Another very busy day at WWF! Our morning began with an interesting and brand new art project. Lisa prepared some bowls with paint and gave the children long pieces of string and a sheet of paper. They dipped the string in the paint and dropped it on the paper several times making very interesting curvy lines. They also tried rubbing and rolling the string on the paper getting different effects.

Some children spent time outside planting tomatoes with Amy. They dug up the dirt using shovels and gently placed tomato starters in. These plants grew out of the seeds we had planted with the children earlier in the spring. Our garden is starting look like one!

While outside today we made lots of music. This week we have added a new song in Spanish that goes like this:

Dos manitas, diez deditos,

Dos manitas, diez deditos,

Dos manitas, diez deditos,

Dos manitas, diez deditos son.

Uno, dos y tres deditos,

Cuatro , cinco y seis deditos,

Cinco, seis y siete deditos,

Ocho, nueve y diez deditos son!

(to the same tune of “one, two and three little fingers”).

Today we had our first try to have a lunch helper. We are hoping to have one child per week who would like to help us setting up the table and preparing the food for their friends. Today and tomorrow will be Umi’s turn. We are excited!

Among the teachers we have been discussing about our role as teacher in “learning through play”. As teachers it is essential to be able to recognize a “teaching moment” and approach it the right way. We are excited about a new tool we have found, and would like to share with you.

When children play we want to watch and look for signs that will tell us we are being invited to play with them. Sometimes these are as subtle as a gentle gaze at you or as clear as taking your hand and saying “come play with me”. The key here is to do it with respect and honoring the intentions and level of sophistication of their play. We have found the following acronym to be helpful.

“Approach play with SOUL”

Silent

Observe

Understand what is going on, and

Listen

Have a wonderful day!!! We? We have SOUL!!!!

Paulina, Lisa and Amy

P.S Sometimes technology gets us and Wednesday our blog post was saved as a draft and never posted!!! So here it is, better now than never!

Despite the clouds and light drizzle this morning, we made our own sunshine inside this morning. Miss Lisa did some fun farm cards with our friends. We identified the animal and the sound it makes, and did some discussion on our farm trip. We worked on individual collages this morning. As we picked different objects (tissue paper, gift
wrap, cotton balls, etc). We talked about the texture, its size and color.

Miss Amy had some avid gardners outside. Things are beginning to sprout! For lunch we had cheese tortillas, mixed vegetables, and

fruit salad. We look forward to more outside time this afternoon.

Have a great day! Regards, Lisa, Paulina, Marty and Amy