Tuesday SOL - Heroes on Parade

Tuesday Slice of Life with Two Writing Teachers

I missed an entire week of teaching last week, due to my family emergency. 

The week was a blur of hospital extremes - long days of hurry up and wait, fervent discussions with doctors, nurses, family; responding to alarms, beeps, tests, results; exhausting. My Mom is now in a nursing home near my parents' home in South Carolina, where she will get intensive rehab to regain, hopefully, her ability to walk and to feed herself.

What did I dream about? The preschoolers, of course. Happy dreams in the midst of sad reality. It was a very strange feeling to be away from the classroom and the children.

Laura (Teaching Resident) finally got the chance to run the class on her own - and this she did beautifully, I have no doubt. I know that our main focus of the week was to create hero capes - the final endeavor of this creative exploration.  She delighted me with photos of the children on parade, on the last day of school before our spring break (this week!).

Thought these happy photos made for the perfect slice this first Tuesday in April. 

Happy April! 

Happy Spring Break!

Practicing flying before heading out for the walk.

SOLSC #22 Writing hero names

Two Writing Teachers' Slice of Life Story Challenge (SOLSC)

Each preschooler created a name for their hero figurine, and we challenged them to write this name on a special "sign" for their hero diorama.  Check these out!  I love looking at their "penmanship" - how adept they are at making those letters.  Some are becoming very skilled, whereas others are still "rising to the challenge" - these are normal developmental extremes of the preschool years. 

I was also amused by the hero names....

Many children named their hero after themselves.  

Dillon chose his nickname "Dilly."

Sarah Lydia used the first part of her name, only.

Harper

Emma

Some children named their hero after a special someone or something in their life...

Lukas named his hero after his friend, Jack.

Jamie named his hero after his big brother, Declan.

Zoe named her hero after her friend, Bella.

Hayley is Saadiq's cousin

Some children named their heroes with names that imitated comic superheroes.

Ellington named his hero "Superboy."

Ebony named her hero "Superhero Girl."

Jack named his hero "Flash."

Still other children created unique names for their heroes.

Soren named his hero "Rashton."

Reia named her hero "Pablo."

Sayid named his hero "Wareth."

Charlie's hero was very tall - and he named him thus!

Bella named her hero "Spotty"

Anya named her hero, "Meetie."

I wonder where these special name ideas came from?  

What influenced the children towards one or another?  

It was truly delightful to see them choose a name for their hero and keep it - hold on to it - over several weeks of work on their dioramas.  

Fascinating!

SOLSC #14 - Heroes, the art & creativity

Two Writing Teachers' Slice of Life Story Challenge (SOLSC)

Let me share some photos of our heroes and their dioramas.  We are hard at work on these, this week and next, with these being the primary exhibit at next Thursday's "Learning Showcase," where families will come by and see what we have been learning and doing.  My apologies for having so few photos!  More to come in the days ahead....

This is the first time I have ever attempted "dolls" in the preschool classroom...and I'm still not sure that I gave the children the right materials.  However, using styrofoam balls, craft sticks, yarn, clothespins, pipe cleaners, beads, tape, all manner of "found objects," the children threw themselves into making figures. Many have added clay at the feet, to help their figures to stand up.  (Others simply created a bed in the diorama, and lay the superhero down!)

We created the dioramas from recycled lunch trays.  The children are adding details using paint, beads, wire, paper, and many other simple materials.  

Laura (Teaching Resident) is working with the children one-on-one to share their stories. While they work with these art materials, their story ideas for their heroes grow and grow. I take notes as I hear different ideas expressed and pass them onto Laura, so that she might nudge them to share a little more.

I need to share their stories - these are so precious!

Yes, we have lots more to do...but having a lot of fun "doing it"!

SOLSC #13 Heroes - What are you afraid of?

Two Writing Teachers' Slice of Life Story Challenge (SOLSC)

At our morning gathering, I posed the question - 

What are you afraid of?

Their fears poured out - 

things with googly eyes

space aliens

rain

big thunderstorms

the lights going out

earthquakes

monsters and ghosts

things that can eat you up

the dark

dinosaurs and dragons

car crashes

bad dreams

noises at night

We stood in our "Archer" yoga pose and recited our bravery chant, as we slowly moved our "bow" from side to side:

I am brave.

I may get scared

but

I am courageous.

I am brave.

Let the dramatic play begin!  One by one, we acted out a hero's response to each of these scary things.  

• We huddled together, standing straight, strong, with hand's on our hips, and said, "You don't scare me! I don't believe in ghosts! monsters! space aliens! You don't scare me!"  
• We lay on the carpet, pretending it was our bed, and we started singing the ABC song when we heard a scary noise. We weren't scared at all anymore!
• When the floor began an imaginary rumble, we thought of an earthquake and we ran beneath our tables to stay safe.
• We imagined riding in our car and how to stay safe - Put on that seatbelt!  

I believe saying these scary ideas aloud and "walking through them," together, even if only in our imaginations, helps these preschoolers to face their fears.  Certainly, it is a whole lot of fun - playing together.

SOLSC #11 Heroes - why this topic?

