Good Afternoon.
Please enjoy the pictures of our day!
Breakfast: Whole grain Chex cereal with banana.
Lunch: Whole grain brown rice with shredded chicken, mixed veggies and apples.
Snack: Pumpkin seeds and Whole wheat Triscuit crackers.
Have a wonderful night! We will see you all at conferences tomorrow. 
Marty
LINK TO PICTURES: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtTCDmdhjIulj7NUzeYju6hbdMfbPQ?e=TKaaoQ
Good Afternoon. What a beautiful sunny day.
PLEASE NOTE: WE ARE CLOSED FRIDAY FEBRUARY 21, 2020 FOR OUR ANNUAL PARENT-TEACHER CONFERENCES. WE LOOK FORWARD TO TALKING WITH YOU ALL.
Boy, did we luck out today?!?! We were able to see a really cool digger truck doing all kinds of neat stuff to the neighbors sidewalk. It was absolutely fascinating to us all. When they got all done digging, we saw they made a huge hole in the sidewalk. We were all so very amazed seeing that huge hole!!
We then were even more excited when teachers got out the trampoline. We had a wonderful time getting our bodies in motion. 
Breakfast: Whole grain oatmeal with raw honey and apples.
Lunch: Farm fresh scrambled eggs, whole wheat butter toast, peas and apples and clementine’s.
Snack: Refried beans and blue corn chips.
Wee Sprouts: Peppers.
Have a glorious evening.
Marty
LINK TO PICTURES: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtTCDmdhjIulj7M0v-FoZYiINNVKLA?e=yqvHCO
Happy Wednesday!
Enjoy a few pictures from our day!
Breakfast– Whole grain oatmeal with honey and fresh blackberries.
Lunch– Farm fresh scrambled eggs with whole wheat tortilla, fresh apples, and fresh cherry tomatoes/carrots.
PM snack– Air popped popcorn with butter and fresh blackberries.
Wee Sprout– Fresh cherry tomatoes/carrots.
Have a lovely night!
-Mindy
Link to pictures: WF 2/19
Good Afternoon!
Chloe picked ‘Lady and the Tramp’ to read during K/PREK1 which is a story that we hadn’t read in group before! Before I started reading, we observed the front cover to look at the illustration to see what the story may be about.
Throughout they story, a few friends shared what comes next since they had read the story before. This is a simple way to evaluate children’s comprehension. For example, if your child has a favorite book at home, ask them some questions before or during your reading at night. A few suggestions would be:
“Can you tell me a little about the characters that are in this story that you remember?”
“After the aunt kicks Lady out of the house, can you tell me what happens next?”
We completed calendar before heading to the art table to journal. During our calendar session today, we focused on several aspects including the month and day of the week.
K.M.2: Understand concepts of time, including: morning, afternoon, evening, today, yesterday tomorrow, day, week, month, and year. Understand that clocks and calendars are tools that measure time.
In PREK2, children read ‘Born to Read’ with Miss Kim. Afterwards, they identified four different events that occurred and worked together to place them in the correct order in which they happened.
Magnatile creations sprung up left and right as children worked together or by themselves to build a variety of towers, houses, and zoos. The magnets played a huge part of their experience because as Franklin was building, he didn’t want his triangles to connect to one another but they kept coming together as the magnets were too strong. He had to use trial and error to see how he could complete his creation without the magnets being attracted to each other.
We’ve seen a variety of children frequent the art table this week. Our older friends have taken on the role as ‘teacher’ during this time as children are asking one another about drawings, letters, and sounds that they have questions on.
Multi-age classrooms have numerous benefits but one that is evident here, every single day, is that, “Older children fell to their knees to help the younger ones. Younger children stepped up their game, stretching themselves to join the play of the older kids.”
We see this all the time. We have three year old’s whose play becomes elevated because their playing with older peers and we see the flip side: older friends who up their game in terms of being helpers and teachers to their younger friends. It truly is a learning experience.
http://teachertomsblog.blogspot.com/2019/06/clearly-as-it-should-be.html
Breakfast– Oatmeal Squares and fresh blackberries.
