Walking Trip To Jenkintown

December 3, 2012                                      

                        Building Walk In Jenkintown

Our study of Buildings and Houses is growing as we begin to look more intentionally at different aspects of buildings.  This morning at Morning Meeting, we re-visited our Language Experience Charts where we brainstormed types of buildings and materials used to build building.  We decided that going for a walk in Jenkintown would be a wonderful next step. We had read several books last week about houses and the children are more familiar with concepts related to houses and buildings. We made a list of aspects of buildings to look for on our walk in Jenkintown. The following is the list of ideas that the children generated: 

Things To Look For On Our Walk In Jenkintown

chimneys

doors

roofs

windows- how many

bricks

houses made of stone

The children were so excited to be going on our first class walk off campus. They felt so proud of being “grown –up” enough to go on such a ‘big kid’ walk! We stopped to look at different types of buildings on our walk.  We noticed the different materials that the structures were made of and having the first hand experience of touching and feeling the large stone walls and bricks of various buildings we passed was a wonderful way to make this study more concrete for our children We looked at the different types of roofs on the houses and buildings we passed and stopped at each one and asked the questions; does it have a roof, is there a door to enter the building and do we see windows.  

Walking in Jenkintown was especially interesting because we were able to stop and look at many of the businesses in our community.  We stopped to look in the windows of   a hair salon, firehouse, restaurant and shoe store.  We were lucky enough to meet a police officer on our walk that stopped to chat with us and help us cross the big road!  We even saw three police cars and they put their flashing lights on for us to see!  We discovered the gazebo in the center of Jenkintown and then walked over to the bagel shop to have a little snack.  Several people shopping in town stopped to say hello to us and commented on how nice it was to see our children in our community.  We had such a wonderful morning and decided to take walks throughout the week to continue to explore building and houses.   

Beading, Gluing,Dough and More...

November 29, 2012

Our day flew by and both the children and the teachers were truly surprised when they looked at the clock and realized that it was almost time for lunch!!  The morning was filled with children working at all of our learning centers and the wonderful buzz of children talking and working cooperatively together filled the air.  We continued to explore the salt and flour dough we had made earlier in the  week at the Sensory Table and the children really enjoyed molding and sculpting with this soft  dough.  At our Fine Motor Table we extended our work with beading by adding different types of beads- plastic, colorful wood beads and thin beading elastic string.  The children were able to make long necklaces with this new string and because of the elasticity they able to wear them with ease as necklaces. The children worked for longer periods of time and practiced fine motor skills more intentionally.  Some children sorted the beads and decided that they wanted to make a necklace that was all one color or a particular pattern. Language and Literacy was experienced directly at our Journal Table this morning as each child had the opportunity to pick any topic which they wanted to draw and dictate a story about.  Math Center- children were involved in creating towers with the unifix cubes.  The children liked practicing their counting skills as they counted and practiced 1:1 correspondence when working with their unifix towers.  Dramatic play was busy with friends playing together in creative imaginative ways.  We noticed that the on-going theme of  ' doctor and sick patient ' was consistent throughout the morning.  Outdoor play was such fun today!  The weather was beautiful and the children really loved playing together outdoors.  Our Catbird friends had brought really fun, little people  size boxes outside and our children LOVED getting inside the boxes and playing together.  The growth in our children's social development is so clearly observed throughout the day.  The children choose to be with their friends all during the day and they love doing things together.  The conversations that are heard during Choice Time, Snack and Lunch reflect the sense of comfort and deep connection that the children feel towards one another. 

Acts of Kindness

Continuing our conversation from yesterday around the topic of thoughtfulness and kindness was so natural this morning when Radha  arrived at school with her mom.  A few weeks ago Subha  mentioned that she loves to sew and that if we ever needed anything in that department for the classroom that she be glad to help us out.  We talked about wanting to change the seat covers on the comfortable chairs in our Library.  Subha graciously offered to take on this project!    Today she surprised us with our new, beautiful chair covers!
After Subha left for the morning, we felt that this was a perfect opportunity to continue yesterday's discussion about kindness at Morning Meeting.  Our conversation led to thoughts of ways we can express our appreciation when we receive acts of kindness from others.    A few of the children's ideas were:

• give them a hug       
• say thank-you
• tell them you love them
• draw them a picture
• take them to Chuckie Cheese 
• write a message and put it in an envelope and put on a stamp and mail it

We decided that the idea of writing a message would be a wonderful way for us as a group to express our appreciation to Subha. We created a large Thank -You card and at Choice Time, the children had the opportunity to collage feathers, tissue paper and decorative paper on the card.  This communal, group art experience helps the children learn to work collaboratively and cooperatively with each other.     When the artistic part of the card was completed, we felt that writing a message was a meaningful way to support our Language and Literacy component of our program. Later in the day, each child had the opportunity to work with a teacher individually and think about the message they wanted to express in our class thank-you card.  The children's thoughts and feelings were recorded in the card and collectively we created a thoughtful message.  The children were so proud of their  collaborative work together and decided that they wanted to surprise Subha when she came to school to pick up Radha.

Needless to say, Subha was very touched and the children had the joy of experiencing first hand the gifts of giving...