Reminder: On Thursday, Tami will be taking the older group of friends to the farm. Swimming as usual tomorrow.

From the dark to the light…..or nighttime to daytime…or home to school!

When the WF staff met with Allison Pascarella last month (Speech Therapist and whole child expert), she asked us, as adults: “What do you need to start your day just right?”. We shared our Just Right morning routines and our ‘must haves’ like coffee, nature, good books, a good breakfast etc. She asked us what happens to us if we aren’t able to perform this morning routine that helps us start the day just right. She shared with us a handout called “Sensory Processing: What Can Go Wrong?”. We studied concepts and examples of how kids discriminate ‘sensory input’. We talked about what they could see, hear, smell, touch and taste as they begin their days. We discussed how each child is different and has completely different sensory input. We wondered and discussed (many of us are parents, too!) how it’s possible to meet various sensorial needs at one time! We learned that a child’s transition to school begins the moment they open their eyes and start their day. 

 

We are very interested in how your Wee Friend’s morning (pre-WF) went and how we can help the transition from home to school continue on the “Just Right” path. We also have terrific workshops materials and books in our Parent Lending Library should you be interested! We hope our dialogue can continue a,s together, we work through that sometimes tricky morning transition.

The light of our day continued when we moved outside to harvest our carrots and green beans. Beautiful earth! Friends picked, plucked, scrubbed and rinsed all of the carrots from the garden.

When we came inside, Mel led friends to a still life art exploration, using the WF garden vegetables.

As always, friends worked together, but at a pace appropriate to their age and skill.

Lisa worked on counting and patterning math concepts with a new game.

We worked with a new set of multicultural dolls, first studying the differences, and then matching like clothes and skin color.

Under the habitrail, friends worked together to build an airplane. The work always begins with a hearty round of “What Gonna Work, Teamwork!” and today, the song lasted almost as long as it took this group of friends to build their structure.

After we figured out how to get the little elastic loop around our middle finger, we played our new castanets.

Our post-lunch large group time is going smoothly. It’s a time of day we rarely photograph, but will aspire to more often, as it is a rich and focused time of day for Wee Friends, before they settle into their nap/quiet time.

With the start of our new year, we begin our FABS again! Remember the Framework for Academic Balance? They are the neatly compiled literacy and math standards we use to assess and guide our preschoolers and our kindergartener. This week’s FABS are: Literacy: K.1.10 Say rhyming words in response to an oral prompt. Math: K.1.2: Compare sets of up to 10 objects and identify sets as equal, more than or less than. K.1.3: Know that larger numbers describe sets with larger numbers and smaller numbers, smaller sets.

Wee Sprouts: Carrots. Breakfast: Chex and watermelon. Lunch: Chicken and noodles, bananas and corn on the cob (thanks, Matt D.!). Snack: Goldfish and apple slices.

Have a lovely day.