We welcomed a new friend Didi Chen to our class this week, and we are glad to have him!
We also are so happy to have Mrs. Frany Cook back with us after the summer break- Mrs. Cook will be with us two hours every day to work on the Handwriting Without Tears program. She has already has us identifying and replicating the capital letter of our name. A project we are working on for handwriting is apple art, and we are using scissors to strengthen our fine motor muscles in our hands and fingers. Another method of developing fine motor muscles is using tray tasks. For these, the teachers design a specific task that works toward a goal and arranges necessary components on a tray. Some of the goals that are encouraged are crossing the midline, getting comfortable with "left to right" and "top to bottom," pinching, and squeezing. These are all pre-writing and pre-reading skills that we need to develop. I will be assessing the children as they work on these tray tasks to identify areas we may need more focus. If you would like a copy of Mrs. Brittney's book "The Little Laughing Yogini" ($13.00) please check with the front desk. Please plan to join us the afternoon of September 11 for an LBS ice cream social. Have a great weekend!Our photos are here.
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Welcome to Jeffrey Lin who joined our class this week!
We've been stuck on spirals this week, and it's been exciting to see the kids discover them in unexpected places. Even the monkey tails in one of our games are spirals! We made paper plate spirals that we're turning into colorful snails, and we took turns cutting and gluing for our projects. While a lot of our artwork and projects stay at school to go in our portfolios, please take home the sand name art! These will be in your child's cubby by the porch door in our room. We identified the letters in our names, circled them, then sprinkled colorful sand on the glue. We discussed the importance of letter order and why we write our names in a specific way. Next week we start our handwriting program when Mrs. Frany Cook joins our class. We will be revamping our centers in order to focus on important developmental activities such crossing the midline, getting comfortable going from left to right and top to bottom. Playing games and working with designed activities get us ready to write and read! I'll be sending home some tips for you to help play/practice with your child at home. If you can, come support our yoga instructor Brittney at her book signing tomorrow. Have a great weekend! You can see our photos here. Our study of wind took a turn this week when a classmate brought in a snail he had found. We had so many questions! What do snails eat? Why do they have slime? Can they climb trees? We talked about two ways to figure out information; one is observation and the other is research. With the snail in a bowl, we used our eyes to observe how the snail moves and wiggle its eyes on stalks. We also saw it sliding over the dirt using one giant foot. We have done some research by reading the book "Are You a Snail?" and we will continue to find the answers to our questions. Using books and the internet are some ways we suggested to do research.
We used our bodies to move like snails. Since snails only have one foot (and lots of slime), we practiced slithering slowly. Snails have two eyes on stalks that they can pull back into their heads when needed. We looked pretty silly trying to do all these things at once! While looking at the snail's shell, we talked about the design on it called a spiral. We traced spirals using our fingers, drew with a pen, and painted which used fine motor and gross motor muscles. Painting on an easel requires bigger muscles as our shoulder controls our arm and wrist, and tracing relies on precise movement from one finger. A fun, tasty spiral activity we did was making our own cheesy bread! We followed directions, measured and mixed ingredients, and used our muscles to knead the dough. After spreading out the dough, we rolled it into a spiral shape before baking. Yum! We have more spiral activities and art planned for next week and will continue to learn about snails. Have a great weekend! You can see our photos here. Wind, wind, and more wind! We are discovering the power of air whether from nature, our breath, or the air conditioning units. We've created our own wind by using straws and our mouths, and this was demonstrated in a science experiment we did. After selecting five different objects, we predicted whether we'd be able to move them across the floor while blowing through a straw. We made an important discovery when some of us realized we could blow stronger wind without the straw.
We then used these straws in an art project in Studio! After splashing some paint on paper, we blew on the blobs of paint to create unique art. Once the paint dried we turned our projects into beautiful windsocks. The flat piece of paper can be rolled into a cylinder before attaching colorful streamers. (They'll be hanging in our room once I get a ladder in there.) Our windy week came together very nicely, and we've started to touch on other weather terms. We'll incorporate more next week, and we'll also make bread dough for a yummy treat. All that kneading will be great for our fine motor muscles! Have a great weekend! Our photos are here. You might have heard us singing "Let's Go Fly a Kite" from Mary Poppins this week as we've been talking a lot about kites! We've identified the shape, what we'd need to fly them, and made our own. After designing individual kites on paper, we worked together to create beautiful, colorful ones for our classroom. Following specific instructions we mixed the paint and water, shook it up, and then poured the mixture onto diamond-shaped pieces of fabric. They're going to look great against the gray clouds on our ceiling!
Mrs. Brittany let us make choices during Yoga this week about which poses we wanted to attempt. We of course wanted to be unicorns with mustaches! We also stretched our bodies as turtles, filled our washing machines, and much more. Ms. Fripp brought her percussion instruments and recording devices so we could hear ourselves play. We were very good at sharing the drums, and everyone got a chance to play the really big ones! Next week we'll be finishing up our ceiling kites and crossing our fingers for a very windy day. Maybe we'll be able to fly a real kite! Have a great weekend. Our photos are here. |
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Class of 2016
Researchers TeachersMolly Fastenau Archives
June 2016
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