Friday, June 19th

What a fantastic school year - each and every one of you have learned so much and grown so much since we first met each other in September. Thank you for teaching us and keeping us on our toes every single day. You are curious, capable and confident learners who have always had no problem having a voice in your learning. Whether you wanted to read a certain book, make art with a particular material, or build with new and creative objects - you always showed us, told us, and then made it happen.

Have an amazing summer. We look forward to a proper goodbye when it’s safe to do so. We love you and we miss you.

Wow - Look how much we have grown! Here we were in September, brand new to the 2A classroom and adjusting to being with one another.

And now - we are happy, confident, and BIG!

Friday, June 12th

Thank YOU!

Parents, thank you for helping us this week as we started our fun themes to wind down the school year. We hope they have been exciting and fun for everyone! We could not do this without you and truly appreciate all of your support.

And a big thank you to all that have had a chance to send in their end of the year video - it’s going to be really great for the kids to see and hear each other through video.

Spirit Week #1

This week we started off with costumes and dress up fun! It was great to see everyone’s dress up outfits!

On Tuesday we all talked about and wore our favorite colors - we had a three way tie! Antoine and Chase love red, Aris and Eudenis love blue, and Rachel and Cleo love purple! We graphed and counted, listened to color songs and did a science experiment to see the three colors that make up black (Cyan, Magenta and Yellow).

On Wednesday we brought our siblings to circle time - everyone in the 2A class has a sibling or will have a sibling soon! Chase made such an exciting announcement- his baby sister was coming on our sibling day! Congratulations to the Rucker family on their new addition, we can’t wait to see her! We hope you are doing well!

Thursday we came to circle time in our pjs and talked about our favorite breakfast foods. We talked about what we would need to bring with us if we were sleeping over at someone else’s house, listened to calm music, and read Llama Llama Red Pajama together.

Our beach party today was the best! We loved seeing your hats, swimmies, sunglasses and beach gear!

We hope you have a beautiful weekend! Next week we will be having more themed/spirit days:

• Monday is our White Gala with our fancy white clothes

• Tuesday is Animal day - bring your favorite stuffed animal, show us your pet, or bring an animal story to share

• Wednesday is Music/Instrument day as we will have a school sing along and then our circle time! (We can do an abbreviated time since they will already have been on the computer for a while).

• Thursday will be our Father’s Day celebration - please let me know if any Dads or Grandpas would like to read with us!

• Friday will be our very last day together and we will celebrate all of the remaining birthdays: Addie, Lily, Antoine, Chase, Millie and Louisa

Please continue to send me pictures of your children working on projects, even if they aren’t the ones I am creating in Google Classroom. We love having a glimpse into their world and keeping in touch with them. Thank you!

Friday, June 5th

Happy 3rd Birthday, Aris! We had such fun celebrating with you on Monday!!

Ocean Life

This week we took a dive into the ocean and started to explore the salty habitat. We took a peek at what happens to paint when we add salt, we made i-spy jars to start language development and storytelling in addition to the ability to sort and categorize objects that belong together, we also began creating dioramas of ocean life inside a shoebox. There were a variety of math skills to work on this week - matching, counting, sorting, and identifying objects that don’t fit within a set.

Please let me know if there is a specific facet of ocean life that your child is interested in so we can continue honoring their interests. For example, if someone really likes dolphins, I’d love to know so that I can design circle time activities that are about dolphins. Thanks!

Art Prompts

We began working on some art prompts this week. Are they helpful? They use less materials and are generally less of a mess than the sensory projects that I had been posting. There was an interest in illustration and using drawings to become stories, so I wanted to test out some activities geared toward that.

We have been doing a lot of them here and it has been going well, so I hope they have been meaningful projects for you and your child to work on. We especially enjoyed the doodle line game where each person adds to one drawing.

Field Day

What a fun way to spend our morning today! I hope everyone enjoyed rolling, working on handstands, and stretching their bodies today during our gymnastics session. I also hope that you were able to continue some of the field day fun at home - we tried out some sack racing and balloon tennis here. Don’t forget to make your own gold medal - you are all amazing and deserve it!

Music & Songwriting

Music is incredibly important in a young child’s life. Their bodies are hardwired to be in constant motion, always moving around and exploring. Music helps to focus a child’s energy (or let a child’s energy out, depending on the tempo!). Now that your child has encountered hundreds of songs in their life, you might notice that they are starting to come up with their own little ditties. Follow this interest and encourage it! Music lends itself to language development and acquisition, to rhyming and sound recognition and will help your child learn how to read and understanding the sound of letters and words. If your child created their own song, please share - I would so love to hear them.

Final Self Portrait

If your child worked on his/her final portrait of the year, please send them my way so I can add to the portfolio. Thank you for always sending me updates and images - I miss the kids and seeing them only thru circle time is not the same as the in person interactions we had previously.

Thank you thank you thank you for all of your help and participation. I know how hard it is to make the time, but I appreciate it! You are an amazing group of parents, and we value all that you do for your children.

Monday is dress up/costume day! Have a fantastic weekend. Be well.

Friday, May 29th

Brrr

This week we focused on a different group of animals, polar and arctic animals. We took a journey through the snow to learn more about: Snowy owls, seals, walrus, polar bears, puffins, reindeer, penguins and more! Eudenis and I feel that most of the children are very connected to animals and we wanted to honor their curiosities and impart some information about different habitats and why certain animals like to live where it’s always hot and some where it’s always cold.

Next week, we will dive under the sea and start exploring ocean life, submarines, boats, and beaches. What is your child’s favorite ocean animal?

Art Prompts

Today I posted the first “Art prompt” and will continue to add one each day for the remainder of the school year. These will be open ended art projects that will require a small interaction on your part- whether that means ripping a piece off from a whole sheet of paper or drawing a circle or square onto the paper to prompt what comes next.

