It was inevitable. My voice was leaving me slowly but surely. The crud that had been going around my classroom had made its way to me, and my voice was sounding more and more hoarse as a result. I knew it was heading towards a whisper.

My kindergarten kids went to PE and when they came back, I remarked, mostly to myself, that my voice was “going away”.

All chatter and activity ceased and they stared at me.

“But what will we do if your voice goes away?” a sweet boy wailed.

“Well,” I whispered matter-of-factly, “We will do what we always do.”

What we always do. The routine.

When our day is going so totally wonderfully, we follow the routine.

When our day is a hot mess, we follow the routine the best we can.

When someone checks in late, we welcome him or her and continue with our routine.

When there is a fire drill or tornado drill, we stop the routine to practice, and then we come back in. And we follow the routine.

When someone gets sick, we fix them up, take a sanitizing break, and then continue with our routine.

When I have a substitute, we follow the routine.

When I don’t feel like it, I follow the routine anyway, and then I ALWAYS feel better.

See the pattern here?

Routine is so important in the classroom. Knowing that expectations and procedures are going to be mostly the same gives children a sense of structure and security like nothing else.

At the beginning of the year, most of my kids ask me over and over throughout the day, “When is lunch? When is snack? When do we go outside? When can I go home?”

They want to know the routine. They want the assurance of what’s to come.

One year I posted a picture schedule for a particular student who needed a visual of our daily routine. I didn’t realize at the time how much the picture schedule would impact my entire classroom management system, which would, in turn, impact my teaching. Gone were the “When do we…?” questions. Gone were the “Is it Library Day? Do we go to Computer Lab today?” questions.  Instead, I referred to the pictures of our daily routine, and I implemented it. Every day.

I simply took pictures or printed clipart to represent our activities for the day, put the pictures in order of our routine, and stuck a magnet dot beside the pictures. Our Helping Hand gets to move the dot as we complete each activity for the day. If we are doing something special, like Library, I post a star at the time of the special activity.

I know this probably sounds like a no-brainer to most seasoned teachers, and there is no magic trick to making your daily routine. It’s as simple as it sounds. You do what you say you are going to do in order pretty much at the same time daily. And then,  the magic happens when you stick to your routine.

I am realistic. I realize that things come up to disrupt the routine. I realize that some days your students will be reading like rock stars, and you are not going to stop them just because the clock says it’s time for math.  I realize that sometimes Children’s Theatre is going to come busting up into your school and totally mess up your routine (but you can get back on it the next day!). I know that one day it will be snowing outside, and you will stop and take your kids outside to play and “catch” snowflakes with black construction paper (for all your Northerners, snow in Alabama is certainly a reason to stop everything!). But for the most part, I have learned that in order to have better management, teaching, and more learning, it is imperative that I stick to my routine.

I mean, my students don’t even tell time yet. But they can tell you exactly what we do and the order in which we do it.

Remember that day my voice went away? The rest of the day went relatively smoothly, with my gesturing to the daily picture schedule and the students simply doing the routine.

Sometimes I see that things are not working so well in the order that I have them, and I change the routine. Although a rare occurrence, once I change our picture schedule and give several reminders, class time begins to flow in a smooth stream once again.

The key to making a successful routine is finding out what works best for you as a teacher and for your classroom atmosphere from year to year. Since I teach Kindergarten and First Grade, I usually try to set up my schedule as a pattern of sorts.

We sit and listen, then we get up and “do”. We sit and listen, then we get up and do.

I’ve had several wonderful teacher friends ask about my daily routine, so I will share my current year’s (Kindergarten) daily schedule with you! J

Welcome Routine- I make it a point to be at my door each morning to greet my kiddos with a hug or a high-five, and then they come in, unpack,  do their counting baskets (a blog on counting baskets to come soon!), and do their Morning Activity.

Morning Meeting– We meet together and go over our Calendar, the Daily News, and any special notes to our daily routine and picture schedule. So this the “sit and listen” part of my pattern. J

Literacy Stations- Now it’s time for us to “get up and do”! After quick reminders of what the day’s tasks are at our Literacy Stations, we disperse and get busy reading, writing, using technology, and working with the teacher.

