THANK YOU!

Dear 3A Families,

It was a great pleasure and joy to have our lovely 3A children. We still can’t believe that the year has already ended, but we know and feel confident that our children are ready for the next chapter of their learning lives. 

Thank you so much for your constant support and trust in us as educators and caretakers of your children. We have laughed, cried, felt touched, and learned so much from these young, fearless, inquisitive, and loving learners all year. 

We would like to thank you again for your thoughtful and generous gift as well! We cannot describe in words how grateful we are.  

For those children and families who are going to another school for Pre-K, we have no doubt that they will have another successful year... but please come stop by! We will miss you. 

For Emilio and his family who are moving back to Mexico, we wish you the best of luck - we will miss you. 

For those children and families who are coming back to Buckle My Shoe for Pre-K, we are so glad that we will see them again across the hallway! 

We hope everyone has a wonderful summer! 

Keep in touch. 

Clare and Erika

Thank you, all of our Specialists!

This week was the final week all of our wonderful specialists were here. Over the course of the year, the children developed so many skills through the different activities during our Specialists' time. Through soccer, they learned to coordinate their bodies and legs to kick soccer balls. Through Karate, the children learned to love every movement they were taught in order to protect their bodies. Breaking wooden boards at the end of class was especially fun! Through Yoga, we learned to calm our bodies and minds by doing breathing exercises and even got to master some cool yoga poses. The children were always excited to sing 'Buenos Dias' as soon as our Spanish teacher came into our classroom. Music with Emily was filled with joy as we sang our favorite songs. Last but not least, Cooking with Diane was always filled with fabulous experiences in making yummy food together and then tasting them to decide whether we liked them or not. We greatly appreciate all of our Specialists' love and passion for children's learning and we hope to see them all next year!

Mother's Day & Parents' Day Projects

To celebrate Mother's Day (5/12) and Parents' Day (5/24), the 3A children decided to make something special for their parents. 


At first, we took all of our beautiful mommies' pictures, or asked them for selfies, then drew our mommies' portraits by using colored crayons. Before we began drawing our mommies' faces, we looked at the pictures carefully and talked about mommies' hair colors, eye colors, hair lengths, earrings, glasses, etc. The children chose the colors that they thought complemented their mommies' features and completed the drawing. The entire process was so loving and joyful. Seeing how the children thought of their mommies was very loving and touching. It almost seemed like they did not realize how much they actually missed their mommies and daddies while they were at school. With the children's drawings, we also made a riddle on the hallway wall, Can you guess whose mommy I am. By looking at the drawing, mommies and daddies have to guess which mommy is which. Once you make your pick, you can flip over the drawing to find the actual picture of the mommy! It was a huge surprise for all our families! It was so great to see all of our parents and children looking so happy. 


For parents' day, we wanted to make something special that parents could keep in their offices or home. The 3A children made their own shapes with clay and wrote a loving message for their parents. Once the clay was dried, the children painted them with different colors. After a few touch ups by teachers (pasting picture and polishing the keepsake), they turned into wonderful gifts for parents.


We thank you and love you parents! 



Field Trips

In the month of May the 3A children got to go on two field trips! One was to BMCC Tribeca Theater to see a play called "Shh! We have a Plan" and the other one was to "Barnyard Adventure" in the Central Park Zoo.

The children loved the idea of experiencing something new outside of the classroom. Although the walk to the theater and to the Central Park Zoo was a little longer than our usual walks, our 3A friends walked so patiently and bravely throughout both of the trips! When our legs were getting tired, we shouted "Legs! you can do this!" and that cheered us up. 

When we arrived at the theater, many of the children started telling the teachers how they already had the experience of visiting theaters to either watch shows or movies. The children then patiently waited for the play to begin. Once it started, they were just completely mesmerized by the sound, visualizations, and acting of the performers. 

The subway ride to the Central Park Zoo was a blast! The children were busy chatting to one another about how rumbly and bumpy the train ride was! When we met our educator, Tali, we learned about what we could get from the farms: fruits, vegetables, meat, wool, eggs, and milk. The best part of the trip was feeding hungry goats and eating our yummy lunch outside. 

