Weekly Recap: 04.18.19

Monday Park Day!

Magna-tiles

Magna-tiles are always a popular construction toy in class, but this week it has been an especially busy center. Chance, Kyan, Aidan, and Leo, worked together to create a very tall structure.

Noam built a castle Tuesday afternoon and wanted to keep it up for Wednesday morning. As the children walked in on Wednesday, they were very intersted in adding onto the castle. We all waited for Noam to arrive before adding to her structure. Noam was happy to have her friends help. George added a spire and called the structure Notre Dame. Later Noam added some circuit pieces from our science experiment.

Chance worked on creating a tall tower with Grandpa Barys.

Leo made a garage for his rocketships.

Thursday morning was all about working together to build.

Where is Nibbles?

After reading Nibbles, the Book Monster, the children took turns searching for him as he hid around the classroom. Searching for objects is a great way to get children to be more aware of their environment and pay special attention to details.

H for the Letter Wall

H is for hearts, hola, hello, hi, and hippopotamus.


Weekly Recap: 04.12.19

Welcome back Leo!

Everyone was so happy to see Leo back at school! As friends walked in and saw him they said, “Leo’s here!”

Emotions Cards

This week we used emotions cards to discover better ways to express ourselves.

One picture was of an onion with a sad face. The question posed to the children was: What would you say to the onion to make it feel better?

  • Maybe share some of my toys. - Aidan

  • He can jump on my bed. - Liv

Another picture and question was about feeling frustrated.

  • I get frustrated when mama gets angry at me. - Kyan

Nervous

  • I felt nervous when I was being born and didn’t know Bree and Brad. - Arden

  • I was nervous when Vincent ate my food. - Yvie

Exasperated

  • I feel exasperated when no one is listening. - Finn

Park Day!

It was such a gorgeous Monday that we spent the entire morning at Horatio Park! The children ran, climbed, slid, rolled, and chased the morning away.

Week of the Young Child

On Tasty Tuesday we made banana pops. After skewering their bananas, the children dipped them into yogurt and had the option of rolling it in granola.

Wednesday was Work Together Day! The children were paired up and had to compromise on where they wanted to work/play first.

Artsy Thursday came next. We used a lot of salt for our artwork. The first activity involved painting with liquid watercolor paint, then sprinkling salt on top. The second activity was creating a glue design then covering it with salt. Friday we observed our salted watercolor artwork, and painted our salt designs.

Friday was Special Person Day! The children were excited to have their special person with them. We enjoyed a lovely spread for breakfast (thank you for bringing in everything!), then watched a video filled with special messages for the special people, and then worked on a beading activity to create a chandelier for the classroom.

Guess Who?

We introduced the children to a new game. While one child was blindfolded, another child stood in front of them and stated if they were a girl or a boy. The blindfolded child then had to guess who was in front of them by feeling their torso/face/hair and listening to their voice.

Happy Birthday George!

Happy Birthday Massi!

Weekly Recap: 04.05.19

It was a cold start to the week, but we still managed to get out for a few minutes and get some exercise at the park!

Art

This week we worked on collaborative clay work. One group made a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs, a bowl of apples and bananas, a plate of french fries, and a bowl of ice cream cones and ice cream. The other group made a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs, a bowl of apples, bananas, and blueberries, a bracelet, and an erupting volcano.

We worked on two very large pieces of art made from cardboard, styrofoam, cork, CD’s, and plastic cups. The artwork came out great, but the best and most important part was the sensory experience of painting their hands and arms!

We ended the week with some purposeful art. Before giving the children a marker, we asked them to think about what they wanted to draw. After drawing their idea, they painted over it with watercolor paint.

Language & Literacy

We read some new stories this week, including The Tube People and The Story of Little Babaji.

We worked on the letter G.

  • G is for Gigi, George, grandma, grandpa, girls, glitter, gold, gummy bears, green, and glue.

