Our theme of Rainbows, this week, included some color explorations and painting experiments. We continued to sing our "Rainbow Round Me" song, and also read the books
Little Blue and Little Yellow, and
Little Smudge which are about colors and friendships and getting along. We have noticed some engaging new interactions occurring during free choice time particularly when there's building going on.
If you can imagine, when a child has begun working on a structure and others begin to add to it, it's difficult to give up the "that's MY building" to make room for others. We talk about the fact that, when you're home, you can sometimes have a box or a toy that no one else is allowed to play with or touch, but at school, it's time to learn to let others join in, because there are so many children ! At the same time, it's important to ask the building children before you move their blocks around. No one likes to be told what to do, and when we ask respectfully everything works out so well!
Our comforter job has begun to be important to a child who is tearful or needs help getting over a difficulty. Today the comforter said "When is someone going to get hurt ?" and when asked why, she said "I want to do my job!"
We have also noticed a great deal of interest in fine motor exploration, early writing experiments, and "reading" time with books. This is exciting to us that it's happening so early in the school year. The children are absolutely in control of making choices in the classroom. We don't sit them down and say "Now we are going to practice cutting with scissors" but we do offer exciting tools, paper, and lots of space for making choices. The children aren't given a worksheet or a picture to copy, but they are offered journals and enticing scented markers every day and have been filling up their pages with pictures and telling stories from them. Our book shelf is always open, and during some transition times we suggest that the children look at a book.
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| these pictures were from a series of moments with a growing number of children as they made taller and taller peg towers together and then counted them up! |
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| Pride in accomplishment! |
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| muffin making! |
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| a rainbow in a jar-this was a listening and looking activity-not easy for a hands on sort of class, but they listened and looked as well as they could! |
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| PE outside! |
Until Next Time,
Michele
