Comment

Friday, May 24th

Happy Parents’ Day! We hope you were pleasantly surprised by the goodies your children worked so hard to make. They have been so excited about preparing gifts just for you- they love you so much!

This week we have seen such growth and development in the children in terms of cooperative play. They are creating play scenarios, such as traveling to a different island or place, and acting it out together as a large group. The children are seeking each other out to play with, having independent conversations, and are really doing much better at sharing and giving each other equal objects to play with. We are so proud of the 2A friends! So often we overhear the children talking about wanting the whole class to come over their house, go on a trip together, etc. They have truly become a tight-knit community and really enjoy being with one another.

Our fine motor skills have really had a big boost of late - we are doing such an amazing job with tasks like beading, cutting, and opening snacks by ourselves! These are important life skills that we are happy to see such big improvements in.

Next week is our last week with our various specialists! This week Ernestina had us go fishing again and taught us the names of the ocean creatures. Coach Jojo had us running around the gym without touching the different obstacles in our way. And Emily sang our favorite songs and let us take turns strumming on her guitar.

Comment

Comment

Friday, May 10th

This week we really got to enjoy the beautiful Spring weather with a couple of trips to Washington Market Park. Along the way we were happy to chat about our surroundings and objects that we encountered. We also named a lot of the flowers we found in the park and identified so many beautiful colors. As the school year winds down, we will go out as much as we can. Please make sure to apply sunscreen to your child before school begins if it’s predicted to be a sunny day. Thanks!


Wishing all the Mamas a restful and love-filled Mother’s day this Sunday. We wanted to make you a little something, but more is coming for Parent’s day in a couple of weeks.


During the last two weeks we created tracings of all of our bodies and have been working on painting them all. These will be up on the walls very soon- we are so excited to showcase our work and talk with the children more about their individuality and identity. We are hoping that we can have the children come up with some words for each other, much like you did about your own child. It’s always exciting and insightful to hear the adjectives the children come up with.


  • Diane helped us make rosewater soaks for our Mamas

  • Ernestina gave us a taste of Cinco de Mayo with some tortilla chips and guacamole

  • Coach Jojo had us practice running and balancing by running around the cones without tipping them over

  • Emily sang our favorite songs with us, like Five little Monkeys & Wheels on the Bus

Comment

Comment

Friday, April 12th

Another exciting and fun week as we celebrated The Week of the Young Child together.

Monday- Music Monday

We did our very first exploration of the tonoscope (which basically allows us to see the vibrations our voices make by moving salt around on a rubber surface. Sometimes you can see a pattern form- and almost always you can see salt “dancing” as it is pushed by the sound waves). For our first time, we thought about what in the world this crazy contraption could do, and then watched Rachel use it. We wanted to gather some predictive data before diving into the exploratory phase.

We also created a class playlist- find it here: CLASS PLAYLIST ON SPOTIFY

Tuesday- Tasty Tuesday

After our vote between tacos, spaghetti and pizza, we decided it was time to make our own tacos! Rachel cooked up the meat and we got to choose toppings like lettuce, tomatoes, onions, cheese, salsa and sour cream. We ate the tacos on hard shell corn tortillas. Everyone loved them!

With Diane, we made our own “birds nests” after a wonderful story that Diane told us. We used shredded carrot, cucumber, and chickpeas to build the nests. A healthy treat!

Wednesday- Work together Wednesday

We had to postpone the festivities to Thursday, but we made some yummy lemonade to share with our friends in the 3A classroom. They came to visit us and brought us some homemade banana bread to share! It was great to make new friends and continue our week full of delicious treats!

Thursday- Thankful Thursday

For Thankful Thursday (which we swapped from artsy Thursday), we each created a very special page for a class book that we are making. Each child chose their favorite animal to make and we will give a copy of the book to those who donate art supplies for The Dreaming Zebra Foundation.

AND Eudenis made us spaghetti since it was tied with tacos.

Friday- Special Person Friday!

What a wonderful way to end our week! We made handprints together, took photos with each other, shared a snack, and did some planting. Everyone was so happy to play with their special people- and we were especially excited to have some Grandma’s spend the whole day with us! Thanks, as always, for helping us create these special memories for your children.























Comment

Comment

Friday, April 5th

Caterpillars

Our annual caterpillars have arrived! We have been making so many wonderful discoveries just by watching and observing them daily. First we learned that we are taking care of 7 little caterpillars. Next we realized that they are growing pretty quickly! They have seemingly doubled in size already. We have watched as they nibble at the brown food at the bottom of their habitat .

What do caterpillars do?

Barak- Eating. Moving. Moving down the drain!

Sloane- Eat. They eat honey.

Riley- Eat pasta and pizza for dinner.

Kennedy- Move. Taking steps. Eat.

Roger- Moving

John- They say caw caw caw!

Luca- They go “hhhhhhuhhhhhhh.”

More Observations:

Barak- And they will be butterflies!

Luca- Caterpillars are moving! WOW! They’re eating my fingers.

Kennedy- (Giggling as they move) It’s butterflies!

Barak- They like me!

We’ve also tried to guess what color our butterflies will be after they have emerged from their metamorphosis:

Luca: Green

Manuela: Blue

John: Red, pink and purple

Riley: Blue

Grayson: Blue

Roger: Blue

Kennedy: Pink

Sloane: Yellow

Barak: Green

(So far no one has guessed the correct color . . .)

Beans

Our beans are growing very quickly. It has been seven days since we planted them, and about half of the bags have bean shoots that are visible now! Each morning we have been spending some time observing the changes and seeing all of the new growth.

Restaurant Play

As our play in the kitchen center continues, we have seen play that truly resembles that of a working restaurant. A child will sit at the table and ask for specific foods- sometimes using the menus we printed out. Then the “server” will go to the kitchen and search for the food and prepare it! Watching this evolution in understanding has been pretty amazing- we are just stepping back and allowing the children to take charge. We hope to rearrange the kitchen a little bit to aid in play very soon. If you have any old kitchen tools that you won’t be using anymore, we’d love to have some safe, real tools to use for play.

