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| What is this?!?! My classroom helpers |
This past week my mind has been all over the place trying to figure out what I could do to make my 4 year old Primary class more reverent. As I am sure I have mentioned before, I have had a new group of children since the first of the year. Before I had the five year old class that turned 6 during the past year. Now I have 4 year olds who are just getting use to the whole class room routine of needing to sit quietly for the majority of 45 minutes.
This is a challenge for some of them as they have what I call, 'the squirmies'. Who can blame them?!?! After all, we now are on the late schedule for Sacrament Meeting after which is Primary Sharing Time. So, by the time I get them in the classroom, they are on their 3rd hour of church....a tall order for an adult, let alone a 4 year old child. Couple this with the fact that they are getting hungry.
After talking with our Primary President about a couple of concerns, I mentioned how I noticed that one child seemed to be able to sit quieter if able to hold onto something. She told me that she had a child who was like that and they needed what they referred to as a 'fidget'....something they could fidget with to keep them focused.
I tried to figure out what I could come up with without singling out one or two children who I thought could use some kind of 'fidget'. The idea came to me to make a beanbag for each child to hold..... then thought....one wasn't enough, they needed one for each hand. My thoughts were that
if both hands were occupied then they couldn't be touching the child next to them or playing with the chairs while I was teaching. Sounded good....until I realized that they could still reach out their arms with them. The idea is to get the the children to sit with their hands in their laps. So, the finally step was to link the two beanbags together fairly close so that if they were truly keeping their hands in their laps with each hand on a beanbag to fidget with, they would get reminded by the pull of the cord between the beanbags that they couldn't reach out.
Maybe I am over thinking this....but we shall see how it works out tomorrow.
Wish me luck!!! :-)
