Tools Preschool visit: Ms. Wanta’s class joins together to play and learn!

If you’ve never visited a Tools classroom, join us as we take a look at what’s happening inside! Each month, a different Tools PreK teacher posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, sharing photos and updates about what their class is up to. Here, meet our October PreK Tools Teacher of the Month, Tiffany Wanta, a preschool teacher at Wittenberg Elementary School in Wittenberg, Wisconsin, who is currently pursuing Tools Certification Track.

A community of learners

Now in her 7th year teaching with Tools, Ms. Wanta is focused on creating a community of learners in her classroom. The play-based Tools activities they do together each day are fun and engaging for her children (and their teachers!) and provide them with opportunities to build the relationships that make for a strong and thriving classroom family. By learning everyone’s name, taking turns with friends, and sharing new and familiar activities and experiences together, Ms. Wanta’s children are growing into a caring, confident, and increasingly independent community of learners. 

My students are turning to their peers for scaffolding and have become better problem solvers because I am teaching them the Tools they need to be successful learners! 
- Tiffany Wanta, Tools 4K Teacher, Wittenberg Wisconsin

Building classroom culture through shared experiences

Because Tools uses familiar activities and predictable routines, it doesn’t take long for children to learn the songs and fingerplays that bring them together in shared activity during times of transition or attention focusing. Some of Ms. Wanta’s class’s best-loved fingerplays are Open Shut Them, Grandma's Glasses, and Rum Sum Sum. Ms. Wanta sees how quickly these fingerplays help children regulate and focus on getting their bodies and minds ready for learning. Fingerplays are one of Ms. Wanta’s favorite Tools activities. Sometimes she makes new ones up on the spot! But she also gets very excited when she hears students starting familiar fingerplays without her, as they wait for her to come to the rug. They know what to do while they’re waiting in their Tools classroom!

Ms. Wanta’s class builds community through many classroom activities, such as playing whole-group games, reading with their Buddies, examining apples together during Science Eyes, brainstorming props to build for their Family theme centers, and constructing and using those props as they play out scenarios in Make-Believe play.  Even Make-Believe Play Practice provides the class with opportunities to join together and build common expectations for their play. Many times Ms. Wanta sees students recreating the same scenarios, private speech, and actions in Make-Believe Play that they’ve practiced together earlier in the day during Make-Believe Play Practice. 

It looks like many of the items from their shared brainstorming did get built and find their way to the Family centers. Check out Ms. Wanta’s children enjoying them together during Make-Believe play below. 

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I am grateful that my school district had the confidence in me to invest in Tools.
- Tiffany Wanta, Tools 4K Teacher, Wittenberg Wisconsin

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Thank you to Ms. Wanta’s and her preschoolers for sharing some of the special ways they are building community in their classroom!

To see more from Ms. Wanta’s class and other Tools PreK Teachers of the Month, head over to X, formerly known as Twitter, and check out the most recent posts.