Food in the classroom

This is a very sore point with me. No, not really sore, but it is something that I stand firmly. I have yet to be swayed the other way and very regularly sway others mine:

Food should ONLY be used in the classroom for cooking projects!

For the most of my career, I have worked in low income centers. There are people out there who can't put food in their child's mouth, yet we send them home with rice glued to the paper. These parents walk in and look at a sensory table filled with macaroni noodles that would last them over a month! But they can't use it because those dirty hands have been all over it, the pieces have flecks of paint all over them, and they are no longer edible.

For those children in a center that don't come from these types of centers, there still is an awareness that other people in the world (other children just down the street) can't put food in their mouths, so we don't play with food.

Another argument for my side that I hear is: we don't play with our food, yet we let them play with their food. That's a weak argument, but it still stands.

My point to every teacher that asks me, "Well, what if we string cheerios on yarn and then they eat the cheerios off the necklace?" is this:

If you want to string something on a string, sting beads. You are getting the same fine motor skills accomplished. Eat cheerios for a snack! Leave the two separate!

There is NOTHING you can do as an activity in the classroom with food items that you wouldn't be able to get accomplished without food. String beads, make collages with pictures, tissue paper, rocks, beads, and all sorts of other things. Put birdseed in the sensory table, not rice and beans!

They don't need to glue macaroni to paper to create art.

You want to do an activity with food? Bake a snack. Cook lunch. Make a fruit salad. You really want to "string" food onto something, make fruit-kabobs (fruit stacked on a long toothpick like thing). You want to "creatively" use food as art; make mini pizzas and let them put the shredded cheese and pepperoni creatively on their dough or english muffin and then eat it for lunch.

Other than that, leave the food for meals!

Evidence is collected and organized...now what?

Well, now that you have collected your evidence and your observations here comes the fun part: putting it into your assessments.

Like I said, we use DRDPr; this will also work in any other assessment process as well. I do know that some assessments require you to sit the children down and test them one on one. This is not a true assessment of their abilities. I'm not endorsing you to go against your programs policies or procedures, but I am encouraging you to speak up and suggest a better way of doing things. I have seen so many other assessment pages and know that the same information you test for can be gotten through observation. Can they count to ten? Watch while they play; you'll quickly find out.

Do one assessment at a time. Take out one child's file and their assessment pages. If you know the child, you will quickly be able to complete these assessments; you could probably even do so without looking at the portfolio of observations and work. I go through and quickly mark all the items that I know without a doubt. After that I go through the portfolio and find what I need for each item to mark off.

As you go through the portfolio, you also want to mark on the assessment any evidence in the comment area (this way you can easily refer to the evidence if needed). If you find that there are items that you aren't sure of or that you have no evidence of you will know that this is something that you need to plan to do in the classroom and do some more observations.

Next, how to put this all together into a lesson plan. This will give you quality lesson plans that serves the needs of each individual child in the classroom.

