Friday May 31st was a very interesting day. At work I am usually in the baby room but they needed me in preschool that afternoon. When I went in the children were still napping. After their nap they have an afternoon snack and then a story. I found the book "An Octopus Followed Me Home" by Dan Yaccarino (which is a Troll book). The children loved the book and they all sat quietly paying very close attention.
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When I read the book I did not let the children see the page before I read. Instead I would ask them what other animal they think the little girl has living in her house. This really works well for the preschoolers (ages 3-5) at the daycare I work at.
After the story I was planning on splitting the class in half. While one group was coloring I would play an alphabet game with the other group. However after seeing how engaged the children were with the story I changed my mind. Instead I had the children move to different parts of the floor and gave each child a large piece of paper.
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I am not sure why but coloring on the floor is so exciting at my center. If you want to really capture children's attention change things up a bit. Color on the floor or take your art supplies outside. =)
I then told them that I wanted to see what animal(s) followed them home. After I told them that I passed out some markers.
They loved it! Every child immediately starting drawing different animals on their paper. When the child was finished drawing I had each and every one come over to tell me what animal was following them home. I wrote this on their paper like:
A dog and a lion followed Miss Sara home today! =)
We had so many different animals following the children home. There were snakes, elephants, jaguars, bunnies, zebras, dogs, octopus, lions and bears.
This lesson I did really just goes to show you that as a teacher you have to be ready to think on your feet. If you don't there is bound to be some chaos!
