Our image of the child, as educators, is that they are brilliant, competent and capable young people. The children in our 2A group have continually blown us away with their creative thoughts, caring natures, and bursts of joy. Eudenis and I already feel as if we have always known your children - their personalities are so bright and happy! Now that we know them pretty well, we are also trying to ask questions and make observations to find out what each child thinks and knows about themselves. While our self-portrait time touches on it a little bit, we wanted to devote more time to speaking about what we observe in the mirror. How do we know that it’s ourselves looking back? What do we see? What are our characteristics? We are starting with the obvious: physical characteristics. Here are some of their preliminary thoughts:
“Hair is white! Eyes, they’re white-blue. I wear this one (pulls her shirt a little).”
“Blue eyes. Body.”
“Hair (touches hair gently), eyes.”
“My hair red. Red. Eyes black. Wear shoes. Socks.”
“Eyes. Blue. Nose!”
“I don’t know! It’s brown (her hair). I like some cookies. Mine eyes is black. Cheeks. That’s just my clothes. They’re just things.”
“Yellow hair. Yellow eyes. Blue eyes. I see Luca. Wearing pants. Arms.”
“Eloise’s eyes. My eyes. It’s my turn. Tongue. Ear. Teeth. A shirt. Blue pants. Wow! Hands.”
“My hair is blue. No, it’s yellow. Eyes are red. I have nose. Roger’s tongue. I wear dinosaur (shirt). Socks! That’s Roger’s cubby there. A backpack there. One, two, six, four, five fingers. ”
We have also been talking a lot about how we can be great helpers and make our friends feel really good and happy. Cleaning the room and respecting the items that we have is one way to be a great helper, and makes it easier for everyone to find what they would like to use. We remind everyone that it’s easy to fall down and trip if everything is on the floor. Another way to make our friends happy is to share with them. As we get comfortable the word “MINE” and “NO!” have been popping up a lot more - and while it’s great that we are using our words, we want to give everyone more language to use. Key things we tell the children they can say, “I’m using it.” “Please give that back to me.” “I’m not finished yet.” “You can use it after me.” “Don’t take that.” “Can I have a turn?” Sharing is a process that takes a while to really understand. It’s easy to facilitate sharing with an adult presence, but it’s another thing for it to be self initiated between the children. Through our practice with teacher help, we are giving the children the tools they need to be able to share on their own. We also make sure to let children know that it’s OK to say no if they are not ready to give a toy to a friend, and we’ve also been helping children find something to use and/or do while they are waiting for a turn.
This week we started three of our specialists! (We are currently on the hunt for a new music teacher, and that will start ASAP).
Ernestina is our Spanish teacher. This week we learned songs about emotions, weather, and hello/goodbye.
Diane is our cooking teacher. We made an “apple salad” using apple, orange, and lemon juice.
Coach Jojo is our Super Soccer Star coach. We are starting off with basics which will hopefully help us not use our hands as we play.
Some of our weekly activities included:
Reading! This week we really loved the books Go Away Big Green Monster! and Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?
Clay - this week we added popsicle sticks to our block of clay and used them as knives and as candles.
Music and Movement - We continued listening to violin compositions, and also started listening to piano. We also added some games to our gym routines such as races (sometimes running, “swimming,” jumping, crawling, etc.), using the balance beam to be Humpty Dumpty and fall down, and scarf play in the classroom.
Cooking - we made “Pink smoothies” with coconut yogurt, strawberries and bananas
Math - we have been talking a great deal about shapes and drawing them this week and will work more purposefully with shapes next week
Science - we brought the fall weather into our classroom with pumpkins and gourds, and will continue to use these for project work as the month progresses.
REMINDERS:
We are closed Monday, Oct. 8th for Columbus day
Thursday, Oct. 11th is our Apple Picking field trip - we leave the school promptly at 8:30 and you need to have a carseat and bag lunch with beverages.
If your child goes home with a fever from school, or if they have one during the weekend, they need to stay home for 24 hours after the fever breaks. We are trying really hard to contain viruses and keeping children home when they are not feeling well really helps! Let’s keep everyone as healthy as we can. Thanks for your help and understanding.