We had such a busy week! We’ve started working on our Halloween costumes, experienced quite a few Autumn inspired projects, and have been working on fostering a community of kindness in our room.
Using pumpkins to help us express our feelings. Each child was able to select which shapes they wanted and which emotion they wanted to convey. Then we used them during our Calabasas song.
Spacial Awareness & Kindness
Now that everyone is settled and comfortable in the classroom, we have been talking more about how we can give each other plenty of space. Sometimes we forget that there is someone next to us, or we just don’t want to share what we are doing. So we have been talking through these scenarios and explaining how important it is to be respectful to each and every friend in the classroom. In moments of tension, it’s hard for two year olds to remember to use their words - their primal and instinctual brain activates first and the calm, reasoning mind isn’t quick enough to intercept the action. Eudenis and I just continually remind each child that we can say, “I need space!” “No thank you,” and “I was here first.”
We have also been working diligently on offering our friends toys to play with. For example, if we are using legos, or tiles, or anything else, we are learning that it’s OK to let another child use them too. That doesn’t mean we have to give up all of the pieces, but that we need to let the ones we don’t need be used by someone else. It’s not easy! And it will take time and reminders. But we are confident that it won’t take long before these concepts are embedded into our way of life in the classroom.
Next week we will be introducing a Kindness jar in the classroom and friends who make really amazing choices with their friends will be able to add a piece to the jar. Once our jar is full, we will have a special party in the class to celebrate all of our kind actions.
Autumn
We have been loving all of the natural materials that have been given to the classroom. We have utilized them with clay, been working on gluing them into people still, and just enjoying touching and observing all of the different textures. We have been noticing that some of the leaves are really crunchy and easy to break while others are still “juicy” and not easy to rip apart. It’s also been fascinating to see that when flowers, like our sunflowers, start to dry all of the petals fall out. But our favorite fall materials has definitely been acorns! They are so much fun to roll around. I think we’ll be making some instruments out of acorns next week - so if you could collect some more for us, that would be amazing!
Specialists
Diane came to cook with us on Monday. We were treated to some really tasty apple butter!
On Tuesday we had our first official Spanish class (we do Spanish daily with Eudenis). Our favorite song was “Five Little Ducks” or Cinco Patitos.
Our second soccer class with Coach C was great- everyone was active and continued to practice using our feet only with the soccer ball.
Mr Andrew has been really engaging for music and we really loved listening to “The Itsy Bitsy Spider/Lion/Tomato”
Reminders
We are closed Monday, Oct 14th for Columbus day
Our pumpkin picking field trip is Wednesday, Oct. 16th
The annual Halloween parade is Thursday, Oct. 31st and our Harvest party is immediately following the parade. A sign up list was created on the Nurish app- but I will email it next week for anyone who would like to sign up. Please let us know ASAP if you do not have someone to attend the parade with your child
