Moving from two to six...wow!

The faculty at TBSCC is reading the book, Beyond Behavior Management, by Jenna Bilmes. The textbook takes us through the "six life skills" that every child should have to thrive in today's world. The book discusses effective teaching strategies to help children move through these different stages of development.

As teachers in the Sunshine classroom, it is our responsibility to facilitate children's social development by helping them create and maintain friendships and connections with people outside of the home. However, it is important to recognize that children become affiliated in ordered stages. Solo play, adult-child play and parallel play are the beginning stages of play for children. There is little direct interaction between children at this time. Dyad play (playing interactively with another child and identifying someone as "a friend"), small group play and large group play begin to develop once the initial stages of play have been mastered.

Yesterday, Zachary and Brett wanted to play with the dinosaurs. They cooperatively brought the basket of dinosaurs to the rug and began using imaginative play with each other to create a dinosaur attack scene. Shortly thereafter, several other children moved into the area to join Zachary and Brett in their make-believe world. We heard growls and chomps and squeals of delight as 6 Sunshine children interacted and cooperatively played together.

Who's In There?

The Haifa kids spent the day looking at themselves! They entered choice time to see a table filled with personal mirrors, skinny black markers, and plain white paper. Each child in the class was given the opportunity to study themselves and then draw what they saw. We definitely have some emerging artists in the Haifa class!

-Alison and Sauci

Digging, digging digging

Sand is naturally intriguing to children. Digging, sifting, building, pouring, pretening, and just feeling and smelling it can mean hours of exploration. Sand is one of the most versitle and imaginative children's toys around. Sand is completely open ended. There is no right way to use it. At TBSCC we build large blocks of time for open ended exploration into our schedules. At first, children get to know the materials, then as the play continues, they become more deeply involved and begin to develop skills they can later apply to new situations. This extended play time allows a practice time during which the child develops useful physical, cognitive, and social skills in an environment where mistakes and errors are inconsequential. Those skills are then available to the child as a resource for future use.

At age two this group play around the sand table is an ideal parallel play experience. The children are close together, so have to negotiate the sharing of space and materials. Yet the table also provides a structure, giving them each their own work area. As they are ready for more interactive play, the sand table becomes a platform for problem solving, coopertation, and partner play.

Haifa Kids Write

Children typically go through a predictable series of stages in learning to write.  Falling after the scribbling and early emergent stages, in which children use letter like shapes to imitate writing, the emergent stage involves experimentation with random letters or letter like strings.  Emergent writers typically use letter sequences perhaps learned from his or her name.  They may write the same letters in many ways.  We often see emergent writers writing long strings of letters in random order.  These are all important steps in learning to write.  The Haifa class was focusing on supporting the children at their own developmental stage.  As children wrote out gift tags to their parents, some used letter like forms,  others used actual letters named by a teacher, and still others knew the letters they needed and wrote the words on their own. 

Stages of Water Play

Just as with all types of play, children go through a series of predictable stages of water play. The first stage of water play is functional play in which children explore water with their senses; studying the way it splashes, pours, spills, and changes when colors, soap, or glitter is added. As they play there are learning the scientific properties of water and finding all the ways it can be used.

After functional play comes constructive play. In this stage, children move from exploring water to using it for play--for example, pouring water over a toy person and pretending he is taking a shower. This stage quickly develop from simple play into more complex dramatic play, such as the preparation of a birthday cake or a fishing adventure as Josh and Issac are doing here.

As teachers, we support children at all levels of play, often through a technique called sports casting. Just like a sportscaster on tv, we describe what we see the children doing. "Josh is pouring. Now the cup is overflowing." By putting the action into words, we are helping children to develop new vocabulary and expand on each other's play ideas. One child's idea of creating a shower might lead someone else to create a waterfall.

Learning to cut

Playdough. What a versatile childhood classic. But did you know it is also the perfect first cutting experience? Playdough offers the perfect amount of resistance, stays put on the table, and cuts with a satisfying snip. And the more children cut, the strong their finger and hand muscles become, developing the strength they will need to sustain writing and typing as they grow. Watch Teddy go! You can see his hands flying. So get out a pair of scissors and a lump of playdough and encourage your child to get cutting!