I hope everyone had a great weekend! Here’s some of our favorite photos from today.
Breakfast was whole wheat bagels with butter and bananas. Lunch consisted of whole wheat pasta with black beans, oranges, and mixed vegetables. Afternoon snack was string cheese and strawberries.
Have a good night!
Amanda
Today while our younger friends were at the farm, our older friends worked with the glittery sequins and glue. This was a popular activity last week and friends are still thoroughly interested and engaged in this work.
After this sensory/fine motor skills/art work, friends helped clean off the tables and get things ready for lunch. Several friends brought lunch over to WWF while the others put out the cots for naptime. They were great helpers!
The rest of our day has been spent mostly outside, enjoying this beautiful weather!
Have a wonderful afternoon! –Jessica
Wee Sprouts: Carrots. Breakfast: Toasted whole wheat bagels with butter and fresh oranges. Lunch: Whole wheat pasta with black beans, fresh green beans and watermelon. Snack: Organic whole milk yogurt and fresh apples.
Hello! It was an absolutely gorgeous day to spend some time at the farm. Our younger friends were so excited to head out into the sunshine and fresh air.
Our farm day started with Miss Charlotte showing us different kinds of seeds: morning glory, marigold and asparagus.
Next, we visited with the baby goats! Although at first they were a little intimidating to some friends, after some encouragement many friends pet the goat’s soft fur.
Miss Charlotte and Miss Tami then brought over some chickens. Miss Charlotte showed us the chicken’s wing. We enjoyed hearing the loud noises the chickens made!
There was also a TRACTOR at the farm! Friends had a blast climbing up on their own, sitting on the tractor seat and grabbing the wheel.
Next, we took a walk through the field. We discovered lots and lots of milkweed beetles on a plant and watched them crawl. Miss Charlotte also showed us how wonderful the bee balm plant smells.
One of our favorite activities to do at the farm is RUN! The wide open spaces at the farm are perfect for moving our bodies as fast as we can. There was lots of starting and stopping and yelling and joyous laughter.
We had a great time at the farm! –Jessica
Hello! Today has been a great day full of exploration and learning.
This morning started off with a reading of Go, Shapes, Go! by Denise Fleming. After listening to the story, friends were invited to the round table to work with the same shapes from the story. Following the directions in the book, they recreated a monkey!
The light table was a popular spot today. Friends spent time sorting, stacking and classifying jewels into different groups.
Much of the class was drawn in by Miss Melinda’s reading of Goodnight, Gorilla. Friends had to pay close attention and use watchful eyes to find the mouse and banana on each page!
Outside friends requested the chalk. What started as a normal chalk exploration changed when some rain water was spilled on a friend’s chalk drawing! This prompted the teachers to bring out the water spray bottles and continue to support friends’ experimentation with chalk and water.
It was a hit! Many friends patiently waited their turn for a spray bottle. In the meantime, many felt wet chalk with their hands or drew with wet chalk pieces. Other friends tried to create a “chalk river,” noticing that the water flowed down the hill.
Kindergarten: Today Elliott and Elizabeth spent a lot of time creating a structure back in habitrail. They were invited to record their work in a habitrail log. We missed getting a picture of the actual creation, so their drawings will speak for themselves! This was a “house boat in a storm” and “a boat”.
Hope you have a wonderful weekend! –Jessica
Wee Sprouts: Green beans and carrots. Breakfast: Brown rice cakes with almond butter and fresh blueberries. Lunch: Whole wheat flatbread with hummus, fresh broccoli/cauliflower and watermelon. Snack: Cheddar block cheese and pretzels.
Happy Friday!
Friends were invited into the kitchen where they worked in their journals and later construction paper. Children were given paper and markers with no directions. The free range of things that friends colored and drew was extremely varied.
For breakfast, children had rice cakes with sweet pea butter and pears. Lunch consisted of hummus on tortillas, peas, and fresh plums. PM snack was string cheese and blueberries.
Have a terrific weekend!
Favorite toy of the day? The cardboard box!
Boxes are a versatile, open-ended material. The best kind of play with boxes is unstructured play- play that has no end result in mind, which encourages creativity and imagination.
Our friends definitely enjoyed them!
Breakfast was Corn Chex cereal and blueberries. Lunch consisted of whole grain brown rice with lentils and vegetables, bananas, and peppers. Afternoon snack was wheat crackers with sweet pea butter.
Have a good night!
Amanda
*Announcement: Weather permitting, Group B [Riley, Naia, Maddie, Lulu, Tate, Maxwell and Lucy] will going on a farm trip on Monday, September 21st. As the farm can be a messy place at times, we ask that you please send your child to school in a pair of shoes that is okay to get dirty. Bringing an extra pair of shoes or well-fitting boots is perfectly fine as well. Thanks for understanding!
Today we brought out some new tangram puzzles—the alphabet in upper and lowercase letters. Friends searched for the matching shapes and then carefully put them in place. Cassie found the letters in her name:
At the art table this morning, friends were invited to work with sequins and glue. Besides being an engaging art project that worked fine motor skills (squeezing glue onto the paper, pinching to pick up the tiny sequins and carefully putting them in place), this work also had an element of sensory exploration. Many friends commented on how “sticky” the glue made their fingers and enjoyed the process of washing the glue off their hands afterward.
