9/20/2008

Photographs in the classroom


Every classroom needs on of these. A digital picture frame! It's perfect. See, this is how I would use it:
Have two cards for your digital camera. Put one card in the camera for the morning and fill it up with pictures; making sure to get all the children in several different pictures throughout the day.
At nap time, put the card into the picture frame that is displayed at the sign in area of the classroom. This way, when parents come in to pick their children up, they can see what they did all day.
Put the second card in the camera. The next morning, start taking more pictures. Leave the first card in the frame and down at children's level. This way they will get to enjoy looking at the pictures all day. This allows you to also take more pictures (the second card). Then, repeat the process at nap time, changing out the cards.
When you take out the first card, download all the pictures to the computer where you have your digital portfolios on the children...what? You're old-school like us and don't have digital portfolios? That's okay, still download the pictures to the computer, take note of the evidence that was collected (pedals a tricycle, reads books, writes name, etc...) and print out those pictures and put that into your paper file portfolio or children's notebooks.
See, having these pictures up for the parents to see allows you to show them the fun that their children had all day. Having the pictures available for the children is great fun for them and is perfect for conversation starters and so many social skills. Then there is the added plus of evidence collected for the assessments.
If I were still running a center, I would make a point to put one of these in every classroom. They are awesome!

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