Signing Papers

I have a great story to tell today.  I missed school Friday and then Monday morning we had release time so we could grade common assessments collaboratively as a grade level. The guest teacher (substitute) was a lady who I am familiar with and she must have told her my class I wasn't in class because I was grading papers.  I met my students on the playground at lunch recess and several of them came running up to me and hugged me, (I love teaching early childhood!) After hugging me one of my students said, "It took you a long time to sign those papers".

Think Time

Today as we were developing our fine motor skills through coloring. As I was walking through the room I looked at a students desk and he had drawn on his desk.  On his paper he had colored one car of the train green and another car yellow.  His desk had a 2"x4" section of green and yellow scribbled on his desk. I asked him what happened and he said, "I don't know." I tried to reason with him and show him how the colors on his desk and the colors on his paper were the same colors.  Of course it was not him who created the mess on his desk.  I asked him to sit in the safe seat until he could be honest with me. About 10-15 minutes later I stopped by his safe seat to see if he knew what happened to his desk and he said, "I colored on it."  I was amazed that just a few minutes to think about what happened allowed him to be honest. 

During center time one of my boys was writing at the writing center.  He asked me how to spell I love you.  As I was helping him we got to the letter y. He asked me how to make a y. I showed him the alphabet on his name tag.  He began pointing to the letters of the alphabet and instead of singing the ABC's he started singing the letters in his name. That is when I realized how new all the information I am teaching is to my students. Being a Kindergarten teacher I have to teach everything like it's brand new information and sometimes I forget that.