A New Type of Resolution.

I’m not sure about anyone else, but in my world, New Year’s resolutions are usually overrated, overstated, and quite unattainable. Losing copious amounts of weight or exercising hours a day just aren’t in the cards for me. To be clear, I’m quite happy with my weight and I do exercise a few times a week. What more can I hope for?

I’d like to offer a new type of New Year’s resolution to my friends this year. Try something small, something attainable, something not only to help yourself, but those around you. Try smiling more.

I know, it sounds silly… and simple, but sometimes silly and simple are the way to go. When I’m asked in a job interview (it’s been awhile) about my strengths, I always list smiling as one. While I’ve been told I have a nice smile (thank you to my dental hygienist Nicole, she’s the best), I don't mean the quality of my smile, but the frequency that it’s offered.

A few years ago, a coworker who I didn't know very well stopped me in the hallway and asked, ‘You always seem so happy, are you really?”

I was surprised by her question. After taking a slight pause, I replied, “Yes, actually I am.”

It’s the smiling. If you smile a lot, you actually feel happier and those around you pick up on it. Like almost everything else in kindergarten, it’s contagious. According to several spiritual traditions, smiling is the secret to health and serenity. Sometimes I smile when nobody is looking… giving yourself a smile is like buying candy for your soul… except it’s free and won’t cause cavities.

So this New Year’s, if you’re feeling overwhelmed by trying to keep some lofty goal, borrow mine. Try smiling more.

Giveaway - HeidiSongs! - WINNER!

Using the lovely (and free) service at random.org to pick a winner (truly the only fair way to do it), Sarah L. was selected! Sarah will receive the HeidiSongs prize package detailed below as soon as I receive her mailing adress (Sarah - you've been emailed, just reply back to me privately).

Congratulations to Sarah and thank you to everyone who entered. There was almost five hundred entries! Thanks for a wonderful 2010 and here's to an even more amazing 2011.

Giveaway - HeidiSongs! - Last Day to Enter!

The HeidiSongs Giveaway (below) ends tomorrow, 12/29 at midnight E.S.T. If you haven't entered yet, go ahead an enter! Remember you can enter once a day until the deadline! So far over 400 amazing folks have entered! I'll be announcing the winner here Thursday 12/30. Good luck!

Giveaway - HeidiSongs!

Recently, as I perused the data from my first report cards, I realized, as a whole, my class was really struggling with teen numbers. They are TRICKY - that's for sure, but we needed to focus on them and try to get the majority of the class on track. As I was flipping through my resources at school, I stumbled upon my HeidiSongs CDs and DVDs. Heidi Butkus is a kindergarten teacher who created these resources to help her own students. They are extremely catchy tunes that really do help with remembering skills and concepts.

HeidiSongs has a CD or DVD for almost everything you can think of... sight words, letters, sounds, numbers, math concepts, you name it. In my classroom, we have been singing and moving to the songs for numbers 11-19 for a few weeks and I'm starting to see a big improvement. Her catchy tunes really do hit the spot. Heidi also has a blog with LOTS of free resources. Her music and blog are truly invaluable.

As my holiday gift to one lucky winner, I'm giving away the following HeidiSongs prize package (click on each for a product overview):

• Jumpin' Numbers and Shakin' Shapes CD
• Musical Math CD
• Sing & Spell #1 the Sight Words CD
• Jumpin' Numbers Vol. 2 - 11 through 30 DVD

Pretty cool, huh? How do you enter to win?

Click here and leave me your name (first name is sufficient) and email address. That's it. No need to follow or 'like' me on facebook, although I always appreciate both. The contest is open to friends in the United States only (sorry my international friends, but this to keep my shipping costs down). You can enter up to once a day until Wednesday, December 29th. The winner will be announced Thursday, December 30th. Good luck to all!

This is my chance to say thank you and help someone else utilize a wonderful resource that has proven so helpful in my own classroom.

Bingo!