We thank all of our chaperones who helped our field trip experience even more precious! 

Our Personal Mailboxes

After exploring sending letters and learning how a mailbox works, we became interested in writing letters/cards to our families and friends. So we decided to make our own personal mailboxes that can stay in our classroom.  This way we could continue to explore sending and receiving letters.

At first, each child was given a pre-made mailbox (a box that had a slot for mails already cut out). Then everyone chose colors that they wanted for their mailboxes and painted them. After the children painted their mailboxes, the teachers put their printed names on the mailbox so that they were visible and clear. As the children noticed their names on the mailboxes, many of the them started to notice the first couple of letters (or all of their letters!) of their names. 

The process of writing letters in the beginning was that the children would write to themselves or to their mommies and daddies. They would put those letters in their own mailboxes. They tremendously enjoyed putting their letters into the mailboxes!  On Friday, we gathered in a circle and took our mailboxes. Surprisingly, there was an opening underneath the mailboxes and allowed the children to get their mail out. The joy of receiving was even greater! It was wonderful to see our children's faces lighting up. Then we talked about how to write to others besides ourselves or mommies and daddies. We decided to write to our classmates and placed the letters in our mailboxes. During center time, many children wanted to write letters to their friends (classmates). It definitely was a great way to deepen our friendships in the 3A classroom!

Special Persons Day!

In celebrating the Week of the Young Child, we selected the children's favorite activities that pertained to the theme of each day: Music Monday, Tasty Tuesday, Work Together Wednesday, Artsy Thursday, and Special Persons Day (Family Friday). 

On Music Monday, the children painted their own art pieces by listening to and following slow, medium-tempo, and fast classical music. On Tasty Tuesday, we made and baked banana bread together. On Work Together Wednesday, we exchanged our banana breads with 2A friends and received yummy lemonade in return. On Artsy Thursday, we started to decorate our aprons (soon to be finished!). 

Today was Special Persons Day, and we invited our very special person in for each child. The children loved having their mommies, daddies, grandmas, sisters, or godmother as their special person! Growing a plant resembles watching young children developing. Both need lots of love and care in order for them to grow healthy and happy. As a symbolic activity, we planted seeds with our special person. We hope they grow as well as our children are growing into kind and loving individuals. Then we presented our very special gifts (a poem and our handprint) to our special person. Lastly, we shared yummy breakfast altogether!

We want to give a shout out to our amazing children who continue to surprise us as they grow into bright individuals as well as to those special people who are so meaningful to our children's lives every day.

You've Got Mail!

After discussing how to send a letter and putting letters in our classroom mailbox, the 3A children showed great interest in writing and sending letters to others. On our way to the park, we noticed a few mailboxes and decided we would write letters and cards that they made for their family members home. 

After multiple days of working on our letters and cards (mostly drawing and a little message) we put them into envelopes. The teachers helped the children write down their home addresses on the envelopes and then we put stamps on them. Finally, we were ready to walk to a mailbox near our school. After we passed a few blocks, Manu shouted "Look! A mail box!" as he pointed to a mailbox afar. 

Once we approached the mailbox, the children put their envelopes in one by one. Then we decided to wait and see what happened to our letters!

By now all of the letters should have arrived.  In order to make this into an authentic learning experience, we would like to ask that you have your child receive the letter from inside your mailboxes! Some questions that you may ask the children are: how did the letter get to our house? What do you think happened to our letters after you sent it?  

The Three Little Pigs Practice

Happy Spring!


As we welcomed Spring this year, we decided to do a class play based on a book that the 3A friends adored: The Three Little Pigs!


