Good Afternoon!

This morning we were engaged in a variety of activities.  Eliza was reading a book to her baby doll, Ben dressed-up in a shirt, Charlotte explored the face of her baby doll and Eleanor made some toast.

We then engaged with the object permanence boxes working on our fine motor skills to place the ball or coin in the hole or slot.

We then built with Magna-Tiles.  We built something that was big enough to place our animals or Little People inside.

We then headed outside to enjoy the sunshine while engaging in our favorite activities.  We rode on the teeter totters, rode bikes down the hill and in the sandbox, we rode the dump truck and scooped the sand.

Breakfast: Peanut butter on toasted whole grain wheat bread and fresh apple slices.

Lunch: Whole wheat penne pasta with black beans, fresh orange slices, and fresh Roma tomatoes.

Afternoon Snack: Whole milk yogurt and Roma tomatoes.

Wee Sprouts: Yellow bell peppers.

Have a great evening!

Rebekah and Jena

Link to pictures: 2024-02-05

Good Afternoon!

This week in PREK1, one of the FAB’s that we’ll be exploring deals with text genres! Today, we read ‘The Day The Crayons Quit’ which quickly lead into a conversation about how it’s a fiction book because, “Crayons can’t talk!” and “Crayons can’t write letters!”. Throughout the week, we’ll dive into each text genre and explore what each genre offers.

K.RL.3.1: Recognize familiar narrative text genres (e.g. fiction, nonfiction, fairytales, and poems).

This morning we enjoyed a loose parts welcome activity.  The activity encouraged sorting and matching, but was open ended to allow for imaginative play.  Several friend found the matching rings and wanted to sort and organize by color.  Others wanted create an imaginative game around it.  Some friends pretended the pieces were little people…or in one case bunnies… and the buttons were their plates.  Some built little homes for them from the wood trays.

We all are enjoying the fresh warm unseasonable air!  We spent lots of time outdoors this morning!

PREK2: We talked about emotions during group time, anger in particular.  We talked about our favorite ways to get ourselves back to feeling calm and safe.

Breakfast– Whole wheat toast with peanut butter and fresh oranges.

Lunch– Whole wheat pasta with shredded beef and fresh tomatoes, fresh pineapple/apple, and fresh carrots/tomatoes/pepper.

PM snack– Whole milk yogurt with

Wee Sprout– Fresh carrots/tomatoes/pepper.

Have a wonderful night.

-Wee Friends Teachers

Link to pictures: 2024-02-05

Happy Friday!

Today we celebrated Ben’s 2nd birthday! Happy birthday Ben!

Enjoy some pictures from our day!

Breakfast: Whole grain brown rice cakes with peanut butter and fresh pear slices.

Lunch: All natural deli turkey on whole wheat tortilla, fresh apples slices, and yellow bell pepper.

PM Snack: Frozen banana bites half-dipped in semi-sweet chocolate, pretzels and mozzarella cheese stick.

Wee Sprout: Cucumber.

Have a great weekend!

~ Jena and Amanda

Link to Pictures: 2024-02-02

Happy Friday!

We wrapped up our week in PREK1 by doing a search throughout the classroom for specific shapes in our environment. As children came to the board, they flipped up their notecard to find what shape they had to find and in what room they had to find it in! Here are a few shapes we found: a square window in habitrail, a circle lazy Susan in the kitchen, and a circle checker in science area!

K.G.2: Compare shapes using informal language to describe their similarities, different, and parts (e.g. number of sides, length of sides, and vertices).

Enjoy the pictures from a fantastic Friday.

Breakfast– Brown rice cakes with peanut butter and fresh pears.

Lunch– Turkey on whole wheat bread, fresh pears/oranges, and fresh pepper/cucumber/carrot.

PM snack– Goldfish and string cheese.

Wee Sprout– Fresh pepper/carrot/cucumber.

Have a lovely weekend.

-Wee Friends Teachers

Link to pictures: 2024-02-02

Good Afternoon!

Reminders:

1. Conference Scheduling Forms are due TOMORROW, FRIDAY FEBRUARY 2nd.

2. Pre-Conference Form (yellow form) is due Friday, February 9th.

3. Re-enrollment Form + fee is due March 1st—> early submission of form and fee by Friday, February 16 for discount rate!

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Good afternoon everyone!

Today we worked on a group activity that fell somewhere between shape building an ephemeral artwork.  We covered the table with a variety of  line drawn shapes.  We added very tactile glass beads to the table for our friends to use to create mosaic like art work.  Some chose to sort the beads into colors, others wanted to get as many beads onto a shape as possible, others said they would only be using rainbow colors in their creation 

After the activity some friends colored and drew on the large shape filled paper.  They wanted to save certain shapes so the project became a fine motor exercise in using scissors to dismantle the enormous paper into take home sized pieces!

PREK2:  During group we read the story “Ruby Has a Worry”.  We talked about worries we each had at the beginning.  After we read the story we remembered that Ruby had made her worry shrink away by talking about the worry with a friend.

Breakfast: Chex cereal with apple slices

Lunch: Brown Rice with beef and fresh clemintines, apples, carrots and cucumbers

PM Snack: whole wheat crackers with peanut butter and seeds in top

Wee Sprouts: Red bell peppers and cucumber slices

Link to Phots:2024-02-01

Enjoy the evening!

~Wee Friends Teachers

Happy Sunny Thursday!

This morning Ben and Eliza engaged in building towers with the Lego Duplo’s and Dax was using the bulldozer to “push the people.”

We then engaged in the kitchen with the wooden loose part shapes and animals.  We were busy stacking and sorting our shapes on our tray.  Eden and Eleanor enjoyed exploring the different animals they had on their trays.

