Children's Center Structured Environment

I observed Circle Time in the Children’s Center on Monday February 23 during afternoon preschool, from approximately 1:04 to 1:24, led by Miss Megan. During this time on Mondays, there are five student workers which seems a bit overwhelming for the students. At the start of every preschool day the children sing a welcome song, Rise and Shine. They sing it once in a regular singing voice, again in a loud voice and finally in a whisper. They do little motions with it and almost all of the children love the song and sing along all three times. Those who do not sing, for the most part, sit quietly and listen, rather than being silly or distracting. Lately, Miss Megan has been picking two children to stand up in front of the class to help with the song. One child asked, “Hey, what about me?” after he was not selected. The topic for this week is an author study of Jan Brett. Miss Megan introduced it by saying that it was an author and writing – “_an _rett” – on the white board for them, then showing them two of her books that the children heard earlier in the year and asking, “Can you remember who the author is?” Many children wanted to share their ideas and most raised their hands and waited to be called. This is something that they really stress in the Center, which is important on the road to classroom behavior when the children get to kindergarten, in the near future. After they figured out the letters, they sounded the words out using the letter sounds and talked about the double t ending only makes one t sound, rather than two.

Once they figured out the author, they were very excited to hear her stories, Gingerbread Baby and Gingerbread Friends, again. Many of them asked to hear them, even though they were both already read aloud to them. When Miss Megan told them they weren’t going to read it, then engaged in a discussion about the last time they read Gingerbread Baby when they made the gingerbread person and he ran away. She asked them, “How did he got out of the oven?” She let many of the children share their creative ideas. This discussion also trickled into free choice time, when the child I observe talked about it again during snack time.

Once Megan started reading, the students were very engaged in the story. They all sat cross-legged and faced forward, though one child needed a few reminders because he is new to preschool this semester. All the students paid attention, making predictions and connections and asking questions about the story as she read. They do a great job of noticing things going on in the pictures. Jan Brett also uses a lot of border art, which tells a totally separate story from the one that the words tell. After they read through the whole story, they went back and told the story in the border art, which they loved.