Teacher Inspiration

As a teacher, I'm always looking for new ideas.  Two new books, Playful Learning and The Write Start have provided just that.  While written for parents who want to incorporate more learning opportunities into their homes, there are tons of great ideas for early childhood teachers.  Both books do a good job expanding the ideas to reach all levels of children.  As a classroom teacher, I also felt that books reinforced my own teaching practices.

As soon as I saw the shell counting idea in Playful Learning, I had to incorporate it into our ocean themed science lesson.  The kids had a great time putting the shells on the little sand islands and I was quickly able to evaluate their one-to-one correspondence. The cards can be used again when we begin to discuss the concepts of greater than/less than and addition.

The authors of Playful Learning and The Write Start also have wonderful blogs that I have followed for years.