Imagination, Construction, Reflection...

Sometimes a few new ideas and props make all the difference in the play.

Last week, as the children were busy working some puzzles at the big table, I brought two large orange acorn squashes, a bowl of nuts, some cockle shells that V's family gifted us with last year, some pine cones and our wooden animals to the big rug and began creating a little scene: the squashes were placed upside-down like houses, the nuts were lined up to become the borders of paths, the animals situated randomly amongst these items. The children finished their work and came close. "What do you think you could do with these things?" I asked them.  Here's what unfolded:

V decided to make a 'river' with some rectangular blue blocks.
V: Ducks are eating a pine cone.
T: Ducks can go underwater and get things out of the ground too.
V: And they're eating in the water.. They're dunking their heads down in the water. I'm pretending they are.

B placed some almonds near the squirrel. The materials were rearranged to suit the children's vision. V uses a pine cone to "play catch" with the dog. Dollhouse people are brought into the story. T's boy doll is "Watching the ducks--just like the football game--that's the name of our football (team)."

V tells us that "when it's nighttime, people can eat out of these pumpkins (the squashes)." There is some discussion if the squashes should be eaten.

At this point, the play turned to using the cone puzzle for 'ice cream' play, and they used the nuts for 'money' to pay the ice cream seller.

This Tuesday and Thursday, construction was a big focus. We read "Truck Driver Tom" and I brought out two large pieces of cardboard, with the suggestion that these pieces might be used to build bridges or ramps for our cars. V and T jumped right into experimenting: T with a ramp, V with a bridge. First, the smaller colored blocks were used to support and modify the bridge and ramp, but the children noticed that they were moving around too much. I suggested they try using the heavier wooden blocks instead, and once this switch in materials was made, their work began to see some success. "These blocks are much stronger' observed V. She built a bridge with support on both ends (stacks of blocks, like legs of a table, plus large round cylinder blocks for central support) and ramps on both sides. T built a ramp with a little "jump" at the bottom. The children also did a lot of trial-and-error work to see how to get the slightly wider cars to go down the narrow ramps on V's bridge.  (During this time, B was happy cooking up food in the little kitchen and brought V some toast while she worked.) When the children revisited this activity on Thursday, the bridge construction went more quickly and blocks were placed on the ends of the bridge, near the ramp, as "gates", V told me. T chimed in-"Yeah, so you don't just fall off the sides." During this time, B built a "house for the people", and situated a dollhouse mom and girl on a few of the blocks.

We also created sailboats on Thursday, with plastic containers, plasticine, paper and a chopstick for a mast. We took turns floating each of them in our large tub of water, and we sat around the tub, blowing on the sail to make the boat go where we wanted it to. Then, we stuck some plasticine (that's modeling clay, which is great because it doesn't fall apart in water) to the bottom of some apple juice containers to keep them floating upright, and marked the water line when the containers were empty. After this began the fun task of 'loading' our bobbing boats up with marbles, glass 'gems', and beach stones, all the while observing the gradually-sinking water mark. Finally, our boats were so loaded up that they sank, sending up big air bubbles which really excited the children.

Last Thursday, we had a fun time re-reading "All the Colors We Are" by Katie Kissinger. This book discusses how our skin gets its color: from our parents and ancestors, from whether they lived in warm and sunny or cooler and less sunny places, and from melanin. (This is one of those fantastic teacher resource books and is a great way to teach simple facts about differences in skin color in a positive way.) Then we created a new page for our books: we used paint samples and a mirror to help each child find colors that matched their skin, lips and eyes. We noticed that all the skin tones were shades of brown, too, and after we selected the colors which best matched, I read the name of each color printed on the back of the sample: "Cave Painting", "Fortune's Prize" and "Antoinette Pink" were the titles of the 'skin' colors they'd chosen. Other fun names were enjoyed, and the children came up with some of their own names: V liked "ice cream cupcake" to describe her brown eyes; T liked "construction paper blue" for his. This Wednesday, we read Lois Ehlert's "Hands" and then traced our own hands, coloring them in, and I asked the children what they liked to do with their hands and wrote these short answers down.

Some other things we've been doing:

Fingerpainting in trays, with fingers and wooden popsicle sticks; we made some 'prints' of their work for fun, and had the big tub full of soapy water for washing hands and trays.

