"Do As I'm Doing"

     Our first week of school is done. Hooray! It's always the toughest week because everything is so new for our brand new students. Lots of anticipation, unsurety and things to learn but they did great!
     A child's play time is a child's work time. That's why one of our longest portions of the session is called 'worktime'. When I was at the Doctor's office last week, I was reading an article in the Parent's Magazine that really caught my attention. I almost asked the receptionist to copy it for me. It was about play-based preschools and how important they are to a child's development. One study they sited stated that children who attend a play-based preschool before kindergarten compared to children who attend an academic-based preschool have on average higher grades levels throughout elementary school. Now, that's not saying we don't do academics in our class because we do, but in a research-based, natural, child-directed way. That being said, in order for our students to be more familiar with the resources they can use during their 'worktime' in our classroom, we have been doing 'classroom tours' during small group. During this time we show them what's available and different ways they can use it. We will continue it this up coming week with 3 new areas in the classroom: Tool, Manipulative and Book (last week was Tool/Block, Kitchen and the Writing Center).

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Manipulative Area: Shapes, Magnets, Beading,
Mr. Potato Head, Star Builders, Gears and a few other items.