On class picture day, as we were waiting for our turn to take our individual photos, Erika read us a story called the Napping House. Our friends loved the story and giggled every time they heard that each character was sleeping on top of another. The next day, we read the same story and had each child act out what the characters were doing. The children shined on the stage. This opportunity inspired the educators to introduce an all time loved fairy tale; The Three Little Pigs. They immediately fell in love with the story and showed lots of excitement.  They asked the teachers to read the story whenever there was a chance! After reading the story a number of times, the children began to recite the lines and even began to change their voices to sound like a big bad wolf or the three little pigs. When the educators suggested acting it out, all of the children agreed and shouted out whether they wanted to be one of the little pigs or the big bad wolf!


After we acted out the story a few times, we decided to design the three houses together. The children collaborated in selecting the shape of each house (circle, triangle, and square).  Then they agreed to paint each house with certain colors (yellow for the straw house, brown for the stick house, and red for the brick house). Finally, we decorated each house with bunny hays, twigs, and brown construction paper cut-outs. With all of our three houses, we felt even more eager to act out the story as the three little pigs and the big bad wolf!


Our children have enjoyed our practices and we are ready to shine in front of our families. We hope all of our families are able to join us on Thursday, April 4th at 9:30am to witness this precious moment of our children performing!

How to Send a Letter

During our morning circle time, our friends greet each other and talk about who is not in school (absent) each day. Every time we check our attendance, the first name our children say out loud is "Parker," even though they know that he moved to a new school and is not coming back to Buckle My Shoe. One day, Parker's mom Tara, sent Clare an email with Parker's picture. When the children saw a picture of Parker, they all shared that they missed Parker. Ever since that day, we decided to send a letter to Parker! We wrote our letter and decorated it with colorful paint to send to Parker with the help of teachers. 

Then we wondered: how do we send our letter to Parker?  Nico said, we can "run to his house." Mia, Emilio, and Levi said, it can be sent via "airplane." Mia later added that it can be sent by "car." The children were welcome to come up with their own theories of how we could send the letter to Parker. When the educators asked who would be going on an airplane to deliver the letter to Parker, they all shouted "Me" or "Clare." We did not want to discourage their imagination of how a letter gets sent, so we shifted the activities into learning something more specific.

The educators put out a miniature mailbox in the morning and wrote a couple of questions: "What do you think this is? What do we do with it?" Many children knew that it was a mailbox where we put letters and cards in the slots. Some children wondered who would be taking out all that mail. Others wondered, "Why is it so blue?" Although we have started to understand the concept of writing a letter to people that we love, we haven't quite figured out how these letters get sent to them. We will continue to explore and observe how the children can come up with their own conclusions!

Special Day

At the beginning of this month, we launched "Special Days" in order to celebrate the childrens' family and all that is special about them! The first special day was for Clare. Clare shared that she and her family are from South Korea by showing a map and flag. She also showed pictures of when she was a baby as well as her family members. The second special day was for Malina! We learned that Malina and her family are from Denmark. Malina showed us pictures of her family members and showed us a toy soldier that represents soldiers in Denmark. "One interesting fact about Malina is that she has beautiful hair," said Malina's brother, Yunus Alexander. 

This exercise was not only beneficial for the everyone to about each other, but it also helped all of the children who were listening to show respect to the presenter by sitting around the carpet and tracking what was being presented at the moment. For the presenter, it helped with confidence building. Being able to speak in front of a large group requires confidence because it is such a high focus activity. The children felt so much pride over what they were able to share to the class. So far we are seeing great presentations and are impressed by all of our little presenters as well as our audience members!

3A "Science" Curriculum Celebration of the Child

We had our second curriculum celebration/breakfast today! As the children continued to express their enthusiasm with science experiments, we chose to celebrate the day with two of our favorites: Making Bubbles and Making trails in Ice.

Our children know the steps to making bubbles by heart (they can recite them pretty well)! The Steps are: 1. Pour water into a cup. 2. Squirt in a few drops of soap. 3. Take a straw. 4. Blow bubbles! Then they had a choice of using a different tool to blow bubbles. The choices were small straws, big straws, and pipe cleaners. Lastly, the children put salt or sugar into their soap water and tried to make bubbles too! The purpose of this particular experiment was to see if they could identify challenges such as not drinking the soap water by accident and finding solutions to those challenges. 

