Some weeks, as I look through my notes, I find that if there's a 'theme' to be found, it's just plain learning and discovery. This took many forms over the Tuesday and Wednesday, and I'm sure there was fun to be had at home on Thursday, in the snow.
As I mentioned in last weeks post, I've started offering picture spelling cards to use with Scrabble tiles. An illustration appears at the top of the card, and the letters of the word below. The child selects a card, finds the letters in a 'pool' of them on the table, and then places them onto the card, spelling out the word. (I work with them to verbally support this by spelling out the letters one by one and then saying the word.) The children helped me to choose the first words for our cards: Mom, Dad, Love, Zoo, Cat and Dog. The first three will be words which they'll use as they begin note/message writing when they are 4 and 5 years old, as they begin to show interest in writing letters themselves. (There's a pretty broad age spectrum for this, by the way.)
I also offered some new puzzles of various levels of difficulty, and the children were clearly interested in trying each of them out. One was a 25 piece Picture in Frame ocean puzzle; a 12 piece animal puzzle with no picture, and a farm puzzle with pegs to use for holding, the picture of the inside of the farm is in the frame. The farm appeared to be a little more difficult for some children, the ocean puzzle required a lot of pattern-matching as well as trial-and-error, and the animal puzzle appeared to be the most easy to assemble.
At our Wednesday Gathering, I asked the children to help me make a park for the Teddy Bear counters to 'play' in. B wanted 'three bears' for the bears to play with; V suggested a football field and T, a soccer field. I added a fountain and a bench, and we began moving the Bears to and from different park sites, with plenty of counting. There's been a lot of progress in sight counting, pointing and counting from a distance; larger amounts of bears still need a 'touch and count' technique from time to time. I am seeing a lot of accuracy in this area with the children; we are working up to the number 6 right now, and so I'll be adding bears up to 10 next week.
We also did some sorting work. I'd offered a very large bowl of nuts for the children to do with as they wished, and a bit of ramp play ensued. "This is like skateboarding" said T, as he launched several Brazil nuts down. Then B had fun jumping over the little clusters of nuts on the floor before rolling some down. When that seemed to be tapering off, I brought out four dishes and had V and B each sit with a big pile of nuts, the dishes in a line between them, and placed one nut in each dish to signal where each type of nut should go. The girls had fun sorting the nuts into the dishes by type, and shaking them. "I hear the nut inside!" B exclaimed happily.
Wednesday, we read a lovely book about Henri Matisse entitled: "A Bird or Two", which spoke mostly about his love for color. Then, each child was given a cup and paintbrush and we mixed some custom colors for our easel work that day. V wanted to make purple, so she asked to start with red and blue, then added white to lighten it and some red to make it more of a pinky-purple color. T wanted green and yellow--"Ducks colors" he told us, and then added a lot of white to lighten it. B kept it simple, just green and black thanks, which made a beautiful hue of deep emerald. I mixed up some turquoise, and then we moved the paint to the easel. What I did notice was that our colors dried much darker than they were originally, and so next week, we'll revisit this (I've saved their paint) and make comparisons, and there will be time to adjust the paints as need be. I, for one, am curious to see what they will want to do!
Tuesday's art time started with 'magic pictures', a bunch of white hearts drawn in white crayon on watercolor paper to show how wax resist works. The children were excited to see hearts emerging from the red watercolor paint they spread on so thickly. V noticed that "the paint keeps moving" when she painted over the wax. After their first ready-made picture, they all clamored to 'do another', and so I showed them how they must rub the crayon hard over the paper, and then they painted again, delighted to watch the paint moving off some of the most waxed areas of their work.
A few other moments from our week:
V invites B over: "Hey, B, want to play dominoes? Want to play mailbox?" Sounds all good, but then we can't agree how to use the mailbox--door open, or shut? While I held onto the mailbox, the girls made a plan, to use it with the door open for three minutes on the timer, and then closed for the same amount of time. Their play resumed without any further hitch. Your children are really figuring out some of their own ideas for what feels good and fair for them.
What did your children remember about their time at home with you last weekend as we sang our song?
V: I played a Kirby video game.
B: I watch Sesame Street.
T: I made a skate park upstairs.
Children running running, and then hopping, around the Children's House outside. We have measured our growing bulbs again outside, which have doubled in height. And we're now seeing the little crocuses emerging from our planters and a big lump of green hyacinth is beginning to claim its space smack dab in the middle. It's always fun to have such a variety of plants to observe. More gems were found in the sandbox too, and V cracked us all up when she sat on the grapevine-trimmings "nest" the children have made. "I'm a bird on my nest!" she crowed at us.
T is painting at the easel in the kitchen. I overhear him: "Wiggle, wiggle. Hop, hop" he says as he paints. Later I asked him about this. He tells me "If I was dancing with a kangaroo".
We clipped some forsythia to take home to force blooms from. If you can, be sure to keep it in an easy-to-notice spot. I explained to the children that, by bringing the boughs in, we were tricking the plant into thinking the weather was warmer and that it was time to bloom. Then we made some predictions as to how many days it will take before the flowers open. V suggested 4 days; B guessed it would take two days; and T, loving big numbers, guessed that it would be 60 days. We'll just have to see!
And we'll see you next week! Please remember that we are only open Tuesday, and closed Wednesday and Thursday for conferences.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Friday, February 18, 2011
Love and Friendship
Happy Valentine's Day!
