Weekly Recap: January 31st

DOCTOR PLAY

From the start of the year up until now, with our new friends, we have been playing doctor and taking care of one another. We took turns being mommy, daddy, or the sick baby. We love checking in on one another and asking if they are OK and always ask what we can do to help them.

ART AND FINE MOTOR

This week we have been cutting paper. When it got too hard to use a scissor we used our fingers to rip it into smaller pieces. At the end of the week, we glued on the pieces onto cardboard and made a collage.

SCIENCE

We made Mercury this week to go along with our sun.

We learned that it is the closest planet to the sun, there is no air or water, and it is a tiny and gray.

The next question was how do we make the color gray? Black and white make gray and with attempts we mixed the perfect shade we thought was right for our planet.

COOKING

Learning to try new foods is important, but so is the process. The children have brought in different kinds of hummus throughout the year and we wanted to try to make our own. Chickpeas, garlic, lemon, olive oil and salt is all that we needed and it was delicious.

MOVEMENT

The gym is one of our favorite places to dance, run, and create games.

HIGHLIGHT OF THE WEEK

PEEK-A-BOO during yoga! We made a game of hiding in the ball bag and jumping out. Can you guess who is in the bag?

THANK YOU SAMMY FOR THE YUMMY SHARED SNACK


Weekly Recap : January 24th

We started our week off hanging out in the Pre-K room which is one of our favorite things to do. We had music and built a large stage out of blocks that turned into a boat. We all took turns on singing and building together.

ART AND TEXTURE

We are always exploring new ways to paint in our class.  Sometimes we enjoy getting messy, and sometimes we don’t.  One method of painting that we previously explored was with bubble wrap wrapped around our feet. Now we wanted to try it on our hands, like a glove.  We wrapped the bubble wrap around our hands and covered them in paint, allowing us to still be able to wiggle our fingers and also make patterns with the print of the wrap.

FINE MOTOR SKILLS

We have been practicing our fine motor skills by using our fingers to explore clay, practice beading, and building with small building blocks. The children have been working very hard on mastering these skills and have been loving the process..

LANGUAGE AND LITERACY

C..C..C what begins with the letter C? Adding to our ABC wall we worked on the letter C by making it out of crayons. We also enjoyed listening to some new and old stories.

SCIENCE

The children have been interested in the solar system. The first question we started with is: what is the Sun? After our discussion, we wrote down that the sun is yellow, it’s hot, the sun and moon are always out, it’s a star and it is big. 

During our art time, we made the sun using yellow and orange tissue paper, and gold glitter.

Weekly Recap : January 10th

It has officially been our first full week of school in the new year and the children were so happy to be back. We are still excited for our three new friends Willis, Ellen and Kate to be joining us. The children all made sure to welcome them and make them feel like home!

SURPRISE GUEST

Our dentists friends from Chelsea Pediatric stopped by on Monday morning with their dragon dinosaur to help the children learn more about brushing their teeth and the germs that can live inside our mouths.. Each child received a little dental goodie bag to take home.

BAKING

We made apple oatmeal bread and it was so delicious. First we listed all our ingredients and than we sat down together. Everyone got a turn one by one to put it in the bowl and mix everything together.

LANGUAGE AND LITERACY

Every morning we are going to start signing into our sign-in book. The children were so excited to find their letters and trace over it.

Will - Hey Wyatt that W is mine

Wyatt - No

We talked about how some friends have the same first letter.

SPECIALIST

This year joining us we also have a few new teachers. Tuesday we have music with Andrew, Wednesday we have Spanish with Raquel, and Thursday we have soccer with Coach Pajama. Fridays like always we will have yoga with Stelios.

FELID TRIP

For our very first field trip of the year, we went to see Paddington Gets in a Jam. The children had so much fun with their parents, teachers and friends going on the train and watching the show together. We can’t wait to go on more trips this year and share more memories together.

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND AND ENJOY THE NICE WEATHER!, SEE EVERYONE MONDAY!

