Which language?

I was amazed to see one of our English speaking students completely engaged in singing this week. At The Tenderloin Children's Playground I adapt our original Spanish curriculum to a bilingual platform. At this center, in addition to the majority of Spanish speakers, we also serve Vietnamese, Chinese, Hindi, and English-only speaking families. My language skills only allow me to interact, sing, and tell stories in both English and Spanish, but little by little, all of the children are learning both the English and Spanish songs. The student I mentioned above is usually one to lose interest very quickly no matter what language is being used. It is great to see the developmental milestones in children after only five months of singing, working, and reading with them.

-Dawn Noelle

Saying Goodbye

I was sad to find out that one of my students, who has been with our class since he was a tiny baby, will not be coming back due to scheduling conflicts. But it was a good last day together as he "read" to me from Good Night, Gorilla. He doesn't even have an inteligible vocabulary yet, but knows how to flip through a book, and gurgles word like sounds out at each page, smiling as he goes along. This is what our class is all about. Tomás is barely walking, but he really can "read". Interpreting the pictures is just as much a part of reading as decoding the printed word. It was highly satisfying to see the fruit of my labor manifested in this little one today.

-Dawn Noelle

Names

The semester has just started up again. The classes this week were focused on the names of the children. For the toddlers we made a poster with a song in which the child’s name is spelled out. For the babies, we painted their names to be hung up.

-Laura Hecht

Little Readers

I did not have a specific title to give away so I let families choose from a variety of books. I let families pick their book as they came in. It was really great to see that some of the children, especially some boys, were SO in love with their books that they just carried them on the play structure and held them throughout the class, stopped doing the project to read, and just sat down immediately to read their book as soon as they picked one.

-Laura Hecht

One on the way...

Grecia is my only student turning three before the start of next semester, which means she will be graduating and moving on :(. She has been with us for the three years I have been teaching. I jokingly asked her mother if she had thought about having another baby so she could keep coming to my classes. Turns out, there is indeed another baby on the way! (Here she is by the way - this year, getting ready to turn three, and three years ago in our Babies class with mom.)

-Dawn Noelle

Prints

We had a fun time making print using a variety of tools. We used cookie cutters, spoons, forks, corks and paper cups. We only used three colors, but the prints created by the children were interesting.

I read aloud ¿De que esta hecho el Arco Iris?, which I thought fit nicely since we did prints with colors and have had rainy days. Unfortunately, we didn’t see a rainbow in the sky that day.

-Laura Hecht

Signature Songs

Some teachers seem to have a signature song. Norma's Tick-Tock class at City College is named for the song in which each mother lifts up their baby at the "cuckoo" chime, once, then twice, and finally three times in the third verse. Margaret starts her class in the Tenderloin, with uno-dos-tres CHO! separating the syllables of the word cho-co-la-te as each child gets to hold the mexican molinillo, the kind that is actually used to mix or wisk chocolate in Mexico. The wooden wisk spins when it's handle is held between flat palms that are rubbing together, back and forth, in opposite directions. Rubbing our hands together with an imaginary wisk can even help to warm us up on cool days.

Over my three years of teaching Growing with Books classes, I have settled on my own signature song that I use as a cue to get babies and toddlers ready for storytime. We sing "Ahora Vamos a Leer / Now we're going to Read a Book" as we get ready to "sit right down...use our eyes...use our ears". The last verse about listening is sung in almost a whisper, and now that my students are used to it, it really helps them to quiet down and be ready to engage in the story. (We also start off our circle time with the same tune: "Now we're going to sing a song...")

-Dawn Noelle