Car track painting this Tuesday, which morphed into some fingerpainting.

Digging out a 'river' in the sandbox, using a piece of wood for a 'bridge', and sailing our little boat in the sandy water.

Pattern blocks: B declares a trapezoid to be a 'slide', then balances a skinny white diamond block onto a blue diamond block. "and I make two slides". B uses all of the pattern blocks vertically, standing them up and placing them as she liked. T created his "houses" again, using trapezoids for roofs and squares for the lower parts. "Like my four houses?" he asked. V worked a pattern all by herself, starting in the middle and finding places for pieces to fit in the negative spaces of what she's already created.

Body Play: Singing the "Hokey Pokey"; we are talking about our hips, elbows, knees, and some of those trickier parts: thighs and calves, ankles and wrists. I drew a huge person and the children were happy to "run to the ears! Run to the tummy!" Taking turns to call out the directions or run, either way it was fun and we've learned a few more words to describe places on our body.

Our neighbor's eaves are home to a robin's nest. We took a peek at it one morning, and when we only spied a tail, re-read Lois Ehlert's "Pie in the Sky" to see that just like in the book, there are eggs in the nest and sometimes, the tail is all we see of Mama Robin.

B and V dancing together, first on the rug, then in the kitchen so that the rug can be used for block play. Then they join T and become engaged in helping to build a 'skatepark'. B sets up a little 'picnic' nearby on the floor, and V bridges the two activities by telling us "I'm a park dog".


"Oh, what would you like to ask me?" Preschool is a lovely place to keep practicing the good manners we will need throughout our lifetime. More and more often, as our growing children feel more confident in asserting themselves and their needs, they forget that there's a difference between asking for something and demanding it. I noticed that we were a little out of balance in this area when at snack time, a child held their hand in my face with a look of upset. "Oh, do you want to ask me for something?" I inquired; "Yes, can I have a napkin?" they answered. I am placing less emphasis on the 'please' part of this, and just focusing on helping the children think about getting from "I want" and "I need" to "May I please have" or "Could you..."  I do notice, too, that their tone of voice changes when they  move from demanding to requesting. If their request is made in a whining voice, I have them try it again in a "Friendly Voice". You can help your little ones at home develop these important habits by modeling this as much as possible and by giving them positive feedback when you like what you hear: "I really liked the friendly way you asked me for that glass of water"; or take a moment to help them: "Use your friendly voice, please", or "Let's try that again. What would you like to ask me?" Our children need our support and guidance as they learn to navigate social interaction in their world, and as parents it's often easier to just get them what they want instead of asking them to rephrase. So pick and choose your times for this practice, and do keep it up. When your child is readily asking for what they need in a friendly way, this will ease their upcoming transitions to new schools, teachers and friends in September.

Have a great weekend!

Fine Dining, Kid-Style

Over the last few weeks, we've been having fun exploring the concept of restaurants. Restaurants are often a big deal in the eyes of the children; not only are some of their favorite foods there for the asking, restaurants are one of a few places in which our adult world can overlap with the child's world. Much like a doctor's office or school, the roles of people are clearly defined: servers, cooks and customers. In this way, playing restaurant is an easier leap of imagination for the children, as they know how to be the customers, know what the servers do (take orders, bring food) and the cooks? Well, they see us cooking all the time at home.

In our housekeeping area, the furniture has been rearranged; a menu and the children's 'fine art' hang on the walls and a server's notepad has been added for their use. The children have been putting lots of orders in: pancakes, toast (which is especially popular) and eggs are big sellers here. Servers scrawl scribble-line 'orders' and an apron is donned by the cook, the customer sits on a stool at a small table and receives the food. At their insistence, forks and spoons were added for this pretend play to maintain the children's sense of legitimacy. T took a big first step in writing when he decided the restaurant needed a sign for "Closed" and "Open", and he wrote both words on paper (I spelled them out for him).

Sometimes, too, our dollhouse would come out to serve as a restaurant. Arranged to be a big dining area, a kitchen and a restroom, there was some discussion as to where to put the television "because a TV is for a house, not a restaurant", said V.  "Well, some restaurants have TVs on the wall" countered T, and the block which was designated as a television was balanced upon the wall to be 'up'.  V's doll was the mother, B's was the girl and then V decided to be a girl too. The dollhouse patrons watched TV, and there was again some conversation about who could watch TV, the grown ups or the kids, as well as a question about what you might see on TVs at restaurants. T and B discussed the placement of the little potty in great detail: should it be under the window, or in the corner for "privacy", which was T's concern.

