First time 3's Teacher

[learnAlot]

Wow so this site is great I got home today after meeting with my daughter's daycare center director. I will be working there next year as the 3 year old teacher, plus my daughter will be in MY class!! I have been working as a middle and high school special education Instructional Aide for four years and now I'm moving to the little guys. OK, my question.....
What should I expect from these little guys and gals? What should I be teaching them? And how? thank you..... :confused:

[Stacy B]

Three year olds are fun. They are independent, yet still babies. Make sure your expectations are realistic. I would recommend reading up on development norms: cognitive, language, fine/ gross motor, social, etc.

I recommend learning centers as the core of your classroom. Allow open ended, purposeful play as it increases language and social development. Allow open ended art and drawings as these are important for fine motor development, pre-writing skills, and self expression. Allow lots of uses of manipulatives for math skills - counting, comparing, etc. Allow opportunities to build with blocks and legos . Pretty much, open ended, developmentally appropriate, hands-on, interactive, and multi-sensory.

Good luck!:)

[Boxcar]

Threes are so cute!

You have a good start because you have a child of that age.

I'd read up a bit though. I love the book Practical Solutions for Practically Every Problem. You can get it off Amazon.

I agree that centers are essential. The common ones are blocks, quiet, books, writing, art, music, math, science, and minipulatives.

With threes, I'd have limited number of materials in regards to variety. However, I'd have two sets of the most highly desired materials. Threes will be playing so nicely and then just decide to get fussy and fight. Practice your mediation and distraction skills! As the school year moves on, you can add more variety and less duplicates.

Threes love dramatic play. You definetly need that in your classroom. They can sit with a pile of blocks and come up with mulitple senerios. These games change at the drop of a hat too. One minute, the child will be playing Baby and the next she'll be acting out Cat.

Threes engage in a lot of parallel play still. This is especially true in the beginning. Don't expect them to be able to share all the time. You're going to have to help them work on it.

Have a few rules for your classroom. Make them postives like "We act nicely twoards others." instead of "No hitting, kicking, or name-calling." Children cannot remember a string of items as easily as a general statement. You want broad, encompassing rules. Also, children are always being told "no". Leave that out of the rules as much as possible. Know about logical and natural consequences rather than time-outs or graduated behavior systems. Those are not effective when used in the conventional sense.

Begin the year by teaching social skills like sharing, patience, kindness, and rule-following. These things have to be the foundations of which you build. If you start off with concepts right away, you will likely have problems.

Threes like sensory experiences. So, have as many of these as possible. Hands-on is always the key.

Oh, and think about your daily schedule. You need to know that children should have alternating quiet and active times. They need transitions as well. For example, naptime is after lunch. Because lunch can and usually is an active and vocal time for the children, they will not be able to go right to bed. So, the transition is brushing teeth, getting cots, lying down, and listening to a quiet poem. Then, we might be some relaxation processes. This helps the children move from one thing to another. Always warn the children before an activity is about to end. Say "Five more minutes before clean-up!"

I could go on and on, but i won't. I'm sure you'll ask questions if you have them. Good luck. Threes are a fun group. :)