The children always loved playing with ice. They were also very intuitive about how ice changes into water and water changes into ice. This led us to try out some of their hypotheses. We experimented first by putting salt on parts of the ice. It was amazing to see the reactions of our children. Nina noticed what happened to her ice and said, "It(salt) went inside the ice!" "It made holes!" 

Our job as educators and parents are to provide all of the mediums and tools to let the children experience and come up with their own understanding of a topic instead guiding them to the "right" answers that we know as adults. 

Thank you so much for all of our families' contribution, participation, and support for the curriculum celebration today! 

Friendship

This week was filled with love! In lieu of Valentine's Day, the children and the educators decided to think about friendship. We started by asking, 'what is a friend'. We were very curious to know what the children thought a friend was. However, they looked puzzled when the question was asked because generalizing a definition or an idea is not an easy task at the age of three. So the question was changed to "what do friends do?" Then the answers started coming from all directions. Charlotte said, "friends give hugs." Emilio said, "friends play." Nina said, "friends share toys." Katerina said, "friends kiss (sometimes)" and she also said, "friends meet" like playdates! Mia said, "friends say sorry." Clare added and said, "friends say thank you and that's ok." 

It was truly impressive to see how our young children were able to understand what a friendship is. On Valentine's day, we had time to exchange the cards that they prepared for the class. Each friend took their turn to give their Valentine Day cards to their classmates. The joy of receiving a card was definitely there, but it was surprising to see how much more joy was seen through the act of giving. Showing gratitude and being able to cherish the presents friends gave each other was just so precious to witness.

We also played a friendship game called 'ball of string'. We each thought of one nice thing about our friend. Then I started the game by passing yarn to Katerina as I held onto one side of the string, and said "you are always nice to other friends." Then Katerina said to Mia as she was passing the yarn, "I like you." Mia said to Harper as she was passing the yarn, "I like playing with you." Harper said to Malina as she was passing the yarn, "I like your dress." Malina said to Levi, "I like your dress," though she meant his shirt. Then Levi said to Nina and talked about how he loves running in the gym with her. Then Nina said to Emilio as she passed the yarn, " I like when you come to my house." Emilio said to Mercer, " I like your shirt. Mercer said to Debbie, "thank you."

Lunar New Year Celebration

This week, we celebrated Lunar New Year (Chinese New Year) with Harper’s mom, Sandra, and 3B friends. Sandra read us a book called Lunar New Year written by Hannah Eliot and explained to us that 2019 is the year of pig! We also learned that Lunar New Year is about preparing for good luck in the coming year. At the end, we decorated a Chinese character for 'luck’ by drawing with color pencils and cutting it around. We placed it in an red envelope that Sandra and Harper prepared for us!

We especially feel fortunate to have so many families from different countries in 3A. We believe that early exposure of multi-cultures  widen the children's perspectives of the world and help in accepting others as who they are. Also knowing where their cultural roots are from help develop a sense of belonging in our children. 

We would love to launch a project called "My Special Day" in March which will give us opportunities to present where our families are from and why we are so special. More details will follow soon... 

How Does Water Turn Into Ice?

From the experience of playing with ice cubes, the children realized that when ice melts, it becomes water. Then they started to wonder, how does water become ice? In the beginning, we had many hypotheses. Nico said, "take the water and get ice." Manu said, "put ice in the water." Malina said, "put paint in the water." Emilio said, "put water near the heater." Then Levi and Nina said, "put water in the fridge." So we chose three of the hypotheses and tried them to see what happened. 

The children and educators took a jar and poured water into it and then placed it near the heater. We took another jar and poured water in it along with some liquid water color paint. Last, we poured water in a ice cube tray and traveled to the big refrigerator in the gym. We realized that there were actually two parts to the refrigerator! We learned that the top part is called the freezer and the bottom part is called the fridge. We decided to put water in both places. 

