Sunday, February 26, 2012

The Three Bears . . .





We had a fun time this week re-enacting the familiar story The Three Bears.  Although the children were familiar with it, it was helpful for us to go over the story several times.  First, I read it to them, then we looked at the pictures and I asked them what was happening, how the characters in the story were feeling.  This led us to examine how our facial expressions tell others' how we are feeling.  We had fun "posing" these expressions for the camera (below).


Elliott is showing us a sad face, and Zoe an angry face . . .


Lilya  and Owen are expressing surprise . . .


Camille is showing her happy and Kaden is expressing mad.
We made a little chart with our expressions posted and talked about things that made us happy, sad, mad and surprised.  When we went back to the story, we paid attention to how the Bears were feeling when they came back into their house and saw what Goldilocks had done.  This helped in our playacting later.


Above, Kaden is playing Goldilocks when she is trying out all the chairs.

Our T/Th group being the bears sampling their porridge . . .

. . . and investigating their chairs after their walk.


We also playacted with our stuffed bears and dollhouse furniture.



And then we made our own porridge!  Everyone helped carry supplies up to the kitchen.


The kids found a green patch of sunlight on the floor of the kitchen and they all wanted to get in it!


We (very carefully) observed that the water had to get bubbly to boil.  When we added our porridge, we could tell it was hot and cooking from the steam.


We needed to stir to keep it from burning (again very carefully!).


The kids decided they REALLY liked porridge!  (Which was an italian breakfast pasta, recipe below)

Boil 1 & 3/4 cups of water
Add 3/4 cup acina de pepe pasta (tiny round pasta)
Cook for 10-12 minutes
Take off heat, add 1 tblspn butter
1 egg, and whip quickly together
Add 1 tblspn olive oil and 1 tblspn parmesean cheese and serve!

 YUM!


We worked on our face-making skills by drawing in the faces of the 3 bears.


Karsten showed us that he can make some letters now!



The T/Th group did their own alphabet work by coloring the first letter of their name.




They enjoyed hanging their letters up all by themselves - proud!


 After the MWF group painted, the T/Th group had their turn working with suds to clean up our table.



And we had more fun in the snow . . .


and MUD!


A very busy week!  Good work preschoolers!

Sunday, February 19, 2012



HAPPY VALENTINE'S WEEK . . .


After a couple of weeks of letter-writing, it all paid off in understanding how to deliver our valentines ("hearts" as the children called them) to each other.  Another opportunity to engage in "giving"!



We had some fun, colorful new cups to stack and sort . . .


We used the cups to sort and play with colorful ice, too!




In fact the whole week was colorful and loving!  I even caught the kids giving impromptu hugs to each other, very sweet!



Another sweet thing was receiving a handful of m & m's to count and sort!


Jane brought us all tatoos to wear on Valentine's day . . .


It took us almost a whole class session to roll out our homemade, buttery sugar cookie dough.



We also made colorful icing.




Making the cookies was like working with playdough, but better!

On Valentine's Day each child had a turn to deliver their mail and had a nice bag of Valentine's to take home.



We used our names to make a book about things/people we love.


Thursday I thought it was time to paint a lot, above, Camille sets everything up.






Predictably with our kiddos, hands and other objects in the room become part of the painting process!





Elliott and Camille REALLY got into it!


The awareness of color-mixing was fantastic.


I was going to do the same thing with our MWF group, but we had so much fun cleaning (a different sort of "messiness" - tactile experience) and it took us so long, that we didn't get around to painting.  Perhaps Monday.



Squeezing a sponge is actually good for strengthening hand muscles!



When we went upstairs to put our cookies in the oven, the T/Th group noticed a fun, green sunspot on the floor. They decided they wanted to sit in it!  We discovered the green light was coming from the pretty stained glass in the kitchen window.


The MWF kiddos got scholarly and we identified the first letter of our names after reading an alphabet story.  We then colored the letters.


Camille and Zoe found a quiet moment together.  I love that they love books!


And there is definitely something about fringe . . . !