Science

For the next few weeks we will be working on our science fair project. We have noticed the children’s interest in light and building with magna-tiles, so we decided that it would be a great experiment to combine the two interests. We are attempting to create magnetic tile circuits!

This week we explored batteries and LED lights, and we had a discussion about how a light bulb works.

To find out more about their predictions, be sure to go to the Science Fair on Saturday, May 4th, from 10am - 1pm at the BMS Tribeca location!

Blocks

The block area has been quite the popular center this week. Loads of boat play has been taking place as well as PJ Masks.

Warm Fuzzy Moments

Kyan, Aidan, and Massi helped Melissa clean up her structure without her asking.

Kyan gave Massi the pretend play fabric he was using because Massi wanted a turn with it too.

Chance handed out water bottles to friends at lunch time.

Nora shared her shell with Roxy.

Aidan shared his toy car with Finn.

Happy Birthday Finn!

Weekly Recap: 03.29.19

Even though we couldn’t make it to the park, we still got some fresh air and art time.

Kindness Project Update

This week we spoke about the homeless families who have babies that go to the church for help. We told the children that the babies range in ages from 2 months old to 3 years old. Some children decided that we should get the babies some milk, water, socks and shoes, balls, chew toys, and stuffies. As they spoke, the children began to say that they had stuffies or toys that they don’t use at home. It sounds like we will soon be holding a drive for the babies. More information to come as we continue our conversation with the class!

After creating teacups, teapots, and bowls last Friday, it was time to paint them this past Monday. The children picked three colors and got to painting their clay work.

This week we also created a collaborative piece of art using a Styrofoam ring and zip ties. The added bonus of strengthening the children’s fine motor skills makes it even more of a win win situation. They were so excited to work on this project.

We created self-portraits using items from our materials center. The children chose from lots of materials, from heart shaped gems to ticket stubs.

This week’s science experiment was sink or float. We used various materials from around the classroom, marked down our predictions on our worksheets, and observed what actually happened. One group discovered that their paper both sank and floated.

As the children get older, their dramatic play gets more in depth. There has been a lot of dramatic play this week, ranging from superheroes to rocketship play.

In addition to the Batboat play in the block area, Aidan was busy creating oceans for his gray whale and humpback whale. Roxy, Luke, Massi, and Melissa were inspired by the ocean building and created an ocean with a rope light and blue fabric. Aidan thought it was a great idea. Our sensory table even became an ocean! Arden was excited to find rocks in the sensory table because she just started collecting rocks.

Sensory experiences are loved and enjoyed by both our young children and older children. We created a variety of experiences. Some bags were filled with liquid watercolor paint, water, and oil. Others were filled with liquid watercolor paint and oil. We also made some with gel and various recyclable materials, and some with paint for color mixing.

Warm Fuzzy Moments

Going along with our kindness and social-emotional focus this year, we began our Warm Fuzzy jar. Each time the children do something nice/kind for someone, they get to put a “warm fuzzy” (pom-pom) in the jar. The catch is that they are not allowed to tell the teachers they did something kind, a teacher has to see it happen naturally. When the jar is filled, the children get to pick what special party/item we can have/get for the class. So far the children want to have a pizza party.

Literacy Week Recap

We began literacy week with activities based on the book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. We started the day with a yoga and meditation session based on the book.

By the time we were done, our special surprise arrived! It was our friends from 3B! We sat down together and read our book (The Very Hungry Caterpillar). 3B then showed us that they brought bananas to contribute to our fruit salad and showed them the rest of ingredients we had. The group then had free choice time where some children made butterfly drawings, and some helped cut the fruit into smaller pieces. Before our 3B friends left, we sat together to eat our fruit salad together.

Taco Tuesday came next! We read Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin. We worked on making guacamole and cooking the beef for our tacos.

We also celebrated Arden’s 4th birthday!

Wednesday was all about pancakes and pajamas! We read Pancakes, Pancakes by Eric Carle. We made pancakes and had them for lunch along with some strawberries, apple butter, and maple syrup.

