Monday News

May 13, 2013

The children were excited to begin their morning working on their journals. Weekend News has become a favorite spot on Monday mornings and the children are eager to share their experiences and adventures they have had with their families over the weekend with each other.

As the children are developing reading readiness skills where they are able to discriminate the different sounds of words and are beginning to make letter sound connections, we are observing beginning kid writing. Story dictations continue to support language development and literacy skills and the children enjoy sharing their ideas  during this time.

The beginning literacy continued after journals with children working with magnet boards and letters trying out different combinations of letters to create words.

The rest of our classroom was experiencing amazing imaginative play this morning. The kitchen area began to resemble a shop as the children made use of a cash register prop. This has been the first step to converting some of our classroom space into our goal of a flower shop.

The magnet tiles had an interesting group of structures being built, and the builders seemed very comfortable with friends stopping by to admire or add their own ideas and moving on.

These comfortable social interactions were happening in other sections as well, as groups gathered to dress up and create dramatic play scenarios focused on the family unit, and everyday experiences of families. Some friends shared new games they had played over the weekend with their families as well.

There were paintings being created in the art studio, as well as the very beginning steps of tracing and cutting out shapes for a large art project we are planning on starting soon.

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!

Stained Glass With Stella's Pop-Pop

March 4, 2013

Stella's mom, Kristina and her dad visited with our Cardinal class this morning to introduce our children  to world of stained glass art . Stella's Pop-Pop is an artist who works with all types of colored glass to create beautiful designs and pictures.  We learned  that he uses special tools to cut glass as well as to assemble pieces of glass together to create a picture or design.  We learned that glass is made of sand that is put into a very, very hot oven and that the colors of glass are created by adding metals such as gold. Gold added to clear glass turns the glass into red glass!

Pop-Pop first demonstrated how he uses the tools to separate and cut the glass and he suggested that we listen closely to the sounds the tools make as he moves them along the glass. The children were captivated by his engaging demonstration and you could have heard a pin drop as we listened and watched as he cut the colored green glass! Pop-Pop introduced the concept of patterns and showed the children a book of patterns that one may use if they wanted to create a particular picture such as an  animal or bird out of glass. We learned that the glass pieces fit together like a puzzle!  The children passed around small finished edge glass samples to touch and explore.

 All of the children had the opportunity to use the special glass cutting tools with Pop-Pop.  What a special experience!

 Kristina suggested a fun way for the children to become stained glass artists using tissue paper, paper frames and clear contact paper.  Kristina used decorative hole punchers to create shapes with colored tissue paper and the children  then covered the sticky paper with the tissue shapes. We were able to see how the daylight changed the colors and how beautiful our windows and classroom became after hanging them up. The children loved spending time with Stella's mom and Pop-Pop.  Connecting home and school and building community is most important to all of us.

We concluded our art visit with a walk to Upper School where we had the opportunity to see the beautiful stained glass installation that Pop-Pop made on Student Street that will stay at Abington Friends forever!

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