Dilly Days with Beth and Joellyn: Authors of The InvestiGator Club™ for Robert-Leslie Publishing

Here is a sample lesson plan about making kites for your prekindergarteners and their families.

One preschool in the Chicagoland area took to heart Beth’s and my suggestion for a family involvement event that we presented during the DuPage AEYC convention last fall—they hosted an art show! Feast your eyes on these amazing works of art, all inspired by some of the greatest artists of all time.

For more information on the importance of teaching the fine arts, see the suggested national standards for arts education developed by the Consortium of National Arts Education Associations (under the guidance of the National Committee for Standards in the Arts).

Here you see one of the fine art prints, Fernand Leger’s The Builder, from The InvestiGator Club program on the right. Then the children’s inspired sculptures and drawings are on the left.

Below are some fine examples of art inspired by the works of Claude Monet and Piet Mondrian. Also, check out this great idea about how to archive your children’s art.

This continues our handouts series from the National Head Start Conference’s Family Involvement workshop. Here is a sample letter to send home with the children at the start of a new unit. (pdf, 80k) The second page is the same letter in Spanish.

It took us longer to get those promised Head Start Conference Workshop handouts up than we had originally expected. Thank you for your patience. We hope these will be useful.

Here are some sample sheets to send home to help increase family involvement. (.zip, 900k) More to come.

Here’s a copy of the Anecdotal Notes Form that we developed for our prek program. Please feel free to use it if you like it. anecdotalnotes.pdf

It is easy to tell that teachers are stuck on Post-it® Notes. When I presented at the 2007 North Carolina Head Start Convention, the conversation kept coming back to those all-important, but rather cumbersome, anecdotal notes. Many teachers write anecdotal notes in journals, on mailing labels, on index cards, in official forms, or on class record sheets. But the majority of teachers said they used those temporary little sticky notes until they can finally get to those portfolios.

A portfolio is the physical “home” for a child’s achievements and records. It can be a folder, a box, or anything that contains information about a child’s progress. The task of organizing Post-its within all that content is tricky and sometimes overwhelming. There are many ways to create an organized system that works for you. Here are a few of my suggestions:

• Attach these notes to relevant samples, photos, audiotapes, or videotapes.
• Make a chart of outcomes and objectives. Leave a blank column that is large enough for whatever type of pad or label you use. Stick the anecdotal notes next to the appropriate item.
• Use a weekly or monthly calendar. Affix anecdotal notes to the days on which the observations were made.

What is your system for recording and organizing anecdotal notes? We’d love to hear from you.