These are great suggestions! I especially like the Mystery Box idea. There are so many ways to give clues and encourage higher level thinking. For example: I have something in the box that is brown and rhymes with hair. (bear) or I have a shape in my box that has three corners. (a triangle) You can go on to give alphabet and number clues or clues about animal characteristics. There are so many possibilities! This will definitely be an addition to my toolbox. One other comment about a body movement idea I have used is this: At our school we do not have a bathroom in our classroom, so we have to use the community bathroom at the end of the hall. Bathroom time is assigned at our school. In order to keep my active boys occupied while waiting their turn I showed them how to do wall push-ups. My boys loved this and started having contests to see who could do the most push-ups. They were counting and getting exercise at the same time.

I have several ideas about how to make changes in my daily schedule routine. First, I love the idea of singing or chanting to prepare for transition from one activity to the next. I am going to also incorporate a visual timer to use for specific times when transition may be more difficult, like from playtime to clean up or to end snack time. I would not do this for every transition, but I think for certain activities it would add another element to help prepare for what comes next. I also love the idea of using different theme- related characters added to the clip to mark the transitions on the schedule. I will also create a new classroom job for a child to move the clip.

I love the idea of calling attention to the schedule by using a song or rhythmic chant. This year I am going to try this little song. ( to the tune of The Farmer in the Dell) It's time to start our day It's time to start our day Let's find out what we'll do today So we can learn and play

@Jocelyn Manzanarez sure.