So, I’m not going to lie to you, it’s been quite a morning! The phone call from our early teachers reporting no electricity really threw us all for a loop. Thank you to everyone for your understanding and patience as we waited to see what would happen.
After our unexpected start, our Wee Frienders settled right into their morning despite the delay. As always, there are children moving throughout our learning environment choosing to play in small groups of children. The most popular areas today were housekeeping, the light table, the reading area, and the block area. However, I wanted to highlight one special activity and one daily activity in our blog today.
I think everyone knows the Wee Friend lingo now, both parents and children. Children come in with an idea (or an idea is formed when they are playing), a conversation is held with a teacher, others express interest, and then….voila!…a “study” is born. Currently, the study that has been developing is surrounding the story of Pinnochio. Today, one of the options for the children to choose in our learning environment was a special activity created by Miss Laurie to support one of the interests that the children have expressed in this study: puppets. Miss Laurie provided the quality materials, brainstorming opportunities, and most importantly, her presence in the moment, to this sock puppet creative arts project. Our art table was filled with rich conversation, artistic expression, and enthusiasm for the duration of our inside time.
I spent much of my time this morning doing a journaling time with the children. This is a daily activity, that is usually offered right after snack. Once again, just like a special activity, it is about providing the quality materials, brainstorming opportunities, and most importantly the invitation from a teacher to a child that “we are here for you in this moment”. I wanted to highlight the journaling time today because we have several children that are experiencing huge developmental leaps in their early literacy skills. When children participate in rich developmentally appropriate learning activities while being supported by knowledgable educators, they naturally progress academically through the literacy stages. And they do it more quickly and more foundationally soundly when they are hooked in the moment and joyful about what they are doing. This is what I was surrounded by today and I just had to use the blog as a outlet to share!
Let’s look at Alexandra (just 3) and Nate’s (age 2¾) journals. In September, both children were still completely in the “scribbling” stage of writing. Alexandra has moved to drawing complicated people and is now writing many letters of her name at the top of her paper. Nate, just in the past few days has moved to writing with a purpose and is drawing faces. This is an enormous leap for both children.
Pictured: Alexandra September (scribbles), October (with letter symbols), and November (detailed drawing with purpose). I missed photographing one where she has written her name in both actual letters and mock letters.
Pictured: Nate, October (scribbles) vs today (detailed drawing with purpose).
Next, we have Annie (4 ¼). We can look at her drawing and see how she has moved from scribbles, to drawing with a purpose, to adding environmental print (her name) and now to the prephonemic stage. Notice how detailed her drawings have become from September to November. She is also writing her own name, repeatedly, on each journal.
Simon (3 ¾ ) has been drawing complicated pictures for some time. They keep getting more and more detailed in picture and description. However, I wanted to share how in just a short amount of time, this daily activity has generated self correction in his name.
Pictured is a tracing of his name on October 4, his own writing on October 18 and his complete name on November 30th. He is monumentally proud of how well he is forming his name.
Finally, Macy (just turned 4) is my last example to share. As we look back to nearly a year ago, you see her early stages of writing and she is simply interested and able to trace her name. Now, she is fully writing her name using upper and lower case letters. She is completely focused, even driven, at this moment to absorb all of the letters and their formation and she’s particularly interested in the differences between uppercase and lowercase letters. As we sat together today, we talked in detail about how all of these letters look and fit together. Macy also expressed an interest to move beyond dictation and wants to write her own words at the bottom of the page. This is the stuff that makes what we do so cool!
Pictured: 
Macy, tracing in January and writing name in October. Now, she’s using lowercase and doing prephonemic writing.
If you have any questions about the literacy stages that your children are moving through developmentally, please don’t hesitate to ask us! We are here to communicate this information to you! Because this is our passion, we have made it our business to know exactly how children learn to write and then read.
For lunch today we had chicken and rice, peas and bananas.
I wanted to do “Part Two: Journaling Time” today because I saw another neat moment that I wanted to share. At one point, I had Kai, Macy and Jane at the table with me. Kai had just finished his time working on our painting project and was excited to carry his Christmas tree enthusiasm to our journal table. He immediately began to independently draw a Christmas Tree. Macy, who was just finishing her journal about Mommy, grabbed another piece of paper and started to draw her tree. She was uncertain how to begin so she and Kai talked about what a tree looks like and she studied how Kai was drawing his tree. Jane sat down and began to also draw a Christmas tree. Kai, at age 5, was easily able to represent a Christmas tree through a sophisticated drawing. However, the shape of a Christmas tree would be far too sophisticated for Macy and Jane who are very young 4 year olds. However, by talking, listening and watching an older child, both Jane and Macy experienced success in their drawing. 
