Timing Tuesday: A Routine Revision

As our baby recently started eating solids, I needed to amend our routine a little.  We have been generally following this sequence of events to keep us organized.

6:00 Wake/Nurse Baby
6:30 Exercise / Shower /Get Dressed
7:30 Kids Wake Up Time, Get Dressed/Suncreened
8:00 Breakfast & Pump, Calendar time, Feed cats, water plants
8:30 Feed Baby Breakfast/ Free Play
9:00 Playground/Outside time
9:30/10 Nurse Baby/Reading Time
10 Baby Nap/ Theme Activity Time
10:30 - Snack Time
11 Continued Theme Activities/Play with Baby/Maybe do some chores
12:00 Nurse Baby
12:30 Lunch Time
1:15 Story Time/Nap
1:30 Nurse Baby to sleep
2:00 Put Baby down for Nap
3:30/4 Nurse Baby/ Snack Time
4:30 Backyard Time (water play)/Free Play (if too hot) or Errands
5:00/5:30 Dinner Prep/ Playdough/Sensory Play
5:30/6 Nurse Baby
6:00/6:30 Dinner
7:00/7:15 Clean up time
7:30 Bath Time
8:00 Story Time
8:30 Bed Time/Nurse Baby
9:00 Put Baby to Bed
9:30 Parent Time
10:30 Parent Bed Time








I also made a few changes to my rotation, since we started a baby co-op and a big kid co-op and get a CSA crate, which changed my grocery shopping day.  I also made sure to add in a day where my free time is spent writing up the lesson plans, as you might have noticed from my last two "Mindful Monday" Posts.  We've tried to keep the major chores out of the weekend, but when we don't finish something vital, we do use the weekend to catch up.

Mondays - Lesson Planning for the Week
Tuesdays - Diaper Laundry, Week 1: Kids Bathroom, Week 2: First Floor Bathroom, Week 3: Master Bathroom, Week 4: Laundry
Wednesdays - Week 2: Laundry, Week 4: Projects, Week 1 & 3: Baby Co-op
Thursdays - Week 1: First Floor Dusting & Floors, Week 2: Co-op Host Day, Week 3: Second Floor Dusting & Floors, Week 4: Co-op Field Trip, CSA Pickup & Process, Meal Planning
Fridays - Meal Planning cont., Grocery Shopping
Saturdays - Week 3: Hamster Cage
Sundays - Lawn & Cat Litter

Mindful Monday: Week 4 Lesson Plans

Our Transportation Theme is transitioning between Trains and Airplanes.  We left all three railway sets open and added the airport to our microcosm, building on how all the transportation systems mesh. 

Here is a look at the general plan for the week.

Monday: Park by the Airport (and RR tracks) to see Airplanes flying over, Draw a transportation picture, How long is a diesel engine?, Plan City Play (with trains, roads, and airport)

Tuesday: Read Planes, Gliders, Helicopters and other Flying Machines (Terry Jennings), Balloon Experiment, The Airplane has Great Big Wings Song, Plan City Play (with Airport), Airplane Concentration

Wednesday: Paper Airplanes, Read Going on an Airplane, Sing I'm a little airplane, A is for Airplane (first page of Letter Book), Packing a Suitcase Activity (with Laundry Day), Airport Dramatic Play

Thursday: Co-op Day - no planned curriculum

Friday: Pilot on the Airplane Song, Oak Meadow Park (They have a full sized airplane for kids to climb around on), Other songs in the car, Banana Airplane Snack

Sunday: (Tentative) Go see a friend's airplane, Styrofoam or Paper Towel Roll Airplanes.

Want more detail?  Click here.

Worthy Wednesday: Momma's Favorite Toys for the Theme

Given my son's long-standing obsession with all forms of transportation, we have no shortage of cars, trains, and airplanes and the like.  That is one of the things that makes this theme an easy one to start with as we have the materials needed for pretend play.  We even have a Power Wheels Lightning McQueen. One set of toys keeps coming back to my lesson plans (and is pulled off the shelf by the three year old on a regular basis), because it is great for independent play related to the theme.  We are fortunate to have collected a large portion of the Plan City Road and Rail system.  I do wish that we had a few more road pieces, but between the Airport, Gas Station, Fire Station, and Eco Town (with segues, bicycles, an electric car charging station, electric train station, and Eco House), as well as a bunch of trains, trucks, cars, airplanes, and construction vehicles.  I love this toy company because it's made from eco-friendly rubberwood with vegetable based dyes and the toys are simple without a lot of bells and whistles to distract. I would love to have the set in a daycare setting too, as it does hold up. My son loves this toy company because he has the versatility to make his own world out of the components.

Note: It doesn't always look so arranged.  I set it up when our son was napping when he first got the mat and the eco-town for Christmas.

Mindful Monday: Week 3 Lesson Plans

This week is all about Trains.  This was a nice smooth transition from cars and trucks and buses thanks to our day trip to San Francisco yesterday, which included a ride on both buses and trains.  I plan on keeping the train sets out (He has three - the Plan Toys Road and Rail (wooden), a Fisher-Price Geo-Trax set, and a legos track for a lego Thomas train) the whole week.  Here's our general plan:


Monday: Follow up on our Transportation Fun in San Francisco, playing tourist on the way to the park, read a great detailed book about different kinds of trains, learn a song about drivers of different forms of transportation, and play with various train sets.


Tuesday: Picnic lunch and a working small scale steam engine.


Wednesday: Shapes train and Train Books.


Thursday: Co-op day and grocery shopping day - no curriculum


Friday: Measuring vehicle sizes, making train whistles, and painting signs that allow trains and cars to interact.

