The kids are back!  Well, new kids.  (When in doubt that we will ever master walking in line  or using the automatic soap dispenser, I just take a  peek at  last year's class across the hall in kindergarten. It will happen...eventually.)

Anyway, I call this blog "GrowinginPreK" for a reason.  I'm not just referring to the amazing growth of four-year-olds over the course of ten months.  I am also trying to grow as a teacher every day.  

The Literacy Beginnings books study made me want to "share the pen" with my young students this year.  We all get stuck in ruts.  One of my ruts was thinking that at least I was doing shared writing with my young students.  I was showing them how it was done, wasn't I?  So, I determined to give them opportunities to write during circle time this year.  Even so, I didn't expect it to happen this quickly!  On our second day of school, I introduced the big math journal.  

http://www.growinginprek.com/math.htm

Just as last year, I had the kids spell their names to me and show me which number to list them under (how many letters in our names.)  Today, day three, I started to do the same thing with how many boys/girls are in our class.  One little boy asked me, "why do you always have us tell you how to spell it?"  I realized he was right.  I started over and had the kids come up and write their own names.  Only one needed my help with the letter "r."  They loved it.  Wow.  This is going to be a great year.

I have a new idea to list under Emergent Literacy - Names.  We read the book A My Name is Alice and then created our own pages using the formula ____ My name is _________ and I like ___.  We have lots of names that start with C and L, so we had candy, cupcakes, and lots of lollipops.  One little boy who needed a word that started with H (since his name started with H) was stuck.  He didn't want to choose hamburgers, hotdogs, hats, or helicopters.  We put it down to think about for a while.  In a few minutes he was "helping" me, which he very often does.  We both loved the idea of him choosing "likes to help."  He then looked down at his own school t-shirt and copied the letters (mirror image) to go on his picture with two characters he drew.  Every year I laminate and selfishly save one of the class books we make.  I think I know which one it will be this year....