Lunch Conversation at Preschool

Our little preschool offers an after school program, where children can stay for an extra two hours after the school day is over. They can play on the playground, do crafts, and generally just have fun. They also get to eat lunch, which they bring from home.

I had the privilege of working Stay 'N' Play this year, and got to eat lunch with the students nearly every day. This is always fun. A highlight for the kids is when they ask me to help them open their fruit cup or yogurt. Because, inevitably, without fail, I would spill whatever it was that I was opening down the front of me. By the end of the year, I could seriously rock the "yogurt down the chest with Dole peaches splashed on top" look. My own kids absolutely loved it when I picked them up from their school sporting this look.

One of the best parts of working Stay 'N' Play for me was simply talking with the kids. I love listening to how they interact with each other, the things they say and how no matter how outrageous the lunch conversation might be, no one under the age of 6 ever bats an eyelash. Those older than 6? Well, I for one have blown Diet Pepsi out my nose on more than one occasion.

The following is a lunch conversation that took place during the last week of school....


Lynn: I haven't pooped in a long time.

Kobey: I pooped just now. It stank.

Lynn: My mom says I need to poop everyday. She said my poops are all stuck in my butt.

Lilly: Why would they want to stay in your butt? Mine always want to come out.

Lynn: My mom says I need to eat different food to make the poop come out. I have an apple and a bagel (holds them up for all to see). She said if I eat these the poops will come out.

Me: Well, go ahead and eat them.

Lynn: But I don't want them to come out here!

Me: It will take at least an hour for that food to make the poops come out. Your mom will be here before then.

Lynn looks at me doubtfully as she begins to munch on her apple.

Lilly, to me: Do you know Zack?

Me: Yep (Zack is Lilly's older brother, and one of my former students)

Lilly, to everyone else: Well, Zack, he is my brother, and he is a dude. Dude means he is a boy.

Everyone else: nods in understanding and agreement.

Lynn: I don't have a dude for a brother. I only have a sister. Who's a girl.

Lilly: Well, since Zack is a dude, he has a penis. And I am not allowed to touch his penis because that is his private place. Mom tells me over and over to respect his privacy.

Bob: I have a penis - does that mean I am a dude?

Lilly: Yep. Only dudes get to have a penis.

Bob: You know what I have? (I am expecting the worst here) A new Lego set.

Kobey: Cool!

Lilly: I don't like legos.

Lynn: My dad likes Legos.

Me: I love Legos, but I can't make cool things out of them

Bob, with exasperated eye roll: No, you can't, Mrs. Velarde, Legos are for KIDS.

And so the conversation continued in that vein. I think they eventually jumped to Star Wars. What struck me about this whole exchange is that I was the only one freaking out about the topic selections. Everyone calmly ate their sandwiches and drank their juice boxes while I was was mentally trying to figure out how to delicately change topics without anyone's feelings getting hurt or causing some other emotional damage. But my intervention was not needed, because, to little ones, talking about their body is as natural as talking about their toys.

Gosh, wouldn't it be nice to have that ability as an adult?

Colleague: Wow, you seem a little off today.

Me: My poops are stuck in my butt.

Colleague: Did you eat an apple? That always makes my poops come out.

Me: No, but thanks for the advice!

Yeah, that will never happen.....






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My Ears Heard You....

At our little preschool we have two raised gardens - one is for planting and one is for digging. The Planting Garden is where classes transplant their bean sprouts, plant seeds, and observe how cool it is to see what you plant actually grow. The Digging Garden, is for, well, digging. We put earth worms in the Digging Garden, as well as lady bugs. This year we have had a ton of pill bugs, and our miniature entomologists have been having a field day. The Digging Garden is also where Patton lives.

Well, we are almost to May, and all the students know the rules of the gardens. You dig in the Digging Garden and you simply observe in the Planting Garden - no digging and NO PULLING UP THE PLANTS. And since about January, everyone has pretty much accepted this rule, and abides by it as well. It has been easier to enforce because everyone is excited about the plants they have planted, and they don't want to pull them out.

Everyone except Lilly. For some reason, Lilly got it in her head this week that she was going to pull out all of the brand new sprouts in our Planting Garden. She was stopped twice by Mrs. D.. who reminded her of the rules. This, however did nothing to deter Lilly from her mission. As soon as Mrs. D. walked away, she resumed her task. I watched her get back to pulling and immediately reminded her (again) of the rules....

"Lilly, you may not pull the plants out of the garden. We planted these so we could watch them grow. You need to leave them alone. This is is the third time we have reminded you to stop pulling out the plants." For some reason, I always tell students how many times I have told them something. Like they are really interested that I keep score. This method doesn't work with my own kids, and the preschool kids really don't care either how many times I say something. They probably think I am just patting myself on the back. (Look how many times I can repeat the same thing. I rock.)