We started our week with this sentiment. Monday found us celebrating our friendships with a little Valentine's Day Party. While the kids loved the special snack time and were tickled to see the poster we made last week hanging up, what they really enjoyed was handing out their Valentines Cards to their friends. V also brought some fancy valentines she'd made at home, which added a bit of variety. Later we made "heart people": hearts with arms and legs attached with fasteners for them to play with. T drew a very silly face on his, while some of the other children were more interested in putting stickers all over theirs. Later that day, we took a very exciting puddle walk down the street a ways, where the sidewalk gets some nice big ones.
What is a friend? This was our question on Wednesday, and it was a rather abstract one for them, by the way that they all substituted "who" for "what".
What is a friend?
B: Anna
V: Mallory.
T: Adam.
Hazel: Okay, so you have told me "who" your friends are. Let me ask the question again: "What is a friend?"
V:A friend is one of your best friends.
T: A friend is someone who you know.
V: Friends are somebody you love people.
What do we do with our friends?
V: I sometimes at Mallory's house I kind of play slip and slide.
T: My friend Adam, I play basketball with him.
B: I do with my friends to play skateboard. (referring to the 'skateboard park' play with V and T)
On Wednesday, I asked how we could be friendly to each other.
T: Being nice and not being bad.
V: You play.
B: Play dress up.
V: I play gently and don't fight.
T: Play monkey bars.
With all of this information, it's really clear to see that while the more tangible aspects of friendship are present in their minds, friendship itself is still much of an abstract notion for youngsters. We can help develop this, though, by pointing out when our children do "friendly" things, just so they notice too. We've also been reading some of James Marshall's "George and Martha" stories, about two hippo buddies, and some more Frog and Toad stories too.
We have been playing a lot of games this week. Besides "Hide the Shoe" and "Doggie Doggie Where's Your Bone?", we played a Letter Card game (this is a set of self-correcting cards which match up the uppercase and lowercase forms of each letter) with a twist: all of the cards were hidden around the preschool and a Letter Card Hunt ensued. Once all of the hidden cards were discovered, they were equally distributed and as I held up the uppercase form and named the letter, they searched their lowercase cards for matches. We worked through the whole set; the nice thing is that when we couldn't figure one out, we just set it aside, and coming back to them, the children could then use them as puzzle pieces to solve their mystery. On Wednesday, we also brought out an old 42 piece wooden jigsaw puzzle to work on together. While it was hard work, the children said they did enjoy it, and we'll have some more picture puzzles offered as group work over the next while.
Our sensory bin was a place of surprise and discovery this week. Beads, buttons and clam shells were hidden in bubbly water on Tuesday. The children agreed with each other to using both green and blue food coloring in the water, and everyone got busy. B scooped water into the mill while T and V made a game of collecting beads or buttons which matched each other. "Look how many beads I got! It's like sixty-twenty!" said T, holding up a container of beads in water. "They (the beads) look big!" he observed, noticing the magnification through the container. V keeps adding beads to the container, then it's emptied out and T pushes the empty container down into the water to make "a window" to see the bottom of the bin. V cries out-"I think I see a yellow thing pass by!" and B looks too. "I see it!" she says. On Wednesday, the beads and buttons were reintroduced to the bin, with colored rice instead of water, and the hunt began anew.
We had some time exploring patterns. On another neighborhood puddle walk on Wednesday afternoon, T read off the numbers on a plaque: "Four eight four eight. It's a pattern!" After confirming that yes, it was a pattern, I asked the group what they thought the numbers were for. No one had an answer. "Let's see if there are numbers on the other houses." I suggested. So we began to look intently as we walked, the children reading off the numbers on each house. We also noticed that several houses all had the number '48' at the beginning. "So, what do you think it could be?" I asked again. "So you can tell where your house is" offered T, and then V put the correct word to it: "It's the address" she said. On Thursday, T created a repeating pattern of 'houses' with pattern blocks, using two squares for the base of each house, which was the exact length of the long side of one trapezoid block, used as a roof. I asked him to count how many trapezoids he used (3) and how many squares (6). V has been interested in using the pattern blocks to create more artistic patterns that start from a center point and work outward. She readily placed blocks into the available negative spaces and we worked together to make a pattern she called "a scary picture".
Some more lovely moments in our week:
All the children working together on the big alphabet and numeral puzzle, talking to each other about the names of the letters and numbers.
B was 'doing a show' on the rug, skipping and singing "Zoom Zoom Driving in the Car", so V made " a gate" around the perimeter of the rug. T made an ink stamp picture and told me it was "a movie"; it was taped to a stool near the rug. There were two ideas about what should be The Show, we realized, and took turns having both live theater and a pretend movie theater.
Bubbles on the table! Tuesday was too cold for outdoor play, and we brought out our cars and foam sponge brushes to 'paint' the table or drive around it. Big fun!
Our chalkboard fabric was also brought out that afternoon, and the children made huge lines for yet another "skateboard park" before practicing drawing some letters. Everyone drew circles, too.
Painting at the big easel and of course, play dough time this week. We also had out some stickers, markers and paper for whoever wanted them. Pictures were created and then exchanged amongst friends on Thursday.
B and V, wiggly at snack time. Apparently early Miles Davis has that effect. They were asked to either eat or dance, and thus began some wiggly silliness (and dizziness!) on the big rug. With, of course, plenty of giggling to boot!
I introduced Scrabble tiles, and we played a bit with spelling random words. Much of this was in the form of the children selecting letters in somewhat random combinations and my answering questions like "is this a word?" and "what does that say?" The tiles can be used as a matching game, too, or for sorting, just to encourage letter identification.
See you next week!
