December 21, 2009

• Yesterday, I was the lead teacher for the preschool class at UU.  Have I ever said how much I love this job? I just love the kidlets. It is a lot of fun and a good way for me to use my Early Childhood skills.  I was especially pleased with yesterday's lesson and how it went.

  

  Because yesterday was Solstice Eve, I decided to do a lesson about the longest night of the year centered around the book Grandmother Winter (A lovely, beautiful book, btw).  In the story, Grandmother Winter collects feathers which she sews into a quilt.  In the winter, on the longest night, she shakes the quilt out making the snows that fall across the land.

  For the preschool class, I prepared two activities.  The first followed the story. I took in a quilt, which we sat on for the story and I also took in some paper snowflakes.  After the story, we used the quilt like a parachute and shook the snowflakes off the quilt.  The kids LOVED the activity.   We went around and around with each child collecting and carefully placing the snowflakes on the quilt to be shaken off. 

  The second activity was also very popular, though got a bit long for the younger 3 year olds.  I cut pipe cleaners into 6" lengths and then wrapped 3 together to be the arms of a snowflake.  I had pony beads in blue, white and clear for the children to string on the arms of the snowflake to make a beaded snowflake. In the picture above, you can see the one dh made as a model so the children could get the idea of how the snowflake might look in the end. I consider yesterday's class a big success! 

  Last week, I did class too on the topic "We are alike and we are different." That class was fine, but really the kids had a lot to talk about last week about doctors and flu shots and germs.  Most of the kids had very recently had flu shots, and we use hand sanitizer at the beginning of class, so germs and the flu were on their minds.  It trickled over into this weeks class too....Evidently, those flu shots made quite the impression! I was able to commiserate as I finally got a seasonal flu shot at work.  (They were out of them so some of us had to wait for the second batch to come in.)  I am always happy to set the lesson aside for a bit and talk about things that are important to the kids...I like them to know they have a voice and their thoughts and concerns are important too.

  So.....Speaking of the longest night....We have had a lovely Solstice celebration here.  I am sooo happy that the days are now getting longer and longer.  Every little bit of daylight (and especially sunlight) is a treasure this time of year!

  • 2:31 pm
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