I brought up the idea of buying a class set of fancy lined white boards for writing time. My boss liked the idea and agreed to let me go over my budget to purchase them. I know it is lame when I get excited about teaching supplies but it happens. So they arrived while I was in Georgia for Christmas and I broke them out this week. The kid's love them. Apparently, more than I realized.
This evening as parents were picking up their kids they enjoyed coming into the room and seeing them writing on our new whiteboards and practicing writing their letters. It's not something they are used to seeing their 4-5 year old children do. I want to honor and respect the curriculum we use. It's called "Creative Curriculum" and it's a good curriculum but don't think it properly prepares kids for the structure they'll experience in kindergarten. I think part of my job is to prepare them for kindergarten, and having taught kindergarten I know what it takes..... so sometimes I think it's necessary to break the rules.
Anyways this parent just couldn't say enough abut how much her daughter was learning in my class compared to her other two children who had attended the YMCA previously. We're learning about planets & space this week so we've been reading books and doing crafts related to our topic. The mom told me that her daughter, who is four, came home yesterday and said these things....
"Did you know you can't eat the Earth's crust like you can eat pizza crust?"
"Did you know that everything floats around in space because there's no gravity?"
"Did you know that Pluto isn't a planet anymore?"
And she told her mom all about the new white boards!
Sometime you can't tell if they're really learning anything until you hear wonderful news like this!
It used to be... My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas. Now she can't serve pizza's cause we don't need the "P" for Pluto in this acronym anymore. Maybe... My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nachos?
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