The Shapes of Things

We started the week off with a fun "shape-hunt" over on the Regis campus.  The children were able to identify circles, squares, rectangles and triangles on the sidewalks and buildings.

 

We also played around a very cool, big tree!

We reinforced the awareness of shapes through several activities, such as, below, creating shape pictures.  First we sat down together and sorted the shapes.  The children exhibited their growth in focussing by spending a lot of time on this task!

We traced the shape of our blocks too!

Tracing is sort of a new thing we are trying - it takes a bit of coordination in holding the object...

We used that skill to trace some shapes without the blocks too, good practice for intentionally drawing an object.

Jane tried it free-hand below...

We used a large triangle and square to illustrate how you can use shapes to make representational pictures.

A fun, edible activity included making shape-pretzels.  We call yeast the "magical ingredient."  Below, Bridget dissolves it in warm water and a bit of sugar...

They sure love to watch things cook in our little toaster oven and are very good at keeping their distance when it is hot!

In other news, some spontaneous train-play occurred in the T/Th class, so we read The Little Engine That Could and play acted it also.

 . . . and Noe is showing us she is learning to write her name!  Important milestone! Yay!