Parent Check-In

Thank you to those that were able to chat with Eudenis and I yesterday, we have a great plan in place to keep the last few weeks of learning really fun and special for the children. We really look forward to seeing their happy faces each morning and want to do everything we can to keep them engaged, learning, and joyful! I will be emailing more details very soon.

Summer Program

I am happy to answer any curriculum questions you might have about our upcoming virtual summer program - I’m really excited about venturing across the globe and learning a little bit more about the wide world around us while we are all planted firmly where we are. Reach out if I can help out in any way.

Celebrating our Pre-K Graduates

This weekend (or early next week if you're busy!), please set aside a little time to create a picture for our graduating pre-k friends. A simple "Congrats class of 2020!" with a handmade painting or drawing would be perfect. You can email me a high quality image of the drawing, or you could send the artwork directly to our 13th St location (230 West 13th St, New York, NY 10011). These will be hung up in the windows for everyone to see, and we will also make a little video showcasing the signs for anyone who isn't in the city to come by and see it. THANKS for supporting our community!

Friday, May 22nd

Birthdays!

This week we had a really fun time celebrating both Una and Cleo’s birthdays! Thank you for joining in and helping add joy and excitement to these birthdays!

Also- happy birthday to Chase’s brother Grayson and to Una’s Daddy - DJ! So many birthdays this month.

Jungle

We continued to explore the jungle this week, covering the animals: Zebra, tree frog, crocodile, toucan and giraffe. It was really fun to see how everyone made their animals using different materials and tools. Great work!

There were some really engaging math, science and literacy projects to work on that reinforced the habitat and habits of the animals. I hope you were able to work on a few of them this week.

Next week we will start talking about the Arctic and animals that live in a polar environment.

Shapes

In addition to the jungle, we have also been focusing part of our morning meeting and activities on shapes. We took a closer look at: Squares, Triangles, Ovals, Rectangles and Hexagons. Shapes are literally everywhere and it’s great when your child can start pointing them out and recognizing shapes in our natural environment. We will keep talking about more shapes next week!

Literacy

Eudenis and I have noticed just how much your children love books and stories! Here are some of the books we’ve read this week during our morning and afternoon times:

• Knuffle Bunny & Knuffle Bunny Too - By: Mo Willems

• The Parrot Tico Tango By: Anna Witte

• Spot Bakes a Cake & Spot’s Birthday Party By: Eric Hill (the kids seem to love ALL of the spot books)

• The Beeman By: Laurie Krebs

Reminders

• School/Online learning is closed on Monday in honor of Memorial Day

• Our next class birthday is for Aristomenes - his birthday is Monday, June 1st

• We will be having a virtual field day and school sing along - look for details soon!

• Our last day of online learning will be Friday, June 19th

Friday, May 15th

Jungle!

This week we started to really dive into the topic of the Jungle. We have been exploring in a multi-disciplinary way - that is, through music, literacy, math, science and art. During our morning meetings we have been busy learning characteristics of animals such as which are carnivores and which are herbivores. We’ve learned about the four different levels of the jungle and what kind of animals live on each, and also touched on the fact that the animals we consider to be “jungle animals” actually live in the plains/savannah near the Jungle and not directly in it (lions, hippos, giraffes, elephants, etc.).

For science, we were able to get an idea of how rain works and how it continually goes through a cycle of rain, condensation, absorption and rain again. We also made our own rainstick to hear the sounds of the jungle/rainforest. The rice or beans make vibrations on the different materials they touch, which sounds to our ears like rain.

For Math we have been learning concepts of patterns, size differences, order of objects, counting, one-to-one correspondence and how to fit pieces together to create a whole. Additionally we are going to be having a shape of the day for at least the next week. We started off with circle today.

In literacy, we have been reading a lot of books that contain jungle animals - there have also been books read during the pre-recorded circle times that have great non-fiction information, like how different animals carry their babies. There have been prompts for storytelling, and ample opportunity to discuss and imagine with animals and scenery.

For Spanish this week, we focused on jungle animals, jungle scenery and vegetables. I have songs that go along with these topics for anyone who is interested.

I tried to make our sensory art projects a little more open ended this week, providing different concepts you could choose to carry out at home. This way the project is flexible depending on what you have on hand and you shouldn’t need to go out and get anything extra. Hopefully this made it easier to work on the animal creation. We made: Tigers, Monkeys, Lions, Elephants and Snakes this week. We will be making five new animals next week, as well as making some of the scenery so that you will, in effect, have a little jungle at home.

Don’t forget today is chocolate chip day! You can put chocolate chips on your banana sushi or straight into your pineapple carrot muffins! Yum!

Have a fantastic weekend with some beautiful weather coming our way!

Friday, May 8th

Happy Birthday!!

We had our very first ever virtual birthday party today. Wishing India such a happy 3rd birthday. We hope your year is filled with joy, learning, and laughter. Thank you to everyone who helped make her day special with cards and party hats! Feliz Cumpleanos!

Cinco De Mayo

This week we also celebrated Cinco de Mayo with music, colors, instruments, and guacamole! It was a lot of fun to listen to the style of another culture and learn some new traditions.

Parents Day

This weekend we wish all the Mama’s a very happy Mother’s Day! We wish we could have helped create something special for you to keep, but hopefully the Dads have something special planned for you. And if we had been at Buckle My Shoe today would have been our annual Parent’s day celebration. I sent a little note to each family, but wish we could have been together to celebrate. Parents have a rough job, but get paid back with so much love. Thank you for all that you do!