We’ve also worked on creating our own recipes, and during our free draw times, more and more menus are being invented and made.

Assorted Classroom activities this week:

  • Lots of reading! We have started to read some of our Easter related books (mostly centered around bunnies and spring). Our current favorite is an Easter version of “Don’t Push the Button.”

  • Using recycled tubes as train tunnels- this has been a very engaging project that has evoked a lot of storytelling.

  • Watercolor and crayons, which make a beautiful resist (as the crayons are oil based and won’t mix with the watercolor inks).

  • Working on a secret project for our very special visitors next Friday (April 12th at 9 AM!)

  • Lego and magna-tile creations have been growing in complexity and size! We hope to add more materials that are similar for building and see if it will push the thought process even further.

  • We started tackling the big big science project of: sound! For this week, we worked with glass jars filled with various amounts of water and tapped on them with a metal fork. Each glass made a different tone. Everyone was very interested in trying and testing out the glasses- and it even sparked a debate about which jar made the “biggest” sound - it was a toss up between the one we colored red and the one we colored orange.

  • Rachel & Eudenis created the first version of our tonoscope- next week the children will get to predict, engage with, and reflect on their experience with it! We are VERY excited!

Specialists

  • Diane helped us make charoset, which is a mixture of diced apple, honey and cinnamon. We ate it on pieces of Matzoh.

  • Ernestina sang songs about Spring, butterflies, and animals with us this week during Spanish.

  • Coach Jojo had us work on a lot of kicking practice and scoring goals

  • Emily sang a variety of different songs using a ukelele this week, rather than her traditional guitar.

  • We made some “apple tacos” this week with chickpea flour tortillas, apples, applesauce, and honey.


Comment

Comment

Friday, March 29th

Our week was filled with wonderful explorations, especially with open-ended loose parts. We used pieces of aluminum foil rolled into balls to really work our fine motor muscles and had a fun guessing game about what might be inside. We turned recycled tubes into train hills, bridges and tunnels. Corks became train cars and something to stack. It’s always fascinating to observe these different methods of using common materials- at first the children kind of ignore that it’s even out and ready for them to play with. They take time to think about how to approach it and why. Once an idea forms, the play really begins and flows into many varied play scenarios.

We also started to embrace the season of Spring by doing some seed germination. We used paper towel “blankets” to envelope our lima bean seeds. We then placed the “blankets” into the ziplock bag “bed.” We added some water in case the seeds get thirsty while they are resting. Now we will wait and see how long it takes for the seeds to wake up! Any predictions?

And our cooking/restaurant/menu project has continued this week. We worked on trying to make our own recipes (and some of us revisited the menu concept instead). Not everyone has had a turn yet, but we can’t wait to see what delicious foods we can learn to make very soon!

Specialists

  • With Diane, we made mushroom and veggie soup

  • With Ernestina, we learned about Spring (Primavera)

  • With Coach Jojo we did a lot of practice kicking the ball into the net

  • Emily played our favorite songs for us!

Comment

1 Comment

Friday, March 22nd

Literacy Week!

Wow- we had a blast this week for literacy week. It was super fun having Mommies come in and read with us! (Daddies- we’d love to have you come in, too!! If you ever have a little time to stop in and read, just let me know a day in advance). I think we all grew to love Eric Carle even more than we already had. The book “How to Draw a Star” really resonated with all of us- we really thought about how we are artists and how we have the power to tell whatever story we want just by drawing and talking through our thoughts. And “The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse,” let us talk about creative decision making and how when we are making art, we can do things that we don’t normally see.

These are the specific books we studied this week: From Head to Toe (in Spanish), Papa Please Get the Moon for Me, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Very Busy Spider, The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse, How to Draw a Star, Brown Bear Brown Bear, Polar Bear Polar Bear, Panda Bear Panda Bear.

We also read the book “Harold and the Purple Crayon,” and each designed our own page for a class book. You’ll get to see the finished book next week!

Here are some of the concepts we drew:

Sloane and the black crayon. I make a fishy. Swimming. He swimming with Mommy.

Riley and the purple crayon. I’m going to draw a butterfly. He’s on the tree top. He’s eating some strawberries. I making a purple cat now. I make a octopus. I make a umbrella. A bridge.

Luca and the brown crayon. A little fish is swimming and spinning. “Fish no spinning. No running, fish.” Now fish is swimming again.

Grayson and the black crayon. A yes crab. That’s a fish! Crab. Starfish. Crab. Crab goes snap.

Manuela and the red crayon.

Roger and the black crayon. It’s a not scary crab. It’s a happy crab.

Kennedy and the brown crayon. It’s a very scary spider!

Eleanor and the red crayon. This is the mountain. Elle climbing.

Finn and the yellow crayon. An excavator goes boom and scoop the dirt. Ok, this is going to be the map to my home. It says you go all the way around to my home. This is downtown and buildings and the road downtown

John and the blue crayon. This is a train going to Boston.

Barak and the orange crayon. I want to draw a firefighter with a helmet like mine. I’m making a ladder. Up, up, up. People are going up the ladder.

Someone donated the book “Choo Choo,” to the class, and it inspired a lovely conversation about where we take the train:

Finn: I go to the subway, it goes up and down.

John: I take the train to the apple farm. I go the 2 train to the museum. And the watermelon store!

Barak: With Daddy to the house, and then Barak go to school.

Roger: The number one train, it goes to the station platform.

Riley: I go train with Mommy.

Grayson: To the movie!

Kennedy: I go with Mommy and Daddy to New York City.

Sloane: With Mommy.

Luca: I take the train Mommy and Daddy and umbrella.

Specialists

  • Diane helped us celebrate literacy week by making hungry caterpillars with sunbutter, celery, raisins, craisins, and fruit gummies

  • Ernestina revisited the names for different farm animals

  • Coach Jojo had us hide treasure while working on our balancing skills.