Reading Vocabulary and Comprehension– We have a shared reading activity where specific comprehension strategies and vocabulary words are taught, used, and solidified.
Phonics and Sight Word Practice– At this time, we take part in some type of “Reading Strategy” practice. Sometimes this looks like a worksheet (that we do whole group) that gives us a chance to use our phonics and sight word strategies, sometimes it looks like partners going over sight words and decodable words/books together.

Recess- Every day. Rain or shine. Indoor or outdoor. We have recess. It’s a non-negotiable 15 minutes where we get the “ants out of our pants”, learn to make-believe (recess outside is on our front lawn instead of the playground- students are encouraged to use their imaginations with games and dramatic play, and get some exercise. Great ideas for indoor recess can be found on youtube!

Handwriting– This quick five to ten minutes includes instruction on correct letter formation and directed drawing.

Writing Workshop– My favorite, favorite, favorite! Kindergarten students are not too young to write! The works of genius that come out of this time never cease to amaze me. In Kindergarten, students work mostly on narrative stories, opinion pieces, and informational articles. I could go on and on about this wonderful part of our routine, or you can just read more here! J

Music and Singing- At this time, students sing seasonal songs together while one or a few go to wash hands, use the restroom, and get their lunchboxes ready for lunch. This time of day runs so smoothly after a month or two, but takes lots of direction at the beginning of the year in Kindergarten.

Lunch

PE– of course, this portion of the routine depends on the master schedule.

Story Time- During this portion of the day, I usually read a chapter book to my students. We have fallen in love with characters like Junie B. Jones, Wilbur and Fern, and the Boxcar children during this lovely time of just reading for the pure enjoyment of books.

Counting Strategies – We begin our math class daily with counting aloud. Depending on where we are in the year, and where we are as a class, we count to 50, or to 75, or to 100 by ones. We count by fives and tens. I pick a number and we start there and count forwards and backwards to another number. We look for patterns on the 100 chart as well.
Daily Data- Each week, we work on student data that starts with a Question of the Week. On Monday, we answer the question and construct the data by putting our names on Venn Diagrams or T Charts or graphs of some sort. On Tuesday, we tally the data. On Wednesday, we write about the data. On Thursday, we show the data in a new way. On Friday, we make addition and subtraction equations out of the data information.

Counting Basket- Our helping hand, who was chosen during the Morning Meeting time, gets his or her counting basket and shows us how to count correctly. This is a great, quick assessment for me to see what counting strategies are being used by students in my class (more on Counting Baskets in a soon-to-come blog post!).

Math Journal-Once we’ve established the number of items in our Counting Basket, we use that number to work in our Math Journals. At the beginning of the year, we show different numbers in a variety of ways (numeral, number word, tallies, drawings, symbols). We learn to break teen numbers into tens and ones and we learn how to construct ten frames. We make patterns and shapes and equations. My students amaze me during our Number Talk/Math Journal time! More about Math Talks here.

Math Stations- After a quick discussion of our daily tasks, we break apart and work on math manipulatives, writing about math, technology and math, and small groups with the teacher. More about math here.

Science/Social Studies- During this portion of our routine, we do Science experiments, read informational texts, and make thematic arts and crafts.

Snack- Yummy! Everyone loves snack time! Mine is about as short and sweet as it gets! J

Rest- Today’s rest time in Kindergarten doesn’t look like nap times of old. We are doing well if we get about 25 minutes of rest time in a day! I still have several sweeties that love to sleep, and they look forward to their power nap. The rest of my Kindergarten friends listen to alphabet music or watch reading and math power points during rest time. What do I do? Well, I run around like a crazy woman getting mailboxes ready for pack up, cleaning out lunchboxes that were leaked into, answering emails, and getting materials ready for tomorrow’s routine.

