Preschool children as most children do, love to test us. they are constantly testing us to see if we mean what we say and we say what we mean.

There has been lots of discussion, pages, written and tears shed over the issues of disciplining our young children but none has been given more press than the topic of limits.

Should they be firm limits, soft limits, how much limit and what should we limit.

I am going to lay out for you what soft and firm limits actually are along with some examples.

Soft limits in parenting

• Does no ever really mean yes or something else? That’s soft.
• Do you ignore wrong misbehavior?
• Give unclear directions?
• Allow the children to bargain with you?
• Gives lots of bribes?
• Let them argue and debate rules?
• Allow different types of parenting from both spouses? (if you are married)
• Don’t follow through

Some examples would be if you said some of these things to your children.

“Can’t you try to be nice”

“Can’t you ssee I’m on the telephone”?

“I don’t like your attitude”

If you allow them to walk away from what you told them to do, or you clean up after them and ignore their misbehavior than these are what one would call soft limits.

Firm limits in parenting

When no really means no.

• When the focus of the message is on the behaviors that you don’t like
• When you are direct and specific on what you want
• You use a normal , calm tone of voice
• Mete out consequences not as threats but as natural result of their behaviors
• Supporting your words with actions

Some example may be

“Stop hitting your brother right now”

“You can play by the rules or you can find some other game”

“Be home by 6:00″

If you give timeouts for children who hit and remove ices from child who is eating it in the wrong place or you remove toys when children don’t want to pick them up, then you are employing firm limits.

One of the best books I ever read on discipline was Setting Limits by Robert Mackenzie and you can find lots more on how to set limits by reading his book.

Preschool teaching has many facets to it. Everyone will agree thought that the most important part of it is the teacher herself.

If you are a preschool teacher or want to be a preschool teacher that it would be a good idea to evaluate yourself to see if you have what it takes to be the best preschool teacher you can possible be.

After you self evaluate you can check out another blog where there is  a list of questions compiled that often come up when interviewing for a preschool teaching job.

Know that no one is perfect and we all have bad days, but in general you can get a good idea if preschool teaching is for you and even if you are already a teacher you can always improve and these questions may help you hone in on some areas of improvement that you may need.

There are 6 categories you can self evaluate.

1. Personal Qualities and classroom presence

• Are you relaxed and comfortable but alert?
• Do you maintain eye contact with children?
• Do you speak in gentle calm tone?
• Do you haves  professional appearance?
• Do you listen to children carefully?
• Do you have high degree of tolerance for noise and movement?

2. Teaching Style and Strategies

• Do you enjoy children?
• Can yo focus on individual children while being aware of the rest of the class?
• Can you relate to various children personality’s?
• Are you aware of differing moods of children?
• Do you enjoy humorous incidents with children?
• Do you have  plan for each day?
• Do you provide guidance for good habits for eating, toileting exercises etc?
• Do you support cultural differences?

3. Environment

• Do you crate an environment where children are comfortable enough to express their feelings?
• Is the environment home like and safe?
• Is there a good structured schedule?
• Do you foster curiosity about the physical world?
• Do you help with social interacting between kids?
• Is your classroom organized and clean?
• Do you take care of repairs?
• Is the outdoor environment part of the learning environment?

4. Relationships with other teachers

• Do you accept constructive criticism easily?
• Do you get along with other teachers?
• Do you ask for help when you need it?
• Are you willing to listen to suggestions from others?
• Are you slow about making negative feedback?
• Are you a team player and involved in staff planning?

5. Relationship to Parents

• Do  you have parent conferences when needed?
• Do you avoid discussing child in front of him or her?
• DO you respect the families right to privacy in discussing their problems with others?
• Do  you assist  parents with goals for their kids?
• Do you use the insights of parents about their children?
• Are you available to parents then they need you?

6. Professional Responsibilities

• Do you attend regular staff meeting and workshops?
• Do you make an effort to expand your knowledge of early childhood development?
• Are yo willing to  try new things (like new kinds of crafts ideas for kids)?
• Are you a good time manager?

That’s basically it and don’t worry if you are deficient in many of these ares. If you love children, have patience, are warm to them and are open to growth and development the yo probably have what it takes.

Creativity is in. Not just in preschool but all over the place.

Not too long ago Daniel H. Pink wrote a book called “A Whole New Mind”, basically explaining why right brainers will rule the future.

For years our educational system has concentrated on SAT’s and PSAT’s and Gmat’s and LSATs.

To be successful in our business world until now one had to have logic and analytic skills. Math and sciences were the be all and end all of education.

A funny thing happened though and it’s called outsourcing. Indian workers began taking jobs that workers in the U.S. would get $70,000 for and charging $15,000 for the same work.