  • We made spiders using strawberries, pretzels and mini chocolate chips


1 Comment

Comment

Friday, March 8th

Kindness Jar

The past two weeks have been very exciting. We are seeing so much growth and language development from the children. We are moving past some of our behavioral issues, and seeing so many moments of cooperative play and purposeful sharing between the children. As a result, we have been adding quite a few pom-poms to our Kindness jar. Everyone is eagerly awaiting the moment when the jar is full and we can have a special party! Now we are not only adding pom-poms for group cooperation, but also for individual kindness moments. For example, Sloane decided that even though she hadn’t used any magna-tiles she would clean all of them up! And Finn handed out collage materials to each of his friends as they sat down to work on their cork circles the other day. We are so proud of everyone!

Sensory Play Experiences

This week we worked on a lot of really fun sensory projects.

Last week we started the process of making our own paper. We filled up the water table with scraps and bits of paper that we weren’t going to use for anything else. It was fun to just push our hands through the paper scraps and stack them up and float them on the water. This week we used an immersion blender to turn the scraps into paper pulp. We added even more water, and were ready to create paper! Using a mould and deckle with a screen, we scooped up the pulp fibers from the water table and watched as water rained down. Once the water wasn’t dripping so much, we were able to place a pellon on top (it’s made with synthetic fibers so the pulp won’t stick to it) and squeezed even more water out! We then placed our sheet of paper onto a poster board to dry. Next week we will come up with a special project to use our special paper.

We painted with watercolors, painted in a plastic bag, and painted with shaving cream on bubble wrap. Each type of painting uses a very different set of skills and activates different parts of the brain. Watercolors are multi-step: dip the brush in water, rub the paint, put the paint on the paper. Repeat. While moving the paint around in a bag, fingers are busy pushing and prodding the paint. A scientific process is happening- the paint colors are mixing and creating new tertiary colors. The shaving cream paint is more of a whole body experience. Arms are swaying, fingers are dragging through the long line of paint. And the body is receiving feedback from the little bumps of bubble wrap. I mentioned earlier in the year that we are creating our own classroom definition of paint- and having all of these very different experiences are helping inform the children’s concept of what paint is and can what it can be.

Additionally we: made and used playdough, made and used slime, worked on shape recognition through drawing, created self portraits, used a dough made from cornstarch and soap, jumped on bubble wrap, worked on glue collages . . . and so much more!

Shadows

Shadow puppets — we have only brought them up to the gym once, but it was such an engaging experience. Everyone was very excited (and very patient while waiting) for a turn to move the different animals around in front of the light projector. We watched as the shadows danced across the “screen” (white sheet). I am hoping that this play will evolve into storytelling- stay tuned!

Building

We try and have out a variety of building materials for the children to interact with. This week we noticed a lot of interest both in the magna-tiles and in the legos. This has also been inspiring a lot of descriptive language building, detailed explanations, and interaction between peers.

Specialists

  • With Diane we were able to make our own pasta bowls! Friends were able to add tomato sauce and oregano to personalize their eating experience.

  • For Spanish with Ernestina, we reviewed songs about animals that can be pets.

  • Coach Jojo had us building snowmen with the different soccer materials, and we practiced a lot of kicking!

  • Emily sang a lot of sleepy songs because everyone was laying down and relaxing on the rug this week!

Comment

Comment

Friday, February 22nd

Why is Color important?

This morning during our curriculum event, we asked parents to tell us why they believe color is important. We got a few answers, and are looking forward to more- please email me if you can!

The children thought about it a little bit during our lunch time:

Luca: I like colors.

Finn: I like green and dark blue and I like yellow.

John: I like everything- I like gray. I like four colors.

Roger: I like black, white, and umm, I like white.

Riley: I like light blue and Riley Gray

Sloane: I like gray

Bellie: Pink. No, white.

We’ll continue this conversation with the children next week, and work on some interesting projects that might help them to think about color or the lack thereof, and what the difference is.

Restaurant Play

This week we continued to be interested in restaurants and cooking. To spark more interest, we added menus to the kitchen area, and have been placing orders. Rachel ordered so many different meals and had some amazing chefs deliver yummy food. We will be working on more real cooking projects soon, and Rachel will be working on some field trips to different restaurants soon! (If you have any ideas, please let me know!).

Family Portraits

Each child had an opportunity to sit and work on a family portrait this week. It was really wonderful to hear each child talk so enthusiastically about the members in their family, and be so excited to have a chance to draw each member. Our drawing is also becoming much more representational (meaning the shapes/lines are starting to resemble actual objects, and the marks are purposeful instead of seemingly random).

Light & Shadow

We took a small break from using our flashlights upstairs, but returned to it this week. Another wonderful light tool, the old fashioned projector, will be used next week with the shadow puppets we created during our curriculum event today. This will also broaden our conversation about color- since the shadows will only have the bright white light, and the dark black shadows.

Other Happenings . . .

  • We got some mail from Manuela! It was exciting to see pictures of her, the activities she’s been doing, and some of her family members. (Our package to Manuela is going in the mail tomorrow!)

  • Our class now has a “Kindness/Good Choices” jar. Each day we are hoping to add at least one pom pom to the jar based on a group good choice (such as everyone sitting down during circle time). Soon we will also add pom poms for individual good choices (like a friend who willingly shares).

  • Bubble wrap was a big hit this week. First we used the bubble wrap to paint on, and created a really beautiful mono print. Then we put some bubble wrap on the floor and got to jump and pop all of the bubbles!

Have an amazing weekend! We are looking forward to having some of our friends return next week!

Comment

Comment

Friday, February 15th


While we continue to discuss the alphabet and work on our light and shadow project with flashlights, we are also developing new interests in the kitchen, cooking, and restaurants.

The Restaurant

This morning as we were cooking in the kitchen and creating many delicious picnics, everyone decided that we should also have a restaurant. To have a restaurant, we need a menu. Here are some of our ideas that we’d like to add to our menu (we’ll continue to work on this next week):

Finn: Chocolate!

Kennedy: Spaghetti

Finn: How about pasta?

John: I like to cook raspberries.

Luca: I order pizza. My pizza has on it salad.

Grayson: Pizza!

Kennedy: Watermelon broccoli!

