Around the age of 4, many children begin to exhibit behaviors, such as gun play or superhero play, which enable them to feel a sense of power or control. Teachers often feel unsure of the best way to handle this type of play. Traditional approaches of banning the play or allowing the play with limits…
Check out my newest feature, the 5-Minute Professor, in which I answer questions about teaching and parenting young children. Read the transcript or watch the full video below! Hi. I’m Dr. Jenni Jacobs, Founder of The Learning Professor. Welcome to the 5-Minute Professor where I answer your questions about early childhood. One of the questions…
Of all the topics about preschool literacy that I teach, the most hotly debated among teachers is that of tracing. A simple google search on preschool writing or curriculum ideas will no doubt result in some form of tracing. In fact, even some handwriting curricula encourage the practice. Whenever I introduce the idea of no…
Recently I’ve joined several parenting (mom) Facebook groups online to get a sense of some of the topics that parents are struggling with. It’s supposed to be a place of support, where mothers can ask questions without fear of judgment. I have found it is quite far from that. I think I naively assumed that…
A friend of mine has a 7 month old infant in a group care setting. She came over with him the other day and told me that the day care had asked her not to hold him so much on the weekends because she was spoiling him. Apparently he was expecting the teachers to hold…
Physical science is one of the three content items in science. (The other two are life science and earth & space science). Physical science deals with the properties of materials and objects. This includes things we can observe, such as height, weight, color, and transparency, but it also includes how objects respond in different situations….
Math is one of my favorite areas to plan for in the preschool classroom. Sometimes teachers get so focused on the counting sequence that they forget about the other types of math activities that are just as, or even more, important! Number sense is just one area of math development that should be an important…
We always talk about how important it is to build relationships with children, but let’s be real. Some children are just really hard to build relationships with. I remember when I first went back to school to get my early childhood degree, one of my professors went around the room and asked why we went…
Relationships are an essential component of an early childhood classroom. One of my favorite quotes is by Jack Shonkoff, editor of the book Neurons to Neighborhoods in which he says, “Without relationships, there is no development.” If you think back on your own experiences, I imagine that the times when you learned the most were…
Yesterday was one of those days where I just did not feel like being social. I was feeling a little stressed, and while I wasn’t in a bad mood or anything, I just didn’t want to socialize. This didn’t seem to sit well with some of the people I interact with on a daily basis….
