Gratitude and Gross Motor Skills
11/21/2020
For the past couple of weeks, we have played outdoors a lot and experienced one of the joys of winter weather: SNOW! We have extended several of our recess times to allow the children opportunities to play in the snow building snowmen. The children were astonished at how heavy big snowballs are, and how difficult it is to lift them up to make a snowman! We have also allowed the children to play on our hillside and snow pile, and we have also explored the giant field behind the playground and admired all the snowmen and other creations the big kids had made. It has been so much fun, and it has allowed us new opportunities for helping the children strengthen their gross motor skills. Gross motor skills involve the large muscles of the torso, arms and legs and include three categories of movements:
There are many reasons these skills are important. The first is the most probably the most obvious: we live in a largely sedentary society and gross motor skills will enable a child to reap the benefits of enjoyable exercise. Other benefits include the following:
Of course, with Thanksgiving so close, we have also talked a little bit this week about gratitude, and also about how challenging it was for the Pilgrims in the New World. With no stores to buy their food, they had to make everything they ate. On Friday afternoon we capped off our week of gratitude by making bread in a bread maker, and, since fresh bread is much better with butter, we let the children experience the hard work of making their own butter by shaking cream (using those gross motor movements again!) until it separated and formed grains of butter. It took a long time, and many of the children said it was too hard and that they just couldn’t do it. They needed a lot of encouragement to keep going, but the joy on their faces when they finally accomplished it was so worth all the effort! Hopefully they will remember that lesson the next time they go shopping to buy bread or butter!
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November 07th, 2020
11/7/2020
Every year it is so much fun to do a pumpkin theme with the children. They love it because to them it means that Halloween is coming, but it also provides rich learning opportunities. We discuss the life cycle of a pumpkin, and then we use our senses to discuss what pumpkins are like, both on the outside and inside. This is a great literacy exercise as we use lots of fun descriptive words like slimy, strands, stringy, warty and lumpy! The theme always culminates with pumpkin science when we measure height and circumference, and then we wonder if pumpkins will float if we put them in a tub of water. Most children are usually convinced that big pumpkins are so heavy that they will sink, but they aren't so certain about the medium and small one. When they discover that all pumpkins will float, even when hollowed out and filled with water, it's pretty exciting and leads to a discussion of density and water displacement, all in preschool vocabulary, of course! This year, however, I chose not only a typical pumpkin for our class, but I also included an extra bumpy one and a small white one with orange stripes. I did this purposefully, knowing that our next theme would be friendship. I wanted to have a discussion with the children about different outward appearances vs. inner similarities, knowing that our next theme was friendship. We reviewed what pumpkins were generally like on the outside and on the inside, and we wondered if they would be the same on the inside even though they were very different on the outside (just like people can be!). As we cut them open and compared them, the children were surprised to see that all three pumpkins were practically the same! This led to a good conversation about how everyone has the same feelings. Most early childhood educators would agree that social and emotional growth in the preschool years is almost more important as academic achievement. One reason for this sentiment is that social-emotional growth has an impact on every aspect of a young child’s life. Self-esteem, personal relationships, and academic growth are all affected by a child’s ability to feel good about themselves and their ability to successfully interact with others. When children don’t have the language and communication skills they need or those needed to successfully resolve conflicts, it usually leads to problems such as hitting, fighting, unkind words, or even a dislike of school in general. This week we revisited the theme of friendship, with an emphasis on social skills needed to be a good friend and problem-solving strategies for resolving conflicts. For many young children, making friends is challenging. While it may seem straightforward, it is actually a complex process. First, we must explicitly teach the characteristics of good friends, then we take turns modelling and role playing different common situations, and finally we provide lots of opportunities for children to practice (play!), as we observe and help with good choices and also apologies, when mistakes are made. For instance, one of our activities this week was making “friendship bracelets”. I modelled my plain one-color bracelet and lamented how boring it was. Then Miss Cassy showed me her different colored bracelet and we modelled how to politely ask a friend for a bead, and then offer one to them. After the explicit instruction and modelling, each child was given fifteen beads of the same color, and a long chenille stem to put them on; then we PRACTICED politely asking for and offering beads to each other. The kids loved it! We will have many fun activities as we continue to weave these concepts into our themes and playtime throughout the year.
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Melissa SmithMs. Smith has a degree in Early Childhood Education and has taught kindergarten for many years. Alaska has been home to Ms. Smith for 28 years, and she can't imagine living anywhere else! She has four children, a dog and two cats. She loves reading, camping, gardening, and genealogy! Archives
April 2021
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