Happy Friday to everyone! As Beau said as got into the car, "See you on Monday!".
"Gem of the Day": Watching Joseph be the 'Little Brown Turkey' during our group's rendition of the story. One of those 'priceless moments'.
While we have been working all along on problem solving skills, I thought I would give a few examples from today of the 'fix-it plans' that we came up with during the course of the day.
1. Problem: A back-pack just won't go on and it is becoming very frustrating. 'Fix-It plan': Stop, find a teacher, use words to say 'my backpack won't go on', ask for help.
2. Problem: Sometime, someone is talking just too loud in the classroom! 'Fix-It Plan': Say the person's name, say "Would you be more quiet?"
3. Problem: Two people want the same toy at the same time. "Fix-It Plan": Stop, say, "I want a turn.", ask a teacher to turn a timer on for each person to play with the toy. (only one solution!)
Ms. Carol, Ms. Cortney and I try to take any opportunity in which a child is mad, frustrated, or sad and turn it into a problem solving time. We will say, "Stop. Use your words. Tell me the problem." After the child has put words to their problem, the degree of emotion decreases (most of the time). We ask the child, "What is a fix-it plan? What can you do to fix the problem?" Depending on the child, the time of day, the context of the problem, we will offer different degrees of scaffolding. We can see a difference from the beginning of the year when so many instances were highly supported!
We spent time making some things for Monday. While they worked on find motor skills involving coloring, tracing and cutting, we snuck some letter identification into the activity.
Using our experience with retelling "The Little Red Hen", we told the story of "The Little Brown Turkey" taking turns being the different characters. Hmmmm....I wonder if you are going to see the play on Monday?
Have a great weekend!
