Carnival of Educators for December 22, 2009

It’s my first time hosting a carnival!  Yeah!  I hope I got enough fairway food for everyone…

First up, a couple of items about brain research.  Always learning, we teachers are.  Joanne Jacobs gets us started with some information about learning styles.  Then Alvaro Fernandez shares “a stimulating interview with brain scientist Michael Merzenich. Who will be the "personal brain trainers" of the future? (perhaps educators can add this to their New Year Resolutions?)”  That comes to us from Sharp Brains.

In the There’s-No-Good-Answer-For-That Department, Siobhan Curious wants to know why Lia is so outraged (though she says she’s not) and what she can do to become a kinder teacher while figuring it out.  Andrea Hermitt wonders on Families.com what it is about homeschooled children that makes people think they can pick them out of a crowd easily.  Maybe we should test it in a lineup, just to make sure (I’m kidding about that, people).

On a happy note, have a little fun with a puppet challenge, sent to the carnival by Pamela Jorrick and the Blah, Blah, Blog.  As an adult I love such challenges, but as a kid, well, I found them challenging!

In the Resources section we’ve got online math games and lessons sent in by TutorFi, the top 45 websites to head for if you want a Christian scholarship sent in by Online University Reviews, and 50 essential blog posts on educational reform sent to us by Online Courses.org.

And finally, from the I-Can’t-Believe-This-Crazy-Weirdness-Happens-In-Our-Public-Schools file, Andrea Hermitt shares with us the story of a teacher driven to distraction by…hair.  Add a pair of scissors and you’ve got a heartbroken kid and a bizarre story to share with your relatives over the winter break.  At least you don’t do stuff like that where you work, right???  Right???

Hopefully you all get some well-deserved rest over the next couple of weeks.  I don’t want to hear any reports of strange teacher behavior when you go back to your classrooms!

Christmas in the Twos Room

By now your school Christmas celebrations are over and all the kids have started their winter break.  Now that you have a chance to breathe, I’ll share with you what we did (or didn’t) do.  I’ll warn you, it’s a little non-traditional!

My nursery school is housed in a church, which considers us a ministry of the church.  They are very generous with our program and many of the things are able to do are because of their generosity.  Luckily, they are also a very inclusive faith community.  We do very little that’s strictly Christian and most classes have one or more students whose families wouldn’t describe themselves as Christian.

In our twos classes we were very low key this year.  I had a ficus tree that I strung with some simple lights and we plugged it in for the last week before break.  Each classroom is supposed to have a nativity set to play with (we don’t instruct about it, we just set it out), but ours somehow lost pieces between last year and this one so we left it packed up.  We used red and green paint, glue, and some glitter the last week and we talked about the upcoming break during snack.  We had a holiday party on the last day where parents brought in healthy snacks, hung out, and let us give them a gift we made with the children’s art work.

And that was it.  (Don’t have a heart attack.)

Now, I love the holiday season as much as the next person, but when it comes to little ones, less is more.  In all other areas of their lives they are bombarded with Christmas decorations, music, advertisements, and the gimmies.  If they don’t celebrate Christmas then they are left out completely.  Their little brains need a rest.  They don’t need more sugar and they don’t need more glitz.  They need their usual routines with just a *little* dazzle added.  Not the whole bag of dazzle, if you get my meaning.  Twos are truly experiencing all the special times of the year for the first time since they don’t usually remember the last time clearly.  It doesn’t help to overdo it.

I will admit that other classrooms in the building worked a little harder at the holiday thing.  And that’s ok.  The threes remember the previous year so it’s not completely foreign.  They get that something’s different than regular times of the year.  The fours know enough to look forward to it.  But for twos it’s a crazy enough time.  Relatives may be visiting or they may be traveling.  Parents are stressed.  We tried our best to make our classroom a haven from the winter holiday crazies that seem to take everyone over at this time.

Whatever your personal winter holiday traditions, enjoy them with love and generosity toward others.  And stay tuned for the Carnival of Educators just a few days from now, right here!

Under (Very Little) Pressure

It's really difficult to teach something as subtle as “gentle” to a two-year-old.  Last year I had a kid who thought that “gentle” meant he was supposed to give a hug!  Pressure is a difficult concept, particularly when children are still learning what their little bodies can do.  And let’s face it, in preschool we’re always trying to get them to more, not less, so it’s easy to understand why asking for less of something would be confusing.

I like to use gak to let children experience pressure.  I’ve talked about gak before, once with a picture and once without.  It’s a substance that’s fluid when you allow it to move slowly and more solid when you interact quickly with it.

We made gak as a class last week.  This week I set it out on little trays (more about the trays in a sec).  The trick with gak and markers is that the markers only make a nice mark if you use a gentle hand with almost no pressure.  Once you poke it in the marker gets gunked up and doesn’t do much of anything other than make a hole (which is a fine experiment all on its own).  After your gak gets colorful you can fold it or flip it to write some more.