We started our week with this sentiment. Monday found us celebrating our friendships with a little Valentine's Day Party. While the kids loved the special snack time and were tickled to see the poster we made last week hanging up, what they really enjoyed was handing out their Valentines Cards to their friends. V also brought some fancy valentines she'd made at home, which added a bit of variety. Later we made "heart people": hearts with arms and legs attached with fasteners for them to play with. T drew a very silly face on his, while some of the other children were more interested in putting stickers all over theirs. Later that day, we took a very exciting puddle walk down the street a ways, where the sidewalk gets some nice big ones.
What is a friend? This was our question on Wednesday, and it was a rather abstract one for them, by the way that they all substituted "who" for "what".
What is a friend?
B: Anna
V: Mallory.
T: Adam.
Hazel: Okay, so you have told me "who" your friends are. Let me ask the question again: "What is a friend?"
V:A friend is one of your best friends.
T: A friend is someone who you know.
V: Friends are somebody you love people.
What do we do with our friends?
V: I sometimes at Mallory's house I kind of play slip and slide.
T: My friend Adam, I play basketball with him.
B: I do with my friends to play skateboard. (referring to the 'skateboard park' play with V and T)
On Wednesday, I asked how we could be friendly to each other.
T: Being nice and not being bad.
V: You play.
B: Play dress up.
V: I play gently and don't fight.
T: Play monkey bars.
With all of this information, it's really clear to see that while the more tangible aspects of friendship are present in their minds, friendship itself is still much of an abstract notion for youngsters. We can help develop this, though, by pointing out when our children do "friendly" things, just so they notice too. We've also been reading some of James Marshall's "George and Martha" stories, about two hippo buddies, and some more Frog and Toad stories too.
We have been playing a lot of games this week. Besides "Hide the Shoe" and "Doggie Doggie Where's Your Bone?", we played a Letter Card game (this is a set of self-correcting cards which match up the uppercase and lowercase forms of each letter) with a twist: all of the cards were hidden around the preschool and a Letter Card Hunt ensued. Once all of the hidden cards were discovered, they were equally distributed and as I held up the uppercase form and named the letter, they searched their lowercase cards for matches. We worked through the whole set; the nice thing is that when we couldn't figure one out, we just set it aside, and coming back to them, the children could then use them as puzzle pieces to solve their mystery. On Wednesday, we also brought out an old 42 piece wooden jigsaw puzzle to work on together. While it was hard work, the children said they did enjoy it, and we'll have some more picture puzzles offered as group work over the next while.
Our sensory bin was a place of surprise and discovery this week. Beads, buttons and clam shells were hidden in bubbly water on Tuesday. The children agreed with each other to using both green and blue food coloring in the water, and everyone got busy. B scooped water into the mill while T and V made a game of collecting beads or buttons which matched each other. "Look how many beads I got! It's like sixty-twenty!" said T, holding up a container of beads in water. "They (the beads) look big!" he observed, noticing the magnification through the container. V keeps adding beads to the container, then it's emptied out and T pushes the empty container down into the water to make "a window" to see the bottom of the bin. V cries out-"I think I see a yellow thing pass by!" and B looks too. "I see it!" she says. On Wednesday, the beads and buttons were reintroduced to the bin, with colored rice instead of water, and the hunt began anew.
We had some time exploring patterns. On another neighborhood puddle walk on Wednesday afternoon, T read off the numbers on a plaque: "Four eight four eight. It's a pattern!" After confirming that yes, it was a pattern, I asked the group what they thought the numbers were for. No one had an answer. "Let's see if there are numbers on the other houses." I suggested. So we began to look intently as we walked, the children reading off the numbers on each house. We also noticed that several houses all had the number '48' at the beginning. "So, what do you think it could be?" I asked again. "So you can tell where your house is" offered T, and then V put the correct word to it: "It's the address" she said. On Thursday, T created a repeating pattern of 'houses' with pattern blocks, using two squares for the base of each house, which was the exact length of the long side of one trapezoid block, used as a roof. I asked him to count how many trapezoids he used (3) and how many squares (6). V has been interested in using the pattern blocks to create more artistic patterns that start from a center point and work outward. She readily placed blocks into the available negative spaces and we worked together to make a pattern she called "a scary picture".
Some more lovely moments in our week:
All the children working together on the big alphabet and numeral puzzle, talking to each other about the names of the letters and numbers.
B was 'doing a show' on the rug, skipping and singing "Zoom Zoom Driving in the Car", so V made " a gate" around the perimeter of the rug. T made an ink stamp picture and told me it was "a movie"; it was taped to a stool near the rug. There were two ideas about what should be The Show, we realized, and took turns having both live theater and a pretend movie theater.
Bubbles on the table! Tuesday was too cold for outdoor play, and we brought out our cars and foam sponge brushes to 'paint' the table or drive around it. Big fun!
Our chalkboard fabric was also brought out that afternoon, and the children made huge lines for yet another "skateboard park" before practicing drawing some letters. Everyone drew circles, too.
Painting at the big easel and of course, play dough time this week. We also had out some stickers, markers and paper for whoever wanted them. Pictures were created and then exchanged amongst friends on Thursday.
B and V, wiggly at snack time. Apparently early Miles Davis has that effect. They were asked to either eat or dance, and thus began some wiggly silliness (and dizziness!) on the big rug. With, of course, plenty of giggling to boot!
I introduced Scrabble tiles, and we played a bit with spelling random words. Much of this was in the form of the children selecting letters in somewhat random combinations and my answering questions like "is this a word?" and "what does that say?" The tiles can be used as a matching game, too, or for sorting, just to encourage letter identification.
See you next week!
