Building Buildings

 Thinking and talking about structures, block building, working together, and creating.  We created art that "stood up" on it's own, with patience and folding for support.  Our home paintings and books are very identifiable and all about our own identities; where do we come from? There is all sorts of building and cooperative fun and collaboration throughout the days.

There's real excitement about our "home" books as we share them and discover similarities and differences amongst ourselves. 

 We glued wood pieces together and painted them, experiencing the physics of angles and curves and how to make pieces stay together with balance and supports, at the same time that we were creating structures that were whimsical and imaginative. We noticed that the children typically started by moving pieces of wood around, adding glue, and THEN came up with the story of their structure.  The action of building was the "plan".  

Once the glue dried on our structures, we painted them and we were able to tell stories about what they were.  We will create a book of structures for each child to remember their classmates and the structures we created. 

The building and block rug has a marble maze activity now.  The children are creating long trenches for the marbles to travel. Sometimes there's an obstacle course, and sometimes it's a simple fact of distance.  

As the spring weather continues, we have begun a closer look at the pond on our property.  We are just in the initial stages of our exploration, and we have a jar of pond water on the science table for observation.  

The lower school at Parker is conducting an in-depth pond study, and we are benefitting from some lovely benches to sit on and observe the pond! 

Happy Spring!

Week of the Young Child !

 This week we celebrate the Week of the Young Child!  We ask the children WHY we would celebrate them, and here are some of the answers:

"because without us what would our parents do?" 

"because we're childs" 

"because we love everyone" 

MONDAY was RAINBOW DAY and included rainbow colored clothes, rainbow colored oooooobleck, a rainbow number coloring game, rainbow shaped craft, and a very special fruit rainbow snack. 

Tuesday was Tasty! We baked cupcakes ! 

We had a discussion about such things as ingredients, recipes, and taking turns.  

The children frosted their own cupcakes with sprinkles.....

WEDNESDAY was WHACKY! 

 We wore what we wanted to; there were princesses, dressy costumes, someone wore a bib and bathrobe. There was a chef, a doctor, and  many mermaids. A lot of clothes were inside out, and there was a fish hat too. We did "whacky" paintings and read that very funny Book with No Pictures (always a hit with tlittles). 

We started the day with our wiggy wiggles freeze dance!

Our message included a riddle. Do you know the answer? You might ask your child!

Even our painting was whacky!

THURSDAY was PAJAMA DAY 

We wore our pajamas, had a cozy message, and ate popcorn together. 

"hello?"

"let it go!"

Until Next Time,

Michele