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!