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Hearts...and More Hearts
This week started with lots of love and giggles and togetherness. To begin our celebration of love, family and friendship that centers around St. Valentines Day, we learned a few new 'love songs' like "Skinna-ma-rink-a-dink-a-dink" and "Love is Something if You Give It Away", then got busy at the table making felt "Heart Cookies" for our Heart Cookie Bakery, currently set up in the housekeeping. Once each child had decorated three heart-shaped felt pieces with markers, they took them right over to the little bakery and began to play. Over the week, the children would stop by there for a few minutes of cookies, fruit and tea.
The big rug was a hub of activity this week. On Monday, B, V and J (visiting for our extra day) worked together to assemble the Big Red Barn puzzle. The Block skate park work continued, and I encouraged T and V to work again with finding ways to make more of the pieces connected paths; once these 'parks' were assembled, B liked to join, each of the children with a car as a 'skateboard'. They are beginning to notice that when they use less blocks, there's more room to play and things aren't getting knocked over so much. Tuesday, we put the dollhouse together on the rug, with V and T more interested in the assembly, and B more interested in the play itself. Furniture was discussed; instead of using the oven as the proxy television, as they had in the past, I invited them to find some small blocks to use for the television. Before we knew it, there were two rather large tv's in the dollhouse living room. Then B moved over to the block shelf and began rearranging the smaller square and rectangular blocks for her dollhouse people. "Tell me about what you've got here," I asked. She proudly replied "I'm building a tower for the princesses!"
As you've likely seen, we've been immersed in lots of art, and heart, work. The Valentines that went home on Thursday were dictated by the children. We've been having some discussions about love. What is love? "Love means you love somebody" said V. Could we see love? Touch it? Taste it? Could you hear it? "Yes" said one child. How? "You don't hear love, I think you just love somebody" V concluded. So it must be a feeling. Could love be inside of us? No one had an answer.
But everyone could tell me how we could show love:
B- Give them a crown for their hair. Give them dresses to put on.
T- I just kiss is out. (Yes, I did have to hold back the laughter within!)
V-I do it like B, give dresses to the people and crowns.
Tuesday brought time for us to make Valentines to give each other for the coming Monday Valentine's Day Party. We used stickers, strips of card stock and markers. B imitated my taking dictation, and began 'writing' on the back of one Valentine, asking V who/what she loves, and then V picked up the game, also making lines of scribble 'writing' and asking B questions in return. T was busy drawing. "Look, Hazel. This is a banana on a forklift" he explained, and you know, the curves and shapes did remind me of just that, until he came up with another idea and colored over the work. V noticed that her pink marker made lines in the same shade as the paper she'd chosen: "But I can't see it. It's camouflaged."
On Wednesday, our time at the big easel was spent painting the paper which would be cut out into hearts for the Valentines that went home. While I offered red, purple and pale pink, there was a lot of color blending going on and I pointed out some of the new shades they'd created, including mauve and fuchsia and hot pink.
We coupled this with some play dough time. V began rolling her play dough. "I'm a baker" she announced. "You're a baker?" B echoed. "Yeah", said V, "and I'm going to make another cake!" B had fun putting her "fingerprints", as she called them, into the dough, and did a lot of scissors practice cutting it up. T was busy observing his hands: first he squeezed a ball of dough and pushed his fingers into it, hard; then he carefully took it off his hand and examined the patterns and lines left in the dough. After this, he used two Popsicle sticks, making them stand up, and experimented with pulling the dough apart, watching how the sticks moved, and then pushing it together again to return them to standing tall.
Thursday, we all had some scissors practice with a basket of scrap paper. We grabbed markers and made a big poster for our Monday party, and there was a lot of hand tracing going on. T had brought in some hand-tracings to share this week, and had explained his process. "I tried and tried a lot, and then I got the knack of it!" He was so proud of himself. Everyone tried to trace their hands as they were able-- you get a really big hand tracing if you don't want marker on your hand; B prefers not to get messy, and her tracing was huge. We also used glue sticks to add hearts onto the poster before deciding it was done.
Outside: Wednesday, we went on an "animal walk", stomping like elephants down to the corner, trunks waving, and then hopping back like kangaroos. I drew big animal pictures and we played a running/acting game, where the children heard "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Run to the dolphin and make it come alive!" The children then ran to the drawing of each animal and acted it out, complete with sound effects. Games of Red Light, Green Light continued, and much of our chalk drawing in the driveway from Tuesday was present, so they were able to play on that "course"-- a wavy line for 'silly walking', circles for jumping into, lines for jumping over, and then three circles colored in red, green and yellow for T's version of "Red Light, Yellow Light, Green Light", where the children were asked to run to the appropriately colored circle. Several rounds of "Hide the Shoe" were played, too, and the ruler was brought out so that we could measure some of the green, growing shoots springing up in the play yard. The children continue to take random bits of leaves and twigs to the pile of trimmed grapevines which make up their "nest". No one can tell me what sort of animal lives there, but there are spurts of focused work on it from time to time. Basketball is also a big hit, with the children having fun throwing balls while standing on the rounds. They are also using the sides of the sandbox as balance beams.
What else did we do? Take a look:
Glue and colored rice on paper. The children were busy working with those little glue bottles, and when V suggested that she needed something to move the materials around on the paper, craft sticks were perfect and kept the activity going for a long time as some of the children really enjoyed piling the gluey rice onto itself. (I'll be sending these home in plastic bags, so as not to leave a crumbly mess in your car. Some kids do like to pick these apart when they're dry, which is a great thing to do outside in the backyard.)
The Lite Brite was out, and very popular. Some children made lines with the colored pegs, some made more random patterns. B emptied out the container of pegs at the base of the lightbox, presumably to see the colors without having to put all those pegs into the little holes.
