If you find creepy crawlies unbearable, you may have to fake it for the sake of the kids. The children will watch your reactions to see how they are supposed to feel about unfamiliar experiences or things.  You have all seen children running and screaming from a couple of buzzing bees.  They learned this from somewhere.  It is an unnecessary overreaction to bees.  For the most part, bees will not hurt you (unless there is an allergy- – which is a whole other  situation).

The children in your program will love studying bugs.  There are so many mathematical concepts in the world of bugs.  All insects have 3 body parts, 2 antennae, and 6 legs.  This alone is a good starting place.

On Mondays, I am going to introduce you to all sorts of cool bug manipulatives, on Tuesdays we are going to explore counting and how we can use insects as a place to work on early counting skills.  On Wednesdays, we will explore a few websites with fun bug games or teacher materials to supplement your bug exploration.  On Thursdays, we will look at ways to develop an integrated curriculum study on insects, and on Fridays, we will talk about good parent newsletters as a means of communicating about the thematic insect unit.

Listen to what the family has to say about concerns about their children’s learning.  Understand that their hopes and dreams for their children are deeply rooted in their own personal cultural context. Because of this they may be more focused on one area of development than you are.  This is to be expected.   Try and communicate with them about their children in their language of origin.  Help them understand that children are a “work in progress” and although some assessments may reveal information that is a cause for a pause, most children under 5 will excel in some ways and lag behind in others.

Two weeks ago I wrote about “looking for progress in children’s development.” Help parents understand that they can do this as well.  Encourage them to see the small steps their children are taking as small and consistent  successes.  Rather than focusing on the speed of skill attainment, help them focus on skill development.  Remind them how one word answers become two words answers.  Two words answers become complete sentences.  Walking turns into running.  Running is the precursor to jumping.  Jumping later becomes hopping and hopping turns into a full game of “Hopscotch” and Skipping Rope.

Try using language like, “We are a strengths-based program.”  Rather than focusing on deficiencies, focus on strengths.  All children have them- sometimes we have to look a little harder to see them, but they are there. Once parents are sure that you have their children’s best interests at heart, they will better be able to handle negative information when it comes along.

1.  They had to be educators (in some capacity).

2.  They had to parents (in some capacity).

That means that I sent the questionnaire out to dozens of people who I know who fit into both of the above categories.  The educators range for early childhood professionals to college professors.  They are local, national and international.  The parents range from having adult children to being brand new moms and dads.

My thinking is this…

Wouldn’t it be interesting to hear from parents who know something about education to find out how they felt about the own children’s early childhood experiences in math?  Was it satisfactory?  What were the strengths and what were the challenges?  I also wanted to hear what they hoped for and how they might have done things differently.

Their answers might surprise you.

Over the next several Fridays, I am going to post their responses to the questionnaire and we can discuss them.

It got me thinking about email communications and how often they can cause more problems than they solve.  As a quick means of getting a message to and fro, email is unsurpassed.    You can set up most emails so you can see if the message has been opened, read or forwarded.  This means you can rest assured that your message has arrived at its correct destination.  I also appreciate having a written record of conversations, so that there is no room for revisionist history (this is especially true for my communications with my students).

However, email communications pose all sorts of other problems that we as educators and as parents should be aware of.  It is very easy to misconstrue the tone of an email message, since you cannot hear the voice of the speaker, nor can you see their body language.  It is also possible that a typo can change a message completely, from “I would like to get together,” to “I wouldn’t like to get together.”  Once written, it is hard to take it back or fix it.

It is also really important to write correctly, without spelling or writing errors, so you are seen as a literate, well-spoken professional.  Once you send out an email riddled with (or even having one error) you may forever be seen as the “teacher who can’t write”.

For these reasons, I think we should tread carefully when sending emails.  Be sure to check your emails carefully for any mistakes, and if you think the tone may be problematic, have someone else read it first and see what they think.  It is better to be safe than sorry when communicating between parents and teachers.

We began to WEB! Lots of teachers use WEBS to plan (like the one above).  I am talking about using WEBS to communicate.

There are several reasons why I love the WEB for communicating with parents.

1.  A WEB is created by teachers and children.  Newsletters are usually written exclusively by teachers.

2.  A WEB is flexible.  It looks different each week and grows exponentially with the interesting and engaging things you do with children.

3.  A WEB is the beginning of a conversation between children and parents.  Newsletters are usually read by parents and then tossed (so sad!).

4.  A WEB is eye-catching and appealing. Newsletters may look sad.

5.  A WEB takes a very short time to read. Newsletters can be too wordy and heavy to read.  Busy parents might put them aside and forget about them.

So, how do you create your first WEB?  I like to sit the children down and ask them about the week.  You can begin by asking, “What did we do this week?” and brainstorm all of the interesting things that happened.  For each thing they come up with, ask a follow-up question, like, “Did we do anything else about that?” These extra activities are webbed out from the central topic.  I am attaching Weekly Web here (it is a pretty simple example, but you can get the picture).

Give webbing a try- see if you like it.

The letters are in an easy-to-use format so that each center can personalize them.  On the right side of each page there is a button that says “Share with Parents”.  The letters are then downloaded in a .doc format.  It’s as easy as that!