I just had the best realization!
For context: I'm not a teacher yet, but I hope to be going to college soon to get a degree in Early Childhood Education and then become an elementary school teacher (hopfully) soon after.
I know that I want a rocking chair in my classroom for morning meeting time, reading time or carpet time in general so I can have a comfortable chair to sit in throughout the day. Today I was looking at different children's books and adding them to my Amazon list for my future classroom and out of curiosity, I looked up if they made a Rainbow Fish stuffed animal and they do! So I started looking for stuffed animals of a couple different characters from children's books and I'm very excited to report that they make quite a bit!
So then I thought about it even more and came up with an idea! What if before class starts each morning, I put the stuffed toy of the character from our reading time book on the rocking chair as a fun little hint to my class about the story we'd be reading? I know that they might not get it or get excited, but I thought it might be a fun idea, just incase a kid or two does notice and get excited for it.
I've also decided that I want to have a designated stuffed animal to be our classroom mascot. Then I could make them do fun things around the classroom for different activities or holidays. Like if we're having art that day, then they wear a smock and hold a paintbrush, or if it's St. Patrick's Day and there's a leprechaun loose in the school that visits our classroom (did anyone else's school do that?), then they could be at the center of the mess the mischievous leprechaun makes. Or if we have a field trip to the zoo, then they hold a map of local zoo and has a little packed lunch of pretend food.
I'm sure there are teachers that have already done these things, but I'm getting very excited to get to college and get my degree and by extension, I'm also very excited to become a teacher, and the more ideas I get the more excited I get!
