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This week Google celebrates its 19th birthday, and the every-day-is-National-Something-Day calendar notes that it’s National Ancestor Day. So the eternal (and eternally divisive) question of using technology as a teacher, in a way that our early education predecessors could not, floats to the top of my mind.
This week: tech anxiety in planning. Next week: tech in the classroom. “I don’t know how anyone taught preschool before Pinterest and Amazon and Google!” Every time I say this (and it’s…not entirely infrequent), I feel torn: lucky to have so many resources available, but also…kinda embarrassed. Ack! What if questioning #teacherlife before Pinterest implies that I’m just lazy, or worse, unimaginative? Ack! Do fewer trips to the library mean I’m not living up to our foreteachers? (is foreteachers even a word?! It is now.) Ack! Am I letting someone else come up with ideas for me! Is my teacher brain shriveling?!
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 Hurricanes and earthquakes and destroying countries and terrorism and more hurricanes... Yipes! Today we're offering a few ideas for helping kids handle some of those fears.
Talk of destruction and suffering are all around us, and inescapably all around our children. It's scary! Add to that all the things that might be lurking in the dark or under our beds - any time we cannot see something, or do not understand how it works or why it happens, or find ourselves in a new situation we cannot predict, we may feel fear or anxiety - at any age. Use Dramatic Play We like to use dramatic play to help children cope with fears that are unlikely to occur (what if aliens attack?), and talking and games to handle fears that are more in the sphere of possibility (what if a hurricane comes to get us?) We act out what might happen, with a silly or happy twist. One of our favorite books to introduce this particular dramatic play activity is Ed Emberly's Go Away Big Green Monster. Monsters aren't so scary when you think of them as a collection of silly pieces instead of one big creature. We like to have kids draw something they are fearful of, and then we work together as a group to figure out a way we could make that fear feel less scary. Happy Wednesday! Today is International Positive Thinking Day! So today’s resource focuses on Positive Thinking and the Growth Mindset.
If you’re not yet familiar with the Growth Mindset, it’s a way of thinking - backed up by scientific research - to develop perseverance and resilience in the face of difficulty, and it opens up doors to new successful and quantifiable strategies for teachers and parents, in fact for anyone who is with a child when that child encounters something difficult.
 It's back to school time, and that means any day now it will be... Fire Drill Time 😱
I don’t know about you, but every year I dread subjecting my preschoolers to the blaring alarms and bright flashing lights. I know that it’s important for their safety, but it can be scary and overwhelming for a little person. One year my co-teacher and I felt that it would be helpful to create a fun, upbeat fire drill song, and we noticed that the students LOVED its sing-songy playful tune and were actually excited for fire drills! The children enjoyed both singing the words and then silently mouthing the words to practice being quiet for the drill. Click Below to learn the best Fire Drill Song for preschoolers! CLICK HERE to request the FREE printable PDF of the fire safety poster pictured! (8.5'x11', no watermark) (we're still working on our email automation, but we'll get you the printable PDF file very promptly!) |
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