SOMETIMES I FORGET.....

I don't always remember how much I affect the activity level in the classroom.

Yesterday, the children were playing pretty well. I was spending a lot of time helping children with table projects during the playtime. We were finishing our Food and Nutrition theme with paper hot dogs and hamburgers, along with the place mats depicting all of the food groups we introduced each day. When everyone had finished the table work, I cleaned up the tables. There was still plenty of play time left. Suddenly the activity level increased and they became less and less focused. Eventually they stopped playing and began asking if it was clean-up time yet.

My working parent commented on how the group of children had started wandering and couldn't find anything to do. She and I looked at each other and tried to figure out what was happening. When I got everything put away, I sat down at the playdough table. At some point in our conversation, we noticed that the children had all settled down and began playing with something or someone again. It was a dramatic transformation.

THEN I remembered!