Pack Up/Afternoon Meeting– during this time, we reflect on the great points of our day. We talk about some parts that we hope will go more smoothly tomorrow. We also talk about any special things that will be part of our routines tomorrow.

It’s a fast-paced, move-and-groove, keep-on-going day, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s our routine. It’s what we do, and how we succeed.

Sometimes I get asked, How do you know when you need to change your routine?

I am not a fan of change, as you can see by this entire post! J But sometimes, I see when things aren’t working so smoothly, and I know it’s time for a change. If I have a certain time of day where behaviors that are undesirable seem to be on the rise, I look closely at the routine and think about what should change. And I tweak and tweak and tweak until the behaviors work themselves out.

I also change my routine after Christmas in Kindergarten in order to add more handwriting and phonics/sight word work.

When you are having a bad day in the classroom, get back on your routine!

When you want to go outside and play all day because it’s 75 degrees, stick to the routine instead, and you’ll be glad you did!

When your voice starts to go away, stick to the routine and let the routine do the talking for you!

By the way, I did end up taking the next day off when I lost my voice in order to go to the doctor. The substitute teacher made a point to write to me and tell me that my students basically “ran themselves” that day, going by the picture schedule, although they were concerned that I had lost my voice.

The next day, when I returned, all of my kids were excited to learn where I went to “find my voice” again. J They were eager to tell me about their day with a different teacher. We took a moment to talk about our special day apart…

And then we went back to our routine.

 

*Teachers! Share with us. What routines work best for you?

 

My youngest son Peyton is such a likeable little guy. He’s funny, intelligent, and social. He’s a wonderful wordsmith, if I do say so myself (I’m a little biased, of course). He loves sports, mostly talking about sports, and he says he wants to be a sportscaster when he grows up, which would put all of his talking and word skills to good use. 🙂

He likes to make friends and he sincerely looks for the good in most people.

Until last year.

It started almost at the beginning of the school year.

“Mama, _________ is having trouble at school. He’s not listening to the teacher.”

We were driving home from school and he was genuinely concerned for his classroom, and this child who was not listening to the teacher.

Now I was tired. First-days-of-school-kindergarten-teacher tired. I don’t even remember what my initial responses were to Peyton’s concerns, but I know that I gave some kind of generic response that may or may not cover bases when your child asks you about a kid who could be considered “bad”.

After awhile, though, it became the norm for Peyton to lament about this one student in his room who just seemed to go out of his way to make…everybody…miserable.

“He said a cuss word.”

“He breathed in my face. On purpose.”

“He lost all his cards.”

“He yelled at me.”

“He went to the principal.”

“He made the girls cry.”

“He called me an ugly word.”

“He pushed me down and kicked dirt on me.”

Now, on those last two, ‘ole Mama-zilla may have come out, except that I knew from the rest of Peyton’s stories that his wonderful teacher was promptly and appropriately addressing each situation. While it bothered me that this kid was messing with my kid, I realized that Peyton was not the only target–everyone was–and I trusted his teacher to take care of him.

As the reports kept rolling in day after day from Peyton, who seemed to have a photographic memory of each day’s events, I started to notice a change in my son.

It was almost as if he relished  thought of “telling on” this kid who was bent on going in a different direction from the rest of the class. And while I understood that yes, this child was difficult; yes, he was defiant; yes, he was different; I also began to see that he was very unliked.

By everyone. Even my sweet little boy who’d always looked for the best in others.

My responses of “Did you tell your teacher?”, “What did the teacher do?”, and “Well, you just need to ignore him,” were not working.

So one day, I simply said to Peyton, “You need to pray for him.”

Why didn’t I think of that first? Why don’t I think of that first when people do things I don’t like? When I’m tested, when I’m tried? When someone does something that hurts my feelings, that is so totally unfair and just plain mean and we all know it? When someone is mean to my baby boys, why don’t I pray for them first?

Instead, I stew. I fret. I stay awake and replay words and what I should have said. I mentally compose what I’ll do the next time I see that person or their parents.

Recently, I came across this gem of a verse in James chapter 15.

