Pizza Restaurant II

The pizza restaurant and pizza art continued in full swing this week! We made pizzas of all sorts with paper, paint, stamps, dot paints, and crayons. We saw some pizza restaurant set up happening as the children set welcoming tables complete with menu, plates, and napkins!

We encourage children to bring in books from home and are happy to sit and read individually or with a group. 

 We have morning meeting every day in the classroom. The there are a lot of responsibilities that the children take on in order for our meeting to happen smoothly. There is someone to lead  the "breathing" to settle us into our group. Another child sends around a "greeting" which is sometimes the gentle sharing of "something little" which they then identify when it returns to them. A child looks out the window and talks about the weather, putting the peg onto the weather picture that describes it best, and finally, a child dictates a message which is read to the rest of the group, complete with illustrations and questions at the end. We sometimes ask the children "what do we need for this to be a well -run meeting?" and there are many expert answers!

We painted a giant pizza in the room this week! This project involved collaboration and cooperation as paint was applied to all spots on the pizza, then paper "cheese," "peppers," and "pepperoni" were sprinkled on, with a little glitter to finish. When the large pizza was dry, we gathered to cut the pizza into enough slices for everyone!

Free choice time gives the children a chance to form strong relationships based on interest and imagination. The room is set up so that independent choices can be made, and there is always room for more than one child in a space. 

 Sometimes the children take a center to a new level, as in this instance when a child used the take out containers to pack nicely balanced lunches, and served one to a friend with a glitter bottle "juice" chaser.

The children see the teachers with cameras in front of their faces, and we've stocked the dress up area with used cameras....and so the children take pictures of the teachers!

Until Next Time,
Michele

READ ACROSS AMERICA DAY!

RAAD is a big day in the PreK classroom, as well in our whole school! We arrive dressed up in costumes, read books together, and visit a puppet show. We had a visit from Sylvie Kantorovitz, a local author/illustrator of children's books. She read from her book Zig and the Magic Umbrella  and drew a funny picture for us. We love celebrating OUR love of reading!

Until Next Time,
Michele

Pizza Restaurant!

Setting up a Pizza Restaurant in our classroom allows us the space and time to play with social roles in the community, communication skills, dramatic play situations, and also some baking. We visit the pizza theme in our artwork; with  color, creating layers, and shapes (lots of circles). We sing some funny pizza songs, and read books about pizza and restaurants and grocery stores, most notably Pete's a Pizza  by William Steig, a classic that has a father pretending to make his son into a pizza. The children bring pizza boxes and paper pizzas into the dress up area, call each other on the classroom "phones", and have even been making pizzas on their own with paper and markers and scissors, which they then add to the collection.  There's a lot of agency and action in our classroom!

 "Down around the corner in the pizza shop there were 10 pizzas, pepperoni on top! Along came ________with a penny in her hand and she took ______pizza and away she ran! " We sing this song together and each child has a chance to count up how many pizzas they will be taking and how many will be left.

Until Next Time,
Michele