Please note: Wee Friends is closed this Friday, March 25 for Good Friday.

Our friends loved the sensory kitchen activity this morning! Moon sand is soft and somewhat moldable. They loved running their hands through it and using the tools in the bin to scoop, pour, and sift.

Anna’s family photos were added to our growing photo albums today. She was so excited to look at them and to show everyone else “Anna banana’s family!” Our friends take out the photo albums everyday to look through!

Breakfast was whole wheat toast with butter and cinnamon and bananas. Lunch consisted of homemade French toast casserole, pears, and peas. Afternoon snack was wheat crackers with hummus.

Have a great night!

Amanda

Link to photos:  https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=A58B8C61670EC2D4!83335&authkey=!AA5_Bieb_LHxgK4&ithint=folder%2cJPG

Today children immediately gravitated to one of our newest materials—a bunch of tiny chairs. There are 8 different chair designs and friends arranged the chairs in various arrangements both by color and style.

After arranging the chairs in the way they wanted, they started seating the audience of Little People. This was a group effort and it took a lot of time to get everyone seated. After putting the audience together, they decided to put on a show for them!

Lots of building happened in the habitrail area today. After playing with the small car ramps, Addi and Jackson decided to build a BIG ramp! This took lots of communication and trial and error, but eventually they ended up with a very long ramp for cars.

Today the Wee Friends also practiced their rhythm by tapping wooden sticks along to a variety of songs. We love getting to sing, dance and move! 

Outside, Ms. Melinda led friends in a garden activity to repot some flowers. Children took turns filling the new pots with soil, and then we replanted the plants. Our gardening season is almost here! Look out for more information about helping with our garden soon.

Now our plants have new homes!

Wee Sprouts: Pea pods. Breakfast: Hot wheat cereal with fresh pears. Lunch: French toast casserole made with whole wheat bread and farm fresh eggs, tomatoes/cucumbers, and oranges/bananas. Snack: Refried beans and blue corn chips.

Link to the photo album: WF 3/23/2016

See you for PJ Day tomorrow! –Jessica

We love our story area of the classroom and spend a great deal of the day there! Reading to toddlers sets the foundation for later independent reading. When you read to your toddler, you help them to learn about new words and concepts, learn letters, and learn about the way the printed word works.

Our friends and a few of the Wee Friends spotted each other through the door while we were outside, much to the delight of Anna, Ruby, and David. There was a few giggly minutes spent making funny faces through the glass. Then our Wee Friends joined us outside and we all enjoyed the fresh air together!

Breakfast was Whole Grain Cheerios and bananas. Wee sprouts was corn. Lunch consisted of whole wheat tortilla with hummus, pears, and corn. Afternoon snack was brown rice cakes with cream cheese.

Have a great night!

Amanda

Link to photos:https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=A58B8C61670EC2D4!83200&authkey=!AIoMcAQcrZ0Ka7Y&ithint=folder%2cJPG

Good Afternoon!

There was an activity that was made available at the table this morning when our Wee Friends arrived!

We worked with looms and ties. This activity allowed for differing developmental levels to participate! For our little friends, they worked on securing the ties anywhere on the loom along with working on their fine motor skills. Our older friends took the ties and stringed them in a specific way. Each child had a clear cut objective and end result that they were striving for!

We received a new set of toys that we introduced today: a LOT of tiny chairs. We brainstormed how to use them and we’ve come up with a few things so far. The most popular idea is using them with the little people. “Of course the little people need chairs too,” said a Wee Friend!

Dominos were requested this morning that led to lessons on spatial recognition as well as talking about numbers.

Maddie took the dominos and stood them up on the table. She quickly found out that the dominos were very fragile so she talked to herself about how she was going to space the dominos to build a house. Self talk and problem solving at its finest!

She later took the dominos and started pairing them up using the numbers that were shown on the domino. If she had a domino that had ‘2’ dots, she found another one with ‘2’ dots and put them together. Peers later joined to work on their 1-1 correspondence by counting the dots on each domino.

Wee Sprouts– Cherry tomatoes.

Breakfast-Kix and strawberries.

Lunch– Hummus on tortillas, peppers/snap peas, and apples/banana.

PM Snack– English muffins with cream cheese.

Have a terrific afternoon!

-Mindy

Link to pictures: WF 3/22

Anna asked to paint this morning, so we all headed into the kitchen and did just that. Our friends used their fingers, paintbrushes, a variety of paint colors, and fine motor skills to create their masterpieces! Using crayons, makers, and paintbrushes helps children practice the fine motor control they will need for writing later on.

While Ruby and Maggie were looking through the transparent colored stackers, Franklin was doing the same thing with the colored tissues! Maggie and Ruby were eager to try all the different colors. Franklin held the tissue over his face, then pulled it down quickly and yelled “boo!”

Breakfast was whole wheat toast with butter and pears. Lunch consisted of whole wheat pasta with shredded chicken, apples, and corn. Afternoon snack was organic whole milk yogurt and crackers.

Have a great night!

Amanda

Link to photos: https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=A58B8C61670EC2D4!83069&authkey=!AHXsrVLo7l7yH1w&ithint=folder%2cJPG

*Reminders: Pajama Day is this Thursday, March 24th! In addition, WF will be closed on Friday, March 25th for Good Friday.

