Back to School

In many cases Preschool is the first school experience for a child. Last year I had students that came from daycare since day one and some students who had never been in a classroom before. Many of the children are already four years old, while some are still three years old and approaching their fourth birthday. There is a lot of growth and development that occurs during the course of the preschool year and the transformation is incredible to watch. I decided to do booklets with the students on the first day of preschool. These pages were created on my computer and are intended to highlight the child's development. The first day booklet contains a handprint, a short questionnaire about the child, and a page for them to do a drawing. I held onto the booklets all year and then in the last week of school we did "Last day of pre-k" booklets. The last day booklet also has a page for the handprint, a new questionnaire about the student, a drawing page and a page where students will write their name. The parents expressed joy upon receiving these booklets. The children also enjoyed measuring up their handprints and seeing how much they've grown. The photo above is a side by side comparison of one student's drawing with the first day on the left. Every student created a drawing on the first day that resembled scribbles. On the last day, students drew pictures. On the first day, many students could not write their names, on the last day, they all wrote their names. This project was a lot of fun and I will definitely do this one again.

Since the last post...

Well, a lot has happened since my last post. In fact, this blog was originally started as a class project when I was still in college, hence, all the philosophy. However, after my graduation, application of such classroom philosophies were hard to come by since I was working as a substitute teacher. In the past few years I have gained valuable classroom experience. Now that I am working as a preschool teacher, I would like to share these experiences on my blog, thus changing the name from "It's Elementary" to "Paula in Pre-K". I still try to adhere to my philosophies in the previous posts but now I get to put them into action. I hope to reflect on these experiences so that I can grow as a teacher and learn new ways to enhance the classroom experience.