Birthday Celebrations

I think it is important to make children feel really special on their birthday.  We have so many restrictions on bringing food into the classroom that our children are not allowed to bring birthday treats.  So, before school started, I did a lot of browsing online to look for ideas that would make their birthday at school very special.  I have been really inspired by the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education.  Reggio Emilia classrooms usually have a special display that is kept up year-round to honor children on their bithdays.  In my classroom, I adapted a few of the ideas I found online.  Here is a post from Fairy Dust Teaching which features Reggio Emilia-inspired birthday traditions.  You will find some beautiful ideas here.

One idea that I saw was a teacher who hung orbs from the ceiling labeled with the children's names.  On their birthday, she placed an LED candle in the orb so it was glowing when they arrived at school.  I love this idea!!  So, I searched for options to use for the candle "containers".  At Michael's craft store, I found small metal birdcages on clearance.  Perfect!!!  I also found some packages of small chalkboards in their dollar section.  So, I purchased the birdcages and chalkboards with the intent of hanging them from the ceiling in my classroom.  BUT, I later found out that due to fire safety issues, the fire marshal has banned us from hanging things from the ceiling.  Determined to put my plan into effect anyway, I decided to line the top of my cabinets with the birdcages.  We labeled the chalkboards with their names and used twine to attach them to the birdcages.  You can see them in the photo below.

So on a birthday day, when we enter the classroom for the first time, I make sure the lights are turned off and we tiptoe in to see whose birdcage has the candle glowing inside.  I keep it on top of the cabinets when we walk in, then we take it down and the birthday child holds it while we sing "Happy Birthday" to them.  We also have a Melissa & Doug wooden birthday cake playset that comes out only on birthdays.  The birthday child places the correct number of candles on the cake and pretends to blow them out when we sing to them.  Below you can see a birdcage with the lit candle.  I also bought the candle at Michael's.  It is an LED candle and has a little switch on the bottom to turn it on.  It flickers like a real candle and even smells like vanilla!!

Another tradition that we have for a birthday is that the birthday child gets to make a special piece of artwork for our birthday bulletin board.  We have cakes with each child's name and birthdate on the board.  On their birthday, they create a piece of art and we put it on the board in place of their cake.  In the photo below you can see that we have had three birthdays so far this year.  The birthday art is displayed on black construction paper with a white label for the child's name.  Their artwork will stay up all year.

Yes, I did actually start teaching full-time this year!

So, of course I got all excited about my new full-time teaching job and set up a blog to share with you all the details.  THEN........I didn't blog.  For a long time.  Because, life happens.  I am realizing it is a very busy transition to go from staying home full-time to working full-time.  And in addition to doing that, I am currently rehearsing for a play that I will be performing in October along with four other lovely ladies and also taking a graduate class.

I am not sure where to start with sharing everything I want to share.  It may end up being a really random string of posts that seem disjointed.  But, since I'm the blogger, I can be random if I want.  haha

I guess I'll start this back-to-school post by sharing some photos of my classroom.  It took many, many hours and a lot of rearranging to get it where I wanted it.  However, I am pleased with the result.  As I may have mentioned before in an earlier post, we follow the Creative Curriculum.  So, I am required to have certain interest areas available in my classroom.

The photo below shows my dramatic play area.  I have a play kitchen that I made this summer out of an entertainment center.  The second photo shows it better.  It turned out really cute.  The littles play with it every single day.  

The tall doors on the left open to shelves with play food, dishes, etc.

These two shelves and the bead table are part of the Toys & Games area.  The table at the very edge of the photo is actually slid back to right between those shelves in the open area.  I just moved it for the photo.

I wanted a lot of space for children to build so my Block area is right next to where we meet for group.  You can't see it in the photo, but there is another shelf full of wooden unit blocks.

Sand and water play is a required part of our classroom.  Right now I just have garden sand in the table.  It is kind of a pain to change it out, so we will probably have it out for most of the year.  The littles love it.

This is my Library area.  I will write another post about the couches and chair.  I slip-covered them because the ones I inherited were all torn up and did not fit into my color aesthetic for the classroom. ;-)

Art Shelf---------A beginning

Sorry for being absent around these parts for so long.  I have now finished all the enrichment camps that I held at my home this summer.  I have also finished my graduate class.  YAY!!  So I will hopefully have a bit more time to post about the progress I've been making.

