Dear parents,
We started our week building with blocks. The children worked in
groups of four to build structures. They built a castle and a bridge,
a gum machine, a stage for a show, a king and queen castle complete
with trolls, and a garbage can.
Tuesday we built with blocks again. We asked what are the blocks made
of? The children answered wood and told us it comes from trees. What
they had to say about their buildings: it’s super high, we’re working
on a castle, we’re making a boat, this is a chair, we’re trying to
make a robber cage, when the walls fall we have to build them again,
it’s harder than it seems, this is an airport, these are the seats but
it’s not really stable, and ours is a tiger cave. Shortly after, that
group turned into a bunch of growling tigers.
During yoga the children sat in a circle holding hands and leaned to
the left. We also saw them trying to pick up pom poms with their toe
toes. While half of us were in yoga, the other half went to present
our giant rainbow bagel thank you card to La Bagel Delight. They
seemed delighted! We saw a real rainbow bagel on the counter which
caused a stir among a few children. We went twice to give our card, so
that both groups could have a turn.
On Thursday the children looked through our bookshelf for books with
pictures of houses. We found many. During circle we examined each
picture for shapes. The children saw rectangles, squares,
sort-of-circles, diamonds, triangles, and a shape no one knew the name
of yet, a trapezoid. We read Our House, The Orange Splot, and looked
at Harold And The Purple Crayon to see other kinds of homes. One
person told us his house was flat on the top.
After snacks everyone chose what color to make their house and we used
different shapes of construction paper to construct our homes. The
next day we added watercolor. One person painted their windows blue,
while another told us they were painting the whole cabin because it
was misty. Then we read Animal Homes.
Next week we will talk about our families and who lives in our homes.
Have a homey weekend,
Therese
A sweet gum family tree grows
Dear you all,
Monday we did the Feely Box again. The guesses were: a porcupine,
something spiky, a ball, a sea anemone, and something that fell off of
a tree. It was the spiky fruit that fell off of a sweet gum tree.
We also had leaves from three trees. The children identified which
leaves came from the sweet gum tree by comparing them to a picture in
Have You Seen Trees? We talked about how the leaves were alike and
different. They noticed how many points each leaf had, the different
sizes, shapes, and colors. They also noticed that they all have veins
and stems.
Before eating snacks the children took turns sorting the leaves into
three piles. Identifying and sorting: science and math skills.
We examined the spiky thing that fell from the sweet gum tree in our
neighborhood. We asked the children to look for them on the way to and
from school. Someone brought in a few small pine cones, the same ones
we had on our science table.
The children worked in pairs twisting long pieces of brown paper for
the branches of our sweet gum family tree.
Eight sleepers on Monday. And Wednesday. One person asked to go lay down early.
Family pictures, family pictures, family pictures, please. We are
short three families. As opposed to three short families.
We read Little Blue and Little Yellow, and the children worked in
pairs mixing blue and yellow. Some painted one sheet of paper while
others couldn’t paint enough. The next day while Frank showed everyone
the banana pose, we practiced using scissors to cut the paper into
leaves for our family tree.
Friday morning we glued our leaves to the branches. We painted the
fruit for our tree. We punched holes in plates for the spikes on our
sweet gum fruit. It took about a week. It was like a tree making
factory. The class worked furiously.
We looked at everyone’s family photos and talked about where they were
in the picture and in what season it was taken. Some were inside,
outside, in winter, in summer, on a boat, at Coney Island, near corn
fields, by fences, and at home.
Next week, we complete our tree fruits and prepare food for our feast.
The family feast will happen on Wednesday at 11:15 am. Each family
will place their family fruit on the tree. We will eat, drink, and be
merry.
Have a lovely weekend,
Therese