Putting the Pretty In Preschool
Finding Beauty In Everyday Early Childhood Experiences
This “Build A Christmas Tree” STEAM activity offers a unique opportunity to incorporate construction, lights, and Christmas decorations in an engaging way. Materials needed are readily available and easy to collect. In the process of building a tree and decorating it, young children progress in many areas of development.
[Read more…] about Build A Christmas Tree STEAM Activity
World Book Day is held every year on the first Thursday in March. It is a celebration of authors, illustrators, and books. And it is most of all a celebration of reading.
The impact of the picture book “Just Itzy” spanning my preschool storytime, a teacher aide’s home, and three children and their classrooms makes the story worthy of a shout out for World Book Day.
“Just Itzy” is written by Lana Krumwiede and illustrated by Greg Pizzoli. This story was one of the many books about spiders I chose last Fall in gathering resources for a Spider theme. It is an entertaining read about a spider named Itzy Bitzy and his first day of school. In the story, Itzy wants to catch his lunch instead of taking a lunch box that had been packed for him. In learning to make a spider web to trap food he becomes part of the nursery rhymes “Little Miss Muffet”, “There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly”, and “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.” By the end of the tale, Itzy builds a successful spider web AND rescues his big brother Gutzy who had been teasing him about his “smallness.”
My class enjoyed the story. The teacher aide liked “Just Itzy” so much she borrowed the book from a library for her three children. After numerous readings at home, the story was further enjoyed at her children’s school:
The teacher aide said that for weeks afterward, their family would add humor to their day by chanting “Keep your eye on the fly,” a saying Itzy’s “spindergarten” teacher taught the class about never giving up.