Pattern blocks and cards were out again, and used. V and I worked together to use the blocks more artistically, figuring out a repetitive pattern which circled a 'starting block' and figuring out which shapes and would fit into the pattern from there. I thought our pattern looked like a flower, she thought it looked like a star....we were both right.
The bean bin had another week with us. B especially had a good time with J there on Monday. "I scooping ice cream for all of us!" she told me.
Bristle block play; the kids had fun smooshing like-sized shapes into a stack, and then putting other shapes onto the rotating pieces and spinning them around.
The teacher puzzles were a big hit once again, and I am observing that everyone is now using the pegs to hold the pieces without any reminding from me at all. In keeping with practicing our fine motor skills, the tongs and a bowl of corks were offered Thursday, and everyone spent time filling up a muffin tin with a cork in each space, then removing them carefully.
"Row, Row, Row Your Boat" at Gathering. What do we see in our stream today, as we row our boat?
T- A frog.
V- Princesses.
B- Princesses! (because it's such a good idea!)
"We must be in a fairy tale!" I surmised, and later we read "The Frog Prince", just for fun.
We recommence Monday, with our Valentines Party, and another busy week of learning and fun. See you then!
The big rug was a hub of activity this week. On Monday, B, V and J (visiting for our extra day) worked together to assemble the Big Red Barn puzzle. The Block skate park work continued, and I encouraged T and V to work again with finding ways to make more of the pieces connected paths; once these 'parks' were assembled, B liked to join, each of the children with a car as a 'skateboard'. They are beginning to notice that when they use less blocks, there's more room to play and things aren't getting knocked over so much. Tuesday, we put the dollhouse together on the rug, with V and T more interested in the assembly, and B more interested in the play itself. Furniture was discussed; instead of using the oven as the proxy television, as they had in the past, I invited them to find some small blocks to use for the television. Before we knew it, there were two rather large tv's in the dollhouse living room. Then B moved over to the block shelf and began rearranging the smaller square and rectangular blocks for her dollhouse people. "Tell me about what you've got here," I asked. She proudly replied "I'm building a tower for the princesses!"
As you've likely seen, we've been immersed in lots of art, and heart, work. The Valentines that went home on Thursday were dictated by the children. We've been having some discussions about love. What is love? "Love means you love somebody" said V. Could we see love? Touch it? Taste it? Could you hear it? "Yes" said one child. How? "You don't hear love, I think you just love somebody" V concluded. So it must be a feeling. Could love be inside of us? No one had an answer.
But everyone could tell me how we could show love:
B- Give them a crown for their hair. Give them dresses to put on.
T- I just kiss is out. (Yes, I did have to hold back the laughter within!)
V-I do it like B, give dresses to the people and crowns.
Tuesday brought time for us to make Valentines to give each other for the coming Monday Valentine's Day Party. We used stickers, strips of card stock and markers. B imitated my taking dictation, and began 'writing' on the back of one Valentine, asking V who/what she loves, and then V picked up the game, also making lines of scribble 'writing' and asking B questions in return. T was busy drawing. "Look, Hazel. This is a banana on a forklift" he explained, and you know, the curves and shapes did remind me of just that, until he came up with another idea and colored over the work. V noticed that her pink marker made lines in the same shade as the paper she'd chosen: "But I can't see it. It's camouflaged."
On Wednesday, our time at the big easel was spent painting the paper which would be cut out into hearts for the Valentines that went home. While I offered red, purple and pale pink, there was a lot of color blending going on and I pointed out some of the new shades they'd created, including mauve and fuchsia and hot pink.
We coupled this with some play dough time. V began rolling her play dough. "I'm a baker" she announced. "You're a baker?" B echoed. "Yeah", said V, "and I'm going to make another cake!" B had fun putting her "fingerprints", as she called them, into the dough, and did a lot of scissors practice cutting it up. T was busy observing his hands: first he squeezed a ball of dough and pushed his fingers into it, hard; then he carefully took it off his hand and examined the patterns and lines left in the dough. After this, he used two Popsicle sticks, making them stand up, and experimented with pulling the dough apart, watching how the sticks moved, and then pushing it together again to return them to standing tall.
Thursday, we all had some scissors practice with a basket of scrap paper. We grabbed markers and made a big poster for our Monday party, and there was a lot of hand tracing going on. T had brought in some hand-tracings to share this week, and had explained his process. "I tried and tried a lot, and then I got the knack of it!" He was so proud of himself. Everyone tried to trace their hands as they were able-- you get a really big hand tracing if you don't want marker on your hand; B prefers not to get messy, and her tracing was huge. We also used glue sticks to add hearts onto the poster before deciding it was done.
Outside: Wednesday, we went on an "animal walk", stomping like elephants down to the corner, trunks waving, and then hopping back like kangaroos. I drew big animal pictures and we played a running/acting game, where the children heard "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Run to the dolphin and make it come alive!" The children then ran to the drawing of each animal and acted it out, complete with sound effects. Games of Red Light, Green Light continued, and much of our chalk drawing in the driveway from Tuesday was present, so they were able to play on that "course"-- a wavy line for 'silly walking', circles for jumping into, lines for jumping over, and then three circles colored in red, green and yellow for T's version of "Red Light, Yellow Light, Green Light", where the children were asked to run to the appropriately colored circle. Several rounds of "Hide the Shoe" were played, too, and the ruler was brought out so that we could measure some of the green, growing shoots springing up in the play yard. The children continue to take random bits of leaves and twigs to the pile of trimmed grapevines which make up their "nest". No one can tell me what sort of animal lives there, but there are spurts of focused work on it from time to time. Basketball is also a big hit, with the children having fun throwing balls while standing on the rounds. They are also using the sides of the sandbox as balance beams.
