PJ Party!

Our 3s have been discovering winter.  

As a celebration, they planned a hibernation party.

Everyone dressed in their PJs and snuggled up for a long winters nap...

More like hot chocolate, popcorn and movie!

It was  great day spent curled up with friends.

What a nice way to spend they day...

Warm Winter Wear

Our 2s have been exploring methods of staying warm in winter! 

We painted mittens...

Exercised by jumping over the candlestick...

Decorated warm hats...

and used scissors!

Staying warm with this sweet group is such a delight!

Building 3 Dimensional Snowmen

  Flat snowmen were fun, but these were too!  

Each set of partners received a tray of snow-doh (really cold) and beads.  

 The only other tool they needed was their hands! 

We discussed how circles are flat and spheres are fat.  

Their instruction was to work together to mold 3 spheres: 1 small, 1 medium, and 1 large.

Then stack them.  As you can see, each snowman was different, but the point was to make a sphere, so we loved the 4 sphere snowman just as much! 

Once complete, we moved around the classroom asking the children to place a certain number of buttons on their snowman.  

 

This was a neat way to work on our developing one-to-one correspondence!

We used beads, but real buttons would work too!

The best part is that you can do this together right at home, just mix up a batch of homemade play-doh, stick it in the refrigerator and have a blast!

Snowy Day Math

Want to have a really fun, really loud, really engaging math lesson?  

Well, just call for an indoor snowfall fight!

We balled up pieces of paper with numerals 1-20 written on them.  

Then we line up in 2 rows and throw them at each other!

Once you collect a snowball, you open and ready your numeral to the class! 

Later in the week we built snowmen!

We worked with partners to build the perfect snowman.

First you roll the dice, count the dots, and look to see which part you should draw.

You have to keep rolling until each part is drawn.  

For my preschoolers I find that it is nice to provide a very faint guide on their paper to help them organize their work (small, medium, and large circles), as spatial awareness is yet to completely develop for them.  

They draw the detail free-handed- of course!

This Is How We Paint...

Painting in preschool is one of the most popular activities that we offer.  It can also be a big mess!  It has taken some time and some trial and error, but we have finally refined our system so that painting is easy!  It no longer takes 1 teacher to keep the center open and going.  It is pretty much hands free for us, so that we can be engaged with other children  facilitating their play.  Here is how it works...

First, you sign up for a turn to paint.  The children are quite good at knowing whose turn it is next!

After their turn is over, their name is marked out and the next child is invited to paint.  Sometimes they are ready, sometimes they have found a different activity to do and pass their turn to the next in line.  

Then you put on your paint smock and get started creating your masterpiece

We try to get by while each child is painting and ask them about their piece.  We say things like, "Tell me about your painting".    We encourage them to talk about their work and share with us what they are thinking as they paint.   We are careful not to make assumptions about their work.  We also avoid comments like, "It is pretty".  Instead we talk about the colors they use and the brush strokes they employ.  

When your turn is over, it is your job to wash hands and contact the next person on the list.  Then you help them put on their smock and get started painting.  A teacher does take the wet painting off, but the children get new paper.  We haven't found a safe way for the children to transport dripping wet paper across the classroom yet!

Painting can be a community project.  

I love to see the children sharing ideas and even colors.  T didn't have a color on his side of the easel that he needed (black), so he just borrowed it from K's side!

When the day is done, and we reflect on center time, we share our work. 

 Here T is telling the group all about his painting.  The children love to ask the artist questions about how they created the piece and the artist LOVES the spotlight!

We find that the sharing part of the process encourages the artist to think about and plan their work.  They know that there will be questions about the process and tools that they used. 

Pass the Peas, Please!

This week our 2s learned the nursery rhyme, Peas Porridge Hot. 

We discussed how winter is a nice time to warm up with a nice cup of hot soup.

We counted together,shared opposites, and played a fun game of "peas in the pot".

During centers, we explored with some pots and pans. 

We noticed that the size of the pot really made a difference in the sound that was made when we tapped it.

We used the words small, medium, and large when we compared size.

We used  metal spoons, plastic spoons, and a spatula to make lots of noise with our pots and pans.  

We also explored with some real peas.  

We taught the boys and girls how to be safe with the peas (not putting them in their ears or noses) and then we closely monitored them as they played.   

One of the benefits of sticking to one center and staying in that place for quite some time is that you really get to see how each child, or group of children, approach the learning tools in their environment,   You get to see how they play and work together.

I noticed this little group of girls had a pretty cool system for filling a large plastic container that they had gotten from the dramatic play area.  They clearly thought that the marshmallow jar would be better served as jar for peas! 

P (in pink) spooned peas into the blue bowl that Z (in white) is holding.  Then Z poured her blue bowl into the bigger jar.

What a great display of teamwork, persistence, planning, and organizing.

How lucky are we to work with such a great group of kids?!?

Here is a blog post from one of my favorites in the field of Early Childhood Education on the benefits of play with small items like peas, and how children are building pre-writing skills when they engage in activities like these.  She focuses on rice, which is great, because it is easily available and can be played with right on the floor in the kitchen!

Building Pre-Writing Skills in a Bowl of Rice (or peas!)

Hot Chocolate for Sale!

Today was our first day back to preschool, following our Christmas vacation.  

I do hate to take down the Christmas decorations in the dramatic play area, but it has to be done so that we can do more fun things-like open a Hot Chocolate stand!

That is exactly what we did today.  We opened the SDS Hot Chocolate Shop!

We scooped "marshmallows"...

We found good reasons to write: to take orders, to write out a bill, to write checks...

We helped each other sound out words to make a sign.

The sign said, "Hot Chocolate for Sale".  

The sign became part of a traveling hot chocolate stand! The creativity and imagination that is alive in these children simply amazes me.  I placed cups, white pompoms, plastic spoons, straws, empty hot chocolate boxes, pens and paper and aprons in the dramatic play area, and look what they did!

They talked to each other, they engaged in extended, meaningful play, they purposefully worked with pens and paper, they interacted with numbers on the cash register, they measured and poured, stirred and mixed, improvised, solved their own problems, exercised their small muscles, and used their brains!

Speaking of improvising... there was only one waitress tray. Not a problem for my thinkers!  A just took the lid off of the train set and made her own tray.  Now, there are times when I purposefully limit the supplies to encourage sharing, however, this wasn't one of them. It does go to show you what children are capable of when you teach them to compromise, think, and improvise and then provide them with opportunities to practice the skills!

 

No one really curled up next to the "fire" to sip coco, but they accepted many of my other invitations to play and extended the play in directions that I had not even anticipated.  

I sure do love to see preschoolers writing for fun!