Getting Ready for a New Preschool Year

Whether you are a new preschool teacher or a seasoned pro, there is excitement and wonder heading into the new "school" year.  Just like children, we learn from our experiences. I would like to share a few tips to make your year successful (or reminders if you're a pro!).

• Be prepared and organized. This means having materials ready for large and small group experiences as well as for centers. The quickest way to lose a preschooler's attention is having them wait while you gather supplies. Keep things clean and sanitized! Wash hands constantly; yours and theirs! Clean and sanitize tables for meals and before and after activities. Lock up medications and anything that says to keep out of reach of children.
• Establish a daily schedule that provides consistency, but allows for flexibility. Keep large group experiences short. Children have varied attention spans and learn through play and active engagement. Read, read, and read some more. Limit transitions. Follow the children's interests. If children aren’t interested or are acting up, change plans. Build a strong teaching team.  
• Be open to new ideas. See things as fresh and new. Children will pick up on your enthusiasm. Expand your interests. Ask open-ended questions (Bloom's Taxonomy). Respect children’s ideas, feelings and thoughts. Have fun! PLAY! You chose this profession for a reason. Enjoy each day! Don’t stress if something doesn't work out as planned. Reflect and learn from your experiences.
• Get to know every child. It is so important to build a relationship with each child and their family. Children need to feel valued and respected. Discover what their interests are and what motivates them to learn. Find out what their strengths and challenges are. 
• Observe consistently. Observation is a teacher's best friend. Through observation, you learn what children are capable of doing developmentally, how they approach solving problems, how they spend their time, how they interact with others, and what they are learning. For teachers, observation serves a number of vital purposes, including being able to keep track of all your children's growth and development, deciding whether to change or modify the environment, and determining if your learning experience plans need to be altered. The better observer you are, the more skilled you will become as a teacher. 
• Keep your sense of humor. Teaching is a serious job; there's probably nothing more important. But, it's also a fun job! Never lose sight of the joy of being with young children. Laughter is contagious! Focusing on what goes wrong brings stress. Learn from challenges that arise and focus on the positive. Be happy! Smile often! 
• Be yourself. Just as every child has his/her own personality, so do teachers. When you build relationships with the children, you get to know them and they get to know you. Building positive relationships will benefit children socially and emotionally. You are a role model for the behaviors and interactions that the children will soon reflect.
• Experiment and explore. As you follow the children's interest, you will discover new ways to incorporate learning experiences. Don't be afraid to fail! Choose the materials that are working and useable, related to the focus/big idea, and that can be implemented to help children reach goals and objectives.
• Reflect. Engaging in self-reflection always leads to improvement! Through self-reflection you will focus on ways to increase learning and provide deeper learning experiences based on the children's interests. You will also discover ways to improve as an educator.
• Be patient. Be patient with yourself! It takes time to build relationships with children and families. It takes work to build a strong teaching team.

Outdoors: Not Just for Recess!

I drove past a child care center the other day and shook my head at what I saw. It was clearly their designated "outdoor time." The children were moving about the tiny fenced in play area while the two "teachers" stood next to each other, leaning up against the fence, looking at their cell phones (insert cringe and shudder here!).

Later in the week, I was across the street from a different center where I saw several children roaming around on an outdoor deck. I could see that the children inside were watching a movie on a television screen, but the sliding doors were left open for those that did not want to watch the movie to go "outside." One teacher stood on the deck and, again, had her cell phone out. There were no toys or designated play areas on this deck either.

I could rant about the obvious lack of supervision and give several reasons why cell phones should not be used while you are supposed to be caring for children. I could discuss how important it is for teachers to step away from the fence and actually engage in play with the children. However, what I want to focus on is the importance of getting children outside for more than just recess.

Let me start by sharing a little bit about me personally. I prefer to be indoors. I prefer to be where the bugs aren't and where I can have air conditioning. Any one that knows me would never refer to me as an outdoor-loving, nature person. But, I do know how important it is for children to be outdoors and, as an early childhood educator, I had my class outside for as much of the day as possible (I also had the air conditioner set to "arctic" in my classroom!).

Harvard Medical School identified five benefits to being outdoors.

• Vitamin D levels will increase.
• Exercise will increase (and screen time is reduced!).
• You will be happier.
• Concentration will improve.
• Health will improve.