On Thursday we read Jamberry and If You Give a Moose a Muffin. After reading we worked in groups to make blueberry jam.

Friday was dress up and tea party day. We read I’m Invited to a Party by Mo Willems. We had tea sandwiches for snack, and cornbread with our blueberry jam. In small groups, we made teapots, teacups, and bowls our of clay. We’ll paint them next week!

Weekly Recap: 01.25.19

We began the week with a conversation about kindness. We are in search of how the children perceive kindness, what acts they think are kind, and what they do that they think is kind.

So far kind means:

It was a cold beginning to the week, and so was our art. We began the new week by painting with frozen paint. The children noticed that the marks created by the frozen paint at first looked like that of markers or crayons. As they painted, they began noticing changes: the paint was melting, it was getting slippery, and it was all over their hands. While Yvie worked she asked, “Is it going to melt away when I’m not holding it?”

There has been a lot of mixed media work going on this week: colorful theme collage, winter theme collage, black oil pastel with liquid watercolor paint.

A lot of puppet play has emerged this week. Next week we will read some books and see if the children might be interested in recreating the book with a puppet show.

Weekly Recap: 01.18.19

We started our week off with two different types of painting projects: painting on the wall, and painting with acrylic paint.

The children working at the wall were able to paint as high as their arms would allow (something not possible when working at an easel). We also had paper on the floor. Some children immediately began painting there as opposed to the wall.

We noticed that some of the children working with acrylic paint were very intentional: creating marks with a purpose or plan in mind.

We did another acrylic paint session at the end of the week. The children really enjoyed mixing their colors. We noticed some children paint very slowly and some paint very quickly. Those that painted slowly were very focused on how they moved their brushes, and observed the marks they made on the canvas.

Nora explored a new way to paint.

Mondays are now are cooking/science experiment days. This week we made guacamole! Even the children who do not usually eat guacamole enjoyed it. We are so proud of them for trying something new!

On Tuesday, Emily was out sick, so we made it another cooking day. We made banana blueberry muffins from scratch.

We started taking attendance. Everyone loved looking at their picture, and counting the number of friends at home and at school.

Our first soccer class was a huge success! The children loved meeting Coach Apple and can’t wait for him to come back next week!

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Coach Apple

Proud Moments

Finn and George were proud of their work with the magna-tiles. They were very excited about creating such a tall structure.

“I made a tower! Look how tall it is!” - Aidan

Roxy was so proud of her work, she went over to the teacher and said, “Take picture!”

Weekly Recap: 01.04.19

Happy New Year! We spent the short week getting back into the groove of school.

On Wednesday we welcomed a new friend, Emma, to the class. We also had Spanish with Ernestina, made a calendar for the month of January, and played boat in the block area.

On Thursday we welcomed Roxy to our class. We also did a lot of center work. The light table area had our new blocks for building. For art we had rubber band snap painting, and creating scenes based on a pre-made image glued to a paper.

Friday we reorganized a little bit. We switched the block area and the creation station, as well as the kitchen area and the light tables. We also had yoga with Stelios.

Weekly Recap: 12.14.18

In the spirit of our holiday party, we started the week off with some Christmas inspiration: a tree made out of hollow blocks and lights. From there, the children began to decorate it with various materials from around the classroom.

Our sensory bin was filled with tinsel and bells. The bells quickly got transferred to the block tree as decoration, and the tinsel was used to decorate the room and each other. Some friends loved the tinsel so much, they wanted to be covered in it the whole time.

There was a big feast during the week. The children brought over all the food, plates, cups, and utensils to the large table and laid everything out.

Most of the week was spent preparing for Santa and Mrs. Claus! The children talked about Santa all week and asked, each day, if today was the day. When it finally came, they were excited that he was here (despite many of them not wanting to sit on his lap). A big thank you to Adam and Kristine for playing Mr. & Mrs. Claus!

