I spent this morning in K's class helping with their Thanksgiving craft. The interesting thing about a Montessori classroom is how many things are occurring simultaneously. While one would assume 20 children working on separate things would be complete chaos, it is astoundingly controlled chaos. So, while one teacher was making homemade applesauce for tomorrow's feast with various children tagging in and out to assist, I was painting each child's hand prints to make pilgrims and Native Americans and another teacher was circulating with the remainder of the children as they worked on world geography, geometry, reading, spelling and writing.
For almost two hours this was the way things went. Amazing.
Can I just mention that it is much harder than most people realize to paint hands and fingers of wiggly, squiggly little people? I appreciate preschool teachers more and more each time I am in the classroom. What a gift they have to so patiently and lovingly do their jobs everyday!
As I was cleaning up the paints the children went to line time and the teacher led them in a story that I adapted for our devotion time this evening. I wanted to pass the story of The Turkey with the Terrible Temper along for those of you who might want to do something seasonal. (*I adapted this to include a Christian component of praying for God to help. The original story was more how the turkey tried harder to learn how to control his temper.)
I am not crafty, so I simply printed a turkey from a free coloring pages website and colored his feathers as we went through the story. If you google the story you can find all sorts of fancier version with water and food coloring or felt, etc...
The children loved the story and it was a great springboard for us to talk about praying for God to help us control our emotions. (A great reminder for me, too.)
1 comment:
I love that story! I use it every year at Thanksgiving. I am not at all crafty, but I traced turkey patterns onto felt and use the felt pieces to tell the story. The kids get a kick out of it, but more importantly (especially in my classroom where students with behavior disorders are often found!) they see both that others struggle with their tempers and that one can overcome this.
Since I teach in a public school, I won't be adding God or prayer to the story, but it's a good reminder for me.
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