Fun Friday: show and park time!

TodayMelissa and Ada acted out The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything.  The children enjoyed the show.  Afterward we went to the park!  The children did a wonderful job of staying on the rope, coming up with park rules, and listening to the teachers when we got to the park.

Thank you Vivi for bringing snack for everyone! This special time of the day when we share food and sit all together is something that we all look forward to. It also teaches the children how to share, appreciate and enjoy mealtime together. 

There is also one very important lesson behind this activity- it teaches the children the concept of one-to-one correspondence (One plate for each child) as well incorporates math, as a child has to give i.e. two carrots and three pretzels to each friend. 

There Was an Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything...

This week 3B continued talking about ways of solving conflicts verbally as well as using their language to express how they feel.  Every time conflicts arise, Adam and I work with involved children in solving the problem in a calm way. We help them work it through conversation and listening to each other. With time we hope to let the children solve problems on their own and provide support only if necessary (this takes some practice). Being able to solve social conflicts (standing up for them selves, sharing, speaking up) is an important life skill to have.

 

We started jobs! The children are really eager to be involved in helping around the classroom. One of the jobs is to be a weather reporter and this job not only require reporting the weather (sunny, cloudy, windy, snowy, rainy) but also we talk about days of the week. This introduces the children to the time concept as they can associate certain events with one of the days of the week i.e. we have music with Evan on Thursdays.

 

Last but not least… We are preparing for Halloween. Most of the children already decided on what/who they would like to be. More details to follow in tomorrow’s blog.

Please, if you have not sent a white t-shirt yet please do so as soon as possible. We plan on starting to decorate costumes on Monday! Yay!

Tea Sandwiches with Diane and Halloween Preparations

Good sportsmanship? - class with Syd and word "red" as a code to stop

Secret Reader!

Thank you Nana for coming and reading this fun book with us!Vivi was very happy to have you in her classroom today and so were we!

We would like to extend our invitation to all of the family members to come join us for book reading/art project/science project/ or sharing your special talent with us. We promise to work around your schedule and provide support as needed. It is really fun to spend some time with the 3B!

Classroom jobs distributed!

Thank you Kian for sharing delicious snack with us!

 

This week we introduced the children to the classroom job chart.  Young children really enjoy helping and being in charge so this will be a great opportunity for them to feel the ownership over the classroom. Today, all together we defined each job and had some practice.

Having children participate in classroom jobs creates AMAZING learning experiences such as teaches them some life skills (being responsible), provides a sense of pride (I can do it!), and teaches beginning literacy skills as the children learn to “read” the chart and well as their friends’ names. In addition, this also teaches the children how to be patient, as each child will have a job every other week. There will be a lot of turn taking as well. The children seemed very excited about having jobs! Yay!

 

This week:

Literacy:

-       We continue working on creating our own books/stories. We also talk a lot about authors and illustrators.

-       Through games we learn to recognize friends’ names.

-       We play sticker game (enriches vocabulary and children love this game).

-       We act out songs/nursery rhymes.

-       3B children love to hear stories so we read lots of books!

 

Math:

-       Attendance- how many friends are at school today?

-       Clock puzzles

-       Geo shapes puzzles

-       Building with blocks/magnatiles

-       Counting pumpkins (Would you like to hear a fun counting Halloween song? Ask your child to sing, “Five little pumpkins song.”

 

Science:

-       Baked with Diane,

-       Cut a pumpkin (children’s idea),

-       Weather report job,

-       Building with blocks, magnatiles

 

Art:

-        The children used watercolor paint,

-       Participated in a drawing/collage prompt activity (two buttons glued as eyes to a piece of paper).

 

Movement:

-       Gym

-       Apple picking trip

-       Walk to the pet store

Have a great weekend everyone!

Weekly Recap

During this week we continued working on providing the children with tools to verbalize their feelings and help them understand our emotions. As it has been few weeks now, we start to observe the children to use their new skills in everyday social interactions i.e. “No, thank you,” “Stop, I don’t like that,” “Can I have it after you are done using it?”