Luca: Muffins

Riley: Ice cream cones

Belle: Pizza with cheese

Sloane: Pizza with sprinkles, cheese and peppers on the top

Kitchen Conversations

Overheard in the kitchen this week:

“I make my own picnic. Apple, apple! Here you go. Want hamburger?” - Grayson

“Here, fish. I like fish. I pour milk in there.” - Luca

“I make a cookie. Happy birthday to you, Rachel!” - Belle

“Look what I got! I making some cake. Chocolate cake!” Kennedy

“No more happy birthday,” Belle, when the cake was gone.

“Now I make a pancake.” - Belle

“Too much!” - Grayson (when he kept giving Rachel a lot of different foods)

Valentines

Thank you so much for coming and making our Valentines party so special- we had a great time together. We also had a lot of fun using hearts and glitter and making your presents!

Specialists

  • On Tuesday we learned “Skiddamarinky dinky dink” in Spanish with Ernestina and learned the words “Besos” and “Corazon.” (Kisses and Heart).

  • On Tuesday we made popsicles with Diane. We mixed blueberry juice and mashed strawberries together.

  • On Wednesday we had soccer with Coach Jojo and have seen so much improvement in our soccer skills!

  • On Thursday we enjoyed music with Emily

  • For science we mixed up two batches of slime

  • We made new playdough this week

  • For cooking, we made orange slices dipped in chocolate

Comment

Comment

Friday, February 8th

Painting Explorations

This week we did a lot of exciting paint projects. One that really captured our attention was using shaving cream to create marbled paper. We first applied a layer of shaving cream to a baking pan, and then dribbled a few drops of food coloring on top. Each child then mixed and swirled the colors around in the pan before we applied a piece of paper and pressed down gently for ten seconds. Once lifted, we had to use a popsicle stick to act like a squeegee and remove the excess shaving cream. Thus we revealed the amazing, brightly colored marbling! Everyone was so excited and impressed with their work! This is definitely a project we are going to have to repeat soon. You’ll get to see how they turned out next week, as they are part of a very special surprise we are creating for Valentines Day.

A second project that each child enjoyed this week was using coffee filters and droppers with liquid watercolor paints. These came out so lovely, and we transformed them into hearts to decorate our classroom for our party next week!

We also began decorating paper bags that will become our “mailboxes” for our Valentine exchange next week.

And to celebrate the Lunar year, we painted with red and gold at the beginning of the week.

Good Choices, Bad Choices

This week we had a circle time meeting about what kinds of choices we can make in the classroom, with a lot of specific examples. We mostly focused on the good choices we can make, but it was important for us to remember what bad choices we should avoid (like grabbing a toy from a friend). This time during the school year always presents some behavioral upheavals as we are getting less outdoors time and feel cooped up together. Big milestones like potty training and switching to beds also change the temperament in the classroom. Eudenis and I will also be working on adding new building materials and rearranging the classroom once again to help keep everyone focused and engaged all day long.

Specialists

  • We made avocado, banana and coconut milk smoothies this week- thank you Barak and family

  • We had soccer with Coach Jojo and used the soccer equipment to pretend we were making smoothies! The pinneys were mixed fruits, the small soccer balls were ice cubes, and the cones were cups and straws. Using our feet, we did a variety of exercises to make our “smoothies.”

  • Diane came in on Monday and had a taste test inspired by the Lunar New Year. We had: raspberry, red grapes, red apples and oranges to celebrate a sweet start to the new year. We really loved the raspberries!

Comment

1 Comment

Friday, February 1st

Night & Day Animals

During this week, we dove further into the world of night and day animals. Each child was prompted to pick an animal to draw, and then we had a group discussion about the animals. We got some really fun and interesting details from our discussion! (Belle drew a night time cat, and Elle chose a camel- but we didn’t get to talk about them just yet).

“Bat man comes out at night.” – Grayson (Bat man)

“Bear goes ‘ROAR!’ Bear comes outside with other bears. Him eats mine lunch!” – Luca (Bear)

“He comes out at the night. The lion eats my lunch. He eats trees. He has a sharp mouth and sharp teeth.”

-Kennedy (Lion)

“Panda bear cries, like this. Eats food.” –John (Panda)

“He says ‘MOO!’ He eats dinner- tacos and chocolate ice cream.” – Sloane (Cow)

“Woof woof! Catches ball.” – Barak (Doggy)

“It’s a tiny buffalo. The buffalos were in the red jerseys and I watched them on TV with Daddy.” – Roger (Buffalo)

“It flies, up in the sky!” – Finn (Butterfly)

“The owl is right there. It comes out at the night. Hooo! Hooo!” – Riley (owl)

Light & Shadow

We’ve continued to explore with our flashlights in the gym. Here’s a little insight into what’s been happening (you can also read it on our wall in the classroom):

Light and shadow always brings joy and wonder, no matter what your age is. And having power and control over the light and shadow is even more joyful. We have started bringing flashlights upstairs to the gym, where we have more control over how dark it is. Each child has been engaging with their flashlight in different ways. Some are content with simply pointing the light up or down and observing the little circle’s movements. Others have figured out that objects in front of a light create shadows. Still others have been inventing hide-and-seek or i-spy type games where the flashlight aids in discoveries. And there have been small observations, such as the light can hide when you press the flashlight against a surface, but it pops right back out when you lift the flashlight again!

Our exploration will continue, and we will start adding a light projector to our play to see what the shadows might inspire!

Barak was so inspired by his flashlight one morning that he decided to draw it and the resulting trail of light it created.

Other activities this week

  • We did a science project where we added baby oil, white watercolor, blue watercolor, and glitter together and then dropped in alka seltzer tabs. We created our very own snow storm!

  • We painted with jumbo marshmallows. It leaves the paint really shiny when dry.