Recap : December 20th

HOLIDAY PARTY

Thank you to all the parents who made this week and year so special. The children loved opening up the presents from “Santa.”

LIGHTS AND SPARKLES

We filled our sensory bins with water and glitter, making our hands all glittery and shiny!. The sensory bin in the pre-K room was filled with peppermint scented water and blue glitter. We also made our own tree out of hollow blocks and the children decorated it with loose parts and drawings.

ICE PLAY

We painted frozen blocks of ice with liquid watercolor paint. We also used frozen paint to create art pieces.

OUR SPECIAL SURPRISE

Thursday we had pajama day! We opened up all the presents Santa brought us. We even got to watch The Snowman while drinking some chocolate milk. During lunch we ate pancakes the pre-K kids made. What a fun way to end our school year together.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS AND NEW YEARS TO ALL THE FAMILIES!

WE CAN’T WAIT TO SEE EVERYONE IN THE NEW YEAR!!!

Recap: December 13

Saturday was our Winter Festival and we had so much fun there, we decided to bring some of the fun over to the week. The children all decorated the paper on the wall last week and this week we used it as a photo wall! and got to jump into our snow bin!

COOKING

On Tuesday we made banana sushi. Each child got to spread their own cookie butter on a tortilla and then got to wrap it in a banana- even though not everyone wanted to try it, it was still fun to make and explore some other foods we don’t usually eat.

SENSORY

Ice is not only for making drinks cold; it is super fun to play with too! We made snowballs with the insta-snow and painted ice cubes with animal inside.

DECEMBER SELF PORTRAITS

BOOKS WE LOVED

We have been spending a lot of time joining Pre- K for stories. On Tuesday we sat together and discussed what starts with the letter A. After we glued on aluminum foil to make the letter A.

ART

The children have started on their special surprise for a Holiday gift, we can’t wait for you to see it!

HIGHLIGHT OF THE WEEK

Even though the paper was messy it was SO much fun to throw around, jump and roll around in.

Weekly Recap : November 27th

Even though it was a short week, it was indeed a busy one. We started the week off by going to the park. some friends in the school were already out for Thanksgiving vacation so we combined all week with the Pre- K.

ART AND SENSORY

Paintbrushes are not the only thing we can use when it comes to painting. Liv used her feet to move the colors around on a poster board and we also painted with fall water colors and permanent markers.

BOOKS WE LOVED

COOKIE TOGETHER

Bananas, blueberries, and honey-dew smoothies!

HIGHLIGHT OF THE WEEK

Our Giving Tree is up and ready for some love! We are participating in New York Cares Winter Wishes Program. This year they are working to make the wishes come true of children and teens of low-income families. Help us make some wishes come true!

Enjoy your Holiday weekend!

Please remember that Monday is our curriculum morning and we are looking to add more textured items to what we already have :)

Weekly Recap : November 22nd

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LIV! - We started the week off celebrating Liv’s with her mommy and daddy! We gathered around to read lots of Pete the Cat books and gave Liv a gift we made from loose parts. At the end Liv asked for birthday hugs from her friends.

MOVEMENT

Since it ended up being such a nice fall week , we decided to go to the park.

ART

This week we used paint in a lot of different ways. We used it in the water table to mix colors, we painted on paper and we painted wooden blocks.

LITERACY

Along with some daily stories, we looked over the morning chart which we will be introducing on Monday to help us know about our daily activities.

MATH AND BUILDING

After Liv’s birthday celebration, she wanted to make her own birthday sign out of magna-tiles, which she was super excited to share with her friends. We have been practicing with copying patterns and other stacking methods around the classroom.

SENSORY

As we prepare for our curriculum morning (Monday, November 25th from 9 - 10am ) we have been making a texture board. Each friend got a chance to explore it, and Sam asked to touch it with his feet.

We also explored sand slime. Wyatt and Manon played with it together while whispering to each other in French.

HIGHLIGHT OF THE WEEK

We have been partnering up a lot with Pre-K. While getting ready for the park this week, the children all wanted to do a group hug. It started with Leo and Sam and soon enough, everyone was joining!

