Safari

It is on my "things to do list" to blog more. I wish I could post all of our activities and every clever phrase that comes out of a mouth of a young person. Like most months this one has come and almost gone. We have been all over the African map! We explored ways to travel, people, food, clothes, new words, new letters and read some fun books.

Relationships

We have turned our pink shop into a friendship house. This is my favorite thing the pink shop has been so far.......wait I say that every time. Anyway we will be using the friendship house to provide a safe place for teachable moments and bonding with our school family. Our first circle time activity using the Friendship House was talking about words. We can use pillow words or sand paper words. I had a fuzzy cozy pillow and asked all the children.... Do you like pillows? How does a pillow make you feel? We passed around the pillow and talked about what we liked about it. I passed sandpaper out and let the children feel and talk about the sandpaper. After we explored the two objects we talked about how we can use pillow words or sandpaper words to talk about our feelings! So far it has been a hit! The children are being more conscious of their language with their friends and dishing out compliments(pillow words) like they are going out of style.

We will keep building on this idea until the kids are ready to move on. It will be interesting to see everything we decide to add and explore. More importantly I can't wait to see the children's friendships blossom and their life tool box full of tools they will use for the rest of their lives!

Dinosaurs

Our January theme was "DINOSAURS." We had a blast learning about all different kinds of dinosaurs.
♥We prepared and ate different dinosaur foods.
♥we paper mached giant dinosaur eggs.
♥Made dinosaur feet, dinosaur exhibits.
♥Tied pterodactyl's in our tree outside our classroom.
♥Put footprints leading to our front door.
♥Made dinosaur noises.
♥Moved like dinosaurs.
♥Dinosaur egg store

It has been a while!

Wow! It has been a while since I have posted anything recent! This month has come and gone in a blink of an eye! The kids and I had so much fun this month learning all about our 5 senses and playing with our new props(vintage suitcases and the steamer trunk). We also added white and purple to our painter's palette.
The five senses are so important when you are working with children. They learn so much through touching different textures, seeing things that are esthetically pleasing, smelling, hearing(listening) and of course their favorite exploring the world by tasting it! I always make sure I am teaching all five senses. This month we had the chance to do different activities to make the children more aware of their senses. I love having a different theme every month! It is so fun to see the children look at the world in different ways! Not only does our theme change but the children's way of thinking!( keeps evolving)

Something is fishy

More nonsense......I stuck a fish decal on the stove and made up a whole story about last nights dinner. It went something like this...I asked Amelia "what do you want for dinner?"and she said "fish". I looked in the refrigerator, I looked in the dryer, I looked in the dishwasher, I looked in the shower, and I even looked in Nicks lunch box. I couldn't find fish anywhere. Then we put our shoes, our coats, a scarf, and a hat on and went to the market. When we got to the market the fish had already gone to bed for the night. I asked Amelia "what should we do?" She said "lets go fishing." We went back home I packed our fishing poles, tackle box and Amelia loaded the boat! When we got to the lake we ran into more problems and more adventures. But to make a long story short, when we got home to cook our dinner one of the fish tried to escape. So we named him Henry, the singing fish(because he is singing).
The kids got a lot of laughs out of my story and had fun with the fish all day long. Of course they knew it was just a silly story.

Unclaimed Baggage Center

Yes, it is a new month and we have tucked away all of our ticket booth manipulative's. We worked hard on creating an unclaimed baggage center for this month's theme "Suitcase Senses." We filled four vintage suitcases with dress up clothes and props. We packed for grandma's house, counted them, stacked them, sorted them, counted the items inside them and worked our fine motor skills opening and closing them. What all will we put in our suitcase's this month? I am wondering how many squashes will they hold? Of course we have to add some nonsense to our curriculum and daily exploring!

GZA Post Office

We went down to our local Post Office. After we explored the post office we went home to design and make a post office in our dramatic child size village. It was their idea to use two rooms. One for weighing, sorting and sending and the other room for mailbox's just like the real post office! Introducing a post office into our tiny town opens up endless opportunities to teach the kids through play.
Airmail.... sending a bird
balloon through the mail was not my idea.
That is nonsense!