Friday, February 9th

Shaving cream, glue (to keep it puffy), and red glitter. We noticed that we can make marks, shapes and lines with our fingers, and also discovered how good it feels to rub on our bodies. Although some of us did not enjoy washing it off!

What an awesome week - we saw such growth and progress from everyone, especially in kindness, sharing, and empathy. There are moments of snack sharing, of inventing games with friends to keep everyone happy and laughing, and true concern and compassion when someone is upset and crying. We could not be more proud!

Community Building

In continuation of our BMS Community project, we welcomed the 3B classroom into our room today. We started off with a fun "Jump in the Water" dancing time, and then answered some questions that 3B had for us.

Zara asked, "Do you have a fish, a bunny, or any pets?"

Vivi asked, "What is your class home?" Which, of course, is the 2A room!

Joseph asked us, "Do you like to play catch?" And since we do, our next playdate will be upstairs in the gym so the 3B friends can teach us how to play catch! We are so excited about this!

Ada, the 3B teachers, had this question, "How old is everyone in this room?" We had some really funny answers. Dylan decided, "8" was his age today, and Nina told everyone that she's "3." Wishful thinkers!! Mia finally let Ada know how old we are- "TWO!"

We ended our playdate with a shared snack of pretzels, and a better understanding of each other.

Valentines Prep

We have been busy artists this week as we prepare for another fun holiday. Using a variety of mediums (cardboard, paper, doilies, oil pastels, paint, crayons, watercolors . . .), we have been decorating hearts and thinking about what love means, and how we can show love.

We're almost finished decorating all of our mailboxes and have already started filling them up with the wonderful cards you've brought in. Thanks for all of your support and help in making each day magical for your children and their friends.

Morgan peeling glue off her fingers post-Valentines creations!

Science Project

We have yet to revisit our volcano project as this week was very busy, but it will happen soon! I think we will also be talking about volcanoes with our new Pre-K friends as our community project evolves in the next couple of weeks.

This week we froze a big block of ice and used epsom salts and watercolor paints to watch the process of a solid melting into a liquid and to get a visual of how it melts on the inside, too. The epsom salts speed up the melting process and also gives the ice a coarse feeling rather than being smooth. The watercolor soaks into all these divots and tunnels and you can get a glimpse into the interior of the ice block! This is another project we hope to repeat because it captivated us for a long period of time!

Other scientific adventures: making playdough, xrays and insects on the light table, sand play and more!

Specialists

Cooking with Diane: This week we compared sweet to savory by tasting both sour cream and whipped cream (with no sugar added). We dipped strawberries and bunny cookies into each cream to note the difference.

Cooking with Mitzi: Berry tacos were on the menu this week. We used bread, cream cheese, strawberries and blueberries to make our tacos.

Cooking with Mitzi Part II: We also made quesadillas this week! Everyone helped to add shredded cheese to the tortillas and we cooked them on a skillet. Everyone really enjoyed the cheese and the quesadillas!

Clay with Rachel: This week we started using clay as a vessel for collage materials. Up to this point, we had been using clay with only our fingers and water, and now that we understand the properties of clay, we can start incorporating new techniques and materials. For today, we started simply with wooden shapes and popsicle sticks/stirrers.

Literacy: We are starting to learn some nursery rhymes, and would like to start working on a poem of the week. Some of the rhymes we have learned thus far: The Muffin Man, Little Miss Muffet, Hey Diddle Diddle and Humpty Dumpty.

Spanish with Ernestina: This week our Spanish class was a bit short due to a fire drill, but we continued practicing our emotions, commands such as up and down, and the weather.

Spanish with Mitzi: Mitzi has continued practicing colors and numbers, and we started adding the days of the week, shapes and colors, and emotions. It's our goal to start adding books in Spanish to our regular routine.

Soccer with Jojo: Our usual skills focusing on using our feet, running, and cleaning up when we're finished!

Music with Evan: We sang a fire fighting song, wake up song, danced with Shooby, and sang Twinkle Twinkle!

Afternoon friends (those who take a nap) also had Karate and Yoga this week! We will also be incorporating music and movement in the afternoons, led by Bridget. I believe this is starting next week!

Topics of Interest

Mitzi and I have been noticing the following interests around the classroom:

Identifying context clues in books and asking "Why" and "What" questions. For example, Nicholas is very interested in a particular page in the Peppa and The Big Train book. On this page the train is stopped with a red light because there are ducks on the track. Nico has been asking what the red, yellow and green lights symbolize, and asking how the ducks will get off the tracks without the train hurting them. We have also noticed that the children love to insert themselves into the narratives - Mia will always name the characters after people in her life, "There's Mommy, there's Daddy, there's Mia, there's Jackson . . ."
Understanding that objects can be used for multiple distinct purposes. Parker found the scissors that we placed with the playdough a bit challenging, so he invented his own use for them. He opened them up and used one side as a knife instead of opening and shutting the two blades to cut with. What a great compromise and shift. We want the children to see the world as full of opportunities instead of full of limits. We encourage them to use objects in multiple ways as long as it's safe and practical.
Real life practice in our play. No matter what kind of sensory material we are using, it invariably ends up as equated to some sort of food. Our playdough becomes pizzas and pancakes. Our kinetic sand becomes ice cream. This has been really wonderful in expanding our vocabulary and allowing us to understand processes. When the playdough becomes pizza, we hear conversation that explains that it needs to cook in the oven, that it needs to be on "80" or "five seven" or other numbers that we turn the oven temperature to. We always hear language that describes how hot the food is when it comes out of the oven and how we can wait for it get cool. Next week we will be transforming our kitchen into a pizzeria and are hoping to set up a field trip to one very soon! We are also scheduling a trip to Eataly to learn some pasta making skills.
Auditory Processing. The most requested activity in our room is specific music. We get a lot of requests for "Freeze Dance," "Ring Around the Rosie," "One Little Finger," "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes," and, most requested of all, "Wheels on the Bus." What's great about these songs is that the children need to listen carefully and process the words they are hearing before carrying out the actions with and through their bodies. Most of our gym time is filled with these song games, and a good deal of time in our classroom too.