It’s back to school time, which means it’s time for everyone to get to know the teacher. Here is the printable that we will be using on our bulletin board, feel free to use it in your classroom! All graphics are from Erin Bradley Designs.
Monthly Archives: August 2013
Mark Your Calendar
We’ve been working really hard to get our new space ready and we can’t wait to share it with you! Please make plans to stop in during our open house!
Art in the Park
We had a great time making art in the park with all of you last night, and we captured some great photos! Please mark your calendars for our upcoming events, we hope to see you there!
The Hundred Languages of Children Printable
Here is a printable version of the Hundred Languages of Children poem from today’s Reggio Monday post. Click the link below to open the file.
Reggio Mondays: The Hundred Languages
What exactly does the phrase “One hundred languages of children” actually mean? This phrase is used quite often in the Reggio Emilia philosophy to express the many different ways that children express their thinking, theories, ideas, learning, and emotions. No two children learn the same way and the Reggio Emilia approach understands this and provides different ways to reach children and help them succeed to their upmost potential.
Reggio Emilia teachers provide children with a wide range of materials and experiences so that children are able to think, construct, negotiate, develop and symbolically express their thoughts and feelings in ways that they are most comfortable doing. By providing these many different materials and experiences, teachers, parents and children can better understand each other. These different languages can include drawing, paint, clay, wire, natural and recycled materials, light and shadow, dramatic play, music and dance. They can also include expression with words through stories, poems, or drawings. All of these different ways are considered part of the one hundred and more languages of learning. Teachers often encourage children to represent their ideas on a particular topic in multiple languages and find that when they do this they are best able to support children in their understanding and learning.
The following is a poem created by Loris Malaguzzi that sums up what the Hundred Languages of Children really means to educators that follow the Reggio Emilia approach.
The child
is made of one hundred.
The child has
A hundred languages
A hundred hands
A hundred thoughts
A hundred ways of thinking
Of playing, of speaking.
A hundred always a hundred
Ways of listening of marveling of loving
A hundred joys
For singing and understanding
A hundred worlds
To discover
A hundred worlds
To invent
A hundred worlds
To dream
The child has
A hundred languages
(and a hundred hundred hundred more)
But they steal ninety-nine.
The school and the culture
Separate the head from the body.
They tell the child;
To think without hands
To do without head
To listen and not to speak
To understand without joy
To love and to marvel
Only at Easter and Christmas
They tell the child:
To discover the world already there
And of the hundred
They steal ninety-nine.
They tell the child:
That work and play
Reality and fantasy
Science and imagination
Sky and earth
Reason and dream
Are things
That do not belong together
And thus they tell the child
That the hundred is not there
The child says: NO WAY the hundred is there–
Loris Malaguzzi
Chalk It Up!
There are SO many ideas for chalk these days other than just drawing with sidewalk chalk. You may need to think outside the box and bit or search the internet, Pinterest is my favorite way to do this! Inside projects can be done with chalk paint to make chalk walls, boards or even turn old board books into mini chalk board books. You can always practice writing or just draw with chalk on dark construction paper too.
We decided to take some chalk ideas outside and see what happened. Not all the ideas worked quite like I thought, but the girls had a great time exploring anyway. Here are a few ideas we tried:
– Paint Chalk: just crush broken chalk pieces and add water (lots of chalk and not too much water or it softens the colors)
– Playing Games with sidewalk chalk
-Drawing on objects other than sidewalk such as rocks, tree bark, etc
– Spray chalk: combine flour, color and warm water in a squirt bottle ( I recommend using liquid watercolors or a lot of food coloring. We used neon with about 10 drops, but it was not as bright as we hoped.)
– Exploding Chalk Bags: combine cornstarch, vinegar and color in Ziplock bag. Once outside add a paper towel folded up with baking soda inside the bag and close. Stand back and watch! (our first attempt leaked through tiny hole and didn’t pop bag)
When you run out of cute tubs…
We have been working hard to get our space ready, and though we were lucky to find a place with a wonderful amount of storage, there is never ENOUGH storage space. If you are a little crazy like me, then you prefer all of the tubs, buckets, random storage containers to at least coordinate, it just looks so much neater!
most parents and teacher will tell you that kids’ stuff is not made to fit nicely into small spaces, so as we put our materials away in their new homes, we quickly ran out of containers in which to store them. Here is our solution – cardboard boxes covered in fabric – this was so easy that I will be doing this ALL THE TIME!
Start by choosing a sturdy box, look for one that is easy to lift when it’s full. Cut off the top flaps.
Then choose your fabric, the size of your fabric will depend on the size of your box. If you can set the box in the middle of the fabric and lift each edge of the fabric up the corresponding side of the box, with extra left to fold into the inside of the box, then your fabric is big enough. I have a bunch of upholstery scraps that had been donated, so that is what I used, you can use any kind of material, the only rule is to make sure that any wording on the box does not show through the fabric.
To start, lay the fabric flat on the floor or a large work space, place the box in the middle.
Use a yard stick (or quilting ruler in my case) to make a straight line from the box to the edge of the fabric. You want to place the outside edge of the ruler approximately 1/4 of an inch past the edge of the box to leave space for a seam allowance.
Do this for each corner of the box, until your fabric looks like a large plus sign or cross. cut on the lines.
Sew the sides together (right sides of the fabric together), to create a fabric box (it should be inside out)
Flip the fabric cover right side out and slide the box inside. Then fold any extra fabric over the top of the box, into the middle, and attach to the edges with hot glue!
these are perfect for any space because you get to customize everything – the size of the box and the way that you want it to look, and they are perfect for kids spaces, or spaces that don’t get used often because they are very inexpensive!