Thanks for the shared snack Liv!

Weekly Recap : November 8th

Welcome to the Buckle My Shoe family Manon! She’ll be joining us for the month and the children have been doing such a wonderful job making sure she feels at home and showing her around the school.

MOVEMENT

We started our week off bright and early at the park; we are so happy to take advantage of this beautiful fall weather.

ART

Earlier this week Emma help collected some leaves one afternoon. We have been using the leaves for an collage art project. Wyatt went back to the project two days in a row to add more glue and leaves, which he spent along period of time doing.

LITERACY

Reading and writing can be fun! We have been finding new ways to play games with our words and have been working together: name tracing and playing book games. This week we paired up with a pre-K friend to play a matching game.

PUZZLES

The more exposure to puzzles, the better we get! Liv has asked for harder ones to complete and then shows her friends how to do them.


SENSORY

Himalayan Salt and washing babies for our sensory bin has been keeping us calm and learning how to relax our bodies. Other activities this week included exploring play dough to make cookies.


SELF PORTRAITS

Novembers self portraits are in, come check them out!

HIGHLIGHT OF THE WEEK

Taking care of each other, even while engaging in pretend play, is important in learning empathy. Thank you Doctor Emma for checking in on Sam.

Thanks for the shared snack Wyatt!

Reminders

Please remember to sign up for parent teacher conference next Friday, November 15th.

Weekly Recap : November 1st

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Thank you to all the families for joining us on our annual Halloween Parade around the neighborhood. We had an amazing time stopping at our local stores to show off our costumes and trick-or-treat. Over the weeks we have been working on our bunny costumes. Hope you guys had fun!

MORNING MEETING

Before we talk about our day we like to sing “Good Morning” to each other. We have been using the dry erase board to spell out our names, but sometimes when a friend is out we get wonder where they are. To help everyone understand what is happening we created an attendance chart.

MOVEMENT

We have been turning all the items in the gym into something else. Our imagination is growing weekly.

This week we took a walk around the neighborhood and kept an eye out for all the fall decorations.

ART AND SENSORY

Texture play has become a big part of our classroom. This week we played with spooky noodles (green and black spaghetti), oobleck, mystery water (black water with water beads), and feathers to create another board for our sensory area.

BOOKS WE LOVED

This week we read Glad Monster Sad Monster, Beautiful Oops, and Wee Witches Halloween. Liv brought in Too Many Carrots and In My Heart to shared with us.

MATH AND STACKING

We have been practicing our beading work. We’re working on pinching our fingers to grab the end of the string and focusing to push it through the cube. Stacking has been a popular activity: wedgits, legos, and dado blocks are great for stacking work.

FAVORITE MOMENT OF THE WEEK

The tooth fairy came for a surprise visit! During circle time she read Bears Loose Tooth then showed us how to brush our teeth.

Since we had so much snack leftover from our party we saved the rest of it for our shared snack.

Earlier in the week we made ghost bananas using bananas, yogurt, and raisins.

Weekly Recap October 24th

We started our week working on our costumes. Remember parents, there is still time to come in and work on it together. Please let me know if you will be coming in to work on the costume with your child.

MOVEMENT

Thank you Wyatt for bringing in our big piece of paper for the gym, the children used it to trace their bodies and color on it.

ART

This week we were all about apples that begins with the letter A. We made apple prints, and created apple using tissue paper add to our growing tree

LITERACY

The Gruffalo has been this week’s favorite. We explored the letter A and realized all of our names have the letter A.

SCIENCE & MATH

We taste tested red and green apples then voted on the one we liked most. Red won!

SPECIALIST

Our specialists have been keeping us super busy this week: we learned so many new things. Emily brought in a ukulele for the children to try. Beysi taught us some new words in Spanish (calabaza means pumpkin, triste means sad, and otoño means autumn/fall). In soccer we worked on jumping in a straight line and Yoga we learned about the body and skeletons.