Thank You

Thank you for always sharing photos and videos with us and giving us a little glimpse into the day to day life that has become our new, if temporary, normal. It means everything to Eudenis and I to be able to keep in touch with the children and be as present as we can. So, we thank you for your hard work and efforts in keeping us all connected.

Have an amazing weekend, despite the cold temps!!! We will see everyone on Monday for our regular circle time.

Friday, May 1st

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Congratulations!

A big congrats to Una, Katie and DJ on their new baby! Welcome to the world, Maya James! We cannot wait to see more of you once you are home!

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ABCs

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This week we concluded our journey through the alphabet; I hope that it has brought more interest in letters and words. Please know that everyone is still very young for understanding all of the alphabet, letter recognition, and even writing letters. So if your child isn’t prepared for those concepts yet, don’t worry! We will keep revisiting the ABCs during our daily meetings.

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May 1st - Self portraits!

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One of my favorite parts of each month is when the children are able to make their self portrait again. This is a momentous journey during the 2’s year especially. We start off the school year with small marks, frenzied scribbles, and harsh dots and pokes of the marker. During this point in the year, we are starting to see some actual human-ish portraits emerge from the scribbles. Most children are able to make circles and clear lines by this stage. Now they are putting these new developments together to create a face.

Please share your child’s portrait if you have a moment - they are special to me and I would love to see the new developments in your child’s fine motor capabilities.

Music

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Eudenis and I have been working hard on creating new music provocations for the children to work on at home. The study of music is important. It helps foster language acquisition, keeps children engaged when they otherwise would lose interest, and even has a lot of mathematical concepts. Playing music in the background while children are working is also a great tool for focus and attention span. And of course upbeat music helps us relax and unwind and get out silly energy. We literally have music on all day at school, and when we forget we can see a very obvious change in behavior.

Guessing Games

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This week we started to play some fun animal-based guessing games. Giving a few clues about habitat, sounds, color of fur and patterns, we tasked the children with using their amazing cognitive abilities to figure out what animal I was describing. This is a fun game to play at home, too! You can even reverse the game and put a sticker on your forehead and try to have your child give you clues as to what it is. It will take some practice, but it’s fun and a great way to get those little minds focused!

Next Week

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Next week we have some fun events coming up: Teacher appreciation, Cinco de Mayo, Parents day, and India’s 3rd birthday! Have your calendar ready so you can remember all of our events and get your child excited and in a routine each day.

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If you have special dates or events that you’d like for us to add, please let me know. I’m happy to include even more on our calendar.

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Friday, April 24th

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What a fun week! Thanks for your efforts in celebrating Week of the Young Child. It’s a very special holiday that we enjoy each year.

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Music Monday reminded me of the importance of using music to help children with their daily routines. In the classroom, we always have some sort of music happening. We use classical music to help us focus when we need to get important work done, use lively upbeat music when we play in the gym, and very calm and quiet music when it’s time for nap. If you’re having a challenging time at home, try putting on some music and seeing if that helps!

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For Tasty Tuesday (which happily matched up with the day we talked about the letter T!), we challenged everyone with the task of creating their own recipe! What did your child come up with? What do they like to cook? Do they always eat what they help cook? Recipes help us learn math skills, science as we watch ingredients mix together and alter appearance, and life skills as we need to be able to cook food to eat!

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Working together is something all of the children enjoy doing. We learn so much from others. Were you able to make a useable bridge together? Wednesday was also Earth day, so we used recycled lids to make Earth prints, and took our learning outside as we had a guide for a nature scavenger hunt.

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Artsy Thursday is always my favorite and it was so hard not to post a million ideas for everyone to play with at home. We usually get super messy and paint with our whole bodies - but I hope you were able to at least work on some sponge painting, some Picasso portraits, or becoming an art scientist and seeing how different canvases produce different results!

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Family Friday was all about being together and recognizing all of the special people in our lives. I hope that everyone spent some time together thinking about all the ways that we love and appreciate one another and how we need each other.

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Next week we will be finishing up the alphabet!!! We will move on to having a shape of the day and also start focusing a bit more on animal habitats again, like we were doing at the school.

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If Eudenis or myself can help out or assist you in any way, please let us know. We are here to support learning, give constructive ideas, and to even help you figure out how to work on an activity even if you don’t have the recommended materials. Reach out anytime!

Have an amazing weekend! Give your kids an extra hug from each of us.

Friday, April 17th

Hello 2A families!

Natural Materials

This week we focused on bringing nature into the home and celebrating the various signs of spring that are happening all around us. From a very early age, children are curious about the world around them. Finding ways to honor this curiosity and giving ample opportunity to explore is crucial to a child’s development. Exploration of nature instills a lasting attachment to the environment. What signs of spring are your children noticing? Antoine has been excited about seeing a duck’s egg in a nest when he goes out for a walk. Cleo showed us her fascination with pine needles and her curiosity about whether or not her cat would be interested in eating them. Aris has collected sea shells and used them in all of his artwork.

Allowing children to pick up twigs and rocks and explore them is a simple activity that has a big payoff - a connection to the world around us, ability to create hypotheses and ideas, storytelling, math concepts, science, creativity - everything can be tied into these explorations.

Basic Math

Counting, grouping, and basic addition are the foundation for all other math concepts that will come later. Allowing children to play with these essential concepts will give them confidence and desire to learn more about math. This week we also did some very preliminary work on fractions by making the 8 pizza slices. Keep math simple and fun, filled with games and art, and it will create a great love for it later on!

Physical Activity

We are working on creating more activities that focus on physical activity that can be done indoors. Have you found great activities that work for you? Please share with us so we can pass it along to other families. Aside from yoga, using tape to make obstacle courses, and having dance parties, it’s hard to design activities that burn off energy safely inside. We’ve invested in some “gym” equipment like a slide, tunnel, and gym cones to make our home a better source of physical activity. Hula hoops, bowling, and a small ball pit would also be great choices.

