Good Afternoon!

Our welcome activity this morning was of the fine motor variety! This open ended activity calls for ice cube trays and colored gems.

For our younger friends, it focuses on basic fine motor skills, placing or transferring gems into each given slot in the ice cube tray.

Our older friends took it one step further by sorting the gems by size or by shape. Addi and Rosemary were having a conversation about the different colored gems. Rosemary said, “This one is smooth.” I asked if there were any pointy edges. She responded, “No!” which is where Addi chimed in and took a gem in her hand and showed Rosemary, “See? Right here. This pointy part of the gem. That’s no smooth.” Interactions like this between peers allows for deeper understanding and makes learning more meaningful!

The art area was buzzing this morning as children occupied the art table as well as the art easel. Daniel displayed his plane drawing skills while Calix worked on cutting paper using scissors. Elijah continued with the fine motor trend as he made his first official piece of art at the easel.

The top of the climbing house was a popular spot this morning. Elijah made it to the top all by himself on just his second day! He kept saying, “I’m not going to fall!”

In large group today, we continued to concentrate on our FAB for the week that talks about community helpers. Our focus today was firefighters! As a group, we had a lot of background knowledge including the following:

“They get cats out of trees!”

“They stop fires.”

“When we see a firetruck, we have to stop and go to that side.” (as he’s pointing to his side )

We built on this knowledge by reading two different stories that taught us more about what firefighters do on a daily basis. Here are a couple of things that we added to our previous knowledge:

-Firefighters live at the fire station sometimes!

-They HAVE to wear specific firefighter gear when they go to fight a fire.

-They’re heroes. (Real life heroes though, not pretend like Spiderman and superman.)

Breakfast– English muffins with no nut butter and grapes.

Lunch– Turkey and cream cheese on flatbread, PPC pineapple, and cherry tomatoes/cucumber.

PM snack– Triscuits and cheddar cheese.

Wee Sprout– Peppers.

Have a great night!

-Mindy

Link to pictures: WF 8/23