While preschool is a special place for a young child, your family home is by far their most beloved. You, their parents, are there, and this gives their life the stability it needs. You also provide some delightful moments for your child. We explored this at Morning Gathering, as we made a list of Things We Like to Do at Home:
V: I like to play dress up.
B: I like to play dress up too, just like V. I like to do cooking.
V: Me too.
T: I like to watch my mommy cook. I like to watch her make pancakes.
V: I like to help Mama make pancakes. (pause) I think I like to watch movies. I like to eat pancakes with whipped cream.
T: I like to cook by myself on my pretend stove.
B: I like to do painting.
V: Me too!
T: I really like to do painting too.
V: I like picking flowers in our backyard.
One of our special one-on-one moments I had with the children this week was working on pages for their books. I asked each child the color of their house, which everyone knew. Then we talked about, and recorded, their addresses and telephone numbers. Some children chose to use a glue stick to create 'houses' from cut-out rectangles, squares and trapezoids (this shape makes a great roof and it's always fun to have that word reintroduced!) to add to that page. Cut-out paper shapes were added to make doors and windows for their houses. We've also been reading stories about the right kinds of homes for different animals, as well as people. Going on a walk, each child received a card with one letter and one number of their choice printed onto it for a hunt. We used the address numbers, license plates, street signs and more to find these symbols; this activity was focused primarily on letter/number reinforcement and also made them a little more aware of the labeling of addresses and streets. Some street corners even have letters and numbers set into the concrete in our neighborhood. Very novel!
The idea of homes was also explored through the continuation of Nest and Bird play in the backyard. Dried grasses are gathered into piles and collected up, redistributed around the play yard as 'nests', and little flight courses for the birds have been created in the moment. They play 'follow the leader', those wee little birdie children, with one child leading, "flying" around the Children's House, up onto a cedar round, back down and behind the plum tree house or back to their nests. They take turns being the adult and younger birds.
Much of our time over the last couple of weeks has been spent trying new-- and sometimes challenging-- activities. We've been spending time before Gathering to learn a very basic group game of dominoes, which primarily involves matching the shapes and building the dominoes onto each other. We do this with the pool of dominoes face-up, for everyone to use. We are using our Fruit Dominoes, so this sparks some fun conversations about fruits we like, too. On other days, we revisited our "Dice: Most and Least" game I mentioned in the last post. One day, we used paper plates to create an over/under weaving. This activity contained many facets : the children followed instructions; used scissors to cut the edge from the plate; traced a circle in the middle, using a metal canning lid and pencil; cut out the circle, on the lines, did over/under weaving, which was challenging- most especially regarding the tension of the yarn (we had a little help); colored the plates and added beads. We rarely do such direction-oriented projects, and the children present that day really rose to the occasion. The next day, we used yarn, beads and feathers to make a decoration to take home. The beading and feathers were easier, the knots more tricky and requiring assistance. The purpose of that activity was 1-to-1 correspondence. ("One feather goes into one bead" as opposed to random amounts of feathers in each bead.)
Artistic opportunities were offered as well. Sticky paper and construction paper squares were offered for a mosaic craft, which the children assembled as they pleased. T liked to place his in rows and columns, V's were a bit more random. Their process was narrated. V hummed "Happy Birthday" and then tells me "It's a rainbow pattern", then the children decided that the squares looked like pages in a book. "Once upon a time there was a million fairies and they were all girls" V 'read' to us. "Once upon a time there was a forest and an owl spied...." T began a story as they walked away from the table, holding their creations.
The big easel was offered; with the tempera paints, V painted " an ocean". Lately, some children are choosing not to take time at the easel as they have been busy with other kinds of play. Everyone is given an opportunity to enjoy the easel, but no one is forced to paint. We've done some print painting with random objects and some exciting pictures came out of this activity. We revisited the eyedroppers and used our long easel to work wax resist 'drippies' pictures; two children worked on these independently and all three joined in for a group work, which was exciting to the children, especially when the paint 'jumped' over some big white patches of crayon which are relatively invisible. Play dough was offered as well. A few letters made it into friends' mailboxes, and watercolors were available too.
Some other moments from our time together:
Lots of circle play on the rug. The children sing songs as they go around, arms spread out: "Airplane Airplane go so fast, Don't fall into the air blast crash!" and all fall down. "Ring Around the Rosy", "The Earth Goes Around the Sun" and a made up songs about "Butterfly Butterfly Fly so High" which always seems to have new words in each singing of the song.
House play extends to the rug: B and V; B is the mom, V is the little girl. B makes pancakes for V. They decide they "are cold". B wears an apron as a shawl tied about her shoulders and V wears a silk scarf tied around her middle, which she dubs "a warm up thing". V then "practices" her dancing and brings out instruments.
T and B building with the magnetic blocks. "I'm building a skate park" says T. B says "I'm not building a skate park, but I'm playing." She makes a car with three seats.
V builds a Princess Castle with blocks, then she and B dance next to it. They are Dancing Princesses.
The silliest play dough time ever! This started out with cutting pieces of the dough with scissors, "bake in the oven" says V, baking a 'cake'. T makes a game. "If the ball (of play dough) goes across and it can't go into the sharks and this (the scissors) will eat it up". He has two pieces of play dough connected with a 'bridge'. V imitates this. The balls are very dramatic as they meet the fate of the scissors. "Oh no, I got snipped!" cries V in a silly voice, pretending to be the ball of dough. "Whoa! Whoa! I'm gonna be eaten!" hollers T.
B: Which ice cream to you want?
V: Cinderella. (pretends to eat. They both giggle.)
We created an outfit for our paper dolls, which went home. If any parents feel like expanding on that play at home, please let me know and I can provide some easy tips.
Outdoors, carrots have been planted. The children were inspired afterward to play "going to a plant festival", pretending to plant 'seeds' in 'pots' in the sandbox. Containers are the pots, stones are the seeds and sticks are the plants. Watering cans came out and all of the 'plants' were watered liberally!
More fun next week as we explore the creepy, crawly, wiggly world of bugs!
