Hello parents!
In lieu of parent teacher conferences this week, I did not send a blog post. Thank you all for understanding! Here's an update of the week.
We're Going on a Bear Hunt!
We read the story We're Going on a Bear Hunt and did a follow-up literacy-related activity in the sensory room. I re-arranged the sensory room so that most of the furniture was against the walls, giving us a big open space for our activity. In the book, a family goes on an adventure in search for a bear. The book is great for 2's and 3's because the author uses repetitive language as the family goes through obstacles such as through a forest and snowstorm. It also does a good job with exposing the children to directional concepts like over, under and through. Re-telling stories is something we have just starting doing in the 3's class.
To help develop reading comprehension and sequencing skills, we went on our very own bear hunt! Following the story, I introduced the children to the teddy bear hunt activity, where they went through the different parts of the story as told in the book. The children walked through tall grass, swam through a river, made their way through a forest, and snow storm before they arrived in the cave where the teddy bears were sleeping. I set up the room with materials to represent each of these areas along a path on the ground--fake grass for the grassy area, blue tarp for the river, leaves and sticks on a green rug for the forest, a white poster board with cotton balls for the snowstorm, and the dark cozy corner for the cave. As the children moved through the path in different ways (walking, hopping, crawling, “swimming”), we replicated the sounds that were repeated in the story (e.g. swish, swish), until they found a teddy bear picture in the cave. We will continue to choose stories to re-tell with whole body movements in the weeks to come.
Specialists: Spanish and Yoga
During Spanish class, in addition to our routine songs, we discussed Thanksgiving and learned a new song about turkeys! In yoga class, Lakshmi had a special surprise for us- a skeleton! We observed the skeleton model's bones from the skull bone, to the bones in its elbows, shoulders, legs, toes, etc. The children were able to make the connection from the bones in the skeleton to their own bones.
Going for a Walk!
We planned for a park day but since it was so windy, we went for a long walk instead. During our walk we talked about different things we noticed with the trees and leaves on the ground. During our next walk, we plan on bringing bags with us to fill with leaves, sticks, rocks, and acorns.
Have a great weekend!