It has been a long time since we made it outside in the morning!  We enjoyed the feel of the bright sunshine on our faces as we played in the little house, went down the slide, walked around and observed and dug in the rock area.

Breakfast: Chex cereal with fresh orange slices.

Lunch: Whole grain brown rice with shredded turkey, fresh yellow bell peppers and fresh apple slices.

PM Snack:  Wheat Thins crackers and Pepita seeds.

Wee Sprout: Fresh Roma tomatoes.

Have a great evening!

~Rebekah and Jena

Link to pictures: 2024-02-01

Good Afternoon!

For PREK1 sign in, children were asked to come to the sign in board where we talked about how the author and illustrator of a story work together so that the author’s words and illustrator’s pictures match. I gave children two illustrations from the book and they told me what was happening. Then, I read two different paragraphs from the book and they had to match the words to the correct illustration.

K.RL.4.1: Describe the relationship between illustrations and the story in which they appear.

After reading, ‘The Invisible Boy’ in PREK1 group, each child got a laminated card and a set of shape blocks. They used the shape blocks to build a new shape. For example, Nesta was given one hexagon and three small triangles. She had to use those four shapes to make a larger triangle.

K.G.4: Compose simple geometric shapes to form larger shapes (e.g. create a rectangle composed of two triangles).

We continued work on our group shape painting that we have been making as a process over a couple of days.  We are using classroom objects that we use every day.  We are seeing them in new ways as we use them as stamps and focus on the shapes they are made of.  We started with a layer of circles yesterday.  Today we created squares, rectangles and triangles.  We used trio blocks, bristle blocks and Legos which we usually use for building and might not normally recognize as a sum of shapes.  We noticed how the trio blocks made rectangles, but within that shape we could see circles and squares.  The Legos made circles within rectangles and even the triangular bristle blocks were made up of tiny circles.  It was a an exercise in finding shapes within shapes, thinking creatively about the use of objects and observation.

We worked on other activities throughout the classroom using shapes.  Amelia particularly like a shape matching activity.  She enjoyed coloring the shapes herself and then matching the buttons to the correct shapes.  At the light table we used squares to see what imaginative configurations we could come up with using them.  There was a magic house that could talk when its square doors and window were opened.  We had a trick shape mixed in and friends had to guess why triangles would be part of a square activity.  Many of us found that it was because two triangles make a square!

PREK2 Group: read the story “Cool Down Calm Down” and picked one calming strategy they would choose to try.

Breakfast– Whole grain oatmeal with cinnamon and fresh clementines.

Lunch– Farm fresh scrambled eggs with whole wheat bread, fresh clementines/apples, and fresh carrots/pepper.

PM snack– Air popped popcorn with butter and raisins.

Wee Sprout– Fresh cucumber/pepper.

Have a great night!

-Wee Friends Teachers

Link to pictures: 2024-01-31

Happy Wednesday!

Today we….

felt the textures of the stepping circles and liquid squares with our hands and feet…

built with wooden hollow blocks while singing the Happy Birthday song…

observed the fish swimming around in the tank…

and manipulated playdough while some of us made birthday cakes and added golf tees (candles) to it.

Breakfast:  Overnight Oatmeal with cinnamon/sugar mixture and fresh pineapple/mandarin oranges.

Lunch:  Farm fresh scrambled eggs with shredded cheese,

Afternoon Snack:  Refried beans and blue corn tortilla chips.

Wee Sprout:  Cucumbers.

Have a wonderful evening!

Rebekah and Jena

Link to pictures: 2024-01-31

Good Afternoon!

This morning was full of music and movement.  We danced with our dancing scarves to a song called, Put Your Finger in the Air by Greg and Steve.  Miss Bekah then got the rhythm sticks out and we tapped them as we marched around the front circle to Ants Go Marching.  We then did the motions to Listen and Move by Greg and Steve and listened for the sound that went with the specific movement.

We then were busy creating our own musical sounds on the pianos and xylophones.

After moving our bodies for a while, we sat and looked at a book or engaged with a baby doll.

Breakfast:  Corn Chex cereal with avocado.

Lunch: Peanut butter on whole grain wheat tortillas, peas, fresh orange slices and block cheddar cheese slices.

Afternoon Snack:  Whole grain cinnamon raisin bagels with cream cheese and fresh pineapple.

Wee Sprout:  Yellow bell peppers.

Have a terrific evening!

Rebekah and Jena

Link to pictures: 2024-01-30

Good Afternoon!

Children scurried up to sign in where they found their name attached to a card. They flipped the card over and were given a shape they had to build using smaller shapes. For example, William was given six small green triangles and he had to use them to build a hexagon.

During PREK1 group, we read ‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs’ and documented the titled, author, and illustrator on our chart.

K.RL.3.2: Define the role of the author and illustrator of a story in telling the story.

K.G.4: Compose simple geometric shapes to form larger shapes (e.g. create a rectangle composed of two triangles).

A group art project was started at the art table using circles and paint! Children took turns adding to the group painting. A variety of jars, cups, and tubes were made available that all left different sized circle marks on the paper which turned into a beautiful collective art piece. Throughout the week, we’ll continue to add to our collective piece of art by working with different shapes. We’re excited to see what shape is next!

We brought out the light table to use this morning and children instantly flocked to it. A collection of various sized triangles were made available and immediately, children started creating things using simple shapes. Hannah created an image of her mom using only triangles! A few younger kids sorted the shapes based on size while also sorting by color.

Breakfast– Whole grain cheerios with fresh clementines.

Lunch– Peanut butter on whole wheat flatbread, block cheddar cheese, fresh pineapple/clementines, and fresh carrots/cucumber.

PM snack– Whole wheat bagel with cream cheese.

Wee Sprout– Fresh cucumber/pepper.

Have a wonderful night.

-Wee Friends Teachers

Link to pictures: 2024-01-30