For more detailed lesson plans for the whole theme so far, click on this link.

Resources

As I embark on this journey, I am certainly not without resources.  Teachers are creative individuals, but many of the activities I plan are not completely of my own independent design.  Some are, but others are variations of things I've seen other teachers do in the classroom, or from books or the internet. 

I want to share some of the tangible resources that I've found helpful.

I have enjoyed the book "Teaching Young Children Using Themes", which is edited by Marjorie J. Kostelnik.  The book has some fantastic activities with ideas for simplifying and/or extending them, depending on the child(ren) you're working with.  I cited Kostelnik whenever I used one of the activity ideas or concept definitions in my lesson plans.  It is a practical resource that can be appreciated by an academic like myself, as well as accessible for the general population.  I recommended (and lent out) this book to the teacher interns that I worked with in the preschool as well.



Also, for a reference of what kinds of skills children typically have at each age, I love "Developmental Profiles  Pre-birth through Twelve" by Allen & Marotz (2009).  I used this as one of the textbooks in my Developmental Assessment Class.  I use it as a guide and have lent it out to new moms as well. 

The First Week of Curriculum

I planned out my first two weeks and this week, we embarked on the exciting journey of learning.  For a start, I think it went well.  RJ was interested in our one-on-one activities and Logan cooperated by napping long enough for me to have that morning one-on-one time with RJ.  I generally plan for about 4 lessons per week so that we can have a day off (to go to the pool or have a playdate or to just have a bad day).  This week, we also hosted our co-op on Thursday, so I got to try out the lesson plans with some children younger than RJ (His playmates are 2 and 2.5).

Here is the link to my lesson plans, which I will keep adding to as I go along. 

What you will see in the lesson plans are columns labeled Lesson, Concepts, Activity, Domain(s), Goal(s), Prep, and Evaluation.  The Lessons column is basically just a number, because I want to leave my plan flexible.  I just follow the numbers rather than assigning days.  The concepts column is for listing the general concepts or content knowledge that I want RJ to learn from the activities and from us talking about the activities.  The activity column is for describing what we will do.  As most of preschool learning occurs through actively engaging with materials, plan activities where RJ can manipulate or create objects.  The final product isn't important, but the process by which we come to it is.  The domain column is where I indicate what area of development the activity helps to progress or nurture.  Typical Domains are pretty basic - Physical (either fine motor or gross motor), Cognitive (which has many sub-domains, such as literacy, pre-math, etc.), and Socio-emotional.  I usually also indicate the specific area that I'm working on after the domain.  For example when we made license plates, one thing listed under the Domain column was Cognitive - Letter and Number Recognition.  The goals column is my bottom line.  I write what I'm trying to accomplish by doing the activity.   Sometimes, it might just be exposure to something or even just for fun, but the point is that planned activities should be goal directed.  The prep column is a practical column, where I write what I need to do BEFORE starting the activity.  An activity doesn't usually work well if the person guiding the activity is busy setting up stuff while the child(ren) are running amok.  And finally, I write down my thoughts after the activity/lesson, so I can see what to change for similar activities in the future. 

I know we're a bit out of order because I didn't post about RJ's initial assessment of content knowledge yet, but I wanted to post the start of the unit lesson plans when I had them done.  The assessment requires me to upload the video off our camera, which is more complicated than it should be.

The First Theme

There is something I find intuitive about thematic curriculum.  I love how all subject areas can be integrated into one interesting theme that also promotes deep knowledge in a particular domain or content area. 

I will write about the history and theory behind thematic curriculum soon, but I want to dive right in sans backround with a pilot theme to get my feet wet and return to what started my interest in children's learning in the first place - TEACHING preschoolers.  Lucky for me, I have a child who just turned three.  So my first task was  to pick the theme to start with.

So how should one choose a theme?  My particular philosophy dictates that we should turn to the children to determine what the theme should be.  In a classroom, one would look to where the children gravitate - what center or what kinds of stories they like and what interests they have and choose a broad theme that all children can benefit from and will find something of interest within.  Some teachers choose the themes based on their interests, which is also a viable method since comfort with the content area is important, and teacher enthusiasm is high, BUT since my philosophy is child centered, again, we start with the child's interest.  In the classroom, this type of child-led approach comes from the Reggio Emilia Approach, which among other things, focuses on the interest of the children.  Keeping the theme structured,  so that it makes logical sense to the children and so that new knowledge can build on prior knowledge, and yet flexible to follow the interests and needs of the children is a delicate balance, yet crucial to maintain for content knowledge growth.  As I develop the curriculum, I think that I will take an activity plan approach, mapping out the activities that will allow exploration into the various content areas and completing a chart to make sure that over the course of the unit, I am balancing out activities in all the developmental and pre-academic domains. 

My advantage (and the advantage of any SAHP seeking to enrich his/her child's knowledge) is that I know my own child's interests really well and don't have to balance out his needs with anyone else. While I would've loved to delve into an ecological or recycling or plants theme, this just isn't (sadly) where RJ's primary interests lie.  He prefers things that give off the very exhaust that his eco-friendly mommy despises...race cars and old rusty tow trucks.  Yes, he has an absolute fixation on the Disney/Pixar movie, Cars.  So, Transportation is logical first theme.  I also like this theme for preschoolers in general because it has the potential for a variety of spin-offs into other themes.  For example, if RJ were really interested in the composition of roads, we could spin-off into a mini theme on construction vehicles; or an interest in spacecraft could launch a theme about Outer Space.  Even an interest in boats could launch an Ocean Theme. 

The next step...planning the concepts I will cover in the theme.