Gratitude !

 These past few weeks we have been focusing on GRATITUDE.  What does it mean to be grateful? What do you say thank you for? How does it feel to be grateful?  We often asked the children to help us write words on their "gratitude turkey's" feathers, and it was GRATIFYING to find out that they appreciate all that they love. 

Thank you for a wonderful ZOOM meet on Grandfriends' Day at Robert C. Parker School.   I was so busy I did not get a picture of our performers (they were so graceful and could you tell I had suggested that they "smile through their masks"?) 

 Team work is dream work. 

We are thankful for all that you are and do. 

THANK YOU! 

Until Next Time,
Michele

Self Portraits

Every year we like to ask the children to draw a picture of themselves. This year I said that I was very grateful to be their teacher and that I would love to have a picture of them to hang up. 

A child's self-portrait can reveal many things. As with any drawing, it shows the development of a child's fine motor, observation, and focusing skills. The children painted these portraits without a mirror to look at. You can see eyes, eye color, hair, facial expressions, and from the drawing there are clues about self concept and body awareness. The ability to draw a whole body with many parts is in itself a developmental and cognitive skill. If your child's self portrait does not look complete yet, it will be soon!

We gave the children choices in colors in tempera paints after they drew their picture with a sharpie. A lot of art at this age is about process, not product, and you can see that there was some mixing of paint colors, splashes, brush strokes painting over and over the paper, and shapes and splatters. 

In every drawing you  can see all of the energy and focus that goes into a wonderful child's self portrait! 

As we were talking about being a member of our classroom, or a "citizen", we had a talk about what it meant to be a "comforter" in the room. The children knew that having the responsibility of being the comforter meant that you could help someone who was feeling sad or bad. Some of the things that we decided the comforter could do to help were:

• Ask "do you want to play?"
• Ask "how can I help?"
• Ask "are you okay?"
• cheer them up
• tell them knock knock jokes
• take them to the teacher to see if they're okay

We are very proud of the citizens of this classroom! They have a sense that they can be powerful helpers, and express some true words and actions. 

Until Next Time,

Michele

 

 

 

Sap and Feeling Grateful

 We are talking about GRATITUDE in our classroom. Being grateful can help our mood, calm us down, and give us good feelings! We sit and breathe, and imagine someone that we love. We imagine giving them something that they will like, and imagine the look on their face!  It feels nice to be kind! Our classroom "grateful turkeys" are filling up with feathers. Some of the words that the PreK children are saying include "family" "mommy" "daddy" "rainbows" and "Michele" (lol).  

We continued to rake around our trail and make it so nice to run on. We can see all the roots and stumps now and run really fast! Also carting a wheelbarrow full of leaves feels pretty good. 

We painted and created a "November trees" picture with brown strips of paper on a blue background. 

Our big story was learning so much about sap this week. We squeezed clear glue and glitter onto a branch and it looks like it is covered with sap. Matt came to talk to us about sap and told us that the VERY STICKY stuff that we are finding outside is actually not sap, but RESIN. It comes out of the tree to heal cuts and holes, like our blood does for us. Leiana zoomed in to talk about why sap is sticky. We experimented with sugar and water and found that if we mix sugar and water, it becomes sticky! We also know now that sugar is food for trees and plants, just like it is food for us.  

Until Next Time, 

Michele

Big Questions and Writing in the PreK Classroom

 There is a lot of writing happening now in the PreK classroom. Writing, which means using a writing implement such as a marker, pencil, or crayon, and making marks that mean something to the creator. 

Writing in the PreK classroom can take many forms. There are pages in the journal that look like lines of writing, there are treasure maps being drawn, and there are faces being made to indicate the makers feelings in the moment. All of these playful ways of making marks are meant to communicate something.  Sometimes our writing is formal, as when we write questions about sap, and sometimes our writing is playful, as when we spend time in our journals or creating pictures with our markers and stickers. The PreK children are WRITING. 

We wrote words, with help, to ask some experts here at Parker School about SAP. The questions mostly had to do with why sap is so sticky, but there was also a question about where sap comes from and why sap is on pinecones?  We've sent the questions out to experts, after we decided how to "address" the envelopes, and we think it could be DAYS before we get an answer. We'll keep you posted! 

We have been writing words of gratitude to add to a "grateful turkey" as feathers. 

We placed our Parker Rock outside in a secret spot. We visit it every day, and sometimes we hear the children say "HI listening rock!" 

It's a beautiful shiny rock and we are very proud that we worked together to create it!

And of course we had some great times outdoors!

We added a wheelbarrow and two rakes to the outdoor space, and have been doing some trail maintenance as well as creating leaf piles for jumping. 

There's limited resources, so there's some turn taking and cooperation as well as hard work! 

Until Next Time,

Michele