As you can see, there is a great deal of social play and problem-solving that goes into this sort of exploration.

We sang a song (based on "Mary Wore a Red Dress") to tell about what we liked to order at restaurants. V and B both love to order mac-n-cheese, T really likes sushi. Then, a question which sparked a discussion at Gathering:

Hazel: What happens when we go to a restaurant?
T: Sometimes a mommy and daddy go to a restaurant with me to get sushi too.
V:  Well, it's loud and has lots of people there. They cook food, they make all kinds of stuff.
B: I eat mac-n-cheese there.
T: One time I go to Hopworks and there's a train set and pinball but now it's gone.
V: Really?

What do the grown-ups do?
V: The grown ups order, but sometimes I order when girls are there. (if the server is a woman)
B: We have dessert for me. And mommy gets dinner.
V: What dessert do you get?
B: Vanilla ice cream.
T: Sometimes I go to the store and get some ice cream.

One of the books we've been enjoying as a group is Monica Wellington's "Pizza At Sally's". From growing her tomatoes in her community garden to making the sauce in her pizzaria to finally enjoying a slice of her own at the end of the day, Sally's little pizzaria inspired us. On this last Thursday, we walked up to our neighborhood pizza place at snack time for breadsticks with plenty of Parmesan. Most of these were devoured.. Returning to school, we then spent some time making 'pretend pizzas'. First, we mixed the "sauce", which was really glue and red paint, then the children spread it onto the 'dough' (paper circles) and added toppings of paper cheese, pepperoni and olives. Remembering the illustrations from the book, V and T decided to put some more sauce on the top of the toppings, because 'sometimes you see the sauce through the cheese'. Don't forget, too, if you're in a pizza mood, the book "Pete's a Pizza" by William Steig. This sweet story reminds us that our kids can pretend to 'be' food any day, if we're game too.

As I have mentioned before, two of our preschool families have new babies and when significant transitions like this happen, it's even more important for school to stay just the same. Be assured that we are keeping to our routines and that I am aware that sometimes, the children use the school space to have some 'down time'. Each morning, we've been reviewing our options for single player areas as well as reminding the group where the more social play is expected to be accommodated. Our Cozy Corner has a few more toys to add appeal for children needing to take a little break, and we have a total of four independent play areas and three group play areas. The four single player areas mean that there's always a choice, and when there are big things happening at home, having choices can become more important in the eyes of our little ones.

We are also moving on in our exploration of our selves, and doing a few activities to explore our 'selves', some of which will become pages in the children's books. Last week, we spent time at Morning Gathering focused on measuring with length and weight with rulers and scales. First, we used a ruler to measure lines of nuts by inches and made predictions as to which lines of nuts would be longer: hazelnuts, Brazil nuts or walnuts. We learned to our surprise that the same number of Brazil nuts and walnuts measured an equal length, and the hazelnuts were correctly predicted to be obviously smaller. (We charted this using both numerals and corresponding amounts of dots.) Then, we used a scale to measure blocks and books, also asking a question at the start: which would be heavier, the blocks or books? We also discovered that they seem to have evened out poundwise. Lastly, we measured each child's height in inches with a tape measure (which they thought was really neat, especially as it self-retracts very quickly!) and their weight in pounds on a scale and recorded these. Next week, we'll be thinking about the colors of our skin, eyes and hair, and working on a project around this topic.

Several more glimpses into our past two weeks:

Name Pictures: the children were each given cut-out letters of their names, some simple shapes and glue with swabs for spreading. Each child put their name onto their paper in their own way, orienting the letters as they chose. We have one name running in a counter-clockwise circle, one name running left-to-right with a few letters upside down letters and one in a jumble with lots of other shapes worked in to create a burst of letters. These hang on the wall of our puzzle and games area.

