Community Helpers: Careers
Procedure
The actions of students and teachers and the interactions among and between students and teachers:


What the Teacher Does:

  1. Arrange for people to come in to the class and "show & tell" about a career.
  2. Try to find representative sample of both men and women at work so children can have equality of gender in role models.
  3. Encourage parents to send in pictures of themselves at work.  Make a display.
  4. Tape record interviews of community helpers that are of interest to the children but cannot visit the classroom.
  5. Involve parents and community in collecting materials for prop boxes.
  6. Prepare prop boxes to be placed in dramatic play center.
  7. Arrange trips in the community to see jobs in action, e.g. the post office.
  8. Record children's dictated responses or support children's writing.
  9. Glue quilt fabric to frame of tag board.
  10. Put the children's pictures together on fabric to form a quilt.  Alternate fabric with pictures to form quilt-like pattern.

What the Students Do:

After many activities in the unit entitled Careers: Community Helpers, such as shared reading, dramatic play at centers, visits by adults with various careers, immersion in games, toys, learning center hands-on activities focusing on careers, art, music, math and language arts, children will create a square for a quilt by drawing a picture representing a career and dictating a sentence about the picture. Children will then share the picture with the group and tell what the community helper does in their job.

Prior to making a picture for the quilt the children participate in

Visitor Interviews. The children:

  1. Talk with visitors representing various occupations to discover what they do at work.
  2. Examine display of pictures of parents at work.
  3. Listen to recorded interviews of community helpers that are of interest to the children but cannot visit the classroom.
  4. Visit an occupation site such as the school nurse's office, post office, police or fire station, or the neighborhood grocery store.

Prior to making a picture for the quilt the children participate daily in

Learning Center Activities.

  1. Provide sharing time each day following center activities.
  2. Children share with group the career activities in which they were involved during center time.

Learning centers include:

  • Dramatic Play Center with Prop Boxes
  1. Health Care Providers:
    Stethoscope, thermometer, blood pressure sphygmometer, bandages, uniforms, measuring tape

  2. Mail Carrier/Postal Worker
    hat, mailbag, stamps, letters, packages, mailbox, money, rubber stamps, cash box

  3. Baker/Pizza Maker
    apron, hat, pans, pizza cutter, pizza box, felt pizza & toppings, rolling pin, spoons, cookie cutters, play dough

  4. Grocery Clerk

  5. Firefighter
    hat, hose, rubber or cardboard hatchet, boots, cardboard oxygen mask

  6. Gas Station
    variety of small and middle-sized play vehicles, gas pumps, oil cans, play money, toy telephone, window washing materials

  7. Airport Traffic Controller
    toy planes, toy binoculars, play microphone, cardboard, teacher-made instrument panels

  8. Others as children's suggestions dictate
  • Block Center
  1. Put out wooden or rubber community helper figures, add various occupational trucks and vehicles.
  2. Set out various community helper puppets.
  3. Encourage children to build community buildings with blocks, then draw a picture of their structure and/or write or dictate a sentence about it.
  • Science Center

    Water tub with boats, play fish, scientist's instruments

  • Reading and Writing Center
  1. Flannel board sets of mixed gender community helpers, sets of figures with uniforms for dressing the figures to make up stories.
  2. Pictures, picture words, picture word books focusing on community helpers.
  3. paper, pencils, crayons.
  • Listening Center
  1. Books with tapes
  2. Language master with vocabulary words
  • Library Center
  1. Picture books
  2. Easy-to-read books
  • Book-making Center
  1. Magazines, scissors, glue, crayons, markers
  2. Blank paper booklets
  3. Sample community helper books
  • Art Center
  1. Scrap box, glue, scissors, crayons, paint
  2. Paper materials for making cut-out figures of community helpers
  • Music Center
  1. Charts with words to related songs
  2. Word strips to match words and lines to song
  • Housekeeping Center
  1. Dress-up clothes for various occupations
  2. Pad & pencil for writing shopping lists, memos, notes, price lists
  3. Housekeeping props
  • Manipulative Center
  1. Sequence picture cards of community helpers
  2. Community helpers games: Lotto board with occupations, pictures to group and sort community helpers and people in action at work.

( See BIBLIOGRAPHY of Children’s Books and Teacher Resources listed under Resources)