HI Joy,
I've been teaching early childhood family education virtually for a lot of the fall. The thing that's worked best is to spend my on-line time building connections with children. I ask parents to help their child find something that they want to bring to class to show me and we spend our first few minutes talking about that. Most of the rest of the time we spend together is parallel play. I ask parents to bring a particular category of thing to class - it might be something to build with, something to draw with or something to roll. We then do parallel play for a while. I narrate what they are doing and model other ways they could play with the materials.
Towards the end of our time together we do a short group time. I try to incorporate movement and lots of singing. If I want a story I often record it and post it for kids to watch later, as I've found that toddlers don't stay with a virtual group for longer than 30-45 minutes.
Good luck. it really is possible to build strong connections with kids virtually. When we moved to hybrid lots of my kids were very excited to see me- even though I had never met some of them face to face. And because I was seeing them in their own homes - I saw some children more verbal and confident than they had ever been in my classroom- because they were in the place they felt most comfortable in.
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[Meg] [Thomas]
she/her
[Early childhood consultant
Co-facilitator for Diversity and Equity Interest Forum
[St Paul ] [MN]
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Original Message:
Sent: 11-06-2020 01:27 PM
From: Joy McVicker
Subject: Going virtual for older toddler classroom
As of today on nov 16th our classrooms will be all virtual at least till Jan 11th. I was wondering if anyone has any tips for a newbie teacher for toddler classroom for virtual.
Thank you
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Joy McVicker
Battle Creek MI
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