  • Snowman paintings - shaving cream, glue, and glitter

  • Making our own salt dough with glitter for a special Valentines project

  • With Ernestina we learned Brown Bear, Brown Bear in Spanish

  • With Coach Jojo we made snowballs with the soccer balls and practiced scoring goals

  • Emily came and sang with us

  • With Diane we mixed cheerios, craisins, raisins and marshmallows together - and next week we will be working on a Lunar New Year inspired recipe






1 Comment

Comment

Friday, January 24th

Light & Shadow

This week we were able to start using our flashlights - what a great way to help push along our topic of nocturnal animals and night time! For the time being, we are just using our flashlights up in the gym, and are exploring freely (with the boundaries of only pointing the flashlights down, up, or at a wall). Some very interesting observations have already occurred:

  • Finn has discovered that the color of his light changes depending on where he is shining it. For example, he says that his light is green while it is pointed at the grass in the gym, and turns white when it moves to the wall.

  • Grayson inadvertently discovered that when he shone his flashlight next to the mirror, he made a double projection from his light. He moved his flashlight slowly and watched as two bright rings sort of danced with one another.

  • Kennedy played a game of hide and seek with her light by pushing the flashlight down and then lifting it up to watch the illumination reappear.

  • Roger compared many different flashlights and noticed varied brightness levels

  • Most friends enjoyed pointing the flashlights up at the ceiling and loved seeing the bright circles that they could make.

  • Luca used his flashlight to discover things around the gym- he investigated what was in the bathroom, what was behind the wall hanging, and what was in the stairwell.

Alphabet

Our class alphabet is in it’s early stages, hanging up on the wall and our photos will be added shortly. We have been talking a lot about letters, and have used various things to help promote early literacy. This morning we introduced scrabble tiles to help with our letter recognition. Kennedy has been pointing out all of the letters in the ABCs as we walk through the hallway (there is a mural hanging outside our classroom with the letters on it). We are starting to recognize each other’s letters, and not just our own! Hopefully we will be able to draw a few letters soon, too.

Luca - “It’s D for mine Daddy.” Kennedy - “It’s M and another M for my Mama!” (She then hugged the two M’s).

Painting

This week we explored many ways to paint. We have gotten really adept at using watercolor palettes, and dipping the brush, rubbing the color, and then applying to the paper. We froze paint and tried to use it. We painted on saran wrap. We used cardboard tube stamps to paint with. We used shaving cream paint. A big theme that has emerged as we paint is describing what happens to the colors as they mix together.

Specialists

  • Diane helped us with another taste test- this time we sampled: raisins, oranges, apples, and pineapple. When we took a vote, pineapple was number one, with raisins in a close second!

  • For Spanish, we continued to learn concepts of days of the week, how to wash our bodies, big and small, and the itsy bitsy spider.

  • Coach Jojo had us on a grand voyage hiding treasure from pirates as we balanced, kicked, and followed directions.

  • Emily sang all our favorites and promised to learn Moana for us since everyone wanted to hear it when it was time for requests!

Other Classroom happenings

  • This week we have done a lot of ice play! We were especially intrigued by colored ice in the sensory table.

  • For science, we melted a snowman using baking soda, dish soap, and vinegar

  • During clay we introduced some tools to use to help us roll and texturize the clay

  • Our cooking project involved making apple pie spiced crackers (which we have yet to taste- but we will soon! The cooking process is a little involved, but we whipped up the batter together this week).

  • Our homemade watercolor paints have hardened and are ready for us to use!

Have an amazing weekend- we can’t wait to hear about all of your children’s adventures on Monday. And if you’d like to set up a time to come in and read with us, we’d love to have you! I sent a sign up sheet a while ago, but we are flexible if you need a time that’s not listed.






Comment

Comment

Friday, January 18th

We had a very productive week in the 2A classroom!

PLEASE BRING IN A FLASHLIGHT FOR YOUR CHILD IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY

Night & Day

Since we had talked a little bit about animals that come out during the night time last week, we explored the topic a bit more through a few different activities. First we painted with light, bright colors and contrasting dark colors. We also sorted and categorized a variety of different animals and tried to figure out if they were awake during the day or the night. Some of the animals were tricky- like deer and alligators, because they seem to be awake during both! So we put them in the middle of our sorting chart. We also brainstormed some words or thoughts that remind us of “night” and for “day.”

Night: Sleep. Lights on. Nothing. I cannot see nothing. Shh shh shh. Twinkles. Star. It’s dark out. Fox! And owls in the night. Dinner. Bath. The moon looks like a semi-circle. The moon comes out at the night time.

Day: Tubbies. Daddy says bye-bye to Luca in the day. The beach. Bus. School. Wake up. Sun. Get dressed. Morning. Raining. Cloudy. Sometimes the clouds block the rain. Sometimes the clouds block the sun. Go in a car. Sun. We can go exercise. We go at the school. Inside.

Doctor / Booboos

We’ve also continued talking about doctors, and what they do. While we were having snack the other morning, we brainstormed “What happens when you go to the doctor?”

Luca: Bump head. Doctor wash my head.

John: Check my booboo. I went doctor when I hurt my leg. I see a doctor appointment.

Roger: I get a booboo. He make sure I ok. I have to make appointment!

Finn: I didn’t go to the doctor. I get a lollipop! Sometimes the doctor gives you a lollipop.

Grayson: Stethoscope.

Riley: I go doctor with Daddy.

Barak: Two minutes.

Sloane: I get a shot at doctor.

Bellie: I get a shot, too.

Itsy Bitsy Spider

During Spanish with Eudenis, we have started learning how to sing “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” in Spanish (La arana pequenita). We are now taking up a bit of an interest in spiders! So this morning we used model magic and pipe cleaners to create our own spiders.

Other Spanish songs we have been working on: Los Numeros (the numbers), De esta forma (This is the way… we get ready for school), Dias de la semana (The days of the week), Los colores (The colors) - and our favorites mixed in!

Math - dice game!

Math is a lot of fun, and this is something we want to encourage and foster through games! This week we took out a di and everyone had a chance to roll it and count how many dots were on the top. Then we graphed the number as well. This helped us repeatedly count in a fun and exciting way. (And interesting for adults- out of the nine friends who rolled the di, no one rolled a three or a five!).

