Preparing Children For College In The Preschool Classroom

Sometimes life takes turns we do not expect and our priorities have to shift in order to care for our families.  I experienced that this summer in more ways than one causing me to neglect one of my passions-this blog.  Things have somewhat settled down a bit and I am anxious to get back to communicating with others about learning through play.

One of the big life changes this summer was dropping my oldest daughter off at college for the first time.  When she was in preschool someone once told my husband and I that before we knew it we’d be dropping her off at college.  We had a hard time believing that thought…until we blinked and we were doing just that! 

As we drove home following one, two, seven last hugs goodbye, and my mind started turning to preparing my preschool classroom for the start of the school year, I reflected on how so many of the skills I was confident that my daughter had and would use starting college were also my focus with my preschoolers. 

Julia, my daughter, is equipped with the skills needed to make new friends.  She can enter a room full of strangers and emerge with acquaintances, and more often, friends.  Making eye contact, commenting on an activity someone is doing, offering to help and asking questions are just a few of the strategies people use to make these connections.  These personal and social skills are a large focus of our time in the preschool classroom.

The Dog Project Phase 2...and 3

This is a very long blog post as I am summarizing an entire project in one post.  Its worth the read as it was such an interesting study.  As I mentioned in my first post about our Dog Project, it was odd that we took on a project so close to the end of the year.  Our culminating event actually occurred on our very last day of school.  This project took on a life of its own...guest dogs came out of the woodwork, field trips and professional visitors just clicked and the enthusiasm of the children was high, so we went with it.

In my last post on this topic, I described the impetus for the project and our first guests.  Learning about the guide dog puppies gave us a bit of a direction for our study as the topic of dogs is so vast.  We focused a great deal on working dogs and the variety of different jobs that dogs can have.  We did also learn about various breeds and the features of each breed by "interviewing" our visitors.  By the end of the study we were able to get answers to most of our initial questions...and the many, many new questions that arise when learning.

Here is a brief synopsis of how the rest of the project unfolded...

Spring Sketching In Our Outdoor Classroom

The children had been noticing the various blooming flowers on our playground as Spring finally started to emerge.  First the crocuses bloomed followed by the buds of our daffodils and tulips.

After talking about leaving them in the ground so we could enjoy them each day rather than picking them, the children became more protective of them and would check on their progress.

We brought out clipboards, white paper and colored pencils to the playground each day as the children arrived and encouraged them to "draw what they noticed."

One More Project...Before Our Year Ends

Our project explorations tend to be pretty in depth and usually last for several months at a time. We usually get through two projects per year and then have lots of wonderful ordinary moments when we are providing provocations and watching for new interests to emerge from the children.

With only 6 weeks left of school, we were hesitant to start a new project...one of those weeks was our school break, but there was such an insurgence of "dog" play initiated by the children, we felt it was worth exploring.

One of our teachers has a large collection of beanie baby dogs of various breeds.  We added a few of these to the dramatic play center.  We also set up a provocation center with leashes, brushes, a harness, a dog toy, a choke collar and other dog related items. Most of the children had some experience with many of these materials and had at least seen them before.

The children were very excited by this center.  It inspired many discussions with teachers and with each other.  The children started using the materials on the stuffed dogs, started using classroom materials to build homes for the dogs and some brought in other materials for play.

Two of the students had recently gotten puppies during our school year and they were often topics of conversation.  Their parents also often brought them to pick up time.

To see if this was a topic that could engage all of the children, we did a memory drawing of a dog. It could be about a dog you owned, or a dog you used to have or any time you interacted with a dog at a park or a neighbor's house, etc.  Each child had a specific story to tell....which led to more stories.

Then when asked if they had any wonderings about dogs the questioning began.
We filled our classroom with non-fiction books on dogs and puppies.
I wrote to the parents to let them know about our new study to see if they had any connections and to ask for photos of dogs known to their families.

One of the opportunities that arose from this parental contact was from a family in our class that socializes guide dog puppies.  The puppies go to three homes for several days each to learn to interact with different kinds of people in different settings.  Then they take a test to see if they qualify to be trained as guide dogs. This fit perfectly with our current study and several of the non-fiction books the children found particularly engaging were on working dogs.

On Friday morning we listed our questions specific to this visit and the puppies arrived late morning.  We learning about the socialization process and actually helped with several of the things they need to do each day; be held by different people, hear loud noises, explore different places, go up stairs, go down stairs, etc.  We also helped to feed them and learned their commands for going to the bathroom.  We ended this terrific experience walking them around our playground.

(here we are measuring the puppies compared to a student in order to compare to the older lab coming next week.)

