I am a visual learner. The longer I teach, the more visual I want to be, and the more it helps me remember the big goal and learning point.
I also during the ongoing pandemic church season have been the main teacher of our children ages 2-6, and I know that to keep their attention, and to help them remember anything, this age needs to be actively engaged with motions and movement. Plus, the youngest children in this group, have lived through a year of not going to programs, nursery, other homes, etc, and being asked to sit with a new adult, and listen, is completely a new experience, as well as a stretch for their developmental ages.
I knew I was on the right track when parents started telling me, that Ms. Sarah or Mrs. Poling was all that their kids could talk about during the week, and when it came time for Sunday morning- they couldn't wait to see me! And it's my greatest joy to be the 'celebrity' teacher to littles. One thing I did for the first few months I made sure every week they had one simple but really neat thing to take home that reinforced our learning. So we took home: fake coins, slinky plastic stretchy hearts, bouncy balls with hearts inside, glow in dark Jesus, finger puppets with holes to make the lame man walk, easter projects like gauze and Jesus to be wrapped and put in the tomb (a paper cup),
So I have pulled out my thinking cap, and continue to employ as many tricks and techniques as I know to bring motivation to attend, joy in learning, active participation, and repetition, that keeps littles engaged with me for 15-20 minutes, and now they want me to do class for up to 40 minutes! It's a wonderful problem to have the children wanting more class time, and we haven't been doing any crafts at all with sharing being an issue in the era of covid!
Here are some of the images that I'm using-- and the easiest way to share my full resource is to share the googleslideshow that I created- to print for games, as a book, to view, and review.
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