Every morning we begin our meeting with a welcome song and we ask the children how are they feeling at the moment. The children seem to be more confident in indentifying their feelings.  Here are some of the great examples:

Conversations from today:

Zara: “What nervous mean?”

Vivi: “You know, sometimes James likes to climb chairs at home and it makes my mommy nervous. “

Teacher: “That would make me feel nervous.”

Zara: “Are you nervous?”

Teacher: “No, no at this moment but I feel nervous when someone stands on a chair instead if sitting on it. It makes me nervous because I am afraid they will fall and get hurt.”

Vivi: “Yeah, like James. He is hurt under his eye because he fell.”

Zara: “I got blood (she shows her finger with a bandage on it). I got hurt.”

 

 

How are you today?

Graydon: “I feel BRAVE because I am wearing a Superman t-shirt.”

Valdi: “ I feel frighten when someone pushes me. Today I wanted my dinosaur and someone pushed me. I cried. I felt sad.”

Sam: “ I am sad because I miss my mommy and daddy. But I am happy, my mommy is picking me up.”

 

In addition to the study of children’s identity, here and there we could hear the children talking about themselves, their names, and their families. Today, the children had a conversation among each other about who is a boy and who is a girl in our room. The children incorporated math into the conversation as Vivi and Graydon went around the classroom to count boys and girls.

As the children continue practicing signing in we also observe them recognizing each other’s names. We also started to mention last names.

Helping children to recognize and celebrate who they are in a fun way is important and helps them find a good emotional balance. We look forward to seeing what else the children will bring into their conversations and build from there.

 

 

Apple Picking Trip!

Not two,not three but four fish! Trip to the pet store!

Sticker game hints - this is a fun and engaging game where we help the children to extend their vocabulary, listening skills, and abstract thinking. The objective of this game is to provide as many hints and clues as possible without naming what is on the sticker. 

Today Adam had a sticker with a pig on it (he did not know that). Hints provided by the children children: 

-it is pink and is has a big nose,

-it starts with letter P,

-It has four legs,

-it goes oink-oink,

First shared snack! Thank you Sam..

Beside talking about feelings and creating books, this week we also introduced children to our attendance and job chart. Starting next week, the children will fully take the ownership over their classroom. The children will take turns and each child will have a job every other week. We have 4 job positions:

- weather reporter will inform us if it is sunny, rainy, snowy, cold, warm or windy outside.

- attendance taker will help us keep track of all the children in 3B class on any given day.

-time keeper will keep us stay on schedule and give us 5 minute warning before clean up time. 

-pet and plant caretaker will feed our fish and water our plants,

Giving the children an opportunity to be responsible for their classroom will help them to take an ownership as well as grow in confidence in abilities to complete given tasks. 

Just a quick reminder: The school will be closed on Monday, October 9, 2017 for Columbus Day. 

Have a great weekend everyone!

This week recap...

This week we focused mostly on feelings and emotions. Since emotions are a big part of who we are it is important to indentify different emotions and talk about them. Adam and I observed that when some conflicts arise in our class, not always the children have tools to solve the problems without someone getting very upset.

Most of preschoolers need guidance to help them interpret their own feelings and emotions and to interact appropriately with others. We hope that through different activities we help the children to communicate their feelings and emotions effectively and at the same time to deflate tense situations and to understand themselves better.

Some of the activities included:

-       Expanding children’s vocabulary to express how they feel i.e. happy, angry, sad, excited, frustrated..

-       We introduced emotion concept through books, puppet shows and social situations,

-       We allowed the children to express their emotions and feelings by saying, i.e. “It’s ok to feel upset but hitting hurts. What are some other ways to let that person know that your are upset?”

-       We encouraged the children to talk to each other about how they feel in certain situations, i.e. “I don’t like when you take something away from me,” or by saying, “No, thank you!”

-       As educators we model self-control by using calm and descriptive language to voice our own feelings,

-       The most important: we will give the children time and space to explore their feelings, we will provide support and tools to support their emotional growth,

-       And we will continue doing it in a fun and engaging way!

