Why Didn't I Do This Earlier?

Hello all!

This week, there's a lot of slapping my own head and wondering how I ever missed doing something so obvious. Have you had those moments? Let's dive in!

Way back when I taught fifth grade, I had a lot of classroom management issues. My mentor told me, "You have to be a little mean. But it's just not in you, is it?" And it's not. My style tends to be more nurturing; I use lots of positive commands and do my best to use praise effectively. The problem is that some children don't respond to that as well as someone who's a little more firm.

This week, I tried something I hadn't before: I taught children the difference between a command and a question. I always tell my students that if I ask whether they want to do something, they can say no. We played "Question or command" a few times, where I asked them silly things. "Do you want broccoli for breakfast?" "Put your hands on your head." "Did you ride a unicorn to school?" "Stand up." I explained that my role is to keep them safe and their job is to help me keep them safe.  If that sounds familiar, you're right; it's straight from Conscious Discipline.
They responded well to it and it gave me a springboard to use for the next week. "You're not cleaning up; why do you think I would tell you to clean up?" I also plan to incorporate bucket filling as soon as I get a copy of the book.


Something else I wish I'd done earlier was to put storytelling elements in Blocks. I got this idea from the NCAEYC Conference this year and instantly fell in love. You might remember from last week that we read "I Stink" and the children loved it. We didn't have a dump truck, but the children had lots of fun making this:

They were involved in the process as far as how we could make the shape of the truck and cutting. There was a lot of guiding, but then it's their first attempt. Here's the completed project with wheels:

I put that and a copy of the book in Blocks, then modeled how to look through the book and pretend to be a dump truck. Some of the students were interested in storytelling, but most had fun seeing how many blocks they could fit inside the hopper. I will definitely continue storytelling in Blocks any way I can.

Finally, I have to give my co-teacher all the credit for this one. She put a recycling center in Dramatic Play so the children could sort objects. 

She also made a conveyor belt, which I don't have a picture of. The children loved dressing up and learning to sort by material, which is a great way to incorporate real-world math!

This next week, we'll be extending the topic and encouraging children to make more with cardboard and junk.

How do you teach about reusing and recycling in your centers? Do you have a recycling bin?

Until next time, happy teaching!

--Amy