The next day, we first checked the jar near the heater. We saw that it was still just water and did not turn into ice. Then we checked the water with paint in it. That too was still just water with paint and had not turned into ice. Breaking down the processes and exaggerating each step helped the children really witness the experiment. We as adults often just give or want to tell children the answer because we think it's too obvious or not worth the time. "Oh water won't turn into ice if you put it near the heater." "It's too warm(hot) to turn into ice." The children may not know that the experiment has anything to do with temperature yet. Instead of giving them the answer, if we walk them through the process, it will enhance the children's knowledge and understanding of the process much more. 

To see the results of the final hypothesis, we took the trip upstairs to the gym to see if the water had turned into ice in the freezer and in the fridge. There was great excitement when we saw that the water turned into ice! We felt that the water that we placed in the fridge got cold, but didn't turn into ice. We can't wait to hear what the children will wonder about next!

Math creeps into a fun activity! On Monday, we tasted a slice of lemon and lime and voted on which we liked more. 2 friends liked lime,  8 friends liked lemon, and 2 friends did not like either of them. We used uni-fix cubes to represent the number of children that liked lime, lemon, and neither. When the educator asked, "which fruit did we (as a class) like more?" the children saw the representation and said "lemon!"

We also love the board game 'Candy Land'! Erika and the children played the board game together in the past week. The children started to pick up on the rules and began to enjoy the game themselves. The game center quickly became so popular that we had to play the game three days in a row!

The Way We Study Animals and Letters

As the children continued to show interest in animals, the educators thought of new ways to stimulate their curiosity. First, we used clay and sticks to make our favorite animal figures. Nico and Mercer tried to make their tiger and giraffe by connecting two pieces of clay using a stick. It quickly became the animals' head and body. They also remembered that each animal had a set of eyes and ears. They took small pieces of clay to make the eyes and ears for their animal figures. 

On another day, the educators prepared a black and white picture that had a missing animal in the middle. The children's job was to paint each missing animal; tiger, giraffe, elephant, and polar bear. They chose colors of paint that they believed each animal should be and painted the missing animals. By providing different mediums of art, the children were able to express their own understanding of each animal. We can't wait to learn more about all the different kinds of animals!



In this past week, we have focused on reading the morning message each day. Not only was it informative and fun, but it was also a great way to study letters. On Tuesday, we had a couple of children come up and trace the missing letters. Then the next day, we had twelve missing letters from the morning message! All of the children had to go on a scavenge hunt to find those letters in the classroom. By incorporating a fun game like the scavenger hunt, the children felt the joy of learning about alphabet letters.

Field Trip Friday

We went to the Children’s Museum of the Arts today! The children were excited to go, but especially about going on the subway! Once we got to the museum, we met Katie who was our teaching artist. She showed us around the gallery and explained how the artists were inspired to make creations using different kinds of books. Then we entered the studio and were ready to make some cool collages of our own. The children expressed their creativity by using different art materials to make their houses, playground, lion, mommy and daddy's room etc. It was a successful field trip day!

Painting

Painting is one of 3A friends' favorite activities that brings a lot of curiosity and excitement. This week, the educators put out different mediums with paint and observed how our children reacted to them. 

We first introduced yarn art by wrapping a clay roller with yarn.  Then we had the children paint with it. Some of the children were really fascinated by the strange looking textures they were creating with the yarn wrapped roller. Then the next day, all of the children dropped liquid water color paint mixed with vinegar on a mysterious powder (baking soda). They were so surprised and excited to see all of the color bubbles erupt in reaction. Charlotte said, "it's looks beautiful!" Levi said, "it looks like rainbow bubbles-it's going above." 

We were able to slowly find out what the children were more interested in by the number of children participating in each activity.

The children also mixed shaving cream with liquid water color paint. Some of them were so intrigued by the feeling of the shaving cream and enjoyed seeing colors mixed in with it.

Lastly, the children used dried water color paint to color ice. It was interesting to see how the ice turned into the colors we painted, but the ice slowly melted away. 

