Thursday, September 6, 2012


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!

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Getting to know each other
Getting to know the routines . . .


The children work together to try to figure out how to put the blocks away...


 The children are learning a pride for their environment as they take part in caring for our materials.  Below, Colin helps to fill up our salt supply!


We help to wipe off the white board at the end of the day...



Bridget volunteered to sweep up her mess!  And Noe demonstrates good hand-washing technique.


We engaged in more Humpty Dumpty activities. Below the children make a face for him.


Colin uses a two-handed technique to paint Humpty.


Noe and Summer check Humpty out at the "doctor".


We also re-enacted Humpty's fate, by building block walls and seeing if he could balance.




All the king's horses took Humpty to the doctor.



An  impromptu picnic became a haven for Humpty to get some TLC with Joy.


We also enjoyed the basic activities of the day.  Joy really enjoyed painting on Wednesday.


Noe mentioned "Super Pets" and their capes, so we ended up putting capes on everyone!




Outside we painted the wall with water.


And Summer initiated turning our water-paint into muddy soup!







Thursday we  made houses in the rocks with found sticks.


When working with the dot markers, Colin put them in a neat line and counted them all! 



We made a picture with them together, taking turns with different colors.  We also practiced screwing the lids back on.


Colin and Bridget had fun together outside this week.


Summer likes to take ALL the puzzles apart and them put them all back together at once.   She is very good at this!


We also started a little beading - good eye-hand practice!