Two Writing Teachers' Slice of Life Story Challenge (SOLSC)

Be the change you wish to see in the world...

- Gandhi

This is one of my favorite quotes of all time.

I woke up this morning realizing that I should share the "why" behind our Heroes curriculum unit. Perhaps this is even more important than the details of the lessons?

We work with three year olds.  This is an age of make-believe, of fear of the "boogie man," of pretend play about "bad guys."  This is an excellent age for fairy tales and folktales, where good conquers evil - preschoolers devour these stories. 

Laura and I were working on the third quarter curriculum plans.  I knew that I wanted to delve deeper into children sharing their own stories - and add a creative arts dimension where their own stories came alive through  puppets, dioramas, and dramatic play.

Laura and I were working on the third quarter curriculum plans in December, days after the horror at Newtown. 

There had been  an uptick in the use of pretend guns by the preschoolers.  We were finding ourselves tamping down on the children - saying, "no, you can't do this."  When I find myself saying "no" frequently or tamping down on particular play, it is as if a loud bell is going off in my head - it is a signal that I need to question myself, the environment, the curriculum, everything that surrounds a child and consider changing it in some way.  I realized - these children need "power," as do all young children - some semblance of "power" in their lives, some way to be "powerful" even when you are only three years old.

I realized, too, that I needed something uplifting, something inspiring. Something that makes me feel that the world is not full of sadness, but full of possibility and hope.

I remembered an excellent article I had read on-line some time ago by Matt Langdon, entitled "We Need Pro-Hero Schools Rather Than Anti-Bully"

Here's an excerpt:

Too often we tell kids what not to do, but forget to tell them what to do. If we build a positive environment with ample examples of positive behaviours, we can change the formula.  My thinking is that building a pro-hero school is greater than building an anti-bully school.  As definition was my first concern with bullying, I owe you a definition for the word hero.  A hero is someone who takes action for the good of others despite a risk or sacrifice.  That is, when a hero sees something they know to be wrong, they do something about it.  There are ample opportunities for heroism in schools. The number one reason negative behaviours happen in school is that the student body allows it. The default response when one sees something happening that is wrong is to do nothing – to be a bystander.  The opposite of a hero is not a villain, it’s a bystander.  The goal of my work and others like me is to turn bystanders into heroes.  With a school of heroes administrators won’t have to worry about eliminating problems one by one with tailor made programs that focus on the negative. A school with a large population of heroes won’t have bullying. It won’t have vandalism. It won’t have drug issues.  It will have learning.  It will have long-lasting relationships. It will have smiles.

There you have it.  This is the "genesis" of our hero curriculum plan: to captivate preschoolers with what truly excites them, and turn it into a real positive for them as a part of our community.  We are creating a community of true heroes - brave, courageous, kind, and caring.

SOLSC #10 Heroes

Two Writing Teachers' Slice of Life Story Challenge (SOLSC)

It has been all about “Heroes” for the last many weeks in the Big Cats' preschool classroom. We’ve been having meetings in the “Big Cat Superhero Club House.”  We have had many exciting discussions:

What is a hero? 

How do you describe a hero? 

What does a superhero eat? 

What are superhero superpowers? 

What does a hero do?

What would a hero do if [xyz] happened?  

We’ve defined the word “tough” and agreed that we will always try harder when things are tough.  We have gone on rescue adventures in the class, through dramatic play.

Now, each child is in the midst of building a superhero “doll” and a special diorama to display everything the child wants to share about their superhero. The children are working one-on-one with Laura [Teaching Resident] to create superhero stories, completing a questionnaire about the superhero. 

We've been able to introduce a lot of science with this topic. We have been learning about the special skills and traits of animals. Our animal sharing box has helped us share what we know about animals. We learned that animals – just like superheros - have special ways to protect, to move, to hide, to defend, to see.  It is fascinating to see the “superhero” skills in the natural world (bioluminence, amphibians, flight, etc.) Because we love drama so, so much, we have dramatized many of these special traits and attributes of animals.

Our Hero focus has allowed the children a creative and playful opportunity to explore how to do good in the community.  We do not permit anyone in the class to be considered a bad guy.  We are, in fact, a classroom of heroes.  We are challenging the children to move from the classic and limited play of "There's a bad guy - what can I do to stop him?" to higher-level thinking of "What can I do, to fix things?"  In a way, this superhero focus is much like engineering, in that the children are identifying "problems" that need fixing - and they are ready to take them on.

Laura and I are really excited about this new and emergent curriculum. We believe it is instigating them to play more kindly with one another.  (Just this past week, one child started to knock down another child's blocks and a third child asserted - "Wait, a hero doesn't do that!"  Our hero was stopped in his tracks and began to add more blocks to the structure.  Pretty awesome!)

I will share more about this curriculum in the days ahead.  For now, let me share the children's thoughts: 

What is a hero?

A hero rescues people and keeps them safe.
They help someone who gets hurt. Yes, like hit by a car.
They are brave and never scared.
They fly to stop bad guys.
A hero stops bullies and gets them to jail.
They save people.
They keep people safe.
They save them from a fire.
They help in emergencies.
They help someone who is trapped.
A hero has a cape.
A hero gives people candy.