I'm totally out of my element at my new job. I'm a 4K teacher with an undergrad in elementary education. My student teaching was 6th grade. I need as many resources and ideas as possible, please.
For instance, I purchased Play-Doh this past weekend and am hoping to have the students use it with one-to-one correspondence this week.
In my experience with students that age, they love to be outside. A great way to teach them about science would be to have them collect different types of leaves and flowers. Then you could cover each type of tree and flower.
ReplyDeleteWe actually did that last week. I took them outside for math. I had them collect 7 flowers. After we counted, I talked about the parts of the flower. I'm running out of ways to keep them interested, though. I'm wondering if I'm just expecting too much from the babies.
ReplyDeleteI have worked with younger kids before and there are so many ways to get them involved in hands-on activities. A wonderful online resource that has a plethora of ideas for younger ages is Pinterest. They have a whole site provided to education. I would suggest typing in ideas on there and seeing what you can find!
ReplyDeleteJessica,
ReplyDeleteI used to play with kids this age when I helped my mother who was the Head Mistress of the Children Center. One thing I learned about this age group is that they can't sustain attention for too long, so no matter how great the idea or activity you want to teach, limit it to 15 minutes (20 min max). So change the activities often and you will see huge improvement in their participation.
One great thing about working with younger kids is that you can create your own games. Whatever you want to teach them -present it as a game. I love one old game called "Gardener" that can be easily adapted to teaching colors, or numbers, or letters. It would help if you can make "clip-ons" with colors or numbers for each child. The children make a circle with one child in the center who is the "Gardener." S/he walks inside the circle saying "I was born a gardener. I love all flowers. All flowers except blue ones!" At this point the kids who are marked or just were designated as "blue" must jump out of the circle and maybe squat, while the rest of the kids need to quickly "close the ranks" by holding the hands with kids on their right and left. If someone is too slow and the Gardener catches this kid, that child becomes "It. The game teaches alertness and focus as well as colors, numbers, etc. You can perfect it any way you like it.