Through this blog you will have the opportunity to explore, discover, play and enjoy some of the many wondrous daily happenings in our early childhood day.
Celebrating fun in learning, accomplishments and sharing with Grandparents and Special Friend's Day!
Building with blocks and building relationships old and new.
The children loved being able to share important aspects of their Junior Kindergarten days with some of their very favorite people.
Budding Authors!
The children, all month long, shared the book Rocket Writes A Story, by Tad Hills with their families. In our classroom they created a word tree to hang words they wanted to know how to spell upon the branches. Collectively, these words became important parts to original stories created by the kids. As you can see, they illustrated them too! Awesome!
As part of our literacy and author study, the children have been learning about building a story with a beginning, middle and end. They have learned to pay attention to the characters, setting, and lesson in a story (if there is one), too. Last week, the children compared stories by Leo Lionni. The stories we read were fables with animals as the main characters and all had great lessons to learn. The fables we shared were: Matthew's Dream, It's Mine, The Green-tailed Mouse and Frederick. This week, we will learn from Inch By Inch. The author spotlight this week will be on Tomie DePaola.
The children enjoy new and exciting ways of learning lessons in our curriculum. Being four or five year olds they love mysteries and gadgets as well. It was fun to learn math using both! Intrigued by boxes in different shapes and sizes, the children estimated how many objects might be in a box by shaking it, listening, and feeling the weight. Numeral cards helped the children to get an idea of the number of items in the box. After guessing how many and matching a card based on their guess to each box, the children opened them and counted to see if their guess was correct. This brought on a lot of conversation, delighted squeals and fun in learning!
Learning through exploration and discovery is always our way!
learning about care and thoughtfulness through up close and personal play with our hermit crab pets!
Building
Experimenting with different mediums.
Writing is more fun in paint!
creating from imagination
inquiring
talking about things that interest us
We Love Learning!
Here's what's coming up in JK....
JANUARY
January 28 - Field Trip to American Stage (leaving school at 9:30 and returning around 11:30)
FEBRUARY
7 - Parent Conferences - No school
February 14 - Valentine's Day Party - 9:00 - 11:00
February 15 - Teacher Professional Development Day
February 18 - President's Day Holiday - No school
We are very excited about all of these coming events.
Mrs. Cummings enjoys reading with the children during free choice time. Soooo cute!
The children brought their favorite books to school to share with their classmates last week. Everyone was very excited to talk about their books, swap them out and show off the pictures they like the best. Together, we graphed the books according to fiction or non-fiction and discussed whether any were by the same author.
Ezra Jack Keats
Speaking of authors.......
Ezra Jack Keats is certainly one of my favorites!
Last week the children embarked upon a journey through the amazing books of Ezra Jack Keats. Reading such favorites as The Snowy Day, A Whistle For Willie, Apartment 3 and more, the children learned that authors like Keats who are also extremely artistically inclined also sometimes illustrate their own books. Keats wrote about, drew and painted what he saw, lived and experienced while growing up in Brooklyn, New York. He understood the simple pleasures and daily experiences of children. Keats is well known for having introduced multiculturalism into mainstream children's literature in America. He inspired authors of all races with his works. We just think his books are really fun and really great! This week the children will read along with and listen to the book
Peter's Chair. Later in the week we will begin studying the books of Leo Lionni. Aren't stories the best! Learning more about and sharing the stories from these amazing authors is such a treat for me and an experience I hope the children will remember always.
The Snowy Day was certainly a crowd pleaser last week!
Transferring
Some of our favorite activities in the Early Childhood Center at Shorecrest are those that work with transferring. Transferring objects, or moving them from one place to another, is not only fun but offers many valuable learning skills to the children. Transferring activities help children to build fine motor skills such as hand/eye coordination, grasping, strengthening hand muscles needed for all sorts of things like using a computer, turning pages in a book, dressing and feeding oneself, writing and so much more!
Pinching the rubber end of eye droppers to collect colored water from one container to move it to another, pouring water and transferring it without spilling a drop (or too much, at least) takes a lot of concentration and sure is a cool experiment when you are four. Scooping colorful beads with a little spoon and moving them from one pretty bowl to another takes a very steady hand. Squeezing a pair of tongs to grasp a sponge and controlling them enough to move and drop the sponge into a space just big enough to fit it strengthens hand muscles. It's also different and cool!
Take a look!
