Tuesday News

Tuesday May 21, 2013

The children began their morning with open choice time. There were builders in the block area, artists in the studio, and  children sharing their family books on the front rug. Soon, an exciting visitor came to  our  classroom! 

Wyatt's uncle T.C., an artist, came into school with him today to share with the children some of his knowledge of art, and to share what his art is composed of and how he came to be an artist. He told the children how at a young age he thought he would grow up to become a writer, but was then introduced to the visual arts in school. A lot of his art still reflects his personal story and his paintings and drawings  he showed us all involve written words and letters. He loves to create art with letters and is often inspired by print in newspapers, signs and words that capture his feelings.  Many of his pieces of art have a message that he feels is important to share.

The Cardinals were excited to hear about the different elements in his artwork, and loved seeing his work on a big projector screen. He  brought with him a short animated film about the weather which he made through a collage technique where he cut out tiny pictures of the weather from the newspaper and  glued each picture onto a special paper which he eventually turned into a film.  This film  will be featured in an upcoming art show in Philadelphia on the Parkway on July 12th.!

Returning to our classroom, the children enjoyed playing in our classroom. 

The flower shop was reopened!

Play in the Flower Shop and making bouquets led to conversation about weddings !At one point, the entire class engaged in a wedding themed dance party combining the dress up clothes from the dramatic play area, bouquets from our flower shop, and a dance party to classical music! The Cardinals  loved waltzing with partners around the room!

Beautiful weather outside... 

Tuesday News

May 14th, 2013

Our choice time is an essential part to open-ended exploration in which

the children's imaginations shine and they are able to independently engage in an area of interest for themselves. Today, the legos provided a wonderful opportunity to support the children in dramatic play. They used the legos to create ships, bridges, and machines.

Also, a polar bear family game continued this morning, as a small group identified what the baby polar bear would need. This nurturing and caring feeling in dramatic play, has strengthened the children's bonds and translated to our interactions among each other in our Cardinal community!

The children continue to show their love of reading as they sit in the big comfy chair and retell their favorite stories to their friends. As our spring study, involving flowers, plants and other living things continues to emerge, the Cardinals are gaining more knowledge and beginning to ask questions after reading books such as, I Love Bugs. The children are wondering what types of bugs we might see and immediately are making connections with their environment as they explore and identify their findings in our outdoor space. 

Building off of this love of nature, and motivation to learn more about spring, the children have begun to create a Spring Mural. Today, we began by finger painting blue shades on large paper to create the background of our scene. We then started brainstorming ideas of what else to include in our mural and recorded them on a large language experience chart. We have already begun to add flower paintings, drawings and petal collages. As their artwork is displayed, adding essential pieces to the spring display, the children feel a sense of pride and joy in the recognition of their pieces and the culmination of their ideas with that of their friends.

Outdoor Exploration: The outdoor play space has also provided the outlet for big body movement and the freedom to explore! This is building our social bonds with each other as the children continue to create new games or invite their friends to make discoveries or investigate with them. The connection with nature and the AFS outdoor environment is apparent when the children use their senses in a tactile way to explore what is around them. Digging up worms, sculpting with sand, and just bathing in the sun have been many ways that the children are developing their love for nature and becoming more comfortable in their world.

Journal time has also grown and the children are expanding their ideas as they work on their own illustrations and story dictations. 

The appreciation and awareness of beginning our study was displayed today as many children created pictures consisting of flowers, bugs, butterflies and more.

*Families, enjoy the shining sun and inviting weather as you read the blog today. Tomorrow, we are looking forward to a visit from Xander's Dad, a cardiologist, at 8:30 am. We are excited about what he has to share with us about his job, responsibilities and what he knows about an essential part of our bodies, the hear!

Wonderful Wet Wednesday

May 8th, 2013

Our Wednesday began with Library with Gwen. The children were invited to find a seat in a circle around her reading rug, and Gwen introduced us to a book based on the Miss Mary Mack clapping game rhyme. Along with the wonderful, silly story, the children enjoyed trying out this new type of play before selecting some new books to bring back to the classroom and enjoy this week.

Settling into our classroom, we noticed the raindrops outside seemed to inspire water based play and the children continued to work with the vibrant water colors we have been enjoying this week. In other areas of the classroom, children pondered what sort of things happen when it rains, and drawings and paintings of growing flowers were gathering in our art studio.

When we noticed the rain outside seemed to have stopped, we quickly paused our work to put on our boots and headed out to see how the rain might have affected our outdoor classroom.

We discovered many interesting effects of rain on the outside space including large mud...

Slippery stumps...







And large puddles that created a fun new opportunity for the Cardinal builders to explore bridge creations.

After we had had our fill of the water soaked outdoor area, we returned inside to settle our bodies with some more Choice time. Having seen the interest in flowers that has taken hold of the Cardinal class, artificial flowers made an appearance complete with foam blocks, and groups of children tried their hand at creating flower arrangements and bouquets!

We are excited to extend our study of flowers and incorporate our learning and interest into new learning centers in our classroom.  We are planning on converting our Dramatic Play area into a flower shop!  The children are excited to plan and change our creative, role play immaginative area. If you have any ideas or props that would help us, please let us know!   We are also going to start to plan how we want to use the two, large  raised beds in our garden that are dedicated for our class.  Planting flowers feels like such a natural  extension. We will discuss our options gardening and will keep you posted!

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!