According to Reggio Emilia philosophy, we know that paint can be one of the hundred languages that children use to express themselves. As educators, we are delighted to see our children feeling proud, happy, and looking amazed as they continue to experience paint with different medium.

We also started a different way of signing in. It seems like the children are excited about it! They traced their names with markers on the sentence strips and started noticing the same letters between their names and their friends! 

Animal Study and More

This week, the children continued to study animals by exploring different activities. We used paint and paintbrushes to depict what a tiger looked like in their eyes. Some of the children looked closely at a Tiger's stripes. They showed distinct styles of stripes depending on how they saw the tiger. Other children looked at other parts of the tiger. Mia painted the tiger and said, "Tiger has legs and a mouth." Charlotte said, "I'm doing a tail" as she was painting the tiger. Some other children expressed their own understanding of a tiger in their paintings.

Then we washed the animals with soap and water at the sensory table. The children showed a lot of affection towards the animals by pretending to bathe them. They also built a zoo and houses for the animals with Magnetiles and blocks. We are noticing that the children are using creative ways to build zoos and animal houses and in a collaborative way!


Today a local dentist visited our school and taught us how to brush our teeth by using a toothbrush. Then we made marshmallow teeth! We also practiced brushing teeth on the dinosaur! 

Happy New Year :)

Welcome back everyone! It was so good to see (almost) everyone back from the long break. The children eased right into our routines and activities as soon as they stepped into the classroom. One thing we decided to do in the new year is to sign our names every day. All of the children are able to recognize the letters in their names and are able to trace lines and letters. We would like to reinforce the sign-in process in order to enhance our children's hand to eye coordination as well as their fine motor skill development. 

Some of the choices for our center time this week were painting, blocks, Magnetiles, waterbeads, dramatic play, and play-dough

One thing we continue to notice from our children's play is building a zoo and playing with animal toys. We decided to name all of the animals that we knew during circle time. Today, the children observed the animal of the day, "Tiger," and shared what they noticed about it. Levi said, "it has black stripes." Manu said, "it has one tail." Mia said, "it has sharp teeth!" Katerina pointed to the eyes of the tiger and said "two eyes" with her hand motion. Malina counted the legs and said "four!" Mercer whispered "orange" to Clare's ear when she asked what color the tiger was. Lastly, Harper said, "it has two ears!" One of the activities that the children enjoyed was to make footprints of the different animals. 

Epilogue
Today 3A and 3B went to Washington Market Park together. Although it was a little chilly, the children had so much fun riding slides, trains, and monkey bars.
We hope the warm weather continues so we can enjoy fun park time more often!

Good Luck Parker! We Will Miss You!

Our good friend Parker's last day at Buckle My Shoe was today. Although it is so sad to think about not having Parker in our classroom anymore, we are happy that he is so excited about the new house and new school. We sang Parker's favorite song, wished him luck, and gave him our class gift! There were so many memories that we shared with Parker. We have no doubt that he will have a wonderful time at his new school! Good Luck Parker!

Epilogue

Today we had a mini concert with Miss Hilary who is a violinist from Mozart Munchkins. We got to learn about how a violin is made and how it works to make beautiful sounds. Miss Hilary played her violin and all of the children instantly fell in love her music! (Check our Instagram stories for videos!) At the end of the concert, all of the friends got a chance to play the violin! 

Happy Holidays!

The Holiday Party was a blast! The 3A children as well as the teachers are so grateful for all the generosity that the families have shown! We have enjoyed so much delicious food, drinks, and desserts, and of course the special time with Santa and Mrs. Claus. Erika and I are feeling especially fortunate to have met all of the 3A children and their families this year. We thank you once again for your support and trust! We will continue to make more and more fun memories with them!! 


We wish you a very merry and happy holidays!


Epilogue

This past week, we worked on our self portraits for the month of December. We saw a great change in what the children were noticing about themselves. It was also fascinating to see how the children have more control over their writing utensils and can draw different shapes to represent their faces!