Welcome

Hi there and welcome to the Little Rattlers Blog!  As most of you know I am currently taking a child development course at Columbia College.  One of our project assignments was to create something program related and to present it in a blog type format to our classmates.  I immediately decided that my project should be to write a family handbook for our preschool program.  When I took the position of teacher at Pine Ridge Preschool 5 years ago a handbook didn't exist.  I work in a very unique situation.  I work at a public elementary school that manages a private preschool program for the benefit of our local and very rural community.  Our preschool program director is also our school principal and our district superintendent.  I have had 3 wonderful directors since being hired but none has had experience running a preschool so quite a bit of the responsibility has fallen on me to figure out what to do.  I am currently in the process of trying to upgrade my permit to Site Supervisor to try and help out my current director.  I've found that I am missing a lot of vital information in the 5 years I have been teaching at Pine Ridge and the classes that I am currently enrolled in are really informative.  I was thankful for this project assignment because one of the things that I have been really wanting to overhaul was the lack of a professional family handbook.  So I'm really excited to be working on this project and to see it's fulfillment.  I was so excited about it that I was sharing with some of the parents of students in my program.  As I was sharing and asking for feedback several of the parents expressed an interest in reading a real blog where I can share ideas, anecdotes from our school day, pictures from special events and just a forum where I can share more information with the families.  I agreed that this seemed like a fabulous idea and so my project evolved into something more than just a family handbook.  It has taken a bit of effort because I am not a very tech savvy individual.  I have a borrowed (from our school library) Mac computer that I have been using and oh my goodness they are sooooo different!  Thankfully one of our staff members who also happens to be a parent of a little enrolled in my program offered to attempt to help me figure it all out.  So after some lunch time meetings and several text messages asking for her help I've got the blog up and running.  I attempted my first practice post bellow.  As for the handbook I've got all the content written out (yes I am old school) and the cover page designed, all that's left is to get it all typed up and printed out.  I then plan on having a few parents and my boss review and critique the handbook...also check for any errors in policy, grammar, etc.  I plan on keeping the blog open until the class ends in December and then I'm going to make it a private blog after that point so that only the parents in my program have access to the information and photos being posted.  I will have 1 unrelated post in the middle that you can ignore, I've just had several parent requests for a holiday shopping guide for preschool aged kids so I'm going to put that up for my parents in the next week or so.  Thanks for reading!

Working on the handbook cover design and finishing up the blog page!

Go Away Big Green Monsters

 One of my all time favorite preschool stories & projects!  The children always love shouting at the book for the different parts of the monster to disappear.  Many of them confused as to how they do disappear.  This is a great story to help littles feel empowered to make their fears disappear.