Painting

Our painting adventures continue! This week we did two different ways to paint- using the watercolor palette (which we tried toward the beginning of the year but was a hard concept at the time, now it came with ease!), and using droppers with liquid watercolor. At first it was tricky to squeeze the droppers and let go so it could fill up, but it didn’t take too long before everyone became experts.

And, we made our own paint this week! We mixed together: corn starch, corn syrup, baking soda and vinegar. Then each child got to decide what color to make their paint and helped add the food coloring. We mixed it all up really well, and now we’re waiting for the paints to solidify. They will become reusable watercolor paints! Everyone is very excited to use the paint next week.

Specialists

  • During Spanish with Ernestina we learned a song about having two hands

  • During cooking with Diane, we taste tested citrus fruits: oranges, grapefruit, and pineapple - pineapple was the winner!

  • For soccer with Coach Jojo, we learned how to use our feet to wake up the cones and did a lot of practice kicking the soccer balls without knocking the cones down

  • We had music with Emily this week and enjoyed being able to request our favorite songs

Comment

Comment

Friday, January 11th

(Sorry there are no images this week, the uploading is not going smoothly! You can see all of our images in the January folder of our Google drive).

This was an exciting week, we made a lot of new discoveries and uncovered some promising project threads through our play. We continued to trace letters and decorate our first initials for a class alphabet that we will be creating next week. There has been a lot of interest in letters and who has each letter, so we are very excited to continue exploring the alphabet in a variety of different ways.

A new interest that has emerged is that of bandaids and booboos. One morning we had out some felt triangles originally intended for pattern making, but quickly transformed into bandaids. We applied the triangle bandaids to the baby dolls and our own bodies. Kenny made sure the baby’s booboo was covered with the bandaid, and Luca was intently putting the triangle on his toe (that was hurt a while ago). This morning we added a few other care items to explore: an ice pack, a thermometer, and real bandaids. We heard some really great language- “My baby is sick!” “The temperature in two minutes.” “Him needs a bandaid on his booboo.” Etc. We will continue to explore topics of the doctor’s office in the coming weeks and see where this interest takes us!

A small topic that came up was that of nocturnal animals. We read a story with an owl in it and started talking about how some animals are only awake at night time. Next week we will make a chart and compare some nocturnal and diurnal (daytime awakeness) creatures.

Specialists

  • With Diane we made a cheerio trail mix with dried peaches, raisins and craisins

  • In Spanish with Ernestina we learned the song “Rain rain go away.”

  • Coach Jojo had us using our feet to stand up cones and practice our kicking skills

  • Emily helped us create a song about airplanes this week during music! We hope to continue to create original songs with her.

  • We worked on 2 science projects this week: we learned about density and layers by pouring different liquids together in a jar. We attempted to do a science project involving milk and vinegar, but unfortunately we forgot to warm the milk so it didn’t work!

  • During our shared cooking project we made some really yummy blueberry and banana oatmeal muffins

  • We listened to a few different classical compositions to help us understand a fast and slow tempo

Comment

Comment

Friday, January 4th

As we returned to school this week, we eased in with a variety of different activities. We returned to our love for beading and worked with alphabet letters that prompted us to speak about letter recognition as well as color recognition. It’s amazing that children who would struggle to put a single bead onto the wire can now fill the entire length of it!

Our love for building continues. We constructed roads, tunnels, dragons, boats and rivers . . . our imaginations are starting to soar!

We also tried our hand at tracing our first initial by connecting dots. Since the alphabet is definitely becoming more of an interest, we will continue to provide different activities to start learning more about the letters. We usually start with each child’s first initial, and work from there.

Some of our self portraits are starting to more closely resemble actual faces- we are seeing circles with eyes, noses and mouths inside! This is such a huge leap- we are so proud of all of the progress and understanding that we are witnessing.

Other activities this week:

  • Creating different colored paintings to create props for our Spanish colors song

  • We had soccer with Coach Steven

  • We loved playing with clay- we can’t wait to take it back out next week

  • Scooping, pouring and exploring with dry oats

  • Drawing with oil pastels

Comment

1 Comment

Thursday, December 20th

Wow- we cannot believe that four months have flown by so quickly! It feels like the first day of school was just a few short weeks ago. And now we are heading right into the holidays and then back for the “meat and bones” of our school year. The first part of the year is always more exploratory, more experiments and tests to see just what interests the children have, and just what activities they are interested in and can handle. When we return for the next half of the year, we will be getting a lot more involved in project work and be learning about topics for extended periods of time. As mentioned during our conferences, we will be introducing the alphabet, math games, acting, puppets, continued use of clay to develop our muscles, and a lot of attention on our fine motor muscles!



This week we continued our theme of giving. We finished the ornament making and handed out ornaments for every classroom at BMS. We finished making the gifts for our “secret Santa” and are sending the last ones home today. It was so exciting to make a present for one of our friends!





We had some new sensory experiences with our “snow” in the sensory bin. It does actually feel a bit wet and cold, and is definitely slippery on the ground. We explored some arctic animals as we played in the snow, and had fun creating a hide and seek game as the animals got buried beneath the snow drifts.







We read a lot of books this week, as is usual! Some of our favorites of the week include: The Polar Express, Jingle Bells, From Head to Toe, and Wheels on the Bus. We love to revisit favorites while we also include brand new stories into the mix.









For our specialist time we:

  • Made party mix with chex cereals and raisins with Diane.

  • Sang Jingle Bells and Feliz Navidad during Spanish

  • Enjoyed scoring goals with Coach Jojo

  • Requested a lot of wonderful songs to dance to during music with Emily










We hope you have a really wonderful holiday and Eudenis and I look forward to seeing everyone in 2019!

1 Comment

Comment

Friday, December 14th

Giving

This week we have focused a lot of our activities around the concept of “giving.” On Monday we started the week by decorating cards which we have since sent to a program that gives them to hospitalized children for the holidays. If anyone is interested in the future, you can read about the organization here (you can donate them at any time!): http://www.cardsforhospitalizedkids.com/holiday-cards.html

Then, we put all of our names into a play helmet and selected a friend that we are making a present for!! This was so exciting- we were waiting in anticipation for a turn to draw a name! Here’s the breakdown (and we will exchange them next week):

  • Roger is making a present for Riley

  • Belle is making a present for Kennedy

  • Eloise is making a present for Barak

  • Grayson is making a present for Sloane

  • Barak is making a present for Belle

  • John is making a present for Grayson

  • Riley is making a present for Eloise (which we gave her today since it’s her last day at BMS).