 

In addition:

 

Since our 3B students love to read books, we encouraged them to become authors and illustrators of their very own books. We already have some great stories written down. More details to be revealed during our First Celebration Day on October 27th.

 

Tomorrow we have another exciting day ahead of us… Please stay tuned:)

Our fish needs more friends?/ Soccer class/ 3B students as authors and illustrators

The day when 3B students became autors and illustrators of their own books/ Spanish class

How are you feeling today?- providing tools to express our feelings and emotions...puppet show, friendship art project

Thank you everyone for you help and support!

This week we focused on finding ways to raise money for children impacted by the Hurricane in Texas. The children were involved in every step of our efforts and even developed new ways to show support and love. 

Thanks so much to all the families who helped make the lemonade and bake sale a success! We raised $254!

On Monday we gathered together in the Pre-k room and introduced our school-wide project of providing charitable funds to children and schools impacted by the hurricane. The children had amazing ideas of how to help and worked on their empathy skills by understanding how storms look and feel. We lightly touch upon the topic by explaining that it rained a lot and some toys and school supplies got wet. 

On Tuesday,  3B was hard at work baking cookies. Here we want to say thank you for generous cookie donations!

Wedensday: Bake sale day! The children were so excited to sell cookies in front of school. Some of them even remembered to tell our customers where the money will go. 

Today, we reflected on our bake sale day as well as sold the remaining ones! 

Just a quick reminder: The school is closed tomorrow, September 29th, 2017 (Yom Kippur).

Have a great and safe weekend everyone!

 

Hurricane Harvey Fundraising Success- day 1!

Bake, bake, bake cookies!

Bake Sale preparations !!

More about "Guessing Glove" game that 3B invented...

Guessing Glove Game

September 18, 2017

 Recently, during open choice time Graydon invented a game. It all started with him hiding kitchen food under his t-shirt and asking one of his teachers to guess what he hid. Soon his friends started to join the game. Graydon would help them guess by providing hints. It seemed that the children were really involved and engaged in this game taking turns and establishing rules. As soon as Kian got involved he modified this game by bringing an oven mitt and placing an item inside of it (instead of under the t-shirt). Instantly he came up with a name for this game, “Guessing Glove.” It seemed that the inventor (Graydon) and participants agreed to that change as they started to use the glove.

Inventing games helps children develop organizational skills such as having a plan and putting it to work. Children must decide how the game will be conducted and plan the sequence for playing it. Once the game has been planned and constructed, a child (Graydon) teaches the game to others who play it (all of his friends). This also promotes cooperation with others and teaches children the concept of turn taking.

Playing the game over time, children will create new elements and make modifications to the game. We can’t wait to see what modifications will happen as we will encourage Graydon to teach us his game.

 

During our reflection meeting we reflected on Guessing Glove game and engaged in playing it with the class.

One of the teachers holding up an oven mitt:

“Who can tell me what this is?”

“A glove,” responded a number of the children

Teacher: “What was the game you were playing with this glove in the block area with Adam?”

Silence

Teacher: “What did you use this glove for?”

Kian said, “Guessing Glove.”

Teacher: “How did you play the game?”

Graydon: “Adam tried to guess what is inside.”

Teacher: “What were some of the rules of the game?”

“No peeking,” cried out Elizabeth

“We give hints,” Vivi chimed in.

Teacher: “It seemed that you had fun playing this game. Graydon, will you please show us how to play this game?”

Graydon went and retrieved the glove, brining it back with a plastic food item from the kitchen inside.

Teacher: “Graydon, will you give us hints?”

Graydon: “It is yellow and white.”

“Eggs,” guessed Elizabeth

Graydon then took fried eggs out of the Guessing Glove.

“I guessed it,” exclaimed Elizabeth.

Hints provided by Graydon (about a roasted piece of chicken):

- It is food.

-You eat it for dinner.

-It is brown.

"Chicken," exlaimed Vivi!

This game strongly supports children's laguage growth (vocabulary, expressive language) and their listening skills. Learning in a fun way!

Would you like to play "Guessing Glove" game with us?