Alphabet

This week we talked about the letters N, O, P, Q and R. We’re really getting close to finishing up the alphabet! It’s been wonderful seeing how excited everyone is to learn about words, books, instruments and songs that start with these letters. How is it going at home? Is everyone trying to write the letters? It’s OK if there isn’t any interest yet, it’s normal!!

Parent Check-Ins

Thank you to those of you who came to our first check in last night. It was really helpful for Eudenis and I to hear what is working, what isn’t, and how we can better serve you at home. We are always eager for constructive comments and are open to trying new things to engage and teach your children at home. I’ll be sending an email tonight as well to follow up on some of the things that were talked about during our meeting. We look forward to more thoughts next week as we continue checking in. Come to us anytime- we are here to guide and help!

Week of the Young Child

Next week is our Week of the Young Child, and we will be doing some really fabulous activities based on the following schedule:

• Music Monday

• Tasty Tuesday

• Work together Wednesday

• Artsy Thursday

• Family & Special person Friday

I’ll send a list of materials by tomorrow afternoon that you might want to get to participate in the activities.

Have a great weekend, and we will see everyone on Monday for some music fun. Take care.

Friday, April 10th

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Honoring Holidays

This week we worked on some activities that help us honor holidays. We got to work making a piece of Matzah bread which has no agents in it that help it to rise and can be completed from start to finish in 18 minutes or less! Recipes are an amazing way to learn basic math, life skills, how to follow directions, watch chemical reactions in action, and work together to make something yummy.

Una and Rachel decorated Easter eggs together during our afternoon song & dance time - and Eudenis made a great drawing of an egg with bunny ears!

We also read books for both Easter and Passover and listened to some music in both Hebrew/Aramaic and English. Even if we don’t celebrate a particular holiday, it’s great to learn about how other people experience their holidays and special gatherings. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday weekend!

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Our weekly explorations

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This week we did a lot of science: we made boats to see if we could get them to float, we played with baking soda and vinegar, we used vinegar to “eat” the shell of an egg and got to see what the egg looks like on the inside - plus, it bounces!

Did you have a chance to count your snack? Almost every activity that we do can have a math element! All the better if we get to have something tasty after we count it!

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We also learned a lot of Spanish this week. We focused on insects and things that we see during Spring time. If you ever want help with words, phrases or questions please email me and Eudenis will assist. We’d love to know what kind of Spanish you and your children want to learn next!

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Our alphabet study continued this week with the letters K, L and M. How is it going at home? Are the letters becoming easier for your child to recognize (it’s normal and OK if not!!)?

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Materials for next week

Here’s a list of items that you might want to get for project work that will happen next week:

• Shaving cream

• Food coloring

• White rice

• Flower petals, leaves, natural materials

• Fruit/Veggies with seeds (apples, peppers, oranges with seeds)

• Plastic bottles

• Popsicle sticks

Next week we will resume all morning meetings and google classroom activities, please keep sharing all of your hard work and sending us videos of your week!

Friday, April 3rd: Curriculum Day

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Alphabet recognition

For last week and this week, we have made our letter of the day a big part of our morning circle time. We hope it’s been helpful in creating interest in the alphabet at home. I know that here every time a toy is picked up the first question is, “What’s this one’s letter?” This is awesome - without a vested interest in wanting to learn the letters, it’s a big challenge! So that is why we try to find creative ways to interact with the letters. Games, scavenger hunts, matching, memory, drawing, painting, building with blocks - we want the letters to be everywhere without being too obvious about it. Usually when we just have it out and ready, kids pick it up and learn faster than if we drill it into them. So just be relaxed about it, and when the fine motor and cognitive abilities are there, it will all click. If your child isn’t interested, that’s OK! We really don’t expect everyone to know the alphabet by sight until at least 4 years old. There’s plenty of time to play around with the abcs until then.

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Drawing/Writing Grasp

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This week I was asked about proper grip on a writing tool. At this stage, some of the kids haven’t even decided which hand is going to be dominant and use both. That’s OK! It’s ok if your child wants to palm the markers and crayons, that’s what is most comfortable for him or her right now. Our goal is to slowly move toward a proper pincer grip where the child is using their fingers to pinch the writing tool. I’ll post some pictures.

A great way to practice this grip is to break your crayons in half and only use a tiny piece to draw with. This forces the pincer grip because there isn’t enough crayon to hold in the palm and still draw with.

Again, each child develops in their own time and there isn’t any rush. As long as your child is starting to use shapes and lines and has a desire to describe what it is they are making, you’re on the right track!

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Scissors

We had only just started to practice using scissors in the classroom. This is an important skill that we should be mastering around 3 years old (again, this is not set in stone and it’s not realistic for every single child). If you have child scissors at home, please start incorporating them into more and more play. You can draw different kinds of lines on the paper (straight, zigzag, wavy) and try to have your child cut the lines. If your child is having difficulty, just continue to model the proper way to hold them and give something solid like playdough or clay to cut first before moving on to paper.

Hand Muscles

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To be successful with hand writing, we want to continue to offer different materials that we need to squeeze, pinch and poke with.

• Clay

• Glue bottles

• Squeeze bottles in the bath tub

• Lids to screw and unscrew

• Keys/Locks

• Putting pipecleaners into colanders or small holes in cardboard

• Tweezers

• Chop sticks

Free Play

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While it’s nice to work on these structured activities, it’s really best to give your child a large opportunity to play creatively in any safe way that they would like. Dramatic play lets children learn wonderful things like being able to get dressed and undressed, how to take care of themselves and others, and how to cope with emotions. Lining up and sorting toys is actually a mathematical and scientific process which is wonderful for cognitive development and curiosity. Block building is basic engineering and architecture and helps to learn all sorts of great concepts, like gravity. No matter what your child is playing with, they are learning!

