Scared
Today the emotion we talked about was scared. I read a couple books that the main character got scared ( for some reason or another ) and after we talked about the decisions that led to him getting scared. We talked about if you are scared what you can do to calm down. ( Do you see a trend here? …. Everything can lead back to Conscious Discipline and self regulation . ) We didn’t chart what scares us. I didnt want to give their little heads ideas of new things to be scared of ! 🙂
Studies have proven that the more uninterrupted free play time children have with the right materials and teachers that are engaged and listening for opportunities to teach the more learning will take place . In our 7 hour day it is suggested for a quality environment we allow 2 hours and 20 minutes free play. In the past it was absolutely necessary that we break into two groups and part of that time be spent 8:1 . Today I decided to stretch that time span a little and see what would happen. We played 2.5 hours and the amazing language and ” thinking ” that went on just amazed me. Seriously, I saw one little bot that is normally extremely shy just blossom . Others did the same. Here are some conversations snippets that I enjoyed.
“You have a lot of glue. 1 ,2 ,3 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 bottles of glue. Thats a lot. ”
Boy – What are you painting.
Girl The sunset
Boy Is the sun going down down down down ? ”
” I had a large yellow bead and now it is gone.”
A letter fell off the wall and someone put it back up. ” Ms Debbie, that is not a W that is an M. ”
This is our baby owl. He is in a nest.
What wonderful expansive language was taking place in our classroom today. It was my pleasure to be part of it. 🙂