Elementary Tales

It's important to start each preschool day the same.  Children thrive with routine and you will notice that behavior problems are significantly minimized when children know what's going to happen.  A timid child will have less difficulty saying goodby to Mom and an energetic child will get right to work.  Needless to say, each morning for us starts the same.  Which means planning is pretty repetitive as well.  My first task is to find a theme.  I use The Peaceful Preschool curriculum from The Peaceful Press to find a theme.  The next step is to go online and reserve five to six books on the same theme from our local county library system.  This planning stage must take place several days in advance in order for the books to be available in time.  Otherwise, I have to make an extra trip to the library to pull books myself.  Now I need to come up with several hands-on, student-led, independent activities to set out for stations.  When the girls arrive, they immediately

My daughter has been getting her 9s and 6s mixed up.  She gets them right about half the time.  The great thing about the Peaceful Preschool numeral cards is that she can self-correct by counting the dots. For a quick math lesson, I gave her three cards and instructed her to order them a certain way (first three digits of my phone number).  She mixed up the 6 and the 9 but I didn't stop her and most importantly I did NOT tell her she was WRONG!  I let her finish her thought process and then asked her a series of questions that led her to finding and correcting her own mistake. Why is this important?  Because as children grow, they become more afraid of messing up.  They don't want to take chances or even TRY for fear of getting it wrong.  Take every opportunity to build your child's confidence.   Confidence is one of the 6 Cs that help your child become "well-adjusted critical thinkers," ( Becoming Brilliant, What Science Tells Us About Raising Successf