is not working on wordpress right now so I will add the two pictures to our group page on FB.