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!
