Having Tea with our Furry Friends/Getting Some Healthy Sensory Experience . . .

   

We brought our furry friends to school this week . . .

We had some "tea" with them.

This was a good opportunity to use eye-hand control while pouring!

Outside we snuggled with our animals in our "fort".

. . . and tried teeter tottering ALL together!

We made houses for our friends in the block area, too.

On our rainy day the M/W/F group made warm bread to eat . . .

 

That morning we learned how to put on our own coats! (the children really wanted to go outside in the rain - we went for about 7 minutes!)

We had fun splashing around!

Additional experiences this week entailed gearing up to explore some sensory substances!  Below is a short quote from a fun website I found that nicely puts into words, my belief and training, on why and how sensory experience is so important at this age, as well as the language development that can occur when we play together!

The senses are young children's most familiar, most basic way to explore, process, and come to understand new information.

This is why we must allow young children to learn through experience, not just lecture. These children need to use their senses and be engaged in meaningful experiences.  As we talk with them about what they are observing and sensing, we give them new language tools to connect with these more familiar sensory tools, building language as well as supporting cognitive concepts specific to the experience. 

Now, the flip side to this equation is important to remember as well.  Just as children learn through their senses, they also are developing the ability to use those senses and are building the neurological pathways associated with each one.  With added sensory experiences, combined with the scaffolding of adults and peers, children become more perceptive.  Their sensory intake and processing becomes more acute.  As they are better able to use their senses, they are then better able to learn through their senses.

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It took some of us awhile, but soon we were enjoying the various sensations and qualities of
"Gak" and shaving cream.

 

Bridget used nice broad strokes on the big paper - this is good exercise for crossing the mid-line.

We also used children's chopsticks to pick up items - this is excellent practice for the fine muscles in the hand.

Colin worked very hard to finally pick something up!

 The T/Th group enjoyed making toast and butter one day for snack . . .

Using utensils purposefully is another good fine muscle and eye-hand activity.

YUM!

We had a nice combination, this week, of child-generated activities, as well as some intentionally planned, fun, and purposeful projects that help us develop physically as well as socially.  Good job, kids!

This week:

Becoming Aware of our Place in our Environment 

The children enjoyed mapping where we each live in the neighborhood, in relation to each other . . .

We compared the number of steps and windows we have at our houses and graphed them together.  This was a great early math activity.  Thank you parents for performing the homework for this with your child.  Enthusiastically and intentionally creating connections with home and school is a great habit to form!

Above right, after getting the idea from a book we read, we created our own book called, "Things We Do Together."  We brainstormed some of the things we do together, such as sing together at Meeting Time, clean the tables before snack and build in blocks together.  This was a nice, child-initiated project  that made the children aware of how we are learning to work as a group!

Below more examples of how we spent our week together, as the children begin to learn to become a community.  We made some nice smelling Shampoo Dough!  Summer and the rest of the gang made a lot of birthday cakes - we enjoyed singing Happy Birthday a lot!

Noe helped her Bunny play . . .

Above all four children painting at the easel and Anders painting an "A" for Anders.

Below, a new basket of cars inspired some block building, making "parking spaces" for them.

Wow. Reading books together!

We read a fun book called, The Big Orange Splot, by Daniel Manus Pinkwater.  The main character ends up painting his house all different colors!

Outside Summer and Jane collected rocks and lined them up.  

We brought the rocks inside and sorted them by various attributes - rough, smooth, white, pink.

Bridget and Colin did a lot of sorting and ordering of items around the room

There was a game of "hide and seek" outside . . . 

Colin checked out the golf clubs.

Adventures of our Friday Girls...(remember I have drop-in spaces for Friday!)

So far on Fridays we have done a cooking project.  This morning it was Baked Hard Boiled Eggs!  We put the shelled eggs directly in the oven at 400 degrees for about 23 minutes.

The kids helped set the timer...

We also toastsed some bagels.  The eggs went inot a bowl of ice cold water to cool down after baking.

Bridget wasn't sure, but peeled her egg and took a taste.

Jane is a veteran egg white eater so she carefully eats around the yolk.

We also practiced pouring "tea".

Bridget enjoyed her buttery bagel and also shared her guitar!

Later we traced her guitar on big paper...



And the girls had a nice stroll with their babies.  Excellent opportunities for friendship and community building!

Another great week of learning together!