Happy Friday!!

Music & Movement

This week Bridget led us through an exploration of the musical whole note, which is four beats long. We listened to music that supported our understanding of the whole note, we used plates to represent the shape of the whole note and even decorated them afterward to personalize the experience. Learning about the rhythm and beat of music and breaking it down into individual pieces allows children to internalize and process the way music (and patterns) work.

Additionally, we have started to incorporate freeze dance, shake your sillies out, one little finger, and other body movement songs into our day! The kids LOVE our dance and movement moments. Do you have favorite movement songs at home? Favorite yoga poses or exercise moves?

Science

For our science investigation this week we made some kinesthetic sand. We mixed two parts baking soda, one part baking powder, and one part dish soap. At first it was foamy and messy, but as all of the ingredients combined it became solid and easy to smoosh together like sand at the beach!

Cooking

Rainbow pudding! This week we made some delicious rainbow pudding. Everyone got to select a color for their pudding and mixed it in. We also added a couple of sprinkles. Thanks Jackson & The Bergen family for providing us the ingredients to make our pudding.

This week we also introduced some scent jars into the classroom. We have been smelling: Basil, Cloves, Dill and Ginger! We will add some more next week.

"Comida!" -Emilio

"Smells like playdough!" -Nico

Clay

Our clay project for the week was building a volcano! We covered up a container with the clay and talked about our process- we're going to use the clay, we're going to paint the volcano, watch a video of a real volcano, and then use baking soda and vinegar to get our volcano to erupt! We're so excited!

Shapes!

This week we built upon our knowledge of the circle and the triangle. We started the week off with a collage of both shapes. Then we started recognizing how many sides each shape has. We've decorated the numbers 0-5, and today we used watercolor palettes to paint a few shapes. We'll start creating our number and shape chart next week.

Kindness Garden

Now that all of our still life paintings have been created, we've started adding your kind words:

Thank You, Share, Empathy, Appreciation, Gratitude, Consideration . . .

We will gather more words from the children, and start adding photos of kind actions and moments in the classroom.

Community

The next segment in our year long project of identity is that of the Buckle My Shoe Community, and the larger community of NYC. To start, we have been talking about the bunny (Chocolate Milk) in the Pre-K classroom. This week most of our friends created images of Chocolate Milk and started asking a few questions that we'd like to know about her.

"Where are the carrots?" -Nico

"Where does the bunny sleep?" -Charlie

"Does the bunny drink milk?" -Nina

"Where the bunny go?" -Mia

"Where the bunny home?" -Mia

"Does he eat cheddar bunnies?" -Nina

"Does he like carrots?" -Nina

Specialists

Spanish: This week we had Spanish with Maria, and we've also started incorporating Spanish into each morning with Mitzi's help! This week we focused mostly on numbers and colors.

Cooking with Diane: This week we made potato gnocchi and mixed in butter, basil, oregano, and parsley. Delicious! Emilio, Katerina and Parker enjoyed it the most.

Soccer with Coach Alex: This week Coach Alex focused on getting us to run! He would hide jerseys and soccer balls behind his back and the kids would chase him around to get the different things.

Assorted 2A Happenings

This week we saw a lot of gentle hugs and helpful hands. Levi started recognizing which cup belonged to which person and has been giving them back to them throughout the day. Nina offers snacks to friends who are sad to brighten their day. Emilio helps feed his friends during lunch time. Dylan loves to give his friends big bear hugs, say their name with a smile, and laugh with them.

There has been more interest in using our light tables, especially to look at various "specimens" of insects and small animals. We will be adding some new objects to the table to explore next week and foster this wonderful learning moment. We would also like to find a couple of microscopes for children so we can get a different view! If anyone could loan one to us, we would be grateful!

Easel paintings are wonderful moments where children work together and have conversations about color, speed of movement, and other random bits and pieces of information.

Train tracks- almost every day one friend or another will start building a train track (Nico loves doing this first thing in the morning), and it grows as the morning continues! There have been some fascinating experiments with this- putting pieces of track upside down on purpose to see the difference, using the bridge as a see-saw and/or ramp, and trying different animals and cars on the tracks instead of trains. We are building up our knowledge and creating different schema in our minds on how to sort and classify in relation to train tracks!

Wooden magnet tiles have been a huge hit this week. Emilio worked on creating a two car garage! A lot of friends used the triangle pieces to make tee-pees and pyramids as well as roofs for houses. Cleaning them up helps us sort shapes and understand similarities and differences.