Gak will get to a strange purple-y color after awhile when you’re writing on it.  That’s ok.  Before all the colors mush together you can extend the learning a little bit by folding the gak like you would pastry dough each time you want a clean slate.  Then you can cut into the gak to see all the layers of color you’ve made.  If you’re really on top of it you can have some examples of rocks with layers for comparison.

You will have children who either can’t or won’t press lightly.  If the child in question is frustrated, don’t push it.  Just suggest another activity.  If that child is frustrated but still trying to figure it out, offer assistance but don’t do it for him or her without asking.  With permission, take his or her arm in your hand and demonstrate what it feels like to use very little pressure.  For the ones who insist on poking, give them their own gak (it’s hard to write on bumpy gak) and make sure they have markers that are already dead or something else you can clean off easily.

When I pulled out my gak this time I couldn’t find my handy mini crate from the last time but I found something in the supply room that was almost as good: a dishwasher basket!  It was so fun.  Our gak was a little on the firm side so it didn’t flow as fast, but it was still cool. 

Oh yeah, about the trays.  The trays we use for stuff like this come in two different sizes and are FREE.  We live in a town with several biotech firms.  One of them uses these trays to store sterilized parts for medical devices before they are assembled.  Then they leave stacks of these trays at the recycle center.  They are so clean I really would eat off of them without washing them first (I do wash for the children at school though!).  We use the trays to contain a lot of messy things and for drying artwork.  We tend to use them until they are totally gross and can’t be cleaned out anymore and then we recycle them.  I scored some totally new ones for these photos.  They are so slick to the touch it makes me happy.  Yes, I’m weird.

NAEYC 2009-Bound

Yeah, I know I’ve been a slacker.  But between accreditation, working 5 days with 2 different teachers, and preparing for the NAEYC conference, it’s been busy!  We leave Wednesday afternoon for the conference and won’t be back until late Saturday night.  Is anyone else going?  If so, let’s meet at the Tweetup spot they’ve got scheduled!

Preventing Food Allergy Emergencies

I am in the midst of an occasional series on food allergies for classroom teachers. I hope to eventually put the posts all together for a presentation at a conference next year, but I’m having trouble deciding what teachers need to know. As a parent of food allergic children, I know a lot more than teachers should be expected to remember or take care of. I need to find the right balance of information. I’d love to have specific feedback on these posts in order to make them accurate, understandable, and helpful. Other topics were/will include: Food Allergy Basics, How to Handle Food Allergy Emergencies, and Instructional Implications for Food-Allergic Students. Thanks for your input!

How can I avoid an allergy emergency?
Planning! Assess the times when children in your care will be around food in order to manage their exposure.

1. Lunch. If a child has an allergy that requires epinephrine, consider creating an allergen-free zone at a table with signs. Only children who do not have that food in their lunches can sit there. It takes teacher support for this to work without becoming alienating.  Some schools make this a special treat for the non-allergic kids.  There’s nothing sweeter to a parent’s ears when their kid comes home and beams, “The peanut-free table was PACKED today!”  You do not need a separate table for each allergy, just the ones that may be lethal.  For example, my own son has multiple allergies, but there’s only a peanut-free table at school.  That’s totally reasonable, since, in his case, he’s unlikely to go into anaphylactic shock with his other allergies.

As children age, the “free” zone should be re-evaluated, depending on the allergy.  A kid with a severe contact sensitivity to something that can easily be spilled (like milk) may have to be separated for quite awhile.  And though peanuts are often a severe allergy, since they don’t tend to spill you may be able to eliminate the separate table once all the children are aware of good etiquette depending on the allergic response.  The age will depend, but my personal feeling is that somewhere around second or third grade is a good time to start moving to shared tables.  You can even talk to children that age about allergies and let them know to get a teacher immediately if they think a classmate has been exposed by accident.  You may want to make a strict “no sharing food” rule at lunch.  Make sure you enforce it.

For preschools, if an adult will be sitting at the table with the children you can share the table.  Just make sure the food-allergic children will be unlikely to come in contact with the allergen.  If you are lucky enough to use several small tables for snacks or meals, then it’s easier to quietly designate one where the allergen won’t be served.  The children don’t even have to know about it.

If your school has children wipe the tables (a good, responsibility-teaching job), make sure any allergic students clean tables that are unlikely to have their allergen, wear protective gloves (which may be problematic socially), or do another, similar chore.  Do not let them get out of doing work or other children will notice and they will feel as though they aren’t good enough to contribute.  Don’t make a big deal about it, but make sure they do something so no one feels it’s unfair if you’re asked.