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Friday, March 27th

Literacy Week

Thank you to everyone who read a book with us this week! I know I enjoyed hearing a lot of books that I’d never heard of before! A big thank you to: Jasmin, Shaun, Carter, Tina and Annie for taking time to share with everyone.

I hope everyone has been working on the alphabet this week, as we worked on the letters: A, B, C, D and E. We will continue to introduce a letter a day and practice writing it. Cleo and India have been doing a really amazing job with their letters!

The stories that you have been sharing with me based on the different prompts this week were fantastic. This is something that we do in the classroom all of the time, and I’m happy to continue offering different ways to approach storytelling at home.

Science

A few of you have shared the different planting projects that are happening in your homes - hooray for some sprouts starting to pop up!

We also explored sink or float this week, which is a great way to begin to understand surface area and density.

Was anyone able to make oobleck?

Did your raisins dance in the carbonated water?

Math

This week we explored the concept of symmetry by making a beautiful print and also adding the element of a mirror to show a reflection.

We worked on numeracy and number recognition through the use of dominos and playing cards.

And we built ramps to discover how to make our own simple machine and use our engineering skills.

Movement

Who enjoyed the color hop? What a fun way to learn our colors, shapes, and move our bodies! I can’t wait to see how you played your game!

And who made an activity cube/ used a di to roll and coordinate different movements for each number?

Since some of us are really cooped up inside right now, it’s so important to figure out safe ways to let our children move around and let out all of their abundant energy!

Next Week

Next week we will continue with the alphabet, we will start learning about community helpers in Spanish, and we will be looking for math in nature (which will easily be done inside or outside).

Some materials you may need to gather for next week include:

• Ice cube tray (I like to use silicone chocolate molds to make ice in fun shapes)

• Ziplock bags

• Aluminum foil

• Baking soda and vinegar

• Masking tape

Please please send me some photos and videos of what your kids are up to, even if they aren’t of the activities that Eudenis and I plan; it’s so nice for the kids to be able to see each other and hear about what everyone is up to. Thanks for your help!

And anyone who listed their address can expect a letter from me very soon - we dropped off the cards to the post office yesterday.

Have a beautiful weekend, and stay safe and health.

With Love,

Rachel & Eudenis

Friday, March 20th

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Cleo is planting lemon seeds!

Happy Spring everyone!

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It’s hard to believe that Winter has already finished and Spring is now in bloom. The trees have buds, the garden beds have green poking through. What a great opportunity to stop and notice all of the little changes that are happening in our environment. Even house plants seem to sense the change and are growing greener, taller and stronger than even a week prior.

Take some time to point out these changes to your child. Maybe start a dedicated notebook to drawing and writing down the changes that you both observe. I know we don’t all have backyards, courtyards and rooftops to observe - but perhaps there’s a tree out of your window, or the little bean Eudenis and I suggested you could grow. Barring that, there are a plethora of amazing books that detail these signs of Spring and can show your child the magic that happens as the earth wakes up again.

Little Blue Truck’s Springtime

Planting a Rainbow

The Tiny Seed

Here in Brooklyn, we found some seed packets and started the process of growing some herbs. We’ll keep you updated of their progress!

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You can make a simple weather chart and talk about it when you get up in the morning; have a schedule and creating a new normal is important.

The Importance of Recognizing Feelings

The world is on edge right now, and all of the tense, panic and negative feelings that we are having are trickling down onto our children. There is a lot of uncertainty right now and a lot of scary things in the world. Let’s remember to give our children the opportunity to express how they are feeling and why, and accept these feelings no matter what they are and how they come out. Challenging behaviors often have a root cause, whether it’s being tired, feeling anxious, or being hungry. Remember to take a deep breath and roll with the tide of these emotions rather than feeding into them and causing more stress for everyone. It’s not easy, but it is worth practicing. Counting to five is sometimes helpful, taking deep breaths, and giving space.

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Calm down jars are helpful. We used glitter, pony beads, and water.

Letter of the Day

Starting on Monday, we will be implementing a letter of the day during our circle time. Please help your child find something that starts with the letter A to share with the group on Monday. Thank you!

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Can you make an A out of ice? We made these watercolor ice cubes with a mini muffin tray.

Materials for next week

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We need cornstarch to make Oobleck!

Eudenis and I have started to plan activities for next week. Here are some of the materials that you may need. I know it might not be easy to get them at the moment, so let me know if we should change our plan.

• Seltzer & Raisins (or grains of rice would work too)

• Paper towel or tp rolls

• Coffee filters or paper towels

• Cornstarch

• Food coloring or liquid watercolors

• A notebook or white paper

• Markers/crayons/colored pencils

• Tempera or watercolor paints

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Did you make a memory game this week? What objects did you use? How did it go?

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Remember- you can paint on just about anything!

With Love,

Rachel & Eudenis

Friday, February 28th

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Once Upon a Time . . .

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The class has fallen in love with the story “The Three Little Pigs.” You can literally hear a pin drop in the classroom when we are reading the story together. Everyone knocks on the table to imitate the wolf banging on the door, and everyone fills their lungs to huff and puff and blow the houses down. We feel anxious and excited for the pigs as they run from one dwelling to the next, looking for a safe haven.

This passion has been creeping into our dramatic play, storytelling, art work, block building, and other buildings with varied manipulatives (i.e. legos, bristle blocks).