  • Finn is making a present for Luca

  • Manuela is making a present for Finn

  • Luca is making a present for Manuela

  • Kennedy is making a present for Roger

  • Sloane is making a present for John

Next week we will also be finalizing a few gifts we’ve been working on for our Mommies and Daddies! We can’t wait to show you.

This morning friends worked on creating even more ornaments, and we decided that we want to share them with all the other classrooms at Buckle my Shoe - plus we made a lot of the ornaments that are on the Christmas tree in the front of the school. We are really in the giving mode!

Emotions

Thank you to all of the families who have sent in photos of different emotions- we appreciate it! We are still waiting for more: happy, sad, angry, surprised and sleepy photos! Please send them when you can - we want parents, siblings, pets (sleepy or happy would work for pets, we think!), and our 2A friends!

Specialists

  • For Spanish this week we reviewed all of the different types of clothing and accessories we need to keep warm outside during the Winter.

  • During cooking with Diane, we sample banana and pineapple in preparation for another cooking project we will do next week.

  • We did a lot of running and goal scoring with Coach Jojo this week. Each child had the opportunity to kick a ball right into the goal without everyone else running around at the same time!

  • We had music with Emily and she did some great holiday songs like jingle bells!

  • Our cooking project this week was to make a salt dough for ornaments- the little people we hung from our class tree. Thank you to Roger and his family for bringing it in for us!

Thank you

A sincere thank you from myself and Eudenis for such an amazing holiday party and for all of your kindness and generosity this holiday season. We are very touched, and wish all of you a magical holiday with your children.

Comment

Friday, December 7th

What would you like to receive for the holidays?

Grayson: A train

Sloane: I want a green doll.

Belle: I want- Belle want baseball! I want a bunny. I want baby tiger.

Luca: Baseball

Finn: A remote control dump truck and a remote control excavator.

Roger: Excavator present. I want a baseball too.

Eloise: A ball.

Manuela: Dress!

John: I want a tiger, a baby tiger.

Kenny: A baby doll, a baby girl.

(We will ask Riley on Monday what she’s hoping for). And now that we know what everyone wants, we are going to start our conversation about giving. Each child is going to draw another child’s name and make something for them! We can’t wait to see the precious objects that they make for each other next week.

Other ways to give: we have been talking about bringing in food to share with people who do not have enough food at home. There’s a big box at the front of the school full of different cans and boxed food to share - we’d love to have the kids be able to drop off some items in the box on their own!

We will also be making cards next week that we will send to a children’s hospital to make their holidays a little brighter, and share our joy and creativity.

Paint

This week we continued to work diligently with paint. We explored a lot of different textures that were new to us: we painted onto dried salt, used paint mixed with shaving cream that dried really fluffy, used a paint made with oatmeal, used a paint thickened with flour, and a paint thickened with glitter. Hopefully we can use these thicker paints to create some really interesting compositions going forward.

We added our pictures onto our paint jars, and we will work on filling them up with some more paint next week before we start using them.

  • Our salt and watercolor snowflakes are hanging from a branch in our classroom

  • Our texture trees are going to be featured in the holiday inspired window before entering the school

Emotions

Thank you to those who have sent us some images of your child’s emotions- we’d love pictures of adults making these expressions, as well as siblings to add some depth to the book that we are creating. Thanks so much for your help, we appreciate it!

We have been hearing so many wonderful forms of self expression this week! Friends are really starting to be able to tell each other exactly what they are thinking and how they are feeling. Now that they are establishing these patterns of communication with one another, we are seeing friendships form and a great deal more cooperative play happening! It’s amazing what a little bit of language can do. Children are able to say things like, “It’s my turn,” “Can I have a turn?” and “That made me feel mad/sad/happy.” Way to go, 2A! This is a big step.

Reading

The books we really loved reading this week included:

  • Happy Hanukkah, Corduroy by Don Freeman

  • The Magical Snowman by Catherine Walters

  • Ten Gingerbread Men by Ruth Galloway

  • Little Blue Truck’s Christmas by Alice Schertle

  • Pete the Cat Saves Christmas by James Dean

  • Llama Llama Holiday Drama by Anna Dewdney

Specialists

  • On Tuesday we used the oranges that you brought in and poked cloves in to create pomanders with Diane. If you’re wondering what to do with it: leave it in the bag in a cool dry corner and wait two weeks. It should harden and become a perfect, deliciously scented ornament.

  • For Spanish this week, we continued to learn the concepts of pequeno (little) and grande (big); ¿Qué tiempo hace hoy? – How is the weather today?;

  • On Wednesday we worked with Coach Jojo and honed our soccer skills

  • On Thursday we enjoyed music time with Emily

  • For cooking this week we combined applesauce, cinnamon and glitter to create dough for ornaments (which we rolled out and cut this morning)

We are looking for more recycled materials:

  • Carpet samples

  • Tiles

  • Old keys

  • Bottle caps and lids of all kinds

  • Shoe boxes

  • Ribbons

  • Tubes




1 Comment

Friday, November 30th

Curriculum Breakfast

Thank you so much to everyone who was able to attend our first curriculum breakfast this morning. The kids really loved having you there to work with- how often do we get to paint with our Mommies and Daddies at school!? The collaborative mural is really wonderful, we hope to keep it up in the classroom for a while, and perhaps keep adding to it, since it was so much fun to be able to “paint the wall” together. We will be using the lovely paints that you helped to create next week on some more art projects. We have a really great variety of colors and shades of colors now- and we will continue to have the kids mix up their own paint colors for the remainder of the school year.