Lilly's response to my reprimand was to simply continue with what she was doing without even skipping a beat. She barely made eye contact.

Taken aback (I usually at least get eye contact), I changed my tone to be more "mom" in nature and I grabbed her hand as it was just about to yank out another innocent seedling. I got right down on her level, and then, I middle named her...

"Lilly Jane Davis, you MAY NOT pull out the plants!! These plants are NOT YOURS. Your friends planted these plants and you MAY NOT PULL THEM OUT!! You need to STOP RIGHT NOW! If you want to pull out plants, let's go pull weeds out of the other garden."

This time, Lilly looked at me, but went for another seedling anyway, with the hand that I was holding.

Exasperated, I just said, "Lilly!"

To which she responded, very matter-of-factly, "Mrs. Velarde, my ears heard you, but my hands haven't heard you yet."

What do you say to that???

Me? I just laughed, and carried her to another area of the playground. And then went and replanted what she had pulled out.

And, there is yet another instance where I have been outsmarted by a three year old.




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Don't Worry, I Put it On Vibrate

Last summer, I ran over my cell phone. A rather silly story you can read about here. My husband pieced it back together for me, and even though it never worked again, it looked like it should. It had been sitting on my desk, useless, for months (I am not one to really ever put things away...) when it hit me that I could put the useless cell phone in my dramatic play center. The kids would probably like it. I wrote "Pretend phone" on the back of it and tossed it in to the center.

It didn't take them long to discover it. At first, they tried to return it. ("Mrs. V., some grown up lost a cell phone"), but when I told them it was for them to play with, the imaginations took off. Next thing I know they are calling me, calling each other, making appointments and texting. It was interesting how they were able to hold the phone in the proper texting position, and their thumbs would fly.

One morning, we were walking to music class (which is in a different room), and I saw one of my students pull the play cell phone out of his pocket and push a few buttons. When he saw me looking at him, he said, "Don't worry, I put it on vibrate." Well, good, I thought, at least it won't ring during class.

During class, as we were dancing around the room, the keeper of the phone suddenly stopped what he was doing, pulled the phone out of his pocket, and started pressing some buttons. He looked up and said to me, "That was just my dad, he texted me."

I said, "Did you tell him we were in music class?"

"Yes, I am going to call him back later."

And sure enough, later on the playground, I found him underneath the slide, "talking" to his dad on the broken cell phone.



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You Belong in Preschool

This past weekend my family and I went camping with a group of friends. Correction - the friends were camping, my family and I met them at the campsite and spent the day. I...am not a camper. Sleeping in a tent? On the ground? In the cold? With bugs? Um...not for this preschool teacher. Blegh.


Anyways, back to my story. Because it is such a small world, a family that attends the preschool was camping in this group we met up with, they were friends of friends, you know how it goes. I was interested to see how the little preschool student would react to seeing me there.


Because, preschoolers always get a little weirded out when they see their teachers outside of school. They are either terrified, or beyond excited. And if you look the slightest bit different, they quite possibly won't even recognize you.


Example: I was running in the park across the street from my house and playing in the park was one of my students. I was wearing my glasses (I wear contacts usually at school), a hat, workout clothes, and no make-up. I go up to this little girl to say, "Hi!". She took one look at me and screamed, "I DON"T KNOW YOU! GO AWAY!" and ran and hid behind her mother. This same little girl spent 45 minutes on my lap a mere three hours prior to this encounter. But outside of school sans make-up I went from beloved teacher to scary stranger. And this is pretty much how it goes.


So, at the campsite, I was wondering how little Sara was going to react. At first she didn't even give me a second glance. I was just another adult among many. An hour or so later she walked by, giving me the hairy eyeball...you could just see her brain working. A few hours in she walks up to me and just stood there.

Me: "Hi Sara!"

Sara: *glare*

Me: "Are you having fun?"

Sara: more glaring

Me: "Do you know who I am?"

Sara: "You...you....YOU BELONG IN PRESCHOOL!!"

Me: "But I am camping with you right now"

Sara: "Oh, ok. Could you tell Shawn to share his ball with me then?"


I am happy to report that Sara and Shawn worked things out, ball-wise, without my help.






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Creating Static

As part of my unit on electricity, I decided to talk a little about static electricity as well. Static electricity is a fun concept, there are lots of experiments to demonstrate it in action. And while I had pages and pages of fun demonstrations, I wanted to at least introduce the some of the science behind it.

So, I did some research. As I read through the information, my brain slowly started to go to mush. If this stuff is boring me to tears, how will I explain it to a room full of young children? I started again, trying to figure out the key things I wanted to get across. Atoms (ok, we had talked about those); protons and neutrons (covered those, too); electrons (yep, also familiar territory); positive and negative charge (ack! what? my brain hurts).