An interest doesn’t stay within one domain, it permeates each activity that we encounter throughout the day. In fact, the big bad wolf even appeared in the form of the wind when we went outside for a walk. We speculated whether or not the wolf/wind could blow down certain buildings, if it could blow our hair away, or if it could blow Rachel over! A few of us embodied the role of the wolf and tried to assist the wind in blowing Rachel down.

We are now adding more classic tales to our repertoire and have noticed that they begin with the line, “Once upon a time.” Next week we hope to read even more classic children’s literature and start writing our own tales.

• The Three Little Pigs

• Jack and The Beanstalk

• Goldilocks and The Three Dinosaurs

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Picnic Play

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Baby care has always been something the children enjoy engaging in. This week they have been taking the babies for picnics and bring baskets of food to share. Dramatic play is an essential mode of learning for early childhood. What is dramatic play? It’s a form of putting on someone else’s shoes and learning about the world from a new perspective. Children assign and accept new roles and breaking down the barriers of reality. Some of the benefits include:

• Self Regulation

• Creating rules and strategies

• Learning how to keep a peer engaged and active in the play

• Dramatic play motivates language acquisition

• It fosters strong social skills and conflict resolution abilities

• It can relieve emotional tension and turmoil

• Literacy, math, and science are often used in the play

• It is empowering and fosters self confidence

We try to allow the children to come up with their own play scenarios, but we are always there to interject, add a new layer, or toss in a few questions to guide and enhance the direction of the learning.

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Other 2A Happenings

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• Learning how to use a watercolor palette

• Still life painting of leaves & talking about spring and how we can tell that it’s coming

• Puzzles and strategies

• Painting with a strainer/colander

• Clay and continued dialogue about bouncy castles

• Lego construction (We are going to try to use smaller legos for building since we are masters with the duplo size)

• Creating a Wolf and Pig with butcher paper and tempera paints - this is ongoing. We will be cutting them out, stuffing them to give them dimension, adding collage materials, and creating scenery.

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Specialists

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• Ernestina played a game to revisit our emotions in Spanish and we talked about different body parts and what we wear on each.

• Diane had us mix banana and coconut milk together to make another smoothie.

• Coach C challenged us to keep our balls on polyspots as we made little kicks through the gym. We also played a freeze game.

• Andrew sang the book “An Octopus Followed Me Home” and “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.” We also used our bodies and voices to act out planting a seed, waiting for it to grow, and seeing it become a flower.

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Reminders

• BMS is closed next Friday, March 6th for Staff Development

• BMS is closed Friday, March 13th for Parent Teacher Conferences / SIGN UP HERE

• Literacy week is March 23-27 / We will start signing up to be guest readers next week, and there will be an amazon wishlist of books that the class would love to receive

• Curriculum Breakfast #2 will be on Friday, April 3rd from 9:00-9:40, details coming soon

Friday, February 21st

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The Bouncy Castle

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It was a short but very enriching week this week! We accomplished a lot of valuable project work and started to uncover a new interest that we will try and investigate further: Bouncy Castle. Chase has been talking about bouncy castles for a while, but the idea is catching on. When we took out clay to work with, everyone started adding recycled pouch caps and straws and talking about how it was becoming a bouncy castle.

“This is the light for the bouncy castle.” - Aris (the small stairs looking piece of clay with pouch caps that is on the side of the main block of clay).

“Those are the bounces for the bouncy castle. And these are the strings of the bouncy castle. They come up and down and I saw these at the bouncy castle.” - Antoine

“People go inside!” - Aris (he moved his hand through the “strings” to demonstrate).

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Clock Making

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Continuing our woodworking project, we built a clock this week! Everyone took a turn painting a section of the clock, and then we worked together to attach the three hands of the clock. We popped in a battery- and voila! We have a 2A made functional clock for our wall! Today everyone took turns admiring the clock and trying to read what time it was.

“It’s four o’clock!” - Cleo

“It’s moving!” - Chase

“It’s working! The other one is broken. It doesn’t work now. We have this one!” - Antoine

Our next wood project will be the tool caddy - the third item we voted for after consulting our woodwork project book.

Specialists

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• Diane made “Patriotic” smoothies with us using blueberries, strawberries and bananas with a little coconut water.

• We took big kicks and played red light - green light with Coach C during Soccer

• Mr Andrew sang us “Never Feed a Yeti Spaghetti” and sang ABCs, Twinkle Twinkle, Slippery Fish and Fire Truck song with us

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Other 2A Work

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• Creating self portraits using loose parts (This encourages the concept of representation, facial part awareness, creative thinking, counting, and self awareness).

• Cooking for this week was Spinach Corn fritters - six out of seven friends tried and seemed to enjoy them!! We called them green pancakes.

• Painting and drawing the characters from The Three Little Pigs // we really love this story at the moment and want to dig deeper to see just what about the story is captivating to our 2A audience. // The drawings showed that we are particularly interested in the Big Bad Wolf and the way that he huffs and puffs the houses down.

• Guessing game during circle time. Can you guess how many gems are in the jar? There were three gems, and the majority of children guessed 3. We will continue to play this game to understand quantity and counting.

• Obstacle courses // our gross motor muscles were happy this week as we challenged the children to move in different ways to complete obstacle courses in the gym.

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Reminders

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• Coffee Chat w/ Chloé on Playground & Playdate Etiquette on Wednesday, Feb. 26th

• We are closed on Friday, March 6th for Staff Development

• We are closed on Friday, March 13th for Parent Teacher Conferences // SIGN UP HERE

• Parent’s Night Out Thursday, March 19th

• Literacy Week is March 23-27 // We will have a class wishlist to shop from and donate to the class, and we will have parent and family readers coming in each day of the week.

