Signing In Time

Each day when children enter our classroom they have many morning jobs to do. They are encouraged to put away their personal belongings, hand in their mailbags, and do some sort of 'signing in' activity. These routines help build responsibility and independence in children. For the last few weeks our signing in activities have involved children identifying and printing their names.

Recently, we noticed that a number of children were interested in creating their own surveys during playtime. 

We wanted to capitalize on this interest and began offering the children simple surveys to complete. Each child signed his or her name on a post it note for easy writing and voting, and these post-its can also be saved as evidence of children's emerging abilities to print their names.

Last week we asked children to vote for which animal they liked best - cats or dogs. A dilemma was immediately created as there were many children who liked both. We introduced the idea of a VENN diagram and children realized that they could post their names in the middle section of the graph to indicate they liked both choices. In the following pictures, children were asked whether they liked apples or bananas best.

Entry time is a great time for encouraging children to engage in quick and easy math and language activities.