Silly, silly play: The children have some 'scaring each other' games going in the most benign, funny way. Two of them will walk by the sharing table and their 'line' is "What a beautiful day" and then another child hides on the other side, jumps out and 'scares' them with a big "BOO!" This elicits shrieks of pretend fear and much laughter. This play was continued in the dollhouse, when T's doll boy began 'skateboarding' on the top of the dollhouse frame and then falling down, saying "What a nice day....OWW!" which was very entertaining to his friends. The safety of the little doll was sacrificed for laughs. Then the other children began to imitate this, with giggles and gales of laughter, dolls tossed into the air with cries of "Hot Lava!" and "Hot Water!" and "What a nice day!" in silly voices.

Lots of opportunities for water play with funnels and beach stones. Scoops were loaded with colorful rocks; some were successfully used to plug up the water mill.

Painting at the big easel with 'daffodil colors'. V tells me her picture is "a big big outer space with all kinds of nice creatures". (With an open mind like that, she's the first one I'm nominating for intergalactic ambassador!) T tells me "I don't know what it is. I mixed all the colors up."

Complicated skate park designs are requiring the children to do more planning, thinking about the traffic flow of the skate park before they use the their cars to 'play' it. Everyone is in on the skate park play these days, and this means that we are learning how to leave the built-in areas as they are and find other areas to build onto it. When a builder leaves, their work may be rearranged to suit the remaining players.

We've been continuing our work with droppers of color. This time, we dripped color onto paper in a pan, then added marbles for a new sort of marble-track picture.The children especially enjoyed tipping the pan to watch the colors swirl and blend.

Paper work: we've had markers and scissors available lately. Some pictures have been going into the mailboxes of friends. T drew a straight line, and then chose cut on it, following the line with scissors. B cut out a triangle shape, so we talked about that as well.

Playdough was another reflection of our restaurant theme: T was "spreading butter on this toast". B had a popsicle stick standing up from the center of her ball of playdough. "I'm making a tall building" she stated. V jumped in on the food play "I'm making toast too" and then B made me a "breakfast of cereal". At the table, I heard a lot of polite questions as the children asked each other for tools.

Outdoors, our sweet planters have gone home to make room for containers of carrots. Last year's Forget-Me-Not plant had set out enough seed to start some more of these small plants with little blue flowers, and we are counting them as they emerge, as well as noticing where they are popping up. How did some of those seeds travel so far? Our peas are thriving, and we are observing where 'more'  and 'less' have come up. We've a children's fact book about composting, and one day we walked up to the local coffee shop for their coffee grounds; some of the kids really enjoyed scooping them out of the big bag and throwing them into the heap! (Dirty work is the best fun.) Chasing games have ensued, and we took a lovely scent tour through the garden. The winter daphne is beginning to fade, but the rosemary, pieris, spicy yellow currant, lavender and lemon balm all have their own perfume in this season. And we're observing the plum tree, sporting a few white blossoms, and the cherry tree with its fat buds just waiting for a bit more sun. Books like Lois Ehlert's "Pie in the Sky" help them to understand the cycle of the fruiting trees, and "The Good Brown Earth" by Kathy Henderson reminds us that while we might plant, weed, water and marvel at our gardens, the soil has it's seasons for rest and growth, and it's own magic and mystery: "And the good brown earth got on with doing what the good brown earth does best."

Have a beautiful weekend, rain or shine. I am looking forward to Tuesday with your special little persons!

A Slight Change

As two of our families have new babies, and as I find myself becoming more interested in providing a richer, more concise account of our days together, I've decided to update this blog once every two weeks. Please enjoy your weekend and do look for the next post around April 16th.

Hazel

Fun and Family

This week for our group has been a quieter one indoors, and a very busy one out in the backyard. Our hyacinths are blooming, thick blue spikes of color in our pots of pansies. Our peas are beginning to sprout too; we can just barely see the green bits emerging from the soil. On Tuesday, both V and T  helped me crush washed eggshells with a mortar and pestle, and then scattered the pieces over the sprouts. This will give the peas some protection against slugs and cutworms.

