Work Smarter, Not Harder

Been trying to post for awhile, Blogger was being stubborn!

If you have a boring job to do... you know the kind... where you are thinking "for this I went to nine years of college?!" try letting the children help you out. For instance, I had a bajillion magnetic letters that I needed to sort so I could create sets and start making word games. Did I want to sort them? No. Did I trust the parent helpers to sort them? No. (More on this later in a post entitled "Bad Help Is Worse Than No Help At All".)

The obvious choice? The children. This gave them letter recognition practice and I have to say they LOVED it. I used empty strawberry baskets and propped a letter card in each one. Then I gave them a bowl of letters and let them sort away. The LOVED this. Like, more than I would have expected. And they did a pretty good job. It was fun to see what letters I had a lot of, what letters I needed more of. And be sure to provide a basket for "things that are not letters" because well, you know.