What else did we do? Take a look:
Glue and colored rice on paper. The children were busy working with those little glue bottles, and when V suggested that she needed something to move the materials around on the paper, craft sticks were perfect and kept the activity going for a long time as some of the children really enjoyed piling the gluey rice onto itself. (I'll be sending these home in plastic bags, so as not to leave a crumbly mess in your car. Some kids do like to pick these apart when they're dry, which is a great thing to do outside in the backyard.)
The Lite Brite was out, and very popular. Some children made lines with the colored pegs, some made more random patterns. B emptied out the container of pegs at the base of the lightbox, presumably to see the colors without having to put all those pegs into the little holes.
Pattern blocks and cards were out again, and used. V and I worked together to use the blocks more artistically, figuring out a repetitive pattern which circled a 'starting block' and figuring out which shapes and would fit into the pattern from there. I thought our pattern looked like a flower, she thought it looked like a star....we were both right.
The bean bin had another week with us. B especially had a good time with J there on Monday. "I scooping ice cream for all of us!" she told me.
Bristle block play; the kids had fun smooshing like-sized shapes into a stack, and then putting other shapes onto the rotating pieces and spinning them around.
The teacher puzzles were a big hit once again, and I am observing that everyone is now using the pegs to hold the pieces without any reminding from me at all. In keeping with practicing our fine motor skills, the tongs and a bowl of corks were offered Thursday, and everyone spent time filling up a muffin tin with a cork in each space, then removing them carefully.
"Row, Row, Row Your Boat" at Gathering. What do we see in our stream today, as we row our boat?
T- A frog.
V- Princesses.
B- Princesses! (because it's such a good idea!)
"We must be in a fairy tale!" I surmised, and later we read "The Frog Prince", just for fun.
We recommence Monday, with our Valentines Party, and another busy week of learning and fun. See you then!
Friday, February 4, 2011
Camping Fun Continues
(Please note that due to family illnesses, this installment of our blog covers our activities from Tuesday of the previous week as well as the current week.)
As the children came in last Tuesday, all of them remarked with surprise that "the tent is up again!" Our camping play wasn't finished yet; we had more to explore. Gathering together, I used a few blocks and a piece of cloth to create a shelter for a couple of our dollhouse dolls. The children were ready to get right into building their own shelters for dolls. A shelter, I explained, keeps people dry and out of the elements, even the sunshine. Hoping for some connection between our camping play and the idea of shelter, I asked the group "So, why do we stay in a tent?" "I do!" replied B excitedly. "To keep you warm" suggested T. We all agreed those were very good reasons to sleep in a tent. Pressing further, our follow-up question: "What could be a shelter?" V said that a car or house could be a shelter. "Or a tree. For the sun." (implying that the shade from the tree was relief from the hot sunshine.)
A few moments later, our usual Skateboard Park construction began. As the curves and angles were being placed on the floor, T wondered aloud if we could build a shelter for the park. The children then began assembling their own creations of block 'shelters', for the skaters to go into. "I build a house!" B crowed over her own little block house.
The following Tuesday brought more camping conversations. I showed the children a compass, and our Teddy Bear's Camping map (which we usually use for counting) was oriented with the compass to face true north. The children had fun moving their bears wherever they chose, and I told them where they'd moved to using the four simple cardinal directions. For some reason, there was a lot of giggling involved! Later, I labeled the inside of the sandbox with the same. This activity is more to introduce the concepts, obviously, than for any sort of mastery, but labeling the directions in which we were walking over the two following days also kept things interesting, and all the children seemed interested that each of their houses was South of the School; and that B's house is West of T and V's houses.
Because camping is one of those activities that tends to be unpredictable, this seemed like a great moment to talk about both perseverance (what a big word!) and finding ways of making ourselves feel better "when things don't go how we like", which is the phrase I find children seem to understand well. How does one explore the topic of try, try again? We started with singing the song of "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider"; I have always clapped and cheered for the spider at the end of the song, because even though things were tough, the spider waited a bit, and then tried again and was successful. Reading the Frog and Toad story entitled "The Kite", the children could see Toad, heckled by robins, is ready to give up trying to fly a stubborn kite, only to have Frog's enthusiasm and perseverance push through; Frog encourages Toad to keep giving it one more try, and at last the kite "flew all the way up to the top of the sky".
During our discussion the next morning, I told the group a story about one of my own disappointments: going to the beach with the hopes of beach combing and hunting for pretty rocks, only to walk over the dunes and find a sandy beach with very few rocks. It was a disappointing moment, but then I was able to look around and find other things to do that were fun. "When things don't go how we like, what can you do to feel better?" The children had some very practical answers:
T: Maybe drink some milk a little bit?
H: Oh, does that help you to feel better?
T: Yeah.
B: Drink milk.
H: Anything else?
B: To do some playing.
V: Go to the beach, or watch TV.
Our story that day was called "Acorn Magic": an older boy finds an acorn, and then sees a scarlet tanager and an owl. His neighbor, an older woman who happens to be a bird enthusiast, suggests that the acorn must be "magic", as he was lucky to have seen the two birds. When the boy goes camping with the neighbor, he begins to collect as many acorns as he can, with the hopes of seeing lots of animals; but his preoccupation with the acorns means that he keeps missing the birds his friend spots through her binoculars. Angry and upset, he throws his collected acorns to the ground. Through a hard night in which a rainstorm visits, the boy cries with his disappointment. The next morning, however, he comes face to face with a moose, who has been dining on the acorns the boy had thrown down, and he comes to understand that magic in the acorn is not about what it helps him to see, but in what it can become.
