Tuesday News

April 30th, 2013

We started our morning with a short choice time today.   Short, but productive including an impressive new building style on the magnet tile rug, and beautiful pictures drawn in journals.

Our choice time was put on pause when our friend Alicia came to our door for Spanish. With their Spanish knowledge steadily growing, the children had no problems with the number game she brought with her which involved rolling a large cube with numbers on each side and then counting up to that number in Spanish.

The children then were treated to a story read by Alicia, all in Spanish about waiting for the bus, or Autobus. While the characters in the story waited, they observed many different vehicles driving by their bus stop and through their observations we learned several names of different types of vehicles in Spanish! Our Spanish lesson rolled along with a song we all knew, The Wheels on the Bus, but with the new challenge of singing the words we all knew in Spanish!

We thanked Alicia with our Kindness Song before she left and the Cardinals returned to their choice work. A new activity the Cardinal teachers introduced today was book making.

The Cardinals  have been so immersed in story dictations at journal time,  writing of signs for various block creations, and  sounding out of words around the classroom. The teachers suggested that the children begin writing themselves and suggested making own books.  Having the opportunity to create personal books of things that they area interested in facilitates writing and reading readiness skills. Some of the children are beginning to sound out words and are able to identify and write the initial consonant sound of words for  their drawings.  We refer to this as 'kid  writing' and we will be encouraging children to begin to explore this skill. One of the important parts of kid writing is that the children begin to auditorily   discriminate different letter sounds and make those connections with words.

The class took on this new endeavor with enthusiasm and we are thrilled to see the children begin to take even more ownership of their beginning literacy quest as they not only imagine the stories and illustrate their thoughts, but also do the physical writing of their own thoughts.

After stretching our minds in new and exciting ways, the Cardinals moved outdoors for some time in the magnificent sunshine. 

We started out having our snack around the stage outside. 

Soon everyone was off exploring the outdoor classroom and small groups of classmates were banding together...

Finding friends from other classes!

Creating additions to the climbing structure... 

Or forming families of Cardinal birds and acting out everyday events and problem solving together!