Today started off with several rounds of UNO. This card game naturally promotes number recognition and taking turns. Many of the children were able to follow the rules of the game or understand directions such as “put down a red card or a number 4.” We also counted the number of cards we had in our hands each round!

Eren asked for the “ramp things” to be brought up from the basement. After determining what exactly he meant by “ramp things,” these toy ramps and corresponding cars were added to the environment. Children spent lots of time exploring them today—having races and making sounds to match the cars’ movement!

The art table was also filled with activity today. Lately, the most-asked for art material is the sequins! Friends compared their sequin shapes, negotiated trades of popular sequins, and used glue to place their sequins in a variety of patterns.

Elizabeth incorporated her sequins into a pop-card she made for someone special in her life!

Kindergarten: In kindergarten today we began working on one of this week’s FABs, K.NS.3: Find the number that is one more than or one less than any whole number up to 20. We played a version of war/memory aptly called “one more, one less.” Each player picks up a card from the deck and then tries to find a card that is either one more or one less. The tricky part is that all the cards are turned over! This game provided ample opportunity for discussions about greater than/less than and a chance to practice finding numbers one more than or one less than quickly.

Wee Sprouts: Carrots. Breakfast: Whole wheat English muffin with cream cheese and fresh apples. Lunch: Whole wheat pasta with chicken, mixed vegetables and fresh oranges. Snack: Organic whole milk yogurt and grapes.

Link to the photo album: WF 3/21/2016

Have a great day! –Jessica

Please note: Wee Friends is closed 3/25 for Good Friday.

Also, we may have another stomach bug going around. Symptoms are diarrhea, loss of appetite, and low fever. 

We hope you have a great weekend and enjoy the photos!

Breakfast was Cheerios and bananas. Lunch consisted of whole wheat bread with hummus, bananas, and carrots. Afternoon snack was pretzels with string cheese.

Have a good night!

Amanda

Link to photos: https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=A58B8C61670EC2D4!82890&authkey=!ACUBz1Tj98Ggq9I&ithint=folder%2cJPG

Happy Friday! Today Wee Friends has been filled with art and music. Throughout our day children have gathered at the art table to work on a variety of creations made with paper and markers. Some students scribbled and drew in developmentally appropriate pre-writing, while others worked on their kid-spelling. Whatever their work was, they took pride in creating something all on their own!

Luke and Rosemary gathered at the piano to explore both the keys and piano music. They relished the sounds they made, both soft and loud. Next step—to work on using gentle fingers versus heavy hands to play the piano! 

Ms. Melinda also led a large group of friends in song and dance. Children of all ages did the hokey pokey with great enthusiasm!

Head, shoulders, knees and toes was also a popular song. We love getting to move our bodies around inside! Songs like these are great for working on body awareness and following directions.

Kindergarten: Today’s kindergarten activity was a natural extension of what our students were already working on/interested in. Several friends were interested in wrestling in habitrail and knew that they needed a teacher to supervise this activity. Before this could begin, however, we talked about the rules we would need to agree on before wrestling. Elizabeth eagerly spearheaded this project and got paper and pencil to write down everyone’s ideas for rules. Together the children kid-spelled all of their rules, ranging from “no biting” to “sta on rg” (stay on rug). Next, we hung up the rules in the back for easy reference during our gross motor movement!

Wee Sprouts: Cucumbers. Breakfast: Brown rice cakes with no-nut butter and bananas. Lunch: Whole wheat tortillas with hummus, fresh broccoli/cauliflower, and bananas/pears. Snack: Cottage cheese and pears/oranges.

Link to the photo album: WF 3/18/2016

Have a great weekend! –Jessica

We had such a great morning outside! There was bike riding, climbing, running, and playing in the pebbles and sand. Our friends love their outside time and we love watching them have fun!

Breakfast was toast with butter and oranges. Wee sprouts was green beans. Lunch consisted of whole grain brown rice with cheese, bananas, and green beans. Afternoon snack was rice cakes with sweet pea butter.

Have a great night!

Amanda

Link to photos: https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=A58B8C61670EC2D4!82755&authkey=!AHZENxFBqnU0Dyc&ithint=folder%2cJPG

 

 

Kindergarten: The kindergartener’s sign-in this morning was a little more involved than usual. Their task: write down a recipe for Irish Soda Bread. Daniel joined in on the kid-spelling and he, Elliott and Elizabeth took turns writing ingredients. Many words and their letters were heard, such “flr” for flour, “shgr” for sugar and “sat” for salt. After they finished writing down the recipe, they counted the number of ingredients!

 

Next, many Wee Friends accepted the invitation to come make Irish Soda bread. We took turns measuring and pouring ingredients while often checking our recipe to see what we needed to add to our dough next.

Elizabeth had the idea to make our bread in the shape of a shamrock. The final result was delicious!

Outside, many friends worked together to fill up a variety of buckets with rocks. Their goal—to build a house! It was a very involved process with many friends working in the same space simultaneously.

Here, Elliott outlines the plan for the house in sand:

Wee Sprouts: Carrots. Breakfast: Whole grain Cheerios and fresh apples. Lunch: Whole grain brown rice with quinoa and shredded beef, broccoli/cauliflower/carrots, and bananas/oranges. Snack: Homemade apple crisp and Irish soda bread.

Link to the photo album: WF 3/17/2016

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! –Jessica