Now that the we have the trellis for the peas to grow on, chasing games are a big hit. Having a longer shape to run around (the children's house and the peas) is making these games more challenging. What else is happening outside? We're noticing the different colors and variety of daffodils. B has been 'making food' over by the rain garden with rocks, pine cones and sweet gum pods. Yesterday, she gave me a "breakfast" of two rocks! Our new rainbow wind spinner tells us the direction of the wind, and the children are noticing this and calling out, pointing "The wind is blowing from that way!" Our "Hide the Shoe" game is starting to involve clues and hot/cold directions from the children. After a story time book on composting and compost piles, we turned over the compost to find impressive masses of very healthy-looking worms, which astonished the children. I think V wanted to hold each of them in turn; she loves to examine the worms and bugs. On Wednesday, after a shorter Trail Walk, we dug out "a lake and a channel" for water in the sandbox, and unearthed some long-buried treasures as well, then brought buckets of water over to fill up our waterways. We've also decided as a group that it was time for the 'nest' of old grapevine trimmings to go, so that we can make a permanent site for fairy house play.

Family, food, and growing things have been topics of conversations and story time this week. On Tuesday, we finished working on a group collage of "Foods We Like" and our individual pages for our books. Thursday also found us working on book pages, this time pasting pictures of our family onto the paper and naming the members of our family. There have been a Prince and Princess keeping busy in the housekeeping this week; V and B have made many Stone Soups as they play these characters. One of their conversations when this all started:

B: You're going to be the princess and I'm going to be the guy.
V: Who? The guard or the guy?
B: The guy.
V: Oh, the prince.

They've been switching off playing these roles, with lots of dress-up play. T has been enjoying these moments for himself, building with magnet blocks, and bristle blocks. On Wednesday, he made a bristle block camera and took pictures of V.

Our block area has been busy. B and V loaded trains and trucks with nuts and stones and ran them round the 'track' of the carpet. T joined them, bringing the house puzzle down and stating "I think we need a station." Wednesday found a colorful skateboard park of both the smaller colored blocks and long unit blocks, created by T and V, who are obviously working toward creating the best skate park ever! Their cars were the 'skateboards', which did tremendous tricks and flips. Very daring!

We are moving into a time of working with eye-droppers, and will have more art opportunities for this as the weather warms up and we can move the big paper easel outside. This is a challenge of both fine motor skill and learning a sequence of actions, which we sang: "Squeeze, Let Go, Pull it Out, Squeeze Again". Sounds a bit silly from an adult perspective, but keeping these steps in order is essential to actually getting the watercolor paint from bottle to paper. It's always neat to observe each child's techniques. B used her dropper to draw out the color from the bottle, then made lines of paint with the tip of the dropper, using it almost like a pencil to move the color. T has been talking a lot lately about the story of "Little Blue and Little Yellow", and had fun dropping yellow paint onto blue dots he'd first put onto the paper, watching at how they turned green. V dripped different colors onto each other. "Look, I'm making a river!" exclaimed T, noticing the color becoming a stream of sorts. "Look at my river right here!" invited V. The children worked on trays, so they could tip and manipulate the paint once it had been dropped on. And we discovered that all those colors together (red, blue, green) make some interesting browns.

A few more moments from our week:

T and V using reinforcement ring stickers and markers on paper. T draws a 'giraffe-- there's the eye'. ( a reinforcement ring was used. V makes 'boats going around', a series of circles. "Like my 1?" asks T, drawing a numeral 'one' onto his paper. V writes her entire name on her picture, with a little help ( I drew out the letters she couldn't immediately recall onto a separate piece of paper). Quite a proud girl!

Play dough: lots of scissors play on Tuesday (cutting up food circulars), and play dough time was no exception. V asked B " can I do what you're doing?" and both cut away at the chunks of  dough for a time. T makes 'a cake with a candle' and then builds a 'teeter-totter' with the dough. V creates a teeter-totter too.

V and T sort through the colored rice bin for beads and buttons. They are very interested in their discoveries.

We continue to explore puzzles. Our dinosaur puzzle is a huge hit, the mouse puzzle also a challenge. We are working on referring to the picture on the box for the latter; for the former, much of this is looking for clusters of color (the dinosaurs are very colorful) and textures and matching those up. When they're stumped, I'm asking them to look at the shapes of the pieces, to remind them about distinguishing between edge and center pieces. This will take a lot of practice before it becomes automatic.

We changed up our Animal Mothers and Their Babies matching game to include making the sounds each animal makes. Quite a cacophony of noises!

Have a great weekend, and I'll see you Tuesday!