*picking up beads with tweezers to move into tiny suction cups
*using tweezers to separate tiny plastic ladybugs from mini apple erasers
BOTH activities require using the "claw" fingers that grip a pencil or writing utensil to properly work the tweezer in order to pick up each item....good practice!
Learning To Write.....
on paper with pencils is not typically part of our early childhood curriculum other than printing one's name. However, learning to form letters correctly by using fabulously fun and tactile means is always at the top of the curricular list! Take a look at the children enjoying printing and forming letters, always starting at the top of course, in sand, shaving cream, with magnets, roll-a-dough, on the ipads and so much more.
Wet/Dry try on the HWT app on the iPads is GREAT for practicing proper letter formation. The kids love it!!!
Budding Authors!
We have some amazingly creative children in our class. Learning to write is just the beginning. Putting ideas down on paper is something I am seeing them do more and more. Taking illustrations and inquiring about how to spell words that fit them to make stories is something our class has taken a huge interest in. Last week the children visited Barnes and Noble on field trip. There they enjoyed a wonderful story time with the book Rocket Writes A Story. That book is being sent home for your family enjoyment with each of the children on his/her sharing day. This book inspired our class to create a "word tree" in our classroom. Each child shared one word they would like to learn to write. They drew a picture and wrote the word with help from their teachers to place on the tree for future writing endeavors. Pre-made books in the writing center and other bookmaking materials will hopefully entice the children into becoming authors and illustrators. Be on the lookout for awesome "books" coming home!
So much learning....so little time to blog!
Stay tuned!
Have a wonderful week!
This week.......
*Author Study: Leo Lionni
*Clubs begin
*Exploring Friday with a special guest...Ellen's mommy!
She will talk to us about and show pictures from her trip to Antarctica!
Happy 2013! The new year brings more new and exciting opportunities for fun in learning. Explorations of and investigations into all sorts of topics will lead to exciting projects and brain power! Come along for the ride. Follow the Sunny Sea Friends and dive on into our ECC ocean.
This week the children will "kick off" a literacy study with a field trip to Barnes & Noble. An exciting Author study will accompany it. We'll be reading books and participating in activities surrounding the literary works of Ezra Jack Keats, Leo Lionni and Laura Numeroff, to name a few.
The children's favorite books (coming in this week) will give the class the opportunity to sort and graph books with similar themes, by the same author, fiction or nonfiction, etc. If you haven't already, please help your child to choose a favorite book (by any author) to bring to school ASAP.
Although we only had a couple days together last week, there was a lot of BIG learning going on. Here a few fun pics of the exciting explorations and heartfelt activities.
The children are learning about "The Fruits of the Spirit" in class everyday. The fruits aren't coconuts, cherries, watermelons, or bananas....the fruits are Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self-control. There is a song to help the children learn about these virtues and the children love to sing it and practice role playing scenarios where they can show each to one another. On Thursday after dancing and singing to our "Fruits of the Spirit" song and talking about ways we can show others love (the greatest virtue of all), the children cutout and decorated hearts as symbols of love, dictating and printing their own words to describe what love means to them. Our hearts will be sent to Newtown Connecticut to add to the "Hearts of Hope". Because of the sensitive nature of the reason behind this project, one that is inappropriate for discussion with four year olds, we simply talked about spreading our love around the world by sending the hearts to people who need a little extra love. The children were happy with that knowledge.
More fun in learning....
cutting mint leaves straight from our garden to add to water and drink as part of Fun Friday's snack
creative building
Polar bears and shaving cream along with building sponges and colored rocks make for fun winter exploration.
Ice, cold and smooth, until you put salt onto it. The salt makes it bumpy and makes tunnels and colored water looks really cool when it travels through them.
Shaving cream is really cool to write in too!
Aside from fun, open-ended exploring the children were busy conducting science experiments during Fridays exploring as well! First they got to create a snowflake out of pipe cleaners. Next, the children had to measure out 8 inches of string using inch cubes. After they tied the string to their snowflake they then came over to the laboratory station! Now for the fun part :) With the help of a teacher, they poured boiling water into quart sized jars and added 1/3 cup of borax to make the solution. After stirring and watching the borax dissolve the children lowered their snowflake into the mixture while suspending it from a pencil laying across the top of the jar. Three days later the children should have tiny crystals growing on their string to look like snowflakes. We can't wait to see them on Monday!
Stay tuned for this week's exciting pictures and news! It's good to be back!