Get creative with your curriculum planning! All types of learning can happen outdoors. Art is one of the most popular activities to incorporate into the outdoors. Typically, teachers bring out sidewalk chalk or some coloring supplies. That is a great start! Plan for painting either on unusual canvas' or with unusual painting utensils. Create art sculptures using materials they find outdoors. Do bark rubbings or brick rubbings depending on the outdoor environment you have.

Plan literacy and math activities for outdoors. Start simple - take a book outside and read! Find "hidden" letters and shapes in the things you see outdoors. Count everything! Graph using rocks/pebbles, leaves, or twigs.

Bring music outdoors. The easiest way to begin is to sing and as loud as you want! Create music with instruments they find outdoors such as clicking two sticks together or running a stick up and down a fence. Listen for sounds outdoors and create a dance to the sounds they hear.

Science? Dig in the dirt. Find bugs and insects. Cloud watch. Identify trees by their leaves or their bark. Build levers, catapults, and pulleys. Explore different aspects of water play and motion.

Everything experience you plan for indoors can be done outdoors with some creative thinking and planning. Make sure families know that you will be spending a lot of time outdoors and to make sure that children have the appropriate clothing and footwear for various weather conditions. Yes, it's okay to take them out when it's raining or snowing! Just make sure the temperatures are safe, that the children are dressed appropriately, and that the teachers are prepared. Some children will wander from activities at first because they are used to outdoor time just being for recess. But, children can wander away from activities indoors too! The more you are outside and the more activities you do outside the more involved they will become.

Play! It's What You're Paid To Do!

Early childhood educators have one of the best jobs in the world! Let's face it; the pay stinks. But, very few jobs allow you to dig in a sandbox, finger-paint with pudding, or explore space in a cardboard rocket ship.

Too often, teachers just sit and watch the children play. Or, worse, pull out their cell phones and scroll through social media. Early childhood educators are not child-watchers or baby-sitters. Get up, get on the floor, and play! You might find out that it is absolute fun!

Playing with the children at their level allows you to build relationships and engage in conversations. The children will respond better. They will listen! They will have learned to trust you better because they have sat with you and had intimate conversations while digging sand into a bucket. They will laugh and smile with you as you squish your hands along with theirs in a bowl of flubber.

Play is an essential part of life for all ages. Young children learn through play. There are times that a teacher needs to sit back and observe, but there are more time in which children will welcome you into their play and respect you more for engaging with them.

Follow Children's Interests: Trash Those Themes

Do you sit down in August to plan your school year?  Do you pick a theme for each month?  Common themes are Back to School/Apples for September and Pumpkins for October.  Picking themes is not the way to go!

I'm sure by now that you have heard of following the children's interests or emergent curriculum.  It is an easy concept that many find difficult to put into practice.  Early childhood educators often make the mistake of assuming that following the children's interests means that they are handing control of the classroom over to the children which would result in complete chaos.  However, by following the children's interests, the classroom will be much easier to manage.

The best teachers take time to build relationships with each and every child in their class.  Building relationships involves listening and observing.  When you listen to and observe the children, you can identify what they are currently interested in.  During the hot summer months, they might be discussing the weather, trips to the beach with their families, or camping.  Plan classroom activities around these interests.  If popular discussions are on family trips to the beach, you can set up a beach in your dramatic play area (and, please, remove the housekeeping stuff!).  Plan math and literacy activities using shells and sand.  Paint with seaweed for art and explore crab and lobster shells in science.

But, what happens when two weeks into this great unit focused around the beach the newest superhero movie is released?  Now, all the children discuss is this new superhero.  Well, that means it's time to switch things up to keep learning progressing and keep them interested.  But, we are an anti-bias program; we can't talk about mainstream superheroes!  Not a problem!

Engage in the children's conversations and use their interests in superheroes to create different learning experiences.  For instance, use open ended questions to discuss what qualities a superhero has such as strength, kindness, physical fitness, special abilities, and so on.  Now you have several concepts to focus on for learning!  One big idea could focus on the question, "How can we get strong like a superhero?" Learning areas can focus on exercise and ways to keep the body healthy and strong.

So, let go of those pre-planned themes and learning will be much more meaningful!