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Friday, February 14th

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Counting & Letter Recognition

This week we utilized Valentine’s Day as a way to really focus on counting and also letter recognition. Everyone was very excited about hearts (corazon!), so we used them to see how many letters (or hearts) were in each name. i.e. Rachel is 6 hearts long.

We are beginning to know our first letter, and starting to know what everyone else’s first letter is. Our next piece is attempting to draw our first letter.

Density

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We conducted a science experiment about density this week. Using five different liquids, we watched as they separated and created different layers in our jar. We used: Baby oil, Vegetable oil, Rubbing alcohol, corn syrup and water. We tried to color each layer, but if the food coloring was mixed in the oil it immediately burst down into the water layer!

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Recipes

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Recipes are not only for cooking food that we can eat, but also for a lot of the sensory materials that we use in the classroom. This is another opportunity to use our counting skills, learn the difference between types of measure (teaspoon, tablespoon, cup, etc.), watch as ingredients go through chemical reactions and change from solid to liquid or vice versa, and deepens our vocabulary base.

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This week we made: salt dough, playdough, slime, and beet muffins! We are starting to incorporate a visual recipe so the children can see how many of each ingredient we will need to complete the recipes.

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Specialists

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• Ernestina had us feed hearts to her T-Rex, taught us many words we use to show love and affection to our friends, and played the Skinny ma rinky dinky dink song for us.

• Diane helped us make tea sandwiches with three topping choices. We tasted strawberry jam, apricot preserves and apple butter with cinnamon.

• Coach C challenged our bodies with various games to improve our kicking and balancing skills.

• Mr Andrew had us hopping and jumping for our whole music time!

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Other Activities This Week

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• Sand play

• Loose part play with rose petals and tulip petals

• Painting cardboard hearts

• Creating Valentines for our friends after drawing names randomly

• Continued practice with our screw driver set

• Walking outside on the rope

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Friday, February 7th

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Our Windy Conclusions

This week we concluded our wind experiments and had some really amazing and profound things to say about the wind:

YEAH! The wind can be inside! It still blows our hair inside. The wind is light and it’s strong, too. – Cleo, 2.8 years

The wind- WOW! It flies! The wind plays. – Antoine, 2.7 years

The wind can blow the feathers. It goes up! – Una, 2.8 years

The wind plays. It’s inside a balloon! – Addie, 2.7 years

The scarf goes up like an elevator! The wind blows the flowers. – Aris, 2.7 years

The wind goes right up there! It blows the feather. The wind blows my hair. – Louisa, 2.6 years

It’s stuck, it’s stuck! Oh, there it goes! It goes out the top and it falls down. – India, 2.9 years

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Three Little Pigs

We are all very interested in the story, “The Three Little Pigs.” We shout out our favorite parts with the wolf and the little hairs on our chinny chin chins! Everyone knocks on the table when the Wolf is knocking on the door. Next week we will be creating puppets, houses, and continue acting out parts of the story. What a great way to celebrate literacy and theater in our classroom!

Other happenings:

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• Shaving cream paper marbling

• Beach day! We celebrated our Spanish with sand play, water play, and “pez” creation (fish!). We also made a delicious Ocean in a cup for snack time.

• Multi-step project with drawing and watercolor painting

• Woodworking and tool use - honing fine motor muscles with screw driver practice and using our fingers for twisting and turning wing-nuts.

• Self portraits

• Strolling through the neighborhood & picking out flowers for our classroom. We chose a multi-color bouquet of tulips!

• Still life painting

• Building in all different areas of our classroom, with a multitude of materials.

• Science experiments: observing how oil and water do not mix, and adding alka seltzer tabs to see waves and bubbles emerge; we also made a batch of slime and watched as liquids became mostly solid.

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Specialists

• During Spanish, we talked about weather, what clothes to wear, the body parts of a snowman, and all about snow.

• Diane had us squeeze lemon juice and make a fruit salad with strawberries and blueberries.

• Coach C had us build ice cream cones with the plastic cones and squishy soccer balls; we also practiced our big kicks.

• Mr. Andrew sang us “Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?” and a bunch of our favorites.

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REMINDERS

• Science Fair tomorrow, Saturday, February 8th from 10-12 - come explore the wind with us!

• Monday, February 10th is school picture day - the background is a light teal

• Friday, February 14th is our class Valentine’s breakfast party - please bring cards to exchange for all children

• We are closed Mon & Tues Feb 17 & 18 for President’s Day

• Please let me know if you have questions about summer camp, I’d be happy to let you know all about the program. We are unsure of staffing at the moment, but as soon as we get some enrollment we will be able to figure out who will be with your children. Let me know if you’re interested so we can start planning staff!

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Friday, January 31st

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Then I’ll Huff . . .

This week we started reading the story The Three Little Pigs (this version is by Kath Jewitt & illustrated by Mei Matsuoka). Everyone enjoyed acting out the Big Bad Wolf’s huffing and puffing! We are embodying the wind and becoming wind ourselves!

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Additionally, we started to artistically conceptualize what the wind looks like through drawing. It was really profound to watch the way each child thought about and recreated the wind on their paper. From long sweeping lines across the page to very carefully articulated circles of wind, we were able to get a real insight into the children’s thinking.

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Another way in which we became the wind this week was by using a straw to blow puddles of paint around! This was a very fun way to paint! You can find all of our wind blown paintings above the sandbox platform.

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Kindness Matters

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Though we always focus on kindness and empathy through our interactions and words with the children, this week we spoke about it even more. We thought about what makes us feel good, how we can help others to feel good, and what really bugs us so we can tell people when we’ve had enough. We played interactive games that let us be kind and loving to others and brought big smiles to all of our faces! Even though kindness week is ending, this will always be an integral piece in our daily learning.

