Getting To Know You

Prompted by the children’s conversations at snack time, whether it’s matching water bottles or what snack they have, the teachers began asking question to get to know each other better.

What fruit do you have for snack today?

Who’s your favorite Paw Patrol character?

What’s your favorite color?

Everyone takes a turn answering the question. So we hear every voice, and we practice our listening skills while waiting for our turn. The children discover what they have in common with their friends (or teacher) and what is uniquely them.

The children have held much of this in their heads, for example remembering a friend’s favorite colors when making messages. Now we’re trying new ways of more permanently recording the information we’re learning about each other and developing our math skills.

We started with our favorite ice cream flavor. Each child had a sticker to place on the chart. The flavor denoted by a drawing and the first letter of the word.

The next day at snack time, we recorded our favorite colors. (Hence, no masks)

Once everyone had voted, we looked to see which flavor or color was most popular. We counted the number of stickers. It takes a cognitive step to go from counting the number to understanding that the highest number has the most votes.

We plan on trying more ways of recording data using a bar chart or tally marks.