SHOW AND TELL
Bring a picture of an insect.
Topic: Insects
It’s 90% of the Earth’s creatures
The value is humility, and we’ll be learning to respect the small creatures that share our world.
For cooking, we’ll try pretzel butterflies and sun-dried apples.
Outside, we’ll go on a bug hunt.
The songs we’ll be singing are Itsy, Bitsy Spider, The Ants Go Marching, Shoo Fly, Let There Be Peace on Earth, and We Shall Overcome.
For creative dramatics, we’ll practice moving like an insect.
Our art activities are pinch-bug magnets, construction paper butterfly, circle caterpillars, and ladybug life cycle.
For motor development, we’ll work on coordination with moving like a grasshopper, a cricket, a butterfly, a bee, a daddy longlegs, and a praying mantis. For bilaterality we’ll do a moon walk, play popcorn, roll a ball with partners, and hop like a camel.
THE LAW OF THE HARVEST
There is an immutable natural law called the law of the harvest. It says that what you plant and cultivate is what you get. A great deal of that law applies to children.
There is a workshop called “Who’s in Charge?” that uses a simple three-step procedure for disciplining children. For many of us, discipline is a difficult issue whether it has to do with our caloric intake, the way we spend time or money, or the way we manage our children. The most important point that the workshop makes is that it’s imperative that we be the parent, to be the one in charge, to be the AUTHORITY. We hear so much today about children not respecting authority that we’re overwhelmed by the immensity of the problem. And yet from the workshop came the message loud and clear – I AM THE AUTHORITY. In our home, with our children, I have the right, indeed the responsibility, to exercise my authority. In a very short ten years, our preschoolers of today will be as tall and taller than we are. And they will behave in approximately the same way then as they do today. Their personalities and their emotions will not be more “mature”. They’ll be deep in the throes of adolescence then with hormones and identity crises everywhere, very like the terrible two’s, a similar transition from babyhood to childhood.
Is there something you would like to change? Is your child’s behavior today going to be acceptable when he’s 6’ tall? The method proposed in the workshop was unbelievably simple. You explain in short sentences what you want your child to stop doing. (“Start” behaviors such as cleaning rooms or eating dinner needs different techniques.) “That’s 1”. If the undesirable behavior continues for 10-30 seconds, “That’s 2”. You cannot explain, get angry, or argue. The words must be totally emotionless. If the undesirable behavior continues for 10-30 seconds, “That’s 3”, and the child is removed to a time-out place for an appropriate time. (Appropriate is 1-2 minutes for each year old of the child.) No emotion, no words, and no making up afterwards, not even discussing the situation. This has to be a totally clean procedure. And it is unbelievably effective. It also has to be done every single time the behavior occurs. As a parent, you must be totally consistent.
Try it. I found that when I junk it up with emotion or extra explanation, effectiveness decreases proportionately. An extra motivator for me is imagining the same behavior in a 15-year-old. I’d better get my act together today
classroom news
Ian’s attention span is improving; he worked with the knobbles cylinders for a long period of time before moving on to another work. Kinsley enjoys working with the sea animals she knows all the names to the various sea animals and reinforces her knowledge by repeating work. Leo likes the geometric shape work; his vocabulary improves as he learns the names of the many different shapes.
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