Involved Cardinals....

Journal Writing: We have noticed that the flow of working on journals during early morning arrival has taken on a more relaxed, independent tone.  The children seem more comfortable with the process and are demonstrating greater levels of independence in getting started and setting up their own work.  We have cups of markers on the tables and the children are beginning to add this work to their daily morning routine before getting involved with play in  the classroom.  We have also noticed that the children are spending longer periods of time drawing and are becoming more patient when waiting a turn for an adult to write their words or stories. Journal experiences provide wonderful opportunities for children to practice expressive language skills, vocabulary , story telling as well as fine motor skills.

 

Math Exploration With Unifix Cubes

During Choice Time today, Kendall noticed the container of  colored unit cubes on the self and asked if she could play with them.  The first thing she did was place the large cubes at the end of each finger and said, " Look I made long fingers with them!" She was delighted with this activity.  Within a very few moments children were drawn to the math center and were interested in exploring the unit cubes as well.  We first discovered that there were 3 different types of cubes mixed together in the large container and that in order to connect the cubes together , one needed to connect to the exact same size cube.  This discovery led to a sorting activity where children needed to differentiate large and small size of the exact same shape cube.  The third unit cube was designed totally differentially and that also would only connect with cubes of similar shape and size.  What a spontaneous classification lesson!

Interest quickly moved to connecting the unit cubes; rockets, trains, towers were a few of the descriptions we heard as the children talked about their work.  We noticed that children were fascinated with making their strand of cubes longer and longer.  Some children were interested in counting how many cubes were in rows and practiced 1:1 correspondence as they matched each cube with a number. Children compared the length of their rows with each other and explored various ways to increase and decrease the size of their  strands of cubes.  Amazing math lessons are happening as interest emerges in our classroom!

Outdoor Discovery

 We were so excited to find time today to play outdoors before the rain!  We all put our rain gear on and had a glorious time playing outside!  Large paintbrushes and pails were added to our outdoor art area and the children loved painting with pails of water from the pond area.  Building with logs and twigs was a very popular area and the structures became more elaborate by the minute! We continue to reflect on how fortunate we are to have such an amazing outdoor classroom to explore everyday!