I decided to touch on the very basic aspects of static electricity, using the terminology we had already touched on while talking about electricity. Using my atom diagram, I explained that sometimes when you rub two items together (I used a balloon on the carpet), the electrons from one item will jump to another item, causing it to have more electrons than it needs. Now these extra electrons need a place to go, and when the item with the extra electrons find another item with no extra electrons, the electrons will jump to the other item, making the other item stick to the first item. Ok - after all of that does your brain hurt?

As I blathered on, I used the balloon and the carpet. As I rubbed the balloon on the carpet, I explained how the balloon was getting extra electrons. Then I held the balloon over some scraps of tissue paper, and as the tissue paper jumped onto the balloon, I said, "Now the balloon is giving its extra electrons to the tissue paper." I demonstrated the same concept by sticking the balloon to the ceiling, to the wall, as well as holding the charged balloon over a child's head to make his hair stand on end. I eventually gave each child their own balloon, and they all rubbed it on the carpet to "get extra electrons", and then wandered around the room trying to figure out "where they could get rid of the extra electrons"..

To illustrate the concept of having too many electrons (and to toss in a little math), I brought out a simple balance and a bunch of milk bottle caps with the letter "E" on them. As I rubbed the balloon on the carpet, I added "electrons" to one side of the balance until it tipped to heavy side. "Now the balloon has too many electrons". As the tissue paper stuck to the balloon, I removed "electrons" from the heavy side of the balance, until the two sides were once again even. The kids then had a good time playing with the balance, and figuring out exactly how many electrons were too many. (Not being all that accurate of a balance, that number kept changing.)

We also played with static electricity using a plastic spoon and pepper...rub the spoon on carpet (getting extra electrons), then hold the spoon over the pepper (getting rid of the electrons), and the pepper jumps up to the spoon. Pretty cool.

There are a kajillion activities to illustrate static electricity. As this was my first time doing this, I chose only to touch lightly on this topic. Next year, I am thinking I will spend a little more time, and go a little deeper (positive and negative charges? possibly...). Possibly introduce magnets as a preview to static electricity. Now that I have tackled this topic, and that it was such a roaring success, I will do it again, and hopefully do it a little better.

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The Return of Patton

Our little preschool has a pet, a little desert tortoise named Patton. This little guy is on loan from Mrs. M's son, and he lives in our garden. The kids take great joy in watching him walk around the garden, feeding him lettuce, and being told "Look with your eyes, not with your hands!"

Last November, Patton went missing. Now, desert tortoises usually hibernate during the cold part of the year, and most of us assumed that Patton had simply dug himself a cozy place way down deep in the garden, and had settled down for his long winter's nap. But Mrs. M was worried...what if he had escaped? What if he was trying to make it on his own in the cold, cruel, world? How would she explain his absence to her son?

Mrs. M brought Mr. M to school, and the two of them dug around in the garden for hours, but their was no sign of Patton. Distraught, Mrs. M decided to tell her son that Patton is hibernating, and deal with the consequences later.

I, on the other hand, was confident Patton was in the garden somewhere. I helped install these gardens, unless he grew really long legs and walked away, or hired a backhoe and tunneled his way out, he was in that garden somewhere.

Months pass. The weather starts to warm up.

One sunny afternoon, Mrs. A and I were outside, sitting on the garden wall, when Mrs. A asks me, "So, do you think Patton will ever show up again?"

And, at that moment, right on cue, out pops Patton from the dirt! He was dirty, and hungry and thirsty, but seemed pretty happy to see us, and once again become the focus of lots and lots



(that's him right in the middle)








and LOTS of attention.















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It's Electric!

This week my theme was Electricity. I have never taught Electricity before in preschool, so this was my beta test. Could I break the whole electricity thing down into concepts three and four year olds could grasp? Well, I was going to give it a try.

I had an electricity kit that I had received at my Steve Spangler Science in the Rockies conference last summer. The unit included a UFO ball, batteries, wires, single Christmas lights and a knife switch. Also included was a lot of information on how electricity does its thing.

To start, I decided to Google "electricity activities preschool". Not surprisingly, not a lot came up. All stuff regarding electricity is geared toward older kids. I did find a couple of cool examples of static electricity, so I decided I might want to figure out how to incorporate that too.

So, what do I want to get across to the kids? Hmmm...P=IV? No...How to measure amperage? No...How about just something as simple as why a light goes on and off. Ok, I started from there. I also wanted to talk about static electricity, and that would make a discussion of atoms necessary. Well? Why not? Using the Velcro Theory, I decided I would just toss a whole lot of information at them, and see how it went.

To introduce the topic, I asked the question, "What is electricity?" This stumped them, at first. Then a little boy pipes up, "Isn't what makes the lights go on?" "Yes! What else do you turn on?" And I got all kind of answers....tvs, computers, the Wii, my nightlight, the dishwasher...we were on the right track.

