Children in the VPK classroom

The children in the Voluntary Pre-kindergarten classroom are each different. Each child not only look different but they act different. They each have their own personality,attention span and are being raised differently. When you have 15 children in your classroom and they are either 4 or 5 years old you can't treat them exactly the same.

So what do you do about each child. You do observations on each child. You have the parent fill out a questionaire on their child.
You can also get to know about the child during small group time. Play games like Emotion Simon Says, have them draw a picture and have them dictate what the picture is about.

For some reason there is always the child who will tell you "I don't want to." Cry when ever you try to correct their behavior. Example: Tommy hits Paul. The natural thing is to go to Tommy and talk to him about hitting Paul. By doing this you gave your first attention to the one who had a sad behavior. Instead you go to Paul and comfort him first. You have now given your attention to the child who was hurt first. Now you can go and question Tommy about his behavior. Tommy needs to hear from Paul how it made him feel by Tommy hitting Paul. And how Tommy was feeling when he hit Paul.

There will be children who act differently in your classroom you just need to learn about each child separately. This will take time but will be worth it in the end.