I did work in my classroom today and made a lot of progress (the custodian finally moved out all the stuff I wanted out!!!) but forgot to bring my camera.  DOH!

So........I'll share a couple of photos of the art shelf I set up last week.  It's a work in progress.  I prefer a different kind of shelf, but I am grateful for getting this one and am determined to make it work.  It came with some different white baskets that completely filled the openings.  I prefer to have all the materials easy for the children to view and access, so I replaced those baskets with smaller ones and some wooden bowls I've thrifted.  I do think this looks so lovely.  I had a lot of inspiration from my new favorite blog, Fairy Dust Teaching.  You HAVE to go check it out.  Such loveliness!

The empty spaces are for glue and possibly some other things I haven't decided yet.  I really love having all the open baskets for collage materials.  And the jars of crayons and markers sorted by color on top I love too!  I like the idea that this will require the children to sort by color every time they return crayons or markers to the shelf.  I haven't ever displayed the colors like this, so I'm excited to see how it works out.

Another afternoon in the classroom

Well, I spent another afternoon in the classroom today.  I did not take any new photos of the room layout because it doesn't look a whole lot different than the last ones I posted.  I did rearrange things a bit, though.

I got good news from my new principal that I can store some of the items I don't want in the room elsewhere in the building.  I was VERY happy about this and hope that they are all moved out by the time I get back there on Monday.  That will really help me start to visualize the space a lot better.

I organized the office supplies in my desk and was thus able to empty a few more boxes, so that was good. There are just so many various boxes and so much visual clutter in the classroom that it's overwhelming.  I find it difficult to focus with so much disorganization.  I am certain that the same can be said for children in many of today's elementary classrooms that are plastered with materials, posters, and other visual clutter.  I am actually doing my final project for my college class this summer on that very topic.  I am very passionate about classroom design and hope that my vision for this new space can be actualized.

I did snap a few photos of a bead-stringing activity just to illustrate a bit of what I think about when displaying materials on a shelf.  So, here you go..........

This first photo shows how materials are typically displayed in an early childhood setting.  There is not anything inherently wrong about this.  The storage container is neatly labeled with a photo and nicely contains the materials.  

The photo below shows how I prefer to display materials.  Do you notice that the materials themselves (in this case the colored wooden beads) compete with the bright yellow of the tub for visual attention?  In the wicker basket, the colors of the lovely beads themselves draw your eye to the materials, making you want to explore further. 

Another thing to note here is that oftentimes it seems that way too much of a given material is displayed at a time.  The tub shown above was nearly half full of beads and had about 10 tangled bead strings lying on top in addition to a rubber-banded batch of pattern cards.  This can make for an overwhelming activity for the child who takes the beads off the shelf.

In contrast, the wicker basket holds fewer beads and has two bead strings.  At the beginning of the year, I wouldn't even add the pattern cards to the basket.  I like to have a variation of bead-stringing out on my classroom shelves all year round.  I change the beads out to reflect seasonal or holiday themes and colors.  I also start the year with larger beads, and swap them out for smaller ones later in the year when the children's fine-motor skills are more refined. I would then also add the pattern cards later in the year.

First steps

I was very excited to have the carpet in my classroom cleaned at the end of last week so I could get in there today and start moving furniture around.  I'll share a few photos with you of how the classroom looked the first time I saw it on June 2nd and what it looked like today after I pushed everything around.  Keep in mind this is a true work in progress.  I've added a few sentences to describe the space so you can get a sense for the positives and negatives.  My school is about 50 years old.  The classroom was NOT designed with early childhood in mind.  But I'm going to make it work, and it will be fabulous!! 

From the doorway, looking into the classroom.............the wall opposite the door is all windows.  There are no outlets on that wall. It is great to have all that natural light though, and I have a plan to soften up the windows a bit and still allow a lot of light in.

 The next photo was taken from the doorway, but looking across to the opposite corner.  You can see from the above photo and this one that the walls that are perpendicular to the door and windows each have a white board flanked by two bulletin boards.  I am planning to have my large group space in front of the wall pictured below.  One noteworthy comment is that there is one outlet on each of the "whiteboard" walls, located directly under the whiteboard in the center of the wall.  This has quite a bit of bearing on how I will have to set up the space.

