Preschool Life Lessons from Zacchaeus

A whole lot of rain (typhoon season) and no park time the first full week of back to school made for some crazy classroom dynamics! We had plenty of opportunities to talk about behavior and treating our friends (and teachers) kindly. :)

We have been reading the story of Zacchaeus from Mother Goose Time's Experience God curriculum. Earlier in the week, I set up the "tax collector" game in the math area earlier this week, and modified it to be used in small group (vs. a 2-player game) with teacher supervision of dice. I was a little unsure how it would be received, since they can be quite dramatic when a peer takes something without permission. Much to my relief, there was no drama to speak of. They were so excited to be rolling the dice and counting out the red "moneys". One particular little girl showed tremendous maturity and clearly has a heart for justice, compassion, and generosity. She volunteered to give away her coins immediately after each person rolled the dice! As you can see below, she was the first person to "lose" all her coins. She didn't appear to count it as a loss though...

 Today, after reading the story, The Milkmaid and Her Pail, the fine motor/sensory/discovery activity was finding small treasure (buttons and pompoms) in mini plastic eggs and using "pinchers" to remove or replace the treasures. This was set up as an independent center, while I sat at the math table supervising another activity. I happened to turn my attention to that table just in time to see one student snatch a blue pompom out of another child's grasp, at which which point he burst into uncontrollable tears. It took several minutes to calm the tears enough to get a verbal explanation for why he was sad. When I called the offending student over, he denied any involvement. This was a perfect opportunity to refer back to our memory verse (Proverbs 12:19) and talk about why it is not OK to steal things from other people, and how it makes them feel. After apologizing to the other child for stealing, and to me for lying, no further tears were shed. They went back to the center without incident and got along just fine the rest of the day. Whew! 

We made it through the first full week back to school after summer break, the sunshine and blue skies have finally returned, and it's FRIDAY! T.G.I.F 

Happy Weekend!