We began our week working in the classroom, connecting and disconnecting math manipulatives. These toys fine tune fine motor skills, hand-eye-coordination, and learning colors, shapes, and counting. They also helps to hone sharing and listening skills. While playing on the carpet, some also chose play dough or the drawing table.
Play dough strengthens hand muscles needed for fine motor skills. Holding small crayons does the same. We are still mixing colors with our play dough, it takes many days of squeezing and squishing to get a new color. Most of our play dough is still red or yellow.
On Tuesday we played with shaving cream at the table. The children drew on the table using hands, fingers, and fingernails. We made circles, straight lines, and a few letters. The children said the shaving cream felt warm, soft, and sticky. The next day we added yellow, and blue or red, to get two new colors.
We are still learning each others' names, how to share, keeping our hands on our own bodies, and listening eyes and ears.
In circle we read books about fall and leaves turning colors. Many children said they had seen the fruit of the sweetgum tree, some had not. We looked at a picture of it in our book. Someone said, "It's spiky."
On Friday we read Little Blue and Little Yellow. We talked about when we mixed blue and yellow at the easel. It was just like in the book when little Blue and little Yellow hugged. We looked around to see who was wearing green. Many.
Have a green weekend,
Therese