What are we up to on Wednesday?

Self Portraits - 

 Today, the children visited the Self portrait table. They looked closely at the features of their face as they used multicultural crayons and pencils to draw the image they saw. The children gathered around the mirror, commenting on what shade of brown or beige they should use. This was a wonderful experience in diversity and differences among us.

Letters -Letters-Letters and Paper Mache'

The children were very interested in playing with the magnetic letters and magnetic board this morning.  "Look I found  the S for Stella", " I have a lot  of letters in my name. See I have all the letters for Trace", " Look I spelled my name- C-O-R-L-O-S"  were a few of the comments we heard as the children were working.

 

 We decided to take the paper mache' materials out for our sensory table today and continue exploring this medium and also see if children were interested in continuing to use the dough to make letters of the alphabet. We have noticed how many children are working at the sensory table each day this week and we are reminded of just how critical sensory exploration is in the development of young children.  When Evan came to the center, he said "There is the E I made before for my name, E-V-A-N. Now I need to make the A for E-V-A-N."  As the interest in creating letters with the dough increased, children were asking " how do we make the letter" and we realized that our Sign -In alphabet chart may be helpful at this time.  The children looked and traced with their finger the shape of the letter they wanted to make and were so excited to discover simple ways to make letters! Big lines, little lines , big curves and little curves were the terms we used in describing out how to make the letters. 

 

Morning Meeting and Sharing A Moment of Silence Together

At Morning Meeting, we shared in a Moment of Silence. We also read two stories, Families  by Ann Morris and Together by George Ella Lyon. These stories expanded our view of a family and how they can be different and look different. These fit nicely with our growing sense of community and connecting with each other in the Cardinal classroom. 

Field Day
Today was Field Day for Lower  and Middle School students at AFS!  We supported our school community and went to the fields to watch the Middle School students play soccer and  handball. Kate and Violet were so excited to see their moms on the fields with the Middle School students.  We saw many of our Middle school buddies and they greeted us so warmly when they saw us!  During the games, Chris Buzby, the Middle School music director was playing music on loud speakers and we had such a good time dancing!  The Cardinals loved Field Day 2012!

We closed our wonderful morning together by reading the book Elmer, by David McKee outdoors.