WF, 11/2/2018 | Wee Friends Early Childhood Program LLC

Happy Friday!

K/PREK1 read a story titled ‘The Tale of Two Beasts’ which has two main characters and they each get to tell their side of the story which is completely different! We talked about the narrator of each story as there were two different versions of the same story.

Afterwards, we looked at the three circle that were drawn on the chalkboard. I read the words, ‘banana’, ‘blueberry’, and ‘grape’. Friends immediately started shouting words like ‘apple’ or ‘watermelon’. We quickly discovered that only fruits go into this circle. A friend said ‘rice’ and I asked if that fit. Several friends said, “No! That’s not a fruit”. So after talking about it, we decided to put it outside of the circle. We did the same thing with the next two circles as we talked about the relationship of the words in each circle.

K.RV.2.2: Identify and sort pictures of objects into categories (e.g., colors, shapes, opposites).

PREK2 used their prior knowledge about shapes to answer the question, “What shape isn’t part of this group?”. Children counted the sides of each shape and determined that the yellow square did not fit because the rest of the shapes were all a type of triangle!

“Did you know that the right brain develops first? It does so by the time children are 3-4 years of age. The left brain, on the other hand, doesn’t fully come online until children are approximately seven years old; hence the first seven years being recognized as such a critical period in child development.”

Wee Friends teachers were given a few articles to read last and I’ve made a few copies and put them on the island of an article that I found quite interesting! It talks about the left and right side of the brain and what expectations are appropriate for developing children around this age. The author, Vince Gowmon, says “The push for academia on children is a symptom of a society that is left brain dominant, or forgetful of the wonderful playground that is the right brain.”

I found this information especially interesting as I was connecting the information in the article compared to what we expect of children at Wee Friends on a daily basis. Children in PREK2 and K/PREK1 journal groups are at varying ability levels when it comes to ‘writing’ or ‘kid spelling’ or even ‘letter identification’. What we expect for each child is widely different and how we approach we learning situation with each child is unique.

Feel free to grab a copy of the article titled, ‘The Right Brain Develops First- Why Play is the Foundation for Academic Learning’ which is on the island Smile .