Lesson time-major changes

Okay, I don't have a product to review; rather a situation. We have a child, let's call her Lacy. Lacy is under the care of her grandmother. Her mother just recently got out of jail and is beginning to be integrated into her life. Lacy is also a tomboy type personality (she was spiderman for Halloween, plays softball very well, and really relates to the boys better). She is an absolute sweetheart and has a great personality. She has more adults in her house than children, and therefore sometimes needs to be brought back down and told it's okay to be a child. She also loves her teacher, Miss N, and seeks her out. Oh, one more thing, she's 3 going on 4. I'm writing about this situation because some people might think how we resolved this issue is somewhat unfair in a classroom environment; I think that not doing it would have been unfair to Lacy.
When I walk into my center, I look out for the best interest of each individual child. This is a difficult task. How do you make sure things are fair for each child and the group as a whole? When dealing with an issue with a child, I look at what will work with just that child and "forget" about how fair or not it is with all the others. That being said, the situation:
As I said, Lacy's mom just recently came home from jail. Last week, she began hitting her teacher. She would hit, kick, throw dominoes at her, and even say not-so-nice things ("you're a poopy head." "I hate you!", etc...). Miss N was at first surprised because she has never had this level of a problem with her. The other surprising thing was that she seemed to be laughing at everything she was doing to Miss N. Lacy even smirked when I went to the classroom and Miss N brought up this issue. At nap time on Thursday, Miss N brought her into my office because she was at her wits end (Note: I don't usually allow children to be brought to my office for trouble. We deal with it in the classroom; Miss N knows and abides by this, so I knew it was urgent when she came in). She was kicking, screaming, and trying to wake the other children up. I got a thought in my head at this point: she wants Miss N to spend more time with her. So, I said "Bring her mat in here. Lacy if you hurt Miss N, you can't be in her classroom. You're going to nap in here with me." Of course, as anticipated, this upset her even more.
After she slept for about an hour, Lacy woke up. It was close to nap time being over, so I helped her up and we talked for a bit. She told me how much she loves Miss N and how "Miss N is cool." She also told me that she told Miss N she was sorry at the lunch table. And I believe she really was. I also believe that this change in home scenarios and her limited 3 year old vocabulary, has caused her to react in this way. She hasn't always known appropriate ways to express love so her way to tell Miss N she loves her is to hit her. Proof to how much she loves Miss N: on the way back to classroom Miss N was coming our way. She leaped into Miss N's arms, buried her head in Miss N's neck, and sobbed. That full on sob of "I'm so sorry, I love you, I don't mean to hurt you, help me please!"
At this point I was very proud of Miss N. She wrapped her arms around her and just held her close. When Lacy was done crying, they walked into the classroom together as if nothing had happened.
Of course, it doesn't end there. How do we get these behaviors to stop for good? I talked to Miss N in my office, away from the children. After talking to her, we both concluded that she did these behaviors when Miss N was focused on other children or activities. She didn't hit/kick/throw things when she was mad or didn't want to clean up. It was always when Miss N's attention was turned to something else. So this is what I told her to do (ready? this is where some preschool teachers may think I was unfair):

I told Miss N to spoil her rotten. Let Lacy think that Miss N's world revolves around her.

Specifically I told her to make sure that she gets to sit next to Miss N at lunch and circle time. Make it known that this seat is for Lacy. When she pulls out an activity, Miss N is to have Lacy help her set it up and everything. Lacy should be the one that invites other children to those activities. Then, after about two weeks, start to slowly break away. At that point, she still gets to sit at Miss N's table, but maybe the seat next to Miss N is still taken. Lacy can sit across from Miss N: "This way I can see you, and look I can still touch you, too!" Let her slowly adjust to not being the center of the world.
Is this fair to the other children? Yes, because if any of them needed it, we would do the same thing for them. Will they think that the teacher doesn't like them? No, they are 3, it's adults who feel this way. Now, if Miss N completely ignored all the other children, then maybe. However, every child is involved in the appropriate activities and each one has something special about them and for them. We are just letting Lacy know that she is as important (and in her mind even more important). Oh, by the way, it's worked like a charm. Her hitting and other behaviors have gone to NONE! That's right, she doesn't need to hit to get attention; she's already got it. And not one other child in the class has picked up these behaviors or has had any other behaviors to show they were feeling left out because of this. They are all happy and active. Each one of them still comes bouncing into the classroom every morning with a huge smile on their face and a hug for the teachers.

Here's a personal philosophy of mine: treating everyone the exact same is not treating them equally. Treating everyone according to who they are individually is treating them equally.

The best teachers, in my mind, are the ones who can think of each child individually and react according to that one child. I had a teacher who's rule was that, in order to get chosen for a weekly chore, you had to sit perfectly still at circle time. Poor Robert never got chosen because he couldn't sit still; it was physically impossible. His face lit up the day that she was absent and I got to choose chores for the week; Robert was the first one I chose, because he had come to circle; which was an amazing thing for him.