We followed up this lovely story with our big project of the week, which was making binoculars. I think it's safe to say that this was just as big a hit as the birds we made a while ago, with the moving wings! The children were very engaged in using markers to decorate the paper that surrounded the tubes, and helping to wind the masking tape around the tubes to hold them together. But the best part by far was wearing them and peering through them. The camping play in the tent began again, with the children mostly looking at each other through them, and they were worn and used as we went on a quick trail walk before returning to school for sandbox play that afternoon.
Another great walk we had was on Wednesday, when we went collecting pine cones and pine needles to use as painting materials on Thursday. Both the collection of the items and the actual painting were intriguing to the children. V found a dried, curled up rhododendron leaf on the ground and asked if she could use it to paint. I told her that of course, she could give it a try. We also collected fallen moss and some sticks. Once we sat down to paint, V wanted to know how to use her leaf; I suggested scooping some paint into it and then dripping it onto her paper. "Wow!" T remarked, "that's a cool dripper!" B wondered if anyone had a paintbrush, so I showed her how to drag the little twigs with pine needles through the paint, and she used this as well as a pine cone to apply paint to her paper. "This is so fun!" remarked V.
Some more moments:
At the play dough table, I made a dough 'campfire' with logs and flames. "What could we add to this?"
V- "I made a little wood." (This, after she has already made a 'person' with a dough head, body and Popsicle stick legs.) She added three pieces of 'wood' to the fire, creating an arc pattern which reaches over the other 'logs'. T works intently, creating and recreating with his dough, very quiet. Then tells me "I made a wooka-zoo-zoo" for "squirting out fires". B continues her favorite past time of cutting the dough into little bits.
Some new teacher puzzles were out this week: we've added a horse, frog and ladybug to our selection. I also set out a challenge puzzle at the puzzle table; this is one that's meant more for 5 and 6 year olds. When it had been disassembled and left alone, unfinished, I reassembled it. B came over, sat down, and worked the puzzle completely on her own in about five minutes!
At the snack table, T wants to sing "that fruit song, about the ones in the tree", so we sing "Way Up High in the Apple Tree", V solos as she sings about the lemons falling out and how "they were sour". We all giggle, then we talk about other things that fall: waterfalls, leaves, snow, rain, and even stars. (Well, meteorites.)
Watercolor pencils on water-soaked paper: B sings the "Hello Everybody" song as she dances two different shades of pink, one in each hand, around on the paper.
Water play: the water mill, scoops, corks, small beach stones and some bubbles (of course!) were available, as well as the hand strainer, which scooped up both bubbles and corks. Tiny agates were placed at the top of the mill; some went through, while V observed that some "get stuck" because "the hole is too small". Later, B stirs and stirs, telling me "We're mixing brownies. Pretend brownies."
At Gathering this Tuesday, we took turns helping to assemble another creation with the connecting foam pieces. Our finished creation is very abstract. What could it be?
V- A standing-up thing where people could work. Maybe an ice cream store.
T-That kind of looks like a tadpole. A green frog.
B-A slide. At an orange park.
We sang "Row, Row Your Boat" and as the children paddled along, I asked them to tell me what they 'saw' in the stream:
V-Crocodiles!
T-Frogs.
B-Monkeys.
We must have been rowing our boats on a jungle stream, I told them, because that's where all these creatures live.
And ever more skate parks were created, with one skate park using all of the blocks on the shelves! We are still continuing our pattern work, both at gathering (with beads and pegs) and with more pattern cards offered. These have become more sophisticated, with a sequence repeated once or twice, and then spaces for the children to continue the sequences on their own.
Moving into next week, we'll be focusing on friendship and love, and of course, a little St. Valentine's day fun with some sweet art projects. See you then!
As the children came in last Tuesday, all of them remarked with surprise that "the tent is up again!" Our camping play wasn't finished yet; we had more to explore. Gathering together, I used a few blocks and a piece of cloth to create a shelter for a couple of our dollhouse dolls. The children were ready to get right into building their own shelters for dolls. A shelter, I explained, keeps people dry and out of the elements, even the sunshine. Hoping for some connection between our camping play and the idea of shelter, I asked the group "So, why do we stay in a tent?" "I do!" replied B excitedly. "To keep you warm" suggested T. We all agreed those were very good reasons to sleep in a tent. Pressing further, our follow-up question: "What could be a shelter?" V said that a car or house could be a shelter. "Or a tree. For the sun." (implying that the shade from the tree was relief from the hot sunshine.)
A few moments later, our usual Skateboard Park construction began. As the curves and angles were being placed on the floor, T wondered aloud if we could build a shelter for the park. The children then began assembling their own creations of block 'shelters', for the skaters to go into. "I build a house!" B crowed over her own little block house.
The following Tuesday brought more camping conversations. I showed the children a compass, and our Teddy Bear's Camping map (which we usually use for counting) was oriented with the compass to face true north. The children had fun moving their bears wherever they chose, and I told them where they'd moved to using the four simple cardinal directions. For some reason, there was a lot of giggling involved! Later, I labeled the inside of the sandbox with the same. This activity is more to introduce the concepts, obviously, than for any sort of mastery, but labeling the directions in which we were walking over the two following days also kept things interesting, and all the children seemed interested that each of their houses was South of the School; and that B's house is West of T and V's houses.