Twice a week, Mrs. D. and I are able to split our entire class by ability. It’s brilliant. Half of them go to a special and we’re left with half the number of sprouts and both of us. Sometimes we even get another adult in to help out. We are able to do some serious interventions with a small group and our class really seems to thrive with this individualized attention.

Last week, on one of these days, we decided to play Alphabet Bingo with our group needing more work on letter identification. One of the aspects of kindergarten I love most is introducing your students to something they’ve never experienced before. When you’re five, you haven’t lived long and there is much to take in. As luck would have it, most of the kids had never played Bingo before.

Now Bingo is nothing fancy. There are no flashing lights or blips and bleeps. It’s pretty boring if you stop to think about it. Well, you would think these kids were playing for all the booty under their collective Christmas trees. They were seriously excited, enthralled, and entertained.

Oh, and there was learning going on to boot. That’s the catch – they’ve having fun, playing, but learning and they don’t even know it. Us kindergarten teachers are sneaky that way. And what did you get if you won a round of Alphabet Bingo? Why you get to come up and call out the letters for the next round. What a prize!

As we finished our time with Bingo, I walked around the room and saw sprouts helping each other identify letters and strengthening their letter identification skills. Of course, they were having a blast. Like the sign outside my door says, ‘Work hard, have fun.’

Clarice.

This afternoon, as we watched Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer on our Smart Board, I was grateful for the mix of high-tech wizardry (the Smart Board) and low-tech magic (the stop motion animation of the 1964 classic). Sitting in Mrs. D.’s rocking chair and looking out at our sprouts, finally calm in front of a video after a day of pre-holiday activities, I was calmed by the tranquility of the group.

And then the part of the program where Rudolph meets Clarice arrived. For the uninitiated, Clarice is a doe who, naturally, has ridiculously long eyelashes that never seem to stop batting at her new beau Rudolph.

After a few moments of speaking, Clarice, overtaken by her love for Rudolph, breaks out into song. As she opened her tiny stop motion mouth to belt out the tune, ‘There’s Always Tomorrow’ suddenly the quiet of our room was pierced.

Betsy, who herself spends an awful lot of time batting her eyelashes, was singing right along with Clarice… every single word. I was surprised she knew all the words and was able to match the high pitch of the doe. As the song reached it’s climax, Betsy reached out her hand for dramatic effect. It was quite a performance.

Tomorrow is the last day before our holiday break. The pre-Santa energy is reaching a peak in the classroom. As the children filed out at bus time, someone mistakenly wished me a premature ‘Merry Christmas’ a day too soon. I reminded them we still had school tomorrow and then began singing, ‘There’s Always Tomorrow’… Betsy, never one to miss her cue, joined right in and made for a wonderful duet partner. And with that, I leave you with this:

Idioms.

id·i·om –noun. an expression whose meaning is not predictable from the usual meanings of its constituent elements, as kick the bucket or hang one's head, or from the general grammatical rules of a language.

One of the many joys of working with young children is their discovery of language. The ins and outs of the English language can be tricky, and as children uncover the nuances, often humor is involved. Today at bus time, Martin was chatting with me about his brother.

“Is he older or younger?” I inquired.

“He’s older… oh, that brother, he really drives me up the nuts,” he said.

I think he was going for either ‘he drives me up the wall’ or ‘he drives me nuts’ – but what he said was, ‘he drives me up the nuts’.

“Excuse me?” I asked for clarification.

“He teases me and tickles me, my brother just simply drives me up the nuts,” he explained.

With that, Martin’s bus was called, I received a great big bear hug, and he was on his way. Teaching kindergarten is no piece of cake… it’s often all Greek to me and I find myself having to bite my tongue or feeling like the new kid on the block, but working with these kids, with all the hugs and laughter, the learning that takes place is just icing on the cake.

Believe.

Oh how I adore The Polar Express. We spent a full week reading and learning about Hanukah. I think my sprouts know much more about the festival of lights than they did before. That being said, I haven’t found a book about Hanukah that is quite as magical as Chris Van Allsburg's award winning story.