Millie

A person you are thankful for - Orna (Jordan)

A place that you are thankful for - New gymnastics

A food that you love - I love corn and tacos

A thing that you love - Lots of toys, babies.

Anything else you love - Jordan!

Una

A person you are thankful for - Rachel

A place that you are thankful for - Home

A food that you love - Bars

A thing that you love - I like to play with an airport

Anything else you love - Play with babies

Addie

A person you are thankful for - Tina

A place that you are thankful for - To Nana’s.

A food that you love - Quack Quack crackers

A thing that you love - More toys

Anything else you love - Mommy!

Antoine

A person you are thankful for - My Dad

A place that you are thankful for - New York City

A food that you love - Bananas

A thing that you love - (Play) With a hippo

Anything else you love - When my Daddy says he loves me

Aris

A person you are thankful for - Mama

A place that you are thankful for - Una’s house

A food that you love - Bananas

A thing that you love - Flowers

Anything else you love - Eudenis

Chase

A person you are thankful for - Daddy

A place that you are thankful for - Nana’s

A food that you love - Fishies

A thing that you love - Rocks!

Anything else you love - Cars!

Cleo

A person you are thankful for - Mommy

A place that you are thankful for - I like to go to the park

A food that you love - Mango

A thing that you love - An ice cream truck

Anything else you love - Rachel

India

A person you are thankful for - Mommy

A place that you are thankful for - to get pizza

A food that you love - Blueberries

A thing that you love - a ball

Anything else you love - Cooking

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And MORE Wind!

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What will the wind carry? What’s too heavy to be moved by the wind? Can we redirect the wind through different configurations? We tinkered with these concepts this week - and you’ll learn more about our findings at the science fair on Feb. 8th!

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Specialists

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• Ernestina brought ducks and puppets for us to really interact with the animals on the farm en Espanol!

• Diane helped us create our own salads with zesty lemon and lime

• Coach C created a challenging and fun obstacle course for our bodies to maneuver through

• Mr Andrew sang us two amazing books - Jamberry & Never Feed a Yeti Spaghetti Plus, he took our requests and sang our favorites with us

• Eudenis is helping the children learn ocean animals and beach terms in Spanish this week and next to support our interest in animal habitats.

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Reminders

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• Saturday, February 8th from 10-12 is our SCIENCE FAIR… please come and see all of the fantastic work your children have been doing (they are brilliant!!)

• Monday, February 10th is PICTURE DAY … More info coming asap!

• Friday, February 14th is our Valentines breakfast from 9-9:45; join if you can!

• We are closed Feb. 17 and 18 for President’s Day

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Friday, January 24th

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The Wind!

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Please CLICK HERE to see our Home Fun for the weekend - it’s all about the wind!

This week we started to have a conversation about the wind, and just what exactly it does and a little bit about where it might come from. We find it really important to value the children’s theories and ideas. It may not necessarily line up with the actual science of how things work, but there is so much time for them to discover that as they grow. For now we want them to come up with creative and thoughtful ideas that relate to our topic. As we start experimenting and playing with wind, they will start discovering the actual science of it!

Antoine: The tunnel makes the wind. Wind comes from the wheels of the train. When it’s windy, the people come inside [the train].

India: Fire makes the wind. Over the hills and far away. It’s only windy outside, not inside. It swishes my hair and I need a pony tail.

Millie: From the air.

Una: Wind blows my hair and blows the snow. It makes it fall down [the snow].

Cleo: It blows our hair. It feels good. The wind comes from trees. It comes from the leaves. The wind goes only outside.

Chase: It windy today. It cold. You blow away! I fall down in the wind.

Aris: No, it’s not windy inside.

Adeline: A cow make wind. When says, “Moo.” I do it my mouth (she demonstrated by blowing).

Louisa: The wind helps my friend Una feel better. I feel the wind in my hair, too.

After having a discussion about the wind, we started to do some preliminary experiments. First, we threw dancing scarves up and into the air with just our own momentum. They did go up in the air, but not very high. Our next step was to turn on the fan (some wind can happen inside!), and let the scarves go flying! It was super exciting. We used both the fan on the wall and also a fan that we could all reach.

More experiments will occur next week- we are so excited!

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Tic Tac Toe

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Our game board and pieces are complete- we got to learn how to play tic tac toe, three in a row! It was really fun to put our hardwork into play. Each child got a chance to play a game against another child. There were some winners, and some who ended in a draw. Either way, it was great to start learning how to strategize, differentiate the Xs from the Os, and enjoy time with friends.

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Inclines

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This week we continued exploring inclines/ramps.

An inclined plane is one of the six classical simplified machines- it’s use is of so much importance to us in our every day lives. The more we play with ramps, the better we will comprehend their value and how to use them to make our lives easier!

Lunar New Year

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We like to celebrate diverse cultural traditions in our classroom. For lunar new year, we read poems about dragons, created our own green dragon, explored red and gold paint, and tasted some very sweet and juicy oranges! Thanks for helping us celebrate the year of the Rat/Mouse.

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Specialists

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• Diane helped us create a delicious salad with radishes and cucumbers with a honey vinegar dressing.

• In Spanish, we sang the days of the week, spoke about farm animals, and thought about polar animals as well.

• Coach C had us do a lot of kicking practice this week, and we played a silly game where we kicked the ball toward him to wake him up!

• Andrew got a lot of requests to sing different books with us today- head shoulders knees and toes, baby bear, and from head to toe were on the docket.

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Reminders

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• Next week is our Kindness week; a lot of our activities will have a basis in empathy and kindness.

• The science fair is coming up! Saturday, Feb. 8th.

• Monday, Feb. 10th is school picture day- we will let you know our time frame as soon as it’s available.

• We are closed Mon & Tues Feb. 17 & 18 for Presidents Day

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