2. Snack. Provide safe snack foods. If you don’t have control over what’s served, make sure your food allergic students have a safe backup snack you can serve them on days when the provided snack isn’t safe for them.  Learn to read labels (and do it every time, even for things you’ve served before) or have the parent of a food allergic child do it for you if that’s practical.  Another alternative is to request that each child bring in his or her own snack and don’t permit sharing.  If parents bring snack, remind them to bring in any packaging that came with the snack or ingredients for the snack.  I remember one nice family making chocolate chip cookies for my son’s class using a recipe that didn’t include any of my son’s allergens.  They gave me the recipe so I could check it, but didn’t bring the package for the chocolate chips so I couldn’t let my son have the cookies.

For both lunch and snack, it is advisable to wash hands not only before but after eating when an allergen has been consumed by the rest of the class. Allergens are not washed away with hand sanitizer. Mechanical removal is required. Hand wipes are acceptable if the children are taught to wipe the fronts, backs, fingers, and between fingers. Ask for wipes as part of your supply list if you know a food allergic student will be in your class or arrange for the parent of the food allergic child to supply them. Some wipes have allergens, so ask for brand recommendations.

3. Class Events. Let the parent of the food allergic child know IN ADVANCE that there will be a class event that involves food and what that food will be if you know. Ask the parent to provide something similar for the food allergic child. If possible provide food that everyone can eat so you don’t have to think about it. Parents of food allergic children are happy to provide recipes! Even if all the food you will be providing is safe, parents of food allergic children like to know that an event will occur so they can be available in case the worst happens by accident. If you plan to leave the classroom and food will be involved, bring the epinephrine with you as well as an antihistamine if it is in the child’s action plan.

The reality is that a food allergic student is much more likely to have a reaction in times and places that are not normal food times.  Parties, field trips, and class treats can turn into a nightmare if you’re not prepared.  Plan a little in advance, communicate with parents and helpers, and you can make sure everyone has a good time.

4. General Measures. Communication and practice are the keys to prevention. As a school you should have procedures in place to ensure that all adults who are responsible for the well-being of children are ready to provide emergency assistance. Your communication plan should include classroom teachers, aids, specials teachers, office staff, field trip chaperones, substitute teachers, extended care providers, cafeteria personnel, and cafeteria helpers.  Do a run-through of an emergency.  Remind specials teachers at least once during the school year who has what allergies.  Since specials teachers deal with many more students each week than a classroom teacher does they tend to forget unless they are especially sensitized to allergy issues.

In regards to the food allergic children themselves, remind to ask “Is this safe?” of any food they don’t normally eat.  Children trust the adults in their lives, but they need to learn to look out for themselves.  Even the most diligent parent of a food allergic child has accidentally given that child an allergen.  You can’t expect more from a teacher with more children to take care of.  Food allergic children should always question the caregivers in their lives and their caregivers should encourage this without getting annoyed.  The 130th time you are asked may be the time you forgot to check the ingredient list and the manufacturer just happened to change the ingredients.  Being asked may remind you to check, so encourage it.

Questions?  Comments?  Post them here!

A Very Preschool Halloween

How do you celebrate Halloween with little ones? Carefully. Some children are easily scared, but most twos really don’t get what all the fuss is about. At our school we focus on the seasonal aspects of Halloween. There’s a lot of orange and black, some extra dress-up available, and subtle room decor changes. Children who wish to wear their costumes to school may, though that’s our everyday rule and not a change for Halloween. Sometimes the whole pre-K class decides as a group to wear costumes and they visit the other classes to show them off.

In my classroom we put some pumpkins out in the kitchen area (above) to change the decorations slightly from our usual fruit bowl. Since we had sand in the sensory table at the same time, you can be sure that everything that started in the kitchen ended up holding sand at some point. We also had plenty of orange and black paper and paint. I’ve resisted trying it in the past, but this year I used the “Make it Shimmer” and “Make it Glitter” paint additives you can buy so that matching paint and paper would show up against each other. I do actually love glitter paint, but I’ve never bothered to make my own with the additives before. I must say I liked the effect, though you can’t really tell from my picture.

Older children have the opportunity to nail golf tees into large pumpkins (like we do with styrofoam), and sometimes we open up pumpkins to show to the children. This year the week before Halloween was short because of fall break and we had many absent children, so we skipped the pumpkin opening. Pumpkins and their guts get dumped in the garden when we’re done so we can watch the vines grow in the spring. Older children are also presented with a variety of face paints in addition to extra dress-up.

The only thing that might be counted as crafty is that we let the kids paint their own mini pumpkins. We tend to stay away from crafty activities because art for twos should be about exploring the medium rather than beginning with an end in mind. Some of the mini pumpkins were so covered in paint it was hard to tell there was a pumpkin underneath!

I didn’t take a picture of it, but we also try to have Halloween books available. Unfortunately, it’s hard to find Halloween books for young twos. Yes, I know that Five Little Pumpkins is a great book/fingerplay. But much of what’s out there seems to be for older kids. I’d love some ideas if anyone has them.