As the cover was displayed, most of the children had some connection. This was a story they were at least familiar with on some level. We learned about Santa and his gift of a bell to the boy in the story. We discovered that his sister could also hear the bell, but his parents could not. As the boy’s sister got older, eventually she couldn’t hear the bell anymore, but the boy always did. He believed.

At the end of the day, we headed out for recess as usual. When we arrived back in the classroom afterwards, I heard the jingling of bells. Then the screams… ‘He was here! Santa was here!’ erupt from the children like the elves in the story upon seeing their mighty leader. Not one child questioned where these bells came from… Santa (or maybe one of his elves) had come to our classroom to deliver each of them an enchanted bell.

I’m not sure when children stop believing. I’m sure at some point I questioned the existence of the plump jolly guy in the red suit. Then something magical happened to me… I started teaching kindergarten. The spirit of the sprouts surrounding me each day began turning the imaginary clock of my soul backwards. Their exuberance and innocence started helping me see the world a little differently. They don’t question, they just believe.

I’ve become a convert. Watching their excitement, enthusiasm, and sheer joy for the season as made me believe again. When they raised their bells in celebration today, I heard them too. Each and every one.

Fluke.

An important part of building our classroom community is the Sharing component of Morning Meeting. During this time, each child gets to share something important with the entire class. We use a fake plastic microphone that really adds some pizzazz. Everyone has to listen to the microphone holder and it’s another opportunity to practice patience and listening skills.

Most friends share items from home. We’ve found out about little brothers and sisters on the way, new pets, the passing of loved ones and pets, movies seen, holiday decorating, visits from grandparents, you name it. Naturally in kindergarten, sharing is often humorous.

Today, when Darlene got the microphone, she reported, “I went to the doctor’s and had to get my fluke shot.”

Yes, fluke shot. Sometimes when sprouts make these errors, I question them and try to correct the misuse of a word, but in Darlene’s case, we didn't really have time, and I thought it was quite cute. So I let her go on believing it’s called a fluke shot. Personally, I don’t care for shots, so I don’t see how one could be considered a stroke of good luck, but hey, I don’t usually get a sticker and lollipop afterwards either.

Audra.

During those first few days of school, teachers do something bad… well most teachers do… well at least I do. In the chaos of those initial days, as I try to reach the surface and get a gasp of air, I scan the room and identify those kids who you think are going to be difficult and those who aren’t. It’s not fair, it’s not on purpose, it just happens. With each year of experience I gain, I realize more and more how wrong I usually am.

This year, the sprout I was most wrong about was Audra. It didn’t help that a few staff members knew her from outside of school and had ‘warned’ me about her… it didn’t help that her parents let me know she could be ‘difficult’ at times… it didn’t help that she showed up those first few days and looked like she’d rather be getting a cavity filled than be in kindergarten.

In a word, Audra appeared crabby. She didn’t seem to like anything we did, any of the other children much, or her teachers. When we sang and moved, she just stood there. Sometimes I thought I could see her lips moving, but I think she might have just been grumbling. I feared it was going to be a dreadfully long year for all of us.

After a few weeks something started to change. As we all settled into the routines of kindergarten, Audra relaxed and began… blossoming. She started singing… she started dancing… she started to love working – especially writing. She started giving hugs… she’s become one of the most frequent huggers… the other day I called her my ‘Velcro friend’ and she laughed. She laughed.

Now when I see those staff members who know her and they ask about her, I gleefully report how well she is doing in all areas. I take a small bit of satisfaction in the surprised looks on their faces. She has become a child who loves just about everything about school. She’s a model student. She’s showing her sweet and caring self just about all the time.

Naturally the lesson here is not to be quick to judge our students. I’m not sure that will happen, because those first few days, we’re all in survival mode. Rather, become aware of those judgments, but don’t hold on to them. Realize, just as the craziness of those first few weeks morphs into a calm and trusting community, so will your perceptions.

Our class wouldn’t be the same without Audra. I sincerely look forward to seeing her smile each morning and knowing she’s going to be helping out anyway she can and offering up hugs every few minutes. She now clearly loves school and I simply adore her.