Literacy Outdoors
With the absolutely wonderful weather that we have been having lately, now is a perfect time to go outside and enjoy nature. However, even when enjoying nature, plenty of language practice can take place! A wonderful blog: www.famigliaandseoul.blogspot.com provides an wonderful example of how to incorporate nature, outdoors, and literacy all in one. A way to get your toddler or preschooler enjoying all that the outdoors has to offer is to create an outdoor literacy bag. You can keep this bag right beside your door, that way all you have to do is grab it and go! The following are two examples of what you might want to include in your outdoor literacy bag to get started. Just remember the possibilities are endless!
One example is when you and your child are outside is to have a bird literacy bag. Birds and the sounds that they make are everywhere. In the bag include age-appropriate books about birds that catches the attention of your child. You can also include a pair of kid-sized binoculars so that they can experiment with them while you walk around your neighborhood looking for birds. Also, to be able to observe them, you will need to include pencils, crayons, and paper on a clipboard to draw the birds that they see. To attract the birds, include a small bag of Cheerios or other small cereal and string to make bird feeders to hang on trees. For older children, you can even include a bird identification book to look up the names and pictures of various birds that you see.
In the second bag, how about learning about bugs? Include books about bugs (touch and feel books are great for this). A bug catcher, magnifying glass, and tweezers are perfect for looking for small bugs around your neighborhood. Also, to be able to observe them, you will need to include pencils, crayons, and paper on a clipboard to draw their bug creations. Plastic bugs are also great to introduce the names of various bugs and to sort them by color, size, insect, or how they move (crawling, flying, jumping). Homemade play dough can also be added to this bag to help your child begin to create their own 3D bugs.
These bags are just two examples of what you and your child can explore outdoors. However, the choices are endless. The most important thing to remember is to follow the interest of what your child enjoys doing outdoors and create a bag that will extend on this interest.
It’s good to get messy!
Many people shy away from attempting art with infants for a number of different reasons. The excuses offered most frequently are that an infant will eat the paint, and that it will make too big of a mess.
i won’t argue with the fact that it will probably get messy, but I’m sure that you can tell by now that we believe that you can learn a lot from making a mess. Today I want to tackle that other excuse. Just because infants and toddlers are known for eating nearly everything that they come in to contact with ( age appropriate exploration of their surroundings), does not mean that they need to be kept from certain forms of artistic expression.
There is a large variety of non-toxic paint available, that is perfectly safe for infants and toddler to use, and while ingesting it will never be recommended, it certainly will not harm the child. However,I have always been an advocate for DIY solutions, and many of the following ideas may help you feel more comfortable with the idea that infants explore and learn using all of their senses, even taste.
There are a ton of recipes available for edible paint, look it up on Pinterest, but you don’t need a recipe to help the youngest children explore art and their senses safely, just take a look in your pantry. Any food items that you can add food coloring to can realistically be used as paint. Here are some of our favorites:
Water (think water colors)
cool whip
frosting
pudding
Corn syrup
baking soda and water or cornstarch and water mixtures
sweetened condensed milk
these are just a few ideas that are perfectly safe for little ones to paint with, and each provides its own, very different sensory experience for their fingers as well. While we encourage you to try out some of these ideas yourself, please remember that food coloring, when used in high concentrations, will stain. We suggest using as little pigment as possible to color your paints, and painting in an area that is okay to get messy, like a high chair or kids table on the patio.
Making Shelves Useful & Artistic
Lots of classrooms have the bookshelves with the not so pleasing pegboard backing on them; but they don’t have to be an eye sore in your beautiful classroom. I have found ways in the past to make these serve as both functional and artistic as well as found some new ideas while searching the internet. It is great when you can use the shelf to divide classroom areas and still be able to have the back of the shelf be functional so both sides are serving a purpose and it saves on having lots of furniture in small spaces.
Here are some of the ideas leaving the pegboard feature showing but maybe painting it to look cuter:
~ add peg hooks with cute baskets to hold supplies for art or writing centers
~ use hooks to hold tools and materials in the block area
~ hooks can be added to hang up clothing in the dramatic play area
~ pegboard holes can be used as fine motor activity area or to create 3-D art mural by using items such as
pipe cleaners or straws to stick in the holes; my last class discovered this idea on their own and loved
it!
Some ideas for the backs of shelves that will cover existing back are:
~ Attach felt to back and use as a felt board for story time or reading center
~ Paint with chalkboard paint (which you can make yourself in any color) and use in art or writing center
~ Paint with dry erase paint (yes they sell that too!) or you can buy sheets or laminate a larger sheet of
paper and use for circle time, art or writing areas
~ Paint with magnetic paint (another great invention!) and use in science area or for magnet stories
~ Using shelves for documentation and displaying the children photos and work is great idea too, especially
because it is as their eye level and looks way better than a bulletin board with stapled papers on it!
~ Make into a work of art by covering with material, paper, sheet, anything that the children can paint,
draw, etc. on and it can hang on the shelf as art mural
Some new ideas for shelving without the typical shelving units:
~ Using old dressers without the drawers; paint it up pretty and looks cute
~ Paint or line with cute contact paper/wallpaper the inside back panel of shelving units
~ Adding baskets to the shelves to hold lots of small items
I will post some photos of the ways we use or shelves and some of the new furniture trends we decide to use in the new classrooms to organize and create separate areas as we begin moving in the center. In the meantime, how do you guys use shelves in your classrooms or homes, making them functional and pretty?
Inspirations 