Kindergarten: Today the kindergartners worked on FAB K.G.4: Compose simple geometric shapes to form larger shapes (e.g. create a rectangle composed of two triangles). The favored shape of the day was octagons! Using pattern blocks we discovered that you could make an octagon a number of different ways: with 2 or 8 trapezoids (it depended on the size), 3 diamonds or 6 triangles. Recording the shapes in our math journals gave us an opportunity work with shapes in another medium and practice writing as well.
Enjoy your afternoon! –Jessica
Wee Sprouts: Tomatoes and bell peppers. Breakfast: Kix and fresh pears/bananas. Lunch: Quinoa and whole grain brown rice lentil pilaf with broccoli, cauliflower, carrots and fresh bananas/strawberries. Snack: Graham crackers and pumpkin seeds.
The magna-tiles were brought out to play with in the kitchen this morning. Our friends used them to build towers and other creative structures.
David showed his friends how fun the tiles are to hold up to your eyes and see everything in different colors!
New toys were introduced to the classroom! The boxes are Montessori tools designed to develop hand-eye coordination and indirectly allows the children to experience object permanence.
Breakfast was hot wheat cereal and blueberries. Lunch consisted of farm fresh eggs with cheese, whole wheat bread, blueberries, and potatoes. Afternoon snack was rice cakes with hummus.
Have a great night!
Amanda
Journaling is an important part of our day here at Wee Friends. Our kindergarteners and older preschoolers journal every day after large group time, while our younger friends are often invited to journal during the morning, or whenever they choose to!
Although it is easy to dismiss young preschoolers’ drawing and writing as only “scribbles,” this is the first stage of learning how to write! These scribbles help children develop the necessary fine motor skills to be able to form letters later. Scribbles turn into drawings of basic shapes/pictures. Eventually, letter-like forms appear within children’s drawings.
The most important thing we are trying to do during journal time is to foster a love of writing. We want our children to understand that writing is a way to communicate their thoughts and feelings. For younger friends, after they finish their picture a teacher will help them write something about their drawing. As they get older, friends begin to write more on their own, eventually using “kid-spelling”.
Friends truly enjoy the process of creating a picture and then sharing what their drawing is about.
The first word most children gravitate towards is one that is important to them: their name! After learning to identify the individual letters in their name, children begin to try and write those letters. This is a process that takes time! Below, Eren has written an “N for Eren,” while Elizabeth, who has been working on journals for years, is able to clearly write her name in upper and lower case letters.
Please feel free to take a look at your child(ren)’s journal and see what they are writing about! All journals are kept on a bookshelf in the art room. Let us know if you have any questions about the writing/journaling process.
Kindergarten: Today kindergarteners played a shape game using dice and dot stampers. Besides identifying shapes, this game worked on counting, identifying numbers on a die, and graphing. It was a race to see which shape was landed on the most!
Have a wonderful Wednesday! –Jessica
Wee Sprouts: Tomatoes. Breakfast: Hot wheat cereal and fresh strawberries. Lunch: Farm fresh egg casserole with whole wheat flatbread, fresh green beans/tomatoes and cantaloupe/strawberries. Snack: Homemade popcorn and bananas.
“There are three teachers of children: adults, other children, and their physical environment.” – Loris Malaguzzi
Loris Malaguzzi is the founder of the Reggio Emilia approach to early education and his work highlights the importance of the environment in learning. The organization and design of school space matters!
At Wee Friends we are very aware of the impact of the environment on learning. Here are just a few examples of the ways in which the WF environment enhances learning as a “third teacher.”
This afternoon, friends got out the readily available cake material and worked together to build it. This led to counting the numbers on the cake out loud; there was lots of excitement upon reaching 10! Friends had ample space to work and build and know where materials are located.
A library full of easily accessible books at children’s level, along with comfortable and well-lit reading spaces encourages lots of reading.
Ample “loose parts” such as logs, buckets and tubes entices friends to work their gross motor skills and experiment with the movement of both their bodies and objects.
The environment is important! WF teachers are always observing and looking for ways to improve and enhance our physical spaces. For an interesting take on the concept of the “third teacher” check out this book, The Third Teacher, filled with practical ideas to improve the environments in which children learn.
Kindergarten: Today the kindergarteners worked with a game similar to “chomp” but with shapes. After pulling a shape from the jar, we discussed its attributes (number of sides, vertices, etc.) But watch out, if you get the chomp/oops shape, you have to put all the shapes back! This was such an engaging activity we brought it down to the art table so other friends could join too.
Have a wonderful day! –Jessica
Wee Sprouts: Tomatoes. Breakfast: Kashi’s Blueberry Clusters and fresh strawberries. Lunch: Whole wheat tortillas with cream cheese and lunch meat, cucumbers/tomatoes and fresh pears. Snack: Homemade granola with cheddar cheese.