All of a sudden people started realizing that we now need a new set of aptitudes to be successful and those new set of aptitudes are right brain related.

Guess what’s real right brained.  You guessed it.

Creativity.

All of a sudden creativity is at a premium.

Jobs that need the classic left brainers will be giving their work away to those inexpensive outsourcers across the sea while the right brainers will be at a premium.

And what does this have to do with our children you ask?

It’s pretty obvious to me and probably to you now also.

The sooner we start allowing our children more creativity and less conformity, the sooner and earlier they will be able to adapt to a new reality and get a head start for later success in life.

This means that the tradtional crafts for kids that have been so prevelant in our prechool classrooms must be replaced with art that makes kids actually use their creativity and not leave that up to the adult creating the projects.

Read the book, it’s fascinating and eyeopening.

Has anybody seen this happening yet in theri world. I’d love to hear about it.

When you talk about reading strategies in emergent literacy, whole language or any of the reading strategy approaches for young preschoolers and kindergarten children one of the best ones is no doubt storytelling.

When an adult tells stories the children are usually riveted by the mystery and suspense of the story and the children who don’t have great attention spans usually can sit through a good story. The children are also learning lots of new language as the story is being told.

What would be really great would be to teach the children story skills themselves.

Having the children learn to tell stories helps them develop their thinking skills and its a fun way to get them thinking.

Here are a few ways to get started thinking about how to get the children thinking.

1. Make a spider web with the children.Draw a web and put a word in the middle, for example FALL. The children can think of words associated with that word, in this case fall and you put the words around the web on cards with paper clips.
2. Use different methods to tell stories to the children. Puppets, flannel boards, magnetic pictures on a sheet, chalkboards, white boards or you can even paint a story.
3. Use story cans with objects inside the cans. Sit the children in a circle. Each child selects and object, and tells part of the story that includes that object. You start the story yourself with an object from the can.
4. Encourage creativity by changing old time favorite. See how you change the 3 little bears and little read riding hood with the children themselves.
5. As you tell a story have the children tell you “one more thing that happened”
6. Use problem solving sills as you ask them questions about the story like “what if?” or What happened then”
7. Use objects and visual aids to help act out the story as you tell it.
8. Have the children make up their own stories, dictate them to you and then you read them to the whole class.

An activity that is very popular especially among the home schooling crowd is the making of lap books. Some children create lap books out of the subject matter they are learning and these books are  very helpful for story telling. As in the case of the child who used to make a colonial lap book as part of a reading strategy

Reading readiness is just that. Readiness for reading. A child that comes into reading without any preparation may be getting himself into trouble.

Granted there are kindergarten children that have not had any readiness and they read fine, which is great. However not every child is born with the same set of skills and talents and the more we prepare our children for the lifelong pleasure that reading gives us, the better readers they will be.

Writing by the way is also something that reading readiness prepares children for. Some children may have a very easy time with reading while struggling with writing.

There are certain basic skills that are needed for children to navigate beginning reading and writing and I will talk about some of them and what you can do to work on those skills.

You can get more of an idea of exactly what reading readiness as defined by wikipedia.

There is the actual reading and language that kids need to be exposed to and then there are the other thins which is what I will be giving you some tips for.

Motor Control and Coordination:

Vital for writing as children without good motor coordination can’t write well or sometimes have such a difficult time with it and end up needing occupational therapy.

Some good activities would be:

Rhythm activities:

Marching, skipping, skating,running and do alot of these activities to different beats. You can also do these activities to the beats of the children’s names.

Follow the leader: Have them follow the leader tiptoeing, galloping etc.

Lifting objects: Let the children determine which is heavier and lighter.

Blindfold child: Put objects in bag and blindfolded child will have to feel object and guess what it is.

Feed the elephant: Have child balance peanut on end of a ruler and walk across the room without dropping it to the person at the other end who can be the elephant. They can eat the peanuts when done. (Or even make peanut butter with the peanuts)

Art activities

• Sewing is extremely valuable for fine motor coordination,
• Working with clay ,
• Cutting
• Folding
• Painting
• Working with puzzles
• Pouring sand and water,
• Peg boards
• Bead stringing
• Hammering and sawing

All of the above are excellent in developing fine motor coordination.

Auditory Discrimination:

Use of Music:

• Using drums let children beat out their names
• Compare loud and soft beats
• Clap to rhythms of songs

Hearing first sounds in words

• Show Pictures of items like cup and chidren can find other pictuers begining with same initial sounds like car and coat
• Teacher says word and children add to list words with same beginning sound
• Compare names of classmates for first sound

Following directions:

• Simple Simon
• Going on a bear hunt as children follow you through mountains and caves, you give directions and they follow exactly what you tell them
• Tray painting- excellent direction following activity

I will continue with more activities in the next post