Lunch– Peanut butter on whole wheat bread, fresh cantaloupe, and fresh carrots/cucumber.
PM snack– Whole wheat bagel with cream cheese and string cheese.
Wee Sprout– Fresh carrots/pepper.
Have a fantastic evening!
-Mindy
Link to pictures: WF 2/18
Good Afternoon.
Today we engaged in a sensory activity that we all loved and spent quite a bit of our time with. We had small cups and marker caps to place in various colors of paint to then stamp onto our paper.
This activity also helps us with our fine motor, hand-eye coordination and color recognition skills.
Later in our day we then sat down in a line on the reading steps to read stories to our friends and babies.
Breakfast: Whole grain Cheerios and apples.
Lunch: Toasted turkey and cheddar cheese sandwiches, corn and oranges.
Snack: Whole wheat English muffins with cream cheese/ peanut butter. (Kids choice)
Have a wonderful evening.
Marty
LINK TO PICTURES: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtTCDmdhjIulj7F9hJV3MumX6uio1g?e=VV7Kwn
Happy Monday!
We read ‘The Gruffalo’ in K/PREK1 which is a story based on several different characters but specifically, a mouse and a Gruffalo. Throughout the story, the mouse meets a few animals so we took the sentence strips and put them in the order in which they happened. Afterwards, children added three different events that happened toward the end of the story.
Everyday, we complete calendar where we say the date: month, day, and year. On the calendar, a holiday was stated today:
K/PREK1 member: “What’s that holiday today?!”
Miss Mindy: “It’s called President’s Day. Does anyone know who the President is?”
K/PREK1 member: “Donald Trump and Pete Buttigieg?!”
K.M.2: Understand concepts of time, including: morning, afternoon, evening, today, yesterday tomorrow, day, week, month, and year. Understand that clocks and calendars are tools that measure time.
K.1.4: Identify and order events that take place in a sequence.
Friends in PREK2 group answered the question: “Name a reason why the boy wanted a stegosaurus?”
Each child got to state their answer and write their name by it.
Friends have shown interest lately in space so today, we started a multi-step art project where children had the opportunity to spray a combination of white paint and glitter onto a thick black piece of paper. Miss Kim asked the question: “What can we see up in space?”. A few of the answers that were given were the moon and stars.
Afterwards, we transitioned to an art project that focused on blowing bubbles. Children got the chance to blow bubbles and while the bubbles were still above the glass jar, they placed a piece of paper on top of it. The bubbles transferred to the paper which created various shapes.
We decided to head outside this morning—children had a blast! They explored snow in many facets: snow angels, snow balls, and foot prints were our main focus!
Breakfast– Whole wheat bagel with butter and fresh pears.
Lunch– Whole wheat noodles with marinara and shredded cheese, fresh banana/oranges, and fresh carrots.
PM snack– Whole milk yogurt and fresh pears.
Wee Sprout– Fresh carrots/pepper.
Have a wonderful night!
-Mindy
Link to pictures: WF 2/17
Good Afternoon.
Today was the day to see large trucks out of our windows. We not only saw the trash truck, but we also were able to see another large truck parked right across the street form our classroom. We ALWAYS get so excited when we see trucks.
Breakfast: Whole wheat butter toast with oranges.
Lunch: Whole wheat pasta with shredded mozzarella cheese and marinara sauce, peas and strawberries.
Snack: Whole milk yogurt with graham crackers.
Wee Sprouts: Tomatoes.
Have a wonderful night.
Marty
LINK TO PICTURES: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtTCDmdhjIulj7AltaGxk4T1itb1rA?e=u61Byz
Happy Friday and Happy Valentine’s Day!
In K/PREK1, we read ‘The Invisible Boy’ which is one of our favorite books from the MACK collection. It is about a child named Brian who feels like he is invisible because children and his teacher don’t pay attention to him. Friends are always quick to point out the difference that they see which is that all of the other characters have color to them while Brian is drawn in black and white.
Towards the end of the story, the illustrator starts using color on Brian because kids in his class start acknowledging him. It makes him feel special.