Then I asked. "What if we didn't have electricity?" A sea of blank faces. I try again, "Has the power ever gone off at your house during a storm?" (Summer monsoons knock the power off a couple of times every summer here). "When the power goes out, it means you have no electricity."

"I remember when the power went off! I couldn't watch TV, and my fan didn't turn on". This comment then sparked a discussion about what doesn't work without electricity. Everyone agreed that it was VERY dark at night with no electricity, but they liked holding flashlights.

I then read "Electricity". This book compares tasks that are done with and without electricity. Like sewing by hand versus using a sewing machine. Except my students had never seen either (with one exception), so at this point we went into a detailed discussion about how clothes are made. (I now have a sewing center in my classroom). This book sparked the idea for an experiment...would a wet paper towel dry faster hanging outside or inside with a blow dryer inside. Of course, the blow dryer method proved to be the most efficient.










Using electricity to dry the paper towel

To teach them the idea of an open circuit versus a closed circuit, I got out the Energy Ball, and had the class sit in a circle and join hands. I touched one side of the ball and the child next to me touched the other. As long as everyone was touching, the ball lit up and made noise. But if just one person let go of his friends hands, the Energy Ball shut off. Just like shutting off a light. The circuit is open when we are holding hands because the atoms are flowing around us. But if I let go of your hand, the atoms don't flow, and the ball shuts off. We experimented with touching different part of the body; the ball lit up when we all held hands, when we all touched each other's noses, and even when we touched each other's elbows. The kids figured out that as long as you were touching skin, the ball would light up. It didn't take them any time at all to figure this out on their own. Soon they were sitting in small groups, making "circuits" to light up the Energy Balls. (I had a few out)

Since I mentioned the word "atoms" in our discussion, I thought I would ask if anyone knew what an atom was? "It's a guy that lives in your neighborhood!" was the answer I got. While, that is true, I said, an atom is also a very, very, very, VERY, small part of everything we see, and it is also what helps make electricity. I showed them this picture ("Wow, that looks like science a little girl exclaimed when I held it up").



An atom is made up of three parts: neutrons, protons, and electrons. The neutrons and protons are in the middle, and the electrons are around the outside. I drew a atom on the board as I described it, and stuck on paper circles labeled with N's, P's and E's in the proper spot as I talked. The kids then had to go and make their own atoms, with N's and P's in the middle, and E's on the outside.

Throwing in a little bit of literacy with my science, I had dozens of paper circles in various colors labeled with "N", "P", or "E". I gave each student a blank atom on a handout (a circle in the middle of a couple of large ovals, the circle representing the nucleus, and ovals representing the path of the electrons.) The student had to identify the letter and place it in the proper spot of the atom. And, believe it or not, everyone of them did it!

Now it was time to actually make a circuit. Hmmmm.... First thing I did was connect the wires to the battery, the knife switch and a Christmas light, and then had the kids take turns turning off and on the switch. Then I removed the battery. "Why won't the light go on?" Everyone of them figured out pretty quick that it was the battery. Because, as I was told, EVERYTHING uses batteries.

So, I reconnected the battery, but didn't connect one of the wires. "Why won't the light go on?" This one was harder. They thought, and moved things around, when suddenly a little boy yells out, "They aren't holding hands!"

Me: "Huh?" ( I am generally pretty slow on the uptake)

Eric: "The light isn't going on because the atoms aren't going around because the wires aren't holding hands" He holds up the loose wire and shakes it at me. "This needs to be holding hands with the other wires!" Wow....he got it. He used the example of the Energy Ball and all of us holding hands and then letting go. And when I explained the concept to the rest of the class using that terminology, the rest of the class got it too.

I then constructed a circuit diagram using pictures* of the things we were using (as opposed to the scientific symbols) that illustrated the first circuit I created. After everyone had had a turn constructing the circuit, we rearranged the pictures creating different combinations of the components. It didn't take them very long to figure out what combinations worked and what didn't.

*(I downloaded actual pictures of the components we were using, laminated them and then hot-glued them to magnets, so we could construct circuits on my magnetic board)


During one of these demonstrations, my light didn't light up, even though it should have with the configuration we were building. I thought maybe my battery was dead, so I ran and got a couple of other batteries to test out. And another learning opportunity was born. What battery makes the light shine brighter? We ended up testing out all different sizes of batteries, and were amazed to discover that a bigger battery didn't necessarily mean a brighter light.

This ended up being a very successful and exciting unit. (I also touched on Static Electricity, that is the next post...). I think the kids really got a lot out of it. The week following this unit I set up an Electricity Center, where they could construct their own circuits and test batteries on their own. They absolutely loved it.



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