So what do you do to celebrate Halloween with young ones?

Too Many Pumpkins

Too Many Pumpkins, by Linda White and Megan Lloyd, is my favorite pumpkin book. I truly enjoy looking for it when we pull down the Halloween box each year at home.  I got my copy through a book club order because it was the 99 cent book of the month. How could I lose, right? Anyway, the art in this book is just fabulous. The little details are great, especially because the book has a lot of words for a picture book.

In the book, Rebecca Estelle (and her cat Esmeralda) hate pumpkins.  Through a pumpkin truck accident they end up with more pumpkins than they know what to do with and they come up with a creative, kind, and generous way to get rid of them all.

Besides the enjoyable art I love that the book goes through a whole year and the cycles of the seasons as though they were nothing special.  Nothing screams, “fall is when we harvest!” at you, like so many other books do.  I love that the protagonist is an older woman who has a history that informs her current preferences.  I love that several of the pages end with, “until…” implying that something new might happen and letting you guess what it might be before you turn the page.

This is not a book for very young children.  The main problem is that the very first page has a lot of words and very little art other than the page border and a small drawing.  3-year-olds who love to read may be able to sit for it.  I’d say it’s more for 4s and 5s. 

This year, my own kids (who are 6 and 8) informed me that I didn’t need to read it to them when we pulled it out of the Halloween box.  They told me they could read it themselves (which they can), which deprived me of my snuggle time with them and my enjoyment of the book.  In desperation I read it to the Kindergarten class at my school.  I figured only a few would listen, but most of the class sat and paid attention.  They loved the page with all the carved pumpkins.  At least someone wants to hear about Too Many Pumpkins!

Baby Washing

After I took this picture I realized how creepy it looked, so let me explain.

We sometimes put soapy water in our sensory table.  We often wash dishes or just play with the water.  We also like to wash the babies (well, baby dolls).  The kids get great joy out of this activity.  We provide lots of washcloths and large towels so the babies can be washed, dried, and wrapped up in a nice, warm towel.  They usually get fed at some point after this, too, and then put to bed.

Our school has special babies for washing.  Yup, they live in a crate in the supply room labeled, “Babies for Washing.”  Why?  Because babies with movable limbs get water inside that’s difficult to get out and that eventually gets mildewed.  Our washing babies are either sealed or they are old enough that we don’t care much what happens to them.  While we’re washing babies I put our regular classroom babies out of sight so the kids aren’t tempted to add to the collection of bathing beauties.

The tricky thing, whether it’s dishes or babies, is that other things will migrate to the sensory table.  It’s helpful to decide in advance what you’re willing to allow so you’re not caught off guard.  My personal feeling is that if I can clean it up and there’s no harm to be done by letting them try, I let them.  But things that might rust, mildew, or dissolve I don’t allow.  You’ll have to decide if you can stand painty water from hands that were just at the easel; I don’t have a problem with it.  You have to wash and bleach the dolls at the end of the day anyway, so what’s a little paint?

Water: The Simplest of All Art Supplies

Teaching twos is kind of like a box of chocolates: you never know what you’re gonna get.  Some years, we have paint-eaters.  Other years, we have paint artists.  Some years, we have both in the same class.

I like to start the year with something simple at the easel.  I’ve had one year when no one knew what to do at an easel because they’d never seen one before, so it’s good to start simply.  Here’s a shot of my beautiful art (the kids hadn’t arrived yet) using water on dark paper.  Any dark paper works, so if you’re feeling purple, blue, green, red, or black this is the activity for you.  Fat brushes seem to work better than thin ones.  And since this picture was taken on the first day I supplied three cups on each side of the easel so that if everyone wanted to do it at once we could manage it.

The one negative with water is that you can’t really take the art home with you unless you’ve impregnated the paper with something that will bleed.  That’s a whole other art activity, in my mind.  The beauty of water is that you can reuse the same piece of paper over and over.  You get to watch the art disappear and you get to use words like, “evaporation,” and wonder aloud about where the water goes.  If someone puts on so much water that the paper disintegrates, well, that’s another good word to use.

In my classes this year we seem to have lots of painting pros.  We didn’t have to keep the water more than a few days before it got old.  In other years we’ve spent the first several weeks with water at the easel because of the aforementioned paint-eating (actually it’s more like brush-sucking).  Some kids like to put brushes in their hands and walk around the room.  I usually let them do this but substitute super fat stubby dry brushes so they’re less likely to stab anyone or hurt themselves.  It’s typically more about having something in hand than having a particular brush.

On a personal note, I used to set my own kids up with brushes, dark paper, and water when I needed to cook a meal.  If the water spilled it was no biggie and they felt like artists without much adult intervention.  Try it!