We talked about how we should treat friends every day, instead of just some days.
We completed our chart that we’ve been working on throughout the week. Children are becoming more confident when answering questions pertaining to characters, setting, and specific events.
K.RL.2.3: Identify important elements of the text (e.g., characters, settings, or events).
Each friend had an opportunity to place their valentines in their peers’ bag. They are quite excited to open their bag and explore the different valentines cards they received.
“Kindness is love in action.”
Breakfast– Brown rice cakes with peanut butter and fresh banana.
Lunch– Melted shredded cheese on whole wheat tortilla/flatbread, fresh pears/banana, and fresh cucumber/carrot.
PM snack– Homemade chocolate covered strawberries with nuts or coconut and block cheese.
Wee Sprout– Fresh carrots.
Have a wonderful weekend!
-Mindy
Link to pictures: WF 2/14
Good Afternoon and Happy Valentine’s Day!
Today we decorated a Valentine’s bag to put all of our V-Day goodies in. We really enjoyed the whole process… decorating our bags and then putting our Valentine’s cards into each others bag. 
We also really enjoyed wearing our jammies today and reading one of our favorite books, Pajama Time!
Breakfast: Whole grain brown rice cakes with peanut butter and oranges.
Lunch: Whole grain tortilla with shredded mozzarella cheese and refried beans, corn and banana.
Snack: Pretzels and block cheddar cheese.
Wee Sprouts: Green Beans.
Have a great weekend and stay warm!
Marty
LINK TO PICTURES: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtTCDmdhjIulj68yPDeM74pjduT0tQ?e=J13t6M
Good Afternoon!
We read a story in K/PREK1 focused on the main character, Anna, as she went through a climbing journey. First, she climbed her refrigerator. Then, she climbed her dresser. Finally, she attempted the tree in her backyard. It’s a book we read often and it’s stories like this that I use to gage children’s comprehension as well as their memory of events.
After we read, ‘Up, Up, Down’, we jotted down specific things we took away from the story such as characters, setting, and three events that occurred.
K.RL.2.3: Identify important elements of the text (e.g., characters, settings, or events).
Our Thursday morning was full of stories, determination while trying to balance play fruit, and various building activities. Several rounds of ‘Go Fish’ were played, which has been one of our favorite activities lately!
Tami had posted this article to the Wee Friends Facebook page and there were many quotes that jumped out at me but this one feels very ‘Wee Friends’:
“But it’s crucial to keep in mind that intentional, attuned teaching is the opposite of a free-for-all where children are running the show. Quality preschool teachers are intentional about everything they do: the classroom routines, the physical environment, the schedule, the types of materials they make available for children to explore and manipulate. These teachers do an extraordinary amount of observation and reflection—and it’s really almost impossible to do that in a vacuum: the best preschools have collegial, inquiry-based cultures so that they can continually experiment with and modify their learning environments to take advantage of children’s natural curiosity.”
We have limited transitions throughout the day as most children don’t enjoy this time. It causes anxiety and unrest as children don’t like cleaning up what they’re doing, especially if it’s unnecessary. Our day is very flexible which allows us to change up our routine to meet the needs of our current group of children. For example, creating our PREK2 group to satisfy the needs of those children.
We value play at Wee Friends because we know it’s not JUST play. It’s a time where children are navigating and strengthening their social skills. It’s where children explore spatial relations and cultivate their imagination.
“We’re seeing more dysfunctional play in modern industrialized societies. Children don’t play as much in mixed-age groups, where younger kids can learn from older ones, and the older children in turn have to learn to be gentle and fair with their littlest players. Children have less free time to mess around and make their own rules. They need the time and space to learn how to play effectively, and they require a culture that values play. Increasingly, we don’t seem to have that kind of early childhood culture.”
Breakfast– Kix and fresh cantaloupe.
Lunch– Brown rice with shredded chicken, fresh pears, and fresh snap peas/cucumber.
PM snack– Goldfish and almonds.
Wee Sprout– Fresh snap peas/cucumber.
Have a wonderful night!
-Mindy
Link to pictures: WF 2/13