“…Pray for one another, that you may be healed.” (v. 16)

Okay, the obvious “church” answer for when you can’t get along with someone is to pray for them. However…the last section of that verse is the part that stands out to me.

That you  may be healed. 

Not that THEY would change. Not that THEY would be nicer to me. Not that THEY would realize the error of their ways.

When we pray for others, we are the ones who change the most. Our hearts are softened and tuned to the voice of our Father. And our Father reminds us that all people are His children, lovingly crafted and created by Him. Who knows what plans He is working in their lives at the very moment we cross their paths? Who knows what seeds He is planting through us, our actions and reactions to difficult situations with difficult people?

So my whole family started praying for the  guy in Peyton’s classroom. And Peyton still reported the mishaps, though they kind of started tapering off. Then one day, my little boy said, “I don’t know if anyone has ever been nice to him.”

And my heart stuttered.

My boy the wordsmith, who had been praying for his classmate, had gotten a heart-change and so simply stated what was really wrong here.

His soul was more tuned to the Savior, and he heard and passed on what my Father had been trying to tell me all year. “This is My child. Love him like I do.”

So we decided that Peyton would say something nice to the guy every day. Just one thing every day for a week, and we’d see what happened when someone was nice to him.

On the first day, Peyton told us that he said, “I like your shoes” to the boy.

“What’d he say? What’d he do?!?” Parker, my oldest, asked. He’d gotten into this whole story with the rest of us.

“Well,” said Peyton, “He said nothing. He didn’t even look at me.”

For the next two days, Peyton said a few superficial compliments to the kid, such as “I like your shirt” or “Those are neat jeans.” He never really got a response at first.

For one, we realized that Peyton did not even have his attention. I actually recognized two things here: that my son was not really used to getting someone’s attention to say things that could be considered different or important or unusual and also that this little man was not used to people complimenting him. On one occasion, I think Peyton yelled “You’re a good runner!” as the boy ran by, and he obviously didn’t hear the words. In fact, another child beside Peyton turned to him and said, “Thanks!” 🙂

I realized that this is a good life skill that all children could use some practice in…

1. Getting someone’s attention appropriately. (Example: “Hey, ___________.”)

2. Maintaining eye contact.

3. Giving them a compliment. A real one.

So you can believe the next week that Peyton went back to school armed with his new skills and more prayer, ready to be nice to someone who had been difficult.

The first day, he walked up to the other child’s desk and said, “I like the way you drew this picture, it looks really good.” The child looked at him and said, “Me?”

Peyton confirmed, and the kid smiled. He smiled, bless his soul.

The next day, Peyton told him he was a good singer. (I guess they’d been singing?) He said, “Thanks.”

On one of the last days of school, the boy was selected as the class leader or helper for the day. Peyton went to him and said, “I’m glad you are the leader today, ____________.” The boy smiled at him and said, “I wish you could be the leader, too.”

You would’ve thought that Peyton had won a huge award, and in a way, he did. I don’t say all of this to brag on my son, although I am so proud of him.

I say this to point out that praying healed us. It healed my son from bitterness, frustration, and a judgemental heart when someone was being mean. The prayers healed this Mama’s heart, too, from worry and it helped me to realize that I don’t have to hover like a helicopter, ready to swoop down and rescue my kids when someone is unkind to them.

Mean people are a part of everyone’s journey. Sometimes we encounter them. Sometimes we are the mean ones.

I am convinced that the solution to meanness is prayer.

Sometimes the prayers don’t seem to visibly and immediately change the situation, but they will always change us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I held up a perfect, red heart for my kindergarten kids to see. They ooh’ed and aah’ed in appreciation.

“That’s beautiful, Mrs. Givens. I can’t even make one like that,” said the boy who proudly held the self-proclaimed Best Cutter Outer award. No one even argued when he called himself this. He was the best cutter-outer that we had.

“I think this heart is beautiful, too,” I told my kids. “It’s so nice and smooth and clean.” They all agreed.