Because camping is one of those activities that tends to be unpredictable, this seemed like a great moment to talk about both perseverance (what a big word!) and finding ways of making ourselves feel better "when things don't go how we like", which is the phrase I find children seem to understand well. How does one explore the topic of try, try again? We started with singing the song of "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider"; I have always clapped and cheered for the spider at the end of the song, because even though things were tough, the spider waited a bit, and then tried again and was successful. Reading the Frog and Toad story entitled "The Kite", the children could see Toad, heckled by robins, is ready to give up trying to fly a stubborn kite, only to have Frog's enthusiasm and perseverance push through; Frog encourages Toad to keep giving it one more try, and at last the kite "flew all the way up to the top of the sky".
During our discussion the next morning, I told the group a story about one of my own disappointments: going to the beach with the hopes of beach combing and hunting for pretty rocks, only to walk over the dunes and find a sandy beach with very few rocks. It was a disappointing moment, but then I was able to look around and find other things to do that were fun. "When things don't go how we like, what can you do to feel better?" The children had some very practical answers:
T: Maybe drink some milk a little bit?
H: Oh, does that help you to feel better?
T: Yeah.
B: Drink milk.
H: Anything else?
B: To do some playing.
V: Go to the beach, or watch TV.
Our story that day was called "Acorn Magic": an older boy finds an acorn, and then sees a scarlet tanager and an owl. His neighbor, an older woman who happens to be a bird enthusiast, suggests that the acorn must be "magic", as he was lucky to have seen the two birds. When the boy goes camping with the neighbor, he begins to collect as many acorns as he can, with the hopes of seeing lots of animals; but his preoccupation with the acorns means that he keeps missing the birds his friend spots through her binoculars. Angry and upset, he throws his collected acorns to the ground. Through a hard night in which a rainstorm visits, the boy cries with his disappointment. The next morning, however, he comes face to face with a moose, who has been dining on the acorns the boy had thrown down, and he comes to understand that magic in the acorn is not about what it helps him to see, but in what it can become.
We followed up this lovely story with our big project of the week, which was making binoculars. I think it's safe to say that this was just as big a hit as the birds we made a while ago, with the moving wings! The children were very engaged in using markers to decorate the paper that surrounded the tubes, and helping to wind the masking tape around the tubes to hold them together. But the best part by far was wearing them and peering through them. The camping play in the tent began again, with the children mostly looking at each other through them, and they were worn and used as we went on a quick trail walk before returning to school for sandbox play that afternoon.
Another great walk we had was on Wednesday, when we went collecting pine cones and pine needles to use as painting materials on Thursday. Both the collection of the items and the actual painting were intriguing to the children. V found a dried, curled up rhododendron leaf on the ground and asked if she could use it to paint. I told her that of course, she could give it a try. We also collected fallen moss and some sticks. Once we sat down to paint, V wanted to know how to use her leaf; I suggested scooping some paint into it and then dripping it onto her paper. "Wow!" T remarked, "that's a cool dripper!" B wondered if anyone had a paintbrush, so I showed her how to drag the little twigs with pine needles through the paint, and she used this as well as a pine cone to apply paint to her paper. "This is so fun!" remarked V.
Some more moments:
At the play dough table, I made a dough 'campfire' with logs and flames. "What could we add to this?"
V- "I made a little wood." (This, after she has already made a 'person' with a dough head, body and Popsicle stick legs.) She added three pieces of 'wood' to the fire, creating an arc pattern which reaches over the other 'logs'. T works intently, creating and recreating with his dough, very quiet. Then tells me "I made a wooka-zoo-zoo" for "squirting out fires". B continues her favorite past time of cutting the dough into little bits.
Some new teacher puzzles were out this week: we've added a horse, frog and ladybug to our selection. I also set out a challenge puzzle at the puzzle table; this is one that's meant more for 5 and 6 year olds. When it had been disassembled and left alone, unfinished, I reassembled it. B came over, sat down, and worked the puzzle completely on her own in about five minutes!
At the snack table, T wants to sing "that fruit song, about the ones in the tree", so we sing "Way Up High in the Apple Tree", V solos as she sings about the lemons falling out and how "they were sour". We all giggle, then we talk about other things that fall: waterfalls, leaves, snow, rain, and even stars. (Well, meteorites.)
Watercolor pencils on water-soaked paper: B sings the "Hello Everybody" song as she dances two different shades of pink, one in each hand, around on the paper.
Water play: the water mill, scoops, corks, small beach stones and some bubbles (of course!) were available, as well as the hand strainer, which scooped up both bubbles and corks. Tiny agates were placed at the top of the mill; some went through, while V observed that some "get stuck" because "the hole is too small". Later, B stirs and stirs, telling me "We're mixing brownies. Pretend brownies."
At Gathering this Tuesday, we took turns helping to assemble another creation with the connecting foam pieces. Our finished creation is very abstract. What could it be?
V- A standing-up thing where people could work. Maybe an ice cream store.
T-That kind of looks like a tadpole. A green frog.
B-A slide. At an orange park.
We sang "Row, Row Your Boat" and as the children paddled along, I asked them to tell me what they 'saw' in the stream:
V-Crocodiles!
T-Frogs.
B-Monkeys.
We must have been rowing our boats on a jungle stream, I told them, because that's where all these creatures live.
And ever more skate parks were created, with one skate park using all of the blocks on the shelves! We are still continuing our pattern work, both at gathering (with beads and pegs) and with more pattern cards offered. These have become more sophisticated, with a sequence repeated once or twice, and then spaces for the children to continue the sequences on their own.
Moving into next week, we'll be focusing on friendship and love, and of course, a little St. Valentine's day fun with some sweet art projects. See you then!
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