HIGHLIGHT OF THE WEEK

Cloud dough is super messy and tons of fun to explore. Cloud dough is a mix of flour and baby oil. We add green and orange glitter in honor of Halloween!

Thank you Liv for the shared snack

Weekly Recap : October 18th

PUMPKIN PICKING

What a perfect Fall day to go to White Post Animal farm, we joined the other buckle my shoe and went on the yellow school bus all together for the first time. We got to feed the animals, ride the hay truck and pick pumpkins. Thank you for the families for joining us on this awesome trip!

MOVEMENT

In the gym the children wanted to jump through our mini hoops and along with going down the slide and making their own obstacles.

ART

Make sure to check out our Jack-o-lanterns and find your face

BOOKS WE LOVED AND LITERACY

The little old lady who was not afraid of anything, and our magnet ABC board and popsicle box.

ACTIVITES

As the weeks pass our attention span is starting to grow more and more.

Wyatt and Sam have been focusing on building their structures higher and higher.

Liv and Emma have been expanding on their dramatic play and taking care of the babies and dolls and cooking in the kitchen.

We also have been doing a lot of sensory in both rooms.

HIGHLIGHT OF THE WEEK

For the rest of the year we will be exploring different sort of textures and seeing how they make us feel. This week we passed around a sequin fabric board.

Liv- It feels like sparkles

Emma - It feels good not hot

Sam - it feels good

Thank you for the yummy snack Emma

Weekly Recap : October 11th

SPECIALIST

We have now mastered our welcome songs that our specialists taught us and we can not wait for them to come in and join us again next week!

MOVEMENT

Every morning Liv will ask for us to sing and dance to Jump in the Water.

“ Jump in the water Liv, Jump in the water Liv, You’re all wet, You’re all wet. Shake your body dry, shake your body dry, you’re all dry, you’re all dry.”

ART

This week we made spooky ghost with paint, sparkly glitter and goggly eyes.

BOOKS WE LOVE

Creepy Carrots!

Along with reading the book, we listened to the audio reading and pointing out what part was happening on each page.

ACTIVITIES

This week we focused a lot on sensory play using shaving cream, clay, sand, and water.

HIGHLIGHT OF THE WEEK: Random acts of kindness

The children love to be around each other and show affection. While looking over Emma gave Wyatt a hug just because her friend was near her.

Thank you Wyatt for the yummy; juice, cheese, yogurt and snack bars this week!

SELF PORTRAITS FOR OCTOBER

Weekly Recap : October 4th

What a short but fun and busy week we had for the first week of October. We started our week with introducing the children to our specialist! Tuesdays we will have Music with Emily, Wednesdays will be Spanish with Beisy, Thursdays with be soccer with Coach Hector, and Friday yoga with Stelios.

MOVEMENT

On top of all our fun specialists, we spent the rest of the time in the gym with our Pre- K and tried to move the teachers!

ART

Painting with different objects can be so much fun! We used coffee filters to hold our fall color paints and then used them as stickers on the poster.

BOOKS WE LOVED

One book we enjoyed this week was Glad Monster Sad Monster. The children acted out each face!

ACTIVITIES

We love having free play because we get to observe the children and where their interests lie. While some friends enjoy exploring all the areas, others like to find a center and work quietly.

  • Block Building

  • Making faces with objects

  • Beading

HIGHLIGHT OF THE WEEK

Thursday was a rainy one so during group time we sang to Mr. Sun and realized we had to make a sun! After doing so we wrote it out and talked about how other letters can start with the letter of our names.

S is for Sam and S is for Sun

Thank you Sam for the yummy chia seed pudding, water melon, cheese and veggie sticks this week!

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

The children love to dance to Sleeping Bunnies so much that we decided to be bunnies for Halloween! Later we found out that our friends in the Pre-K room are being creepy carrots and creepy underwear (not knowing - and the main character in their story is JASPER RABBIT!! ) We have decided to team up together.

Weekly Recap : September 27th

Our week started off on a bright note! We spent Monday at the park with the Pre- K class. Everyone is so good at holding the rope and using their listening ears when crossing the street.

