Category Archives: WWF Daily Explorations

What do WWFs do when they are outside?

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We have spent a great deal of time outdoors these past few weeks!  It feels so good to be outside!  Outdoor play is essential for your child’s health and well-being. The sense of peace and pleasure our children experience when they take in fresh air, feel the warmth of the sun, and watch a butterfly land gently on a flower is immeasurable!  What is so evident is how much they all enjoy running, jumping, climbing, and just being outdoors!  As teachers, it is a great way for us to enrich curriculum and support their development of learning!
Being outdoors helps with your child’s:
Social/emotional development: Children  experience a sense of  accomplishment and growing competence when they spend time outdoors  and they are  engaged in purposeful activities. What a sense of accomplishment some of our little friends have when they climb to the top of our new playhouse, throw or catch a ball, and learn how to pedal a bike!  Their social skills grow as they experience sharing our equipment with each other, such as our bikes and shovels, work to
gether in our sandbox, and follow our safety rules.
Physical Development:
How lucky we are to be outside!  It is so much healthier for us to be using our muscle activity.  We are also developing gross motor skills as they run, leap, hop, jump, swing, slide and climb.  This also allows them to take risks and try new skills.  They are also using  thier fine motor skills outdoors to work on our garden, collect bugs, and pour sand through a tunnel in our sandboxes.  What fun!
Cognitive Development: When we are outdoors we like to study bugs and butterflies, plant seeds, and watch our garden grow!  In the fall, we watch leaves change colors.  In the winter, we taste and play in the snow, and this spring we have touched the bark of a tree, and smelled the fresh rain air after a rain shower!  We count the seeds we plant, the number of petals on spring flowers, note different patterns and colors on flowers, count how many flowers we see on a wagon ride, and we will watch water run through tubes during our summer outdoor water play!
Language Development: Some of our vocabularies will really expand as we learn the names of insects, flowers, and plants, and learn some different characteristics:  fast,
fuzzy, shiny, hard, colorful, the list is endless!  We learn about traffic signs on our walks and learn to identify birds, flowers and bugs we discover.
Feel free to join us on our outdoor adventures. Have a great day!

Wee Friends Daily Explorations, Wednesday 4.13.11

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Melinda began our day with a musical lesson using kazoos! The kids were excited to play the kazoos as Melinda created different rhythms and played a medley of songs with various tempos. At one point, one of the older kids began marching while playing his kazoo-all the children followed suit! F.3.1 Follow along and imitate patterns of sounds and movement. F.3.2 Reproduce patterns of sounds and movement.

                     

A small groups of friends spent time at the art table studying the plastic milk jugs Jane brought in (thank you Matt!) and discussing what to make with them. They decided they would make pirate milk mugs and used markers to individualize them. From there, they cheered each other taking big gulps! They also painted the salt dough creations from last week. Some of our toddlers created paper plate art.  F.2.7 Show individuality by actions such as drawing a pumpkin that differs in color and design from the traditional.

              

A few friends spent time in the Science Center experimenting with the magnetic ball and rods making discoveries: How tall can I build it? How many pieces do I have? Which pieces will stick together? Will it stand up by itself? What can I use it for?  F.2.1 Participate in activities related to number sequencing and counting.

Take a look at our sensory table when you come in! Tami switched out the rice ocean for a treasure chest, gold coins and sand. We moved the wooden pirate ship to the truck room where it will live with our other trio pirate ships! She also added a fish net to our ship environment in Hopscotch. Don’t forget to find your child’s pirate symbol that they sewed on the WF flag now mounted in Hopscotch! F.2.15 Enjoy repetition of materials and activities to further explore, manipulate, and exercise the imagination.

 Enjoy the rest of this beautiful day!

 

WWF Daily Explorations, Wednesday 4.13.11

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This week WF and WWF have began working on phase one of our garden work. On Tuesday “wee wees” and “wees” planted their first two trays of cherry tomatoes.

WWFs worked on transferring potting soil to the flats, leaving them ready

for WFs to put seeds in. Yesterday, three children worked on preparing pellets for seed planting pouring warm water on them and observing how they puffed up (to their surprise!).

All the seedlings we get started are being kept at the Greenhouses on Mishawaka Ave. They have kindly allowed us to keep our trays in their facilities ensuring proper light and temperature for our seedlings.

Special thanks to Amy for all of her help with this project!!! And to allparents who have donated materials!

We will continue to plant throughout the

following weeks, stay tuned for more gardening news!

 

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WWF Daily Explorations—science

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Our bean seeds project has moved to the next stage! A few weeks ago wee wees  dropped bean seeds on damped paper towels and enclosed them in plastic ziplock bags. We hung the bags on sunny windows and waited for them to sprout.

This week we noticed some of them not only had sprouted but also had their first leaves out. Yesterday we began to transfer some of those into little pots with soil to help them grow bigger.

To do this, we followed following process:

1. Children scooped organic potting soil into plastic cups and tapped the tops to pack the soil in to the cup.

2. with their fingers pushed a hole into the soil to insert the sprouted seed.

3. gently pushed the seedling into the hole and covered the roots with soil leaving stem and leaves out uncovered.

4. watered the plants using a turkey baster.

Project highlights:

–While working on this project children had a chance to touch and converse with the teacher about the parts of the plant they were handling. Roots were of special interest.

–touching and running their fingers through the potting soil.

–scooping and transferring soil from the big bucket to a small plastic cup.

–using gentle pressure for handling the seedling, tapping and pocking holes on the soil.

–learning to use a baster.

Be on the look for more pictures!!

Have a wonderful day,

WWF.

 

This week at WeeWee!

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WOW!  We had an action-packed week at Wee Wee!  We did some sponge painting with circles.  We used several spring colors and they looked beautiful!  We counted each circle as we painted, and learned some colors along the way.  Who ever knew learning math could be so much fun?!

Outside play was spent as firefighters!  We wore firefighter hats and costumes, and put out fires in our new play house out back.  Engine 59 and crew were sure busy responding to their calls of using their imaginations and creativity along the way!  Some of our wee wees have taken upon mastering the art of riding tricycles, working hard almost everyday at figuring out how use their little feet to push the pedals.

We played with our indoor sand and oatmeal tubs and used our wooden hammers to pound golf tees into some styrofoam.

Curious?  Curious George that is!!  What a fun matching game of shapes, colors, and learning our zoo animals.  This kept us busy for quite some time.

As  Finn counted down the days for the grand opening of the zoo, we have been reading “Birthday at the Zoo” and acting our own zoo birthday party with our stuffed animals. As we play birthday party we talk about what do we need for the party and set up our table with the necessary elements. We count candles and talk about growing “GETTING OLDER” 🙂 We also sang Happy Birthday in English and Spanish!

Wake up earth, hello spring!  We are so glad to be able to spend more time outside!

Thank you for the wonderful gift of your child!