If you have some time this weekend, we would really like for you to send Rachel some emotion photos- you can make: happy, sad, mad, surprised, sleepy, and confused faces - of you! We’d like to put together a 2A book of parent faces so the children can continue to learn about reading facial cues and understanding emotions (and the impact their choices have on the emotions of others). Thanks for your help with this- we know it can be a little awkward, but your children will really love having this in our classroom!

Emergent holiday curriculum

As we read one of our new books, Little Blue Truck’s Christmas, we started to open up a dialogue about Christmas trees. Finn wondered if we’d be getting one for our classroom - and we definitely will next week! Then John mentioned that he wanted ornaments for the tree, so we will be making some very soon! We’d still love to hear about your family traditions for the holidays. Would anyone like to come in and help us learn about Hanukkah next week? I purchased some dreidels for everyone, and we will be making some latkes for our shared snack.

Emotional growth

This week has been filled with some really tender and gentle moments between the 2A friends. They are really starting to enjoy each other’s company and are able to initiate play with one another. It is beautiful to watch these budding friendships form, and to see our words about kindness and caring start to permeate the classroom.


Books we loved this week…

  • Little Blue Truck’s Christmas

  • Ten Gingerbread Men

  • Pete the Cat Out of This World

  • Have You Seen My Dragon?

  • Twenty Big Trucks in the Middle of the Street

  • I Stink

Specialists

  • Diane helped us make a really yummy salad filled with: chickpeas, red peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers. We then dressed it with olive oil, oregano and basil.

  • Ernestina continued teaching us new songs in Spanish; we sent out the summary the other day.

  • Coach Jojo had us practice using our feet for soccer and next week is going to set up some obstacle courses for us!

  • We made a tropical fruit salad with the ingredients Manuela brought in for us this week- papaya, mango, cantaloupe, and pineapple with lemon juice

  • Emily came to play music with us and we especially enjoyed “Wheels on the Bus.”

Activities

  • We made a different kind of slime, which was a lot slimier and stickier than the last one we made!

  • Purple playdough with cloves and peppermint oil

  • We used white air dry clay with collage materials to make mosaic tiles

  • We sailed our cork boats in the water table

  • We washed our babies and squeezed sponges in the water table

  • Our structures in the block center have been evolving and becoming a lot more complex

  • We did a group painting on the light table with fingerpaints - it was super messy, but it was really great to see everyone experimenting with line, shape, and blocking/uncovering the light

  • We painted with pinecones as our brush

Reminders

  • Please bring in an orange on Monday for our surprise project with Diane

  • Our holiday party will be on Thursday, December 13th at 4pm

  • BMS is closed from Dec 21-Jan 1 for Winter break








1 Comment

Wednesday, November 21st

What are we thankful for?

We asked each child what they are thankful for after we read a couple of stories about being thankful and happy for what we have and who we are. Here are some of their very thoughtful responses:

“Daddy, Mama, Eva, Baby.”
— Luca
“Daddy and Mommy.”
— Riley
“For the playground with Dada and Mama. I’m thankful for the library. For Mommy, Daddy and Grady. ”
— Finn
“Thankful for monkey, Daddy and Mommy.”
— Roger
“For 2 (Thankful for being 2).”
— Isabelle
“For the sky!”
— Sloane
“Daddy, Mommy and bike!”
— Barak
“School.”
— Grayson
“I’m thankful for snowman. Daddy and Mommy.”
— John
“Mama and Daddy and Grady.”
— Kennedy
“Mama and Papa.”
— Manuela

Today we had a special shared snack with our friends from the 2B classroom. They prepared a delicious banana smoothie for us, and we created a gluten free pumpkin pie with coconut whipped cream to share with them! We read some books together and enjoyed the treats. We will be creating more opportunities for the 2’s classes to work together in the future!

As we all talked about during the parent-teacher conferences, we are starting to move from outer space and rocket ships into a study of all vehicles. There are a few specific vehicles that stand out so far- boats, school buses, and trains/subways. We have been very intrigued by all of the different cars and transport vehicles in our new book “Toot Toot Beep Beep,” by Emma Garcia, which all about traffic and the sounds that different cars make. Another book that we really love reading is “The Little Blue Truck Leads the Way,” by Alice Schertle, all about how the little blue truck clears traffic and helps the mayor get to his destination quickly. Other vehicle related books that have caught our attention lately:

  • Chugga Chugga Choo Choo (Emma Garcia)

  • Tip Tip Dig Dig (Emma Garcia)

  • Subway (Anastasia Suen)

  • Toy Boat (Randall de Seve)

  • Go! Go! Go! Stop! (Charise Mericle Harper)

And we are still in the midst of our social-emotional curriculum, and especially how it pertains to painting. So many of us are really getting a strong grasp over the language to use to describe how we are feeling Throughout the morning we are so proud to hear our friends saying things like, “I feel frustrated,” or “I feel silly!” We are recognizing how others impact the way we feel and how we can let others know when we feel that way.

For our emotion paintings, we had a lot of “Good” and “Happy” responses, but each child’s colors and style are very unique. We hope you have a moment to come in and peek at the amazing work that has been happening!

Kennedy: I feel wet. Blue & Green

Finn: Happy. Yellow only

Luca: Good. Yellow & Red

Barak: Hungry Orange & Red

John: Happy White & Green

Manuela: Good Pink

Sloane: Quiet Black & White

Eloise: Eloise is silly. Yellow, Red, Purple

Roger: Good. Blue- no! Green!

Isabelle: Happy Clear, white, blue and orange

Grayson: Mad Red & Black

Riley: Happy Yellow, blue, purple & brown

Specialists

  • Diane helped us make cranberry sauce this week

  • Ernestina sang us a new song about being thankful, and a lot of songs that we have already experienced before.

  • We worked on colors and numbers in Spanish with Eudenis

  • Coach R continued to help us work on using our feet vs our hands in soccer, and encouraged us to use our feet to stand all of the cones up

  • Emily joined us for music and sang our favorite songs and helped us count all of the strings on her guitar.

Have a very happy Thanksgiving, we will see everyone on Monday! And please don’t forget that we will have a curriculum breakfast next Friday, November 30th at 9 AM.