Busy With Building

Building ...Building...Building!

The Cardinal classroom is filled with energy and excitement connected to our exploration of building in so many different ways.  The children continued to work on their  building drawings that reflected their impressions and recall of buildings they saw on our walk to Jenkintown this week.  The stories and words that the children are dictating highlight the  growth we have observed in the overall development of language skills for our children. The children's  growing ability to form more mature sentences, describe ideas using richer vocabulary and organize their  ideas is so clearly observed  through this
process.

The large doll houses have been an amazing addition to our Dramatic Play area.  The children are enjoying the large houses where they can physically move around the wooden structures as they play with the people figures and with each other. We will continue to bring the houses out for special times during the morning when we are working on building/house related activities.

We introduced the small Lego's today as a choice during our building activities.  These smaller manipulative's provide an opportunity for the children to explore building in a more detailed and focused way.  The smaller pieces of Lego's challenge the children and encourage the children to use their fingers and hands in ways that will strengthen their fine motor skills.  The question we pondered during our planing session centered around how we would invite the children into this new learning area and guide the experience.  We decided to set individual trays on the table with Lego's and invited children to visit the table for building.  In reflecting on the experience, we realized that the tray was an important component of the experience.  The tray actually set an outline and created a surface for the children to begin construction.  The tray provided a natural boundary and created a visual blueprint  to work from.  This introduction motivated and inspired the children to engage in building using Lego's which we will continue as our study evolves.

Our friends in the Dove class lent us several fun books to read about houses.  Today we read  A House Is A House For Me, by Mary Ann Hoberman. ` The book is a delightful rhyming  story that describes where different people and things live. It makes comparison on each page such as " a pod is a house for a pea, a pueblo is a house for a Hopi and an igloo is a house for an Eskimo". The repeating phrase through out the story is   "a house is a house for me".

Art With Sam

The Cardinals have adjusted beautifully to their art routine, walking all the way to Sam's studio to see what she has planned for us each class. Today's class we found large pieces of white paper lining the tables and between each place was three individual paint containers with blue, yellow, and red paint. Sam asked the Cardinals to remember what we had worked on the last time we had visited her studio and to answer her question of "Why do you think we are using these three colors today?" Our Cardinals remembered their lesson on primary colors and Donny answered, "Because they make all the other colors."

Everyone was eager to get started on their own paintings and once brushes were handed out the group, everyone dipped and began mixing their colors. Our artistic class had a lot to say during the artistic process as they noticed "It's turning green!"(Lilly), and "Look our water is turning purple!"(Kate, Jacob, Wyatt), and "I'm mixing colors so I can see the differences. Orange! It's Orange! Lets see what
happens if you add water and blue..."(Hannah).

Afterwards, one of our Cardinal Teachers remarked she had "never seen so many different colors created out of just three starting colors!" and Sam told us these were "the most beautiful paintings from a class this age" she had seen and asked if she could hold on to our paintings to put them into a gallery style art show the school creates!

The children are very interested in books!  They love to read in our class library, listen to stories read aloud and are beginning to show interest in making their own books.  Trace shared a really special book about firefighters today and Evan shared a 'chapter' book that he and his sister made at home.  Our Writing Center was busy today with children making their own books as well.

Community Service
Fourth grade friends visited our classroom and talked to the children about the Toy Collection Drive that our school is involved with. The children listened attentively as the 4th graders described the service work and our children seemed sensitive to helping others in need.  If you would like to participate please drop off your gift item at the entrance of the school. The agency that our gifts will be distributed to is Youth Service Inc. Another way to be involved is to join the gift wrapping party on Tuesday, December 11 after school where everyone can work together to make wrapping paper and wrap the presents from the collection.