Fantastic Friday!

May 3rd, 2013

Today was a Friday full of celebration! Trace came to school excited to share his birthday with all of his friends, and the whole group was excited  in  anticipation of the Arbor Day celebration happening this afternoon.

With all of this to look forward to, morning choice time had a special energy. Interest in writing is continues to grow at the Writing Center and children are even starting to try to write the Question of The Day on their own!










Our flower study has inspired children to draw and practice fine motor skills . Several friends are drawing detailed flowers and are using our flower diagram and  flower model to reference facts and information that they are trying to understand.  It is very exciting to observe our active learners!

In the Math area,  there was a game being invented that involved finding the "monster number". Players are given two different numbers and need to circle the larger "monster" number.This again, led to a writing experience where children were practicing writing and copying numbers.









There was some teacher help involved, but these independent Cardinals were fast learners and were soon playing this game with one another, choosing two numbers on their own.

Mid morning we had a visitor ! Trace's dad had brought delicious ice cream for the children to share in honor of Trace's birthday. The Cardinals lined up for a chance to take a bowl of ice cream and choose from the amazing number of different delicious toppings Trace's parents had set up for his Cardinal classmates to enjoy.

Their sundaes in hand, now loaded with strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, bananas, chocolate chips, sprinkles, and a little whipped cream, the children gathered at the tables and sang to Trace who glowed with joy waiting to blow out his "4" candle.

Their energy was given an extra boost after the birthday fun, and there was really only one thing left to be done on a beautiful sunny day like today, so we headed outside and the children ran, and jumped, and laughed, and climbed until their lungs were full of fresh air.

Heading back inside, we read a few stories on the front rug before lunch. We relaxed with books on our nap mats after lunch to get a short rest before heading outside again for the Arbor Day celebration!

Thursday News

May 2nd, 2013

Like the flowers that have been popping open all at once outside our windows these days, the Cardinal classroom's academic spirit is in full bloom! The children have been showing off their true academic colors in many different areas from scientific examinations of different flowers, to letter  games brought to us from both our Cardinal Teachers and our Cardinal families.

Kate came to school with us a real sunflower and, since we all now have been seeing flowers through a scientific lens thanks to our friend Roseanne's lesson, we conducted a scientific examination of the parts of this Sunflower finding what is different looking or the same between this flower and the flowers we had been looking at before. With some extra help from Kristina, Stella's mom who is also a science teacher at AFS, we found the flower sections we were hoping to identify and learned a little more about the differences.

The morning began as the children came into the classroom and found materials set up for them to use. Large alphabet tiles shared the front rug space with small letter tiles. One set with uppercase letters, the other lower case letters.

The children began their letter explorations on their own, spelling their names or arranging the letters in alphabetic order, and once in a while a Cardinal Teacher would come with an idea or suggestion. The children began spelling out their families for each other, sounding out the names of their loved ones as well as words like "Mommy" and "Daddy".

The sounds of children carefully slowing down the sounds of words to identify the different letter components could be heard from the front rug to the back tables where the children were continuing the book making project that had been started this week.

A different group of Cardinals who had been inspired by their friends who had started this activity yesterday were hard at work thinking of imaginative stories and then finding ways to express their stories in written form, trying out making sound to letter associations!

Finding even more ways to expand our growing need for intellectual stimulation, our friend Violet shared with us a letter game her Mom and her play during bath time. This game show style activity goes by the name of "Guess My Letter!!" and involves one player picking up a letter (we used our handy letter tiles) and hiding it from view. Then the hider gives a few words that feature the hidden letter at the beginning, and the other player has to Guess That Letter!! It was a fun adventure finding several word examples for each letter to help the guesser, and I am sure "Guess My Letter!!" will become a favorite of the Cardinal classroom and led to an interest in other letter and number focused games!

We decided to finish our morning outside and immediately it became apparent that today was going to be a "jump right in" sort of outdoor playtime...

Confidence was not left behind in our classroom when we put down our letter writing pencils and changed into our water stomping boots and the water pond was a focal point for the majority of our class.

Other features of our outdoor time included different groups engaging in dramatic play especially family oriented games...

As well as interactions with some of the other classes of different ages, holding their own in conversations with groups of children from outside the Cardinal class.