Preschoolers Build A House!

Last month’s theme in the center I work at was “Under Construction”. Let me tell you, with a class of 10 young boys…they were in their glory! From our construction site dramatic play, to our letter roads in block center and our construction truck sand table, they found excitement and engagement each and every day.

However with a classroom with boys (who know more about construction that I do) I had to think of a project that wasn’t like any other that I found on Pinterest or cliche craft that had been done before.

One book in particular: Building A House by Byron Barton sparked my interest. This story shares all of the different jobs, trucks and steps that happen in building a house. While reading this story to the children we talked and questioned why each of these steps were important…”Why is it important that your house has walls?” “Does your house have pipes?”(obviously they all said no since they cannot see them…but this was a teachable moment in which we talked about how we all have sinks and tubs, “So where does the water go?”) The children were all so engaged in this story and how many people and jobs are involved in making the house they live in every day!

After emailing all parents two weeks in advance…I had a photo of each child in the classroom’s house from the front. So after the story was over I placed each photo upside down in front of the children on the rug. Then, at once they turned them over and was shocked to see and recognize their homes in front of them.

Our first step to the project was to have each child count the number of windows and doors that they could see (this was not accurate since some windows are stacked or have small windows on top of another…so it was their interpretation) and we recorded it on a sheet of paper. Then the children traced over their numbers (that I had written in yellow).

Next, the children stated what color their house was, so we wrapped our cereal boxes and glued that number of windows and doors onto their house.

Then, we glued “shingles” on a piece of paper…attached the roof to our home and then picked out two pictures (from magazines) of different rooms we have in our house, a bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, and glued them to the back of the house.

 

After about a week when the project was complete we displayed our homes on top of our cubbies with a photo of our houses right next to them…MAN did they look awesome all lined up like a neighborhood in our hallway!

The children were all so proud of their work and could not wait to bring their houses home to share with their family.

 

 

Leave any questions or comments below about this project 🙂

Started From the Bottom….now Welcome back to Preschool

As the notorious Drake once rapped, “started from the bottom now we’re here”…but I don’t think he was talking about a preschool room.

We all started school at the bottom: Preschool or Kindergarten. In a brand new building, with new faces, names, classrooms, and other children beside us. Do you remember your first day of school…preschool or kindergarten, whatever the class may have been I’m assuming we all had very similar feelings. Scared of this new setting our families were so excited for us to start and then uncertainty of if our families would actually come back for us at the end of the day. All these adults bending over smiling in our faces and making our skin crawl which made us miss those familiar faces that just dropped us off and walked out the door.

This colorful, over stimulating scary place where some children feel terrified in on the first day is what I now call my second home Monday through Friday…Preschool. 

I can honestly say though, at the beginning of this school year (August 2016) I felt very similar emotions to some of my new students. I was nervous, feeling shy, and uncertain if my very first “first day of school” would run smoothly as my first year teaching.

Going to college for 4 years, double majoring in Early Childhood Education and Child Psychology, taking a hand full of over priced state tests to be a certified teacher, stressing about overloading my schedule each semester/taking summer and winter courses just to finish my degree in four years was a lot. However, those four years were the greatest years of my life. I met amazing people: from roommates (duh), to professors, to coworkers on campus and magical teachers I was lucky enough to shadow along the way, I feel have all shaped me for the teacher I have become today.

On my drive to graduation I called back a job offer and accepted a job as a year round preschool teacher. Three weeks after graduation my life of teaching had just begun.

I was so nervous for my first actual day of the school year this past fall. It would not be like anything I was taught in school, not like any lesson plan that I executed with a supervisor grading me, not like any psychology class I took about the development of children or any parent conference I’d sat in on during student teaching. These were my students, the lessons I spent weeks working on introducing myself and showing these children the joy of learning. These were my parents and families that I had to learn how to connect and communicate with. These were my very first steps in the rest of the upcoming school year and my life as a teacher.

There was something about the look in my students eyes as terrified as they were the first day, week, or month of coming to this new classroom; to the looks they have now coming into my room 5 months later…smiling, greeting their friends as they walk in and saying goodbye confidently to their families as they leave. Completely different children. There is something about making your classroom that started off as a scary unfamiliar place to 14 preschoolers to a place where children feel confident and excited about starting their day, that makes the 4 crazy years of schooling, test taking and the comments “Oh your an education major?” make waking up each morning and chugging my cup of coffee worth everything.

 

Sincerely,

The twenty two year old teacher who loves her job