We ended the week with Pajama Day! Everyone came to school in their jammies, and some friends brought their stuffed animals. We started the day with shared snack (strawberries, cucumbers, and cheddar bunnies) from Nora. Thank you Nora! Then we had yoga with Stelios.

After yoga we sat around our tree and opened the presents from Santa! (Thank you parents for making the holiday party such a success and for making Pajama Day a bit more fun with present opening.)

We ended our day with some clips from Polar Express while drinking some hot chocolate. Yum!

There was also one more thing we did this week, but it is a surprise. You’ll find out next week what we’ve been up to!

Weekly Recap: 12.07.18

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One of this week’s activities was to explore slip. Slip is a sticking agent, made from water and clay, to help “glue” two pieces of clay together. Some of the children used it to create animals, while others explored it’s properties.

We also worked on December self-portraits. We just have one or two more to finish and they’ll be up next week!

We began working on patterns.

The children are beginning to master our 12 - 16 piece table puzzles, so we have brought out our floor puzzles, some of which have 36 pieces.

We noticed a few of the children measuring things around the classroom, using cardboard tubes. Seeing this, we wanted to foster this interest with a group activity. Next week we will have measuring tapes available for the children to further explore. We’ll see where their interest leads.

There was some great block play this week. A doghouse was built and both groups of children did a wonderful job of working together, problem solving, and including all their friends in the play.

Since we have been using boxes so much this year, we decided that instead of buying one for school, we would make one out of all our boxes. The first step was to paint everything green.

On Friday we celebrate Hanukkah with Noam and her family. We read a book, ate latkes, got dreidels and gelt, and lit the hanukkiah (not menorah). Thank you Noam, Ella, and Ofer!

We ended our Friday by celebrating Noam’s 3rd birthday! We sang Happy Birthday and ate sufganiyot. Happy Birthday Noam!

Weekly Recap: 11.30.18

We spent our week working on our project for Friday’s Curriculum Morning & Breakfast. The children created pieces based on the feelings of happy, sad, scared, and mad, and then painted the piece with colors to represent those feelings.

Friday was our Curriculum Morning & Breakfast! Thank you all for coming to see what the children have been doing in school. We hope you all had a wonderful time painting with the paints the children made. We’ll be sure to let you know when the next Curriculum Morning and Breakfast is happening!

Happy Self-Portraits

Sad Self-Portraits

Scared Self-Portraits & Mad Self-Portraits

Other moments throughout the week…

Puzzles

Morning Message Helpers

We started off our week with a discussion about classroom jobs. We created a list of jobs that we would need and then talked about the children interviewing for the jobs. So far the jobs are Time Keeper, Weather Reporter, Lunch Helper, Teacher’s Helper, Morning Message Helper, and Attendance Monitor. Next week the children will go on interviews for their dream job.

Inventors & Block Builders

Taking turns to lead a game

November self-portraits are finished!

And of course a big happy birthday to Noam! We will celebrate next week.

Weekly Recap: 11.21.18

On Monday we began prepping for our Friendsgiving Feast with our new friends from the Tribeca 3B class. We discussed what we needed to buy for our stone soup, we voted on what type of dessert to get, and we talked about making butter from scratch. Then we went over to Integral Yoga to purchase what we needed.

On Tuesday, during circle time, we FaceTimed with the 3B class. Everyone was so happy to see each other and were VERY excited about our upcoming Friendsgiving, and of course, the stone soup! They showed us all the ingredients they were preparing for the soup, and we showed them our cookie mix, and how we were shaking up our jar to make the butter. The butter took a lot of shaking, but we finally did it!

Wednesday was our Friendsgiving Feast! We took the train to the other BMS and started our day with a little circle time and play time with our friends. Then we made cranberry grape punch with Diane, followed by soccer with Super Soccer Stars. After that it was time to begin our Friendsgiving feast! We had stone soup (Yvie & Leo found stones in their soup!), cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, bread and butter, and chocolate chip cookies. Yum yum.

