Gray Days

It's been overcast and rainy now for about 2 weeks.  Maybe a sunny moment here or there, but mostly gray.  I don't know about you, but I don't do gray days very well.  So what to do?  Well, I try to make it colorful inside.  I try to add as much "color" as I can to my lessons.  One of my favorite books to read this time of year is Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh.  I love this book.  I have so much fun with the kids.  When I read the book I mix the colors in front of the kids using colored water.  So when the "red mouse steps into a yellow puddle", my colors mix in front of their eyes.  Three and four-year-olds are in love with magic and this is magical for them.  Their little faces light up enough to brighten any gray day.

After I'm finished with our large group, we go to small group.  I use "jelly marbles" and I let the students mix their own colors.  I use small, plastic condiment containers.  We place a clear jelly marble into the cup.  At this point, the marble is just a very small, very hard piece of  clear "plastic." I make sure they feel the marble before we add the liquid.  Once they tell me what color they want, we mix the color in the little cup using red, yellow and blue water.  I get my marbles, water containers and coloring tabs from the Steve Spangler Science website.  I love the quality of his products and I have not been disappointed yet.

When I come back to class after a day, we look at what we have in our little cups.  It does not resemble anything like the beginning marble.  Instead of hard, clear, and small, it is soft, colorful, and much bigger.  The "jelly marble" is actually a polymer.  It absorbed 300 times its weight in water.  The children are amazed.  We look at a beginning marble and then at the end result.  It's hard to believe they were the same thing.  They are able to take them home when we are done.  Another surprise for them is that the once hard sphere is now able to be broken.  They take great joy in doing that with their "marbles."  It is one of those very joyful, learning experiences that can make a gray day feel warm and sunny.

Wishing you colorful "gray days".

Websites
www.stevespanglerscience.com
www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Ellen-Stoll-Walsh/70624406

Relationships

Relationships. 
 www.merriam-webster.com defines a relationship as follows:

• the way in which two or more concepts, objects, or people are connected, or the state of being connected.
• the state of being connected by blood or marriage
• the way in which two or more people or organizations regard and behave toward each other.

I was recently in a meeting where people were defining what was expected from different groups in the workplace. The first group addressed were the teachers. The moderator wanted to know what was the most important thing teachers could do to provide the best learning experience for their students.  It was unanimous! Teachers need to establish positive relationships with parents and children.  This was said to be essential because only then would both the child and the parent feel safe.  In order to learn, we must feel safe.  Brain research bears this out. When we don't feel safe we are always on guard and therefore unable to attend to what's being taught, presented or shown.  Everyone in the room agreed with this assessment.  Positive relationships were the most important thing teachers could do to make their classrooms productive and well managed. We then moved onto the next group.

This group was the staff in charge of the teaching staff.  The moderator asked what they could do for the teachers.  I couldn't help myself.  I have very strong opinions on this matter  I said that I thought the same applied to them with the teachers as it did for the teachers with the students and parents.  I said that the administrative staff needs to create a positive work environment for the teachers so that they feel safe and are able to pass that along to the students.  The administrators set the tone for the staff.  Teachers are "required" to provide positive feedback for students.  For example, three positive comments to every one negative comment.  I think it should be the same for the adults.  

Everyone needs to feel worthy and respected.  Positive feedback is one way that happens.  I am very fortunate that I have that with my administrators.  At this meeting, I was more of committee member than an employee.  The golden rule "Treat others the way you want to be treated," still holds in work situations.  People of all ages need to feel safe in order to prosper.  Adults need positive feedback as much as students and parents do. As we get older I think we forget that aspect of life.  We are all "grown up" now and don't need positive feedback.  We can "handle" it, we are adults.  I disagree, we all need respect and acknowledgment.  It is so important that all of us support one another.  As teachers, we need to support each other as well as our administrators.  Administrators need to remember to support their teachers and staff in the same way they expect the teachers to support and provide a positive environment for their students.  The same rules should apply all around.

Feeling safe and respected is so important for everyone involved.  When we work together and help bring each other up, we are helping ourselves.  Think about how good it feels to help someone.  Think about how good it feels for you to get a thank you or a smile from someone you didn't expect to smile or even acknowledge you.  It's the little things that make a workplace fun to go to.  There will always be conflicts and disagreements.  What we do to get over them and help each other smile is what makes a classroom, school, home, office, etc. a wonderful place you where you want to be.  A happy place that makes a job feel more like fun and provides a safe environment for learning.l.

Choices

A friend of mine gave me a "Self Therapy" pad for Christmas.  It was hysterical but only because it struck some familiar chords.  The first thing you are supposed to list is "Psychodrama of the Day".  I think about that a lot.  We have those moments daily when we can choose to react in any manner we choose.  The point being, we get to choose.

I have to remind myself that I cannot control someone else's emotions or reactions.  The only person I can control is me.  It's pretty empowering to know that I have that choice.  Sometime I get sucked up into the vortex of calamity.  I have to remind myself (often times others remind me) that I have that choice.  I get to choose how I react.

This is not to say that there are real situations that need reaction.  However, in all of those I still have a choice about my reactions.  How I react to the child who rolls their eyes at me, the teacher who is complaining, the office person who is not doing things my way.  In everything, I have that choice.  Today I choose love and kind.  I choose to see through those lenses.  Hopefully that will make for a wonderful day.

Caps for Sale

"Caps for sale, fifty cents a cap!"  I remember that story by Esphyr Slobodkina from my childhood.  Captain Kangaroo read it to us on the television.  It was so long ago, the show was in black and white.  It's hard for me to believe that so much time has gone by.  When a friend suggested that I use this book with my three-year-olds, I said: "no way, it has too many words."  I didn't think the children would be able to sit for that long.  Oh me of little faith!  Caps for Sale is one of my favorite books that I read with children.  I read it to the same class for 3 days.

The first day I put on my own checked cap.  The second time I put on my own checked cap and a gray, brown, blue, and red cap.  On Friday, when I read the story for the last time, I have on as many caps as I need for the students to each have one.   They are not just gray, brown, blue, and red.  I have a rainbow of sparkly colored caps.  During the story, when the peddler falls asleep, the teacher helps remove the caps from the sleeping peddler and gives them to the students.  The class then becomes the monkeys in the tree.  It is so much fun when they figure out that they are doing what I'm doing.  They even are good about giving the caps back when they throw them down.

Making stories come alive for the children helps them to love the stories.  I hope that as they grow, they develop a love of stories and books.  It is always such a treat to share these stories each year.