To learn more about taking part in socializing guide dogs, please visit the website https://www.guidingeyes.org 

Next week we have a different dog visiting each day; three dogs at different ages as well as a therapy dog and a diabetes aide dog.  We are working on a visit to the pound or an animal shelter and a police dog. It is tricky trying to schedule all of this so close to the close of our school year, but the interest is so strong it is important to follow it.  Also, since both of our big projects this year just happened to involve vehicles, I wanted to children to experience studying something very different.  Our research will be different as well as our representations.

Plus, who can resist the opportunity for some puppy love??

Cooperative Spring Mural

We had been noticing and discussing the arrival of budding flowers on our playground. The children had enjoyed sketching them as part of their time outside. Check back for post on that soon.

I modified this idea that I had seen from Teach Preschool on Springtime Easel Starters.

Ball Painting-A Cooperative Art Experience

We were focusing even more on cooperative experiences this week with the children, so we made our art center a collaborative effort.

We used an over sized pizza box taped open and reinforced.  We cut paper from a large roll to fit inside the box.  We precut several sheets of paper as we knew it would be a popular activity. Three small trays were filled with tempera paint in primary colors and thinned with water to allow the balls to roll rather than stick to the paper.  We chose to use ping pong balls, but small wiffle balls, golf balls or other balls you have on hand would work.  It would be fun to elaborate on this idea trying different balls and comparing the marks made.

Baking Bread is Science and Cooking-A Guest Post

I am honored to feature a post written by my talented teaching assistant, Katherine Seeley. Katherine, a trained pastry chef and food writer/stylist, handles most of the planning and preparation for all of our classroom cooking experiences.  Even with young children she focuses on the various techniques associated with cooking.  She has her own food blog and was recently featured in Fine Cooking magazine.  Make sure to check out her blog, www.moonlightkitchenmusings.com...I can personally vouch for most of the recipes there...delicious!!


Baking  bread is as much science as it is cooking. Our 4’s class has been hard at work exploring scientific principles. We’ve observed the reaction that happens when you combine baking soda and vinegar, and the children did an experiment where they observed and recorded what dissolved in water. Baking bread was a natural extension of this scientific inquiry. We chose a simple bread recipe that uses 5 ingredients found in most kitchens: flour, yeast, salt, sugar and water.

Our first step was to look at and talk about the recipe. What is a recipe? What ingredients are called for? What are the steps we will take? Then we identified the ingredients laid out on the table.

A Perfect Square-Manipulating Paper

We read the book,  Perfect Square by Michael Hall about the transformation of a simple square in to several creative possibilities.

Following reading the story each child was given a 4 x 4 square of construction paper of a variety of colors. NO two students had the same color.  This was important because the task given to the children was to create something with this square using all of the pieces of it.  They were given scissors, textured scissors, hole punchers and glue.  They could also rip, crumble, bend, etc. the paper.  They could create anything they wanted to but they had to use every scrap of the original square-just like in the book.

                         

They used a piece of black construction paper to mount their pieces.  Then they had to write what it was on the paper using their sound/symbol knowledge.

Following the activity we shared our creations with each other paying special attention to the various ways the children manipulated the paper.

For a follow up activity to this we created a large class mural.  We tried to focus on making the paper 3D giving the piece a lot of texture using the same techniques, ripping, bending, folding, crumbling, cutting, and so on.

Studying Artist's Techniques-Creating an Art Gallery

We have an open easel in our classroom where children choose the paper and materials with which they want to create.  We have several students who spend time there everyday and others who rarely venture to the easel in favor of building or other centers.  However, we feel this is an important time to be exposed to a variety of experiences and materials, so we do encourage everyone to give activities such as painting a try once in awhile.

We had been looking at some artists who used mixed media in their work a few weeks ago, so this week we focused on how artists name their pieces.  We looked at several prints, talked about what we saw when we looked at the piece and then what the artist named his/her work.  We talked about why they might have chosen that name.  We also read a book about Vincent Van Gogh called Camille and the Sunflowers.

Following reading the story, our art center was set up with a variety of fresh flowers in vases and several colors of liquid water colors.  We used water color paper as well.  We talked about the process of the still life.  How an artist looks at what he/she sees and tries to capture the image in his mind.

When the children were painting we asked about what they were noticing.  Our comments about the children's work focused on what we saw, not non-specific praise such as, 'beautiful"  or "good job".  Rather, we would point out features of the piece, "I see you noticed the petals around a center here", or "you painted a close up of one flower", or "I can see you noticed the stems and leaves of the flowers."  

When the paintings were dry, we had the children look at their own work carefully and come up with a name for their work.

We then cut out frames from black construction paper to create our classroom art gallery.  We shared the pieces and their titles with the class.  

As the week went on, some children revisited the center several times.  Some decided to add tempera paint to their work for a different effect.  We also made sure that every child spent some time in this center during the course of the week.