In regards to out paint study, we made new paint colors this week. We also talked about how the colors made us feel. We can’t wait to use them!

We continued working on our November self-portraits.

Other moments throughout the week…

We hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving filled with love and good times with your family!

We hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving filled with love and good times with your family!

Weekly Recap: 11.09.18

We started our week with some painting with primary colors. We had friends from the other school coming to have a play-date with us, so we made a welcome sign using red, blue, and yellow paint. As the children worked, they commented on how the colors were changing when mixed, and even noticed that when a lot of colors are mixed together, the color brown is made.

When the day finally came for our friends from 3B to visit us, we were very excited! They had questions for us and we had questions for them. They asked us if we had a bunny (which was a question we had for them too). Their bunny’s name is Pinky. We had a quick circle time meeting to introduce everyone and then it was time to play.

Last week and throughout this week we made thank you cards for the local businesses that passed out treats to us for Halloween. Everyone smiled when they received the cards. Some stores even said they will hang it up on the walls for everyone to see!

For science, we conducted an experiment using Skittles and warm water. The children made predictions about what would happen and then we poured the water onto the plate.

Block building has been a frequent activity in the classroom this week. It all began last week when the children created a house and a spider web made of tape.

Our sensory bin was filled with shaving cream and giant water beads. The children had a great time exploring, feeling the texture of the shaving cream, and playing around with the water beads (trying to hold them without them slipping out, or breaking them into smaller pieces).

Focusing a bit more on our painting intent, we began with setting up an activity involving cups of paint and spoons in each cup. We watched as the children dripped it from up high or down low, pooled it into little puddles, or stirred the pool of paint on the paper. We noticed that they were very focused on their work, especially aware of the placement of their paint.

The next day we explored corn syrup colored with liquid watercolor paint. Some of the children, remembering their drip painting experience, also dripped the corn syrup mixture onto their paper. We noticed a few children making marks by moving their brush up and down, creating “dots.”

November self-portraits are underway.

We made play-dough!

Weekly Recap: 11.02.18

The first half of our week revolved around our Halloween Parade and Party. On Monday we made Rice Krispie treats and on Tuesday we covered them with chocolate and added eyes to them. Of course, Wednesday was our big Halloween Parade and Party!

Thursday was a park day. We spent the entire morning at Horatio Park, getting out all the candy energy from Halloween.

On Friday we began to dive into our feelings/emotions intent. We read Color Monster and then created calm down jars, and feelings jars. We will be creating a calm down corner where the children can go when they feel frustrated, angry, sad, etc. The jars are filled with glitter, so when shaken, the glitter can be seen settling to the bottom. The feelings jars will be used during circle time. We will start each day with how we are feeling.

Other moments throughout the week…

Weekly Recap: 10.26.18

The week started off with some great dramatic play in the block area. The children pretended to be pirates and were jumping in the water.

There was also some great building and teamwork with the projector. Having the colors change on the wall really got the children curious and working this week.

We played a new game called The Sticker Game. One child sits on a chair and gets a sticker placed on their forehead. The other children then come up with clues for the child to figure out what is on his/her head.

We introduced the children to a new letter matching game. Using craft sticks and a box, the children had to match the letter on the craft stick to the letter on the box. This was great for letter recognition, fine motor development, and one-to-one correspondence.

Using the letter box, we also created an amazingly fun obstacle course. The children had to climb up the playset, slide down the pole, crawl under a table, hop in 3 hoops, climb up a chair, crawl or walk across a table, go down a chair, walk along some hollow blocks, and then place their letter sticks in the appropriate spots. This is a wonderful way to tie movement and literacy together. Next week we’ll do it with a puzzle!

Of course, with Halloween right around the corner, we continued working on monster costumes…and we transformed our pumpkin into a jack-o-lantern.