 This next photo was taken from the "window" wall facing the wall with the doorway.  You can see the door to the far left in the photo.  What you can't see very well here is that I have a little teeny tiny tiled area in front of a set of cupboards.  There is a sink on the far right.  I desperately wish for more tiled floor, but pretty sure that's not happening.  So I'll have to get creative with messy and wet materials.  The table right next to the door hold two classroom computers.  I had wanted to relocate them to another area, but have to leave them here due to the lack of outlets.  After moving things around today, I actually feel okay about this location for them.

So..........on to progress made today.  I just snapped two quick photos before leaving for my college class.  I am too tired at present to write a whole lot about this photo.  I know it looks like a hot mess.  Right in front of the doorway is a big jumble of items that I am hoping to get rid of or store elsewhere (i.e.. I don't want them to stay in the classroom).  I am finding that this may be a difficult task, but we'll see what happens.  One little teaser I'll add here is about the tape that you can see in the center of the photo if you look closely.  I have a big project that I am going to be working on (in all my spare time.......haha) that is going to go where the taped area is.  I wanted to allow for this big item as I arranged everything else, thus the tape.  I have no idea when this project will be started let alone done, but suffice it to say..........it will be AWESOME!!  Very excited about it!

 This photo is from the doorway looking into the room.  To me, the most exciting part of my preliminary room arranging is that I was able to fit my teacher desk and file cabinet into the space in a way that makes a very small footprint as well as making them virtually invisible.  So..........can you find a file cabinet and teacher desk in this picture?  If you have to look hard, I will feel that I've succeeded in one of my goals.  This is the children's space, not mine.  If I had my way, there would be no "teacher area" in this space.  But........I am required by the district and ECERS to have a work area.  At least I was able to make it a minimal part of the entire layout. 

That's all for now.  I am one tired puppy.  I had a Puppet & Storytelling enrichment class for children at my house from 10-11:30 this morning.  Then I headed immediately to my school to work until about 3:45.  Then I went to my college class which was from 5-8:30, and got home around 9:00.  It is now 11:00 p.m.  I feel good about what I did in the classroom today, but I admit to feeling quite overwhelmed by all that is left to do.  One day at a time............

This not that

As I mentioned in my last post, I have pretty strong opinions (that you won't convince me to change) about the aesthetics of learning environments for young children (actually for all children).  I like to describe my viewpoint as "not wanting my classroom to look like the teacher store threw up in it".  You know what I mean, right?  I was guilty of this as a new teacher.  There are SO many cute decorations, bulletin board borders, posters, cut-outs, etc.  It is hard to resist.  It wasn't until I took training to be a Montessori teacher that I realized how all the cutesy stuff is really for the adults, not the kids.  If you don't believe me, I challenge you to do this.  If you know a little person who has been a student in a classroom that is decorated in the style of cute-to-the-max, just ask them, off-handedly, an open-ended question such as, "What was your favorite thing about Ms. So-andSo's classroom?"  I can pretty much assure you that their response will NOT have anything to do with bulletin board borders or cute room decor.  Most likely, they will mention their friends, their favorite toy or material, etc.  Now, you nay-sayers may be thinking that a young person from  a non-cutesy classroom might also mention friends and materials, not decor.  And you are right!!  And that's the point!  The cutesy stuff doesn't matter to them.  And in many cases it is so visually distracting and creates so much visual clutter that the environment does not feel relaxing and peaceful and can, in fact, detract from learning.

I believe that children deserve to learn in a very carefully prepared environment.  One that is free from extra clutter on the walls, on the shelves, on counters, etc.  Instead of cutesy posters on the wall like this.
Source:  Amazon

How about a piece of handmade art like this?  This beautiful pegboard cross-stitch was made by Allison from Dream a Little Bigger.   Love it!!  I want to replicate this in some way for my classroom.  Unfortunately, I don't have much empty wall space.  One is windows, two are white board/bulletin board combos, and the fourth is cupboards.  It would look lovely in my house too, though.

Or a project that the class has worked collectively on?  Or individual children's art, tastefully displayed? There are many options for enhancing an early childhood environment with aesthetically beautiful decorations that acknowledge a young child's ability to appreciate loveliness.