MOVEMENT

Lots and lots of gym play: the gym was used this week for so many things. When they walked into the room one morning, they noticed a very large box in the middle of the room. They absolutely loved playing in it: they jumped in it, pushed it around, and used it as a drum. The endless possibilities a simple box can be.

ART

We are continuing to work on making our tree: we used brown and black paint and added flour that gave the paint a harder texture and gave it a more realistic look.

SENSORY

We made play dough for the first time this year. The children were so excited to all join in and take turns waiting to help out.

 Best Ever No-Cook Play Dough Recipe

1.)    2 cups plain flour

2.)    1 cup salt

3.)    1 tablespoon oil

4.)    1 cup cold water

5.)     2 drops watercolor

6.)     Mix together and enjoy

BOOKS WE LOVED

Pete the cat is still our favorite in the third week, we also enjoyed reading: this is not a box, deer zoo and thats not my robot

ACTIVITIES

The children have been interested in the letters of their names. This week we wrote their names on the board and asked them to circle the first letter. We have also been exploring numbers: we put them on a board so we can rearrange them to put them in order.

HIGHLIGHT OF THE WEEK

It is so wonderful to see the children feeling so comfortable in school and having their personalities starting to show.

And as always to end our week right, Thank you Liv for our yummy peaches, yogurt and goldfish!

Enjoy your weekend!

If you come across any leaves and other fun nature items, please bring them in for us to use!

Weekly Recap : September 20th

It is our second week of school and already the children are staring to feel comfortable and at home. They wave and kiss mommies and daddies goodbye and are ready to start their day!

MOVEMENT

The gym has become a great place for us to pretend play. We enjoying playing house with all our open space. Liv and Emma spent most of the time playing mommy and baby while Sam and Wyatt enjoyed kicking the soccer ball to each other.

ART

We continued working on painting with primary colors to create secondary colors . We learned that yellow and blue make green, red and blue make purple and yellow and red make orange.

SELF PORTRAITS

Our first self portraits for the year are done and up on the classroom wall! We can’t wait to see how the children’s pictures develop each month.

BOOKS WE LOVED

The children have showed a strong interest in Pete the Cat books. We’ve read Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes and Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons. We also read Little Gorilla and acted out the animals on each page.

HIGHLIGHT OF THE WEEK

HAPPY BIRTHDAY WYATT! Wyatt is two years old now. His mom, Anastasiia, and dad, David, came in to celebrate with us. They read Birthday Monsters! and the children then presented Wyatt with a self portrait made out of recyclables  and paint.

ACTIVITIES

We had some fun exploring shaving cream. The children touched it with their fingers, rubbed it on their hands, and some children even put it on their faces.

Liv : It feels sticky, I’m putting it on my face.

Emma : Rub, rub, rub

SHARED SNACK

Thank you for the yummy strawberries, yogurt, cheese puffs and cookies Emma!

MOVEMENT

We ended the week by joining Pre-K at the park!

First Week of School

Today was our first full week of school. We explored all areas of BMS.  As the children get more comfortable they will open up more and truly let their personalities show. Each child is so different and it is so exciting to watch each child develop in their own ways. We are so happy to spend this school year with you and can’t wait to find out where it will take us. Here are some highlights of our first week.

MOVEMENT

 

In the gym we got to go on the play-set, learn how to use safe bodies on the slide, and danced to some songs (Sleeping little bunnies, and lets go swimming)

ART

 

We started with primary colors of paint (blue, red and yellow) and learned it is fun to get messy. We made our first individual paintings and one as a group that is up on our wall.

Books We Loved

Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons, Bear in the Square, You’re Not My Mommy.

Working Together

As a group we did our first walk around the block! The children held onto the rope while having listening carefully to the teachers.

Highlight

 Our favorite area of our classroom this week was the dramatic play area.  We played doctor and did lots of music activities.

 

 

What an amazing week we shared!  We can’t wait for next week to do it all over again. Have a great weekend!