Don’t forget to check out our Instagram account to see more pictures and videos! BMSWV2018

Weekly Recap: 10.19.18

This week was all about continuing our monster study/Halloween prep and beginning our school wide intent where we are focusing on social-emotional development, specifically feelings. We began with a story titled The Very Frustrated Monster by Andi Green. After the story we had a discussion about the times we feel frustrated and what we can do to make ourselves feel better.

The times when the children feel frustrated are:

  • When someone doesn’t listen to them

  • When someone says something that hurts their feelings

  • When someone yells at them

  • When someone hits them

  • When someone picks another person over them

What can we do to feel better?

  • Talk to a teacher/parent/adult

  • Relax by yourself

  • Take a deep breath

Next week we will create feelings jars and calm down jars.

Focusing on the monster portion of our study, this week the children drew pictures of monsters, and began working on their Halloween monster costumes.

Lights were a big part of our exploration this week. The sensory table was filled with soapy water and colored submsersible lights and the block area had string lights and colored submersible lights.

We had our first music day with Ms. Emily! The children loved singing and dancing with her. She’ll be coming to BMS every Tuesday.

This week we used milk, dishwashing liquid, and watercolor paint for our science project! The children were surprised when the dishwashing liquid made the watercolor paint move.

October self-portraits are complete and up on the wall.

Here are some other moments that happened this week.

Weekly Recap: 10.12.18

We started our week off with an orange hunt around the neighborhood. We found lots of orange things, ranging from flowers to cones, and even some letters.

For science and sensory, we made fluorescent orange slime and fluorescent green slime. We added Halloween creatures to the slime and the children explored by creating creature prints, pulling the slime, or letting it drip from above.

We began our October self-portraits.

We ended the week with a watercolor palette workshop. The children explored the water to paint ratio in order to get the desired shade of color.

Weekly Recap: 10.05.18

We started off our week with a block workshop. Using only units, the children worked on creating bridges, enclosures, and anything else they wanted to make. Some children worked with another friend to combine structures, others wanted to work alone.

During this week’s small group work sessions, the children have created art pieces using clay, wire, and beads, began drawing out their monster costume ideas, and participated in the above block workshops.

This week we started working with our specialists. On Mondays we have karate with Ms. Bibi. On Wednesdays we have Spanish with Ernestina. On Fridays we have yoga with Stelios.

We also had our first park day for the school year! Before heading outside we came up with rules for the park. When we got there everyone had a blast. There was running, climbing, balancing, and just overall fun!

Weekly Recap: 09.28.18

It was a busy week! We began our first study of the year about monsters, saw friends working together to create, finished our self-portraits, used our breath to create art, and went on our first walk around the neighborhood.

Monster Study

We have noticed a lot of monster play over the past week and wanted to find out more from the children. At our first discussion this week, we asked the children what they know about monsters. Afterward, they created individual monsters. Throughout the week we read Leonardo the Terrible Monster, There Was an Old Monster, and Go Away Big Green Monster!. The children have also created monsters using play-dough and googly eyes.

Teamwork

Now that the children have settled in, they are starting to form great relationships. As a result, they are working together more often to create various structures.

Self-portraits

We finished our self-portraits for the month of September.

Weekly Recap: 09.21.18

We started off the second week of school with an exploration of clay. We presented the kids with a block of clay, and did not give them any directions. They began to scratch, pound, pull, and pinch. Soon they were creating their own works of art: houses, lollipops, pancakes, and worms.

Later in the week we introduced the children to a different type of clay: modeling clay. This time the children used them on small canvases to create individual pieces of art. Modeling clay is a little stiffer. Some children kept the clay the size it was, others broke it into smaller pieces.

There was a lot of painting this week, from painting with flower, and toilet paper rolls, to painting with paintbrushes and hands.

The sandbox was also a big hit.

On Friday we celebrated Aidan’s birthday! Happy Birthday Aidan!