Little Bursts of Light

OK. I had meant to do a bit more reflecting on this blog. I have a big problem with doing things (reflecting, writing emails, studying...) only in my mind but never in reality or never putting things down on paper. I will try to at least put things down "on blog" :)

I am constantly struggling with TIME in my classroom. It seems to take us forever to wash hands, use the toilet, eat snack, focus as a group... I feel like I am losing so much valuable time every day! Today I did something that I had gotten out of the habit of doing, and it felt good: learning instead of waiting.

We eat our snack in the lunchroom, so there's a lot of time used up to get to and from the lunchroom. Of course there are always fast snackers and slow snackers, so there was often the dilemma of keeping everyone together as kids finished, rushing kids, or sending some kids ahead to the classroom to... wait? No! Today the kids who were ready just came right in, sat on their circle carpets ready for the morning calendar time, and I just did a few alphabet activities with them that I rarely have time for. It was great and it also encouraged the children, who were entering the classroom, to enter in a reasonable manner and to get right into the game or conversation. Fun! I have to remember to keep doing this. Today, I just used one of my alphabet lunch bags. I have a paper bag (some are red and some are brown) for each letter. I had long ago photocopied the pictures from an early picture dictionary and put them inside each bag. So, during our "waiting" time, kids took turns taking a word out of the letter "R" bag, we talked about them briefly, and I stuck them onto the blackboard.

Last year I used to play a kind of storytelling game with a phonics workbook we have. On each page there is an animal or object starting with that letter. Then there are four or five small objects in a column on the side. Two of those objects begins with the SAME letter/sound. I used to make up stories about the children walking to the forest and meeting a silly fairy, who turned them into ... (whatever the big picture was on that page). They had to find TWO things in the forest that started with that same letter in order to get the fairy to turn them back into themselves again. The kids LOVED this! I am going to have to try it again this year ...