Then their awe-filled faces looked on in despair as I crumpled the heart up into a tiny ball and stomped on it with my foot.

“What’d you do that for?!?” asked Best Cutter Outer. “It was so nice.” He was so distraught, I actually thought he might cry.

You could’ve heard a pin drop. Nineteen pairs of eyes were trained on me as they all held their breath. I had their full attention.

“Imagine that this was your heart. It was so clean and pretty and pure when you came into the classroom. You thought it was perfect, and it was. But now think about some of the things that have been said to you before that hurt your feelings, that hurt your heart. Your pretty, smooth heart got a little wrinkle the first time someone said or did something ugly to you. Then another wrinkle when they said it again, didn’t it? But even worse than your own heart getting wrinkled is knowing that you put wrinkles in someone else’s heart…”

A girl sniffled. A boy looked down at his hands.

“Wouldn’t it be sad if all of our hearts were wadded up like this ball every day? It would be terrible! How are we going to fix this?”

A little hand went up in the air. “Smooth it out,” said a shaky voice, almost in a pleading way.

“Yes! Smooth it out! Flatten it up!” They started shouting. “Get the iron!” someone yelled, and I conveniently “didn’t hear” that one.

I carefully began to smooth the heart out. Some sighed in relief. I smoothed and smoothed and smoothed until they started wriggling around on their carpet spots.

“Well?” I held it up. “What do you think?”

They looked at it carefully, thoughtfully. “Better,” someone said. “But not the same. It’s still wrinkled.”

“It’s hard to fix a wrinkled heart, isn’t it?” I answered. “We can say we’re sorry, we can try to be helpful and have fun with the person, and we can start saying nice things to them to try and smooth out the mess we made. But see these little wrinkles? They’re hard to get rid of.”

It really hit home with my precious five-and-six-year-olds, who were just beginning to find out  how hard this world can be.

We remind ourselves often in my room to watch our words,  our hands, and our feet to make sure they are not hurting someone else’s heart. We talk about how hard it is to fix a wrinkled heart. Just yesterday, I had a little girl come up to me and say, “Mrs. Givens, _________ has wrinkled my heart twice today. What am I gonna do with her?” 🙂

It’s true, friends. This world is so hard. Our hearts are easily wrinkled. We have an enemy who uses every available tool to crush our hearts–to destroy them. And his best weapon? Our brothers and sisters on this earth. The situations we are walking through. The past we run from.

Just like my school children learned and still discuss daily, it’s hard to fix a wrinkled heart. My own human mind repeats to me when I stare at the construction paper cut-out, “It’s impossible, Paige. This will NEVER be the same heart again. It’s impossible to fix.”

And it is impossible, in our own strength. There is only one Mender of hearts, and that is the Maker Himself. The One who formed us and molded us in our mother’s womb. The One who made our hearts.

We were born with black, sin-filled hearts, and only when we invite Jesus in to stay does He clean out our mess of sin. And because we are human, we let sin back in our hearts every day. Because…we are human. But when we become Christians, we have the privilege–the underserved, grace-filled, merciful privilege–of asking Jesus daily to come in and clean out our hearts. And He does. Every time we ask.

But what about the wrinkles? What about the cruel words that have been said to us? The misdeeds, the unfairness that has attacked us? What about the grief that has broken our hearts into pieces? What about the guilt that racks our hearts when we are responsible for smashing someone else’s?

He fixes that, too. He cleans us up. He lovingly mends the tears and broken places with His healing touch. He smooths out the wrinkles, just as a loving parent smooths the head of their beloved child.

Grace is a healing balm.

On our own, we cannot forgive and forget. We cannot smooth the wrinkles of bitterness, grief, and pain out of our hearts. But with God, all things are possible. With God, our hearts aren’t just mended–they can be made whole and pure again.

When you have a wrinkled heart, give it to the One who made your heart. He will fix it, friends. I know, because He fixed mine.

And He didn’t even need an iron. 😉

We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed…Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 

2 Corinthians 4: 7-9, 16