Good Afternoon.
Please Note: Tomorrow we will have a Pajama day to celebrate Valentine’s Day!
Please enjoy the pictures from our day!
Breakfast: Whole grain Kix cereal and pears.
Lunch: Whole grain brown rice with shredded chicken, peppers and pears.
Snack: Whole wheat triscuit crackers and pumpkin seeds.
Wee Sprouts: Peppers.
Have a nice night.
Marty
LINK TO PICTURES: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtTCDmdhjIulj65Lu7zDlyVGYSGOoA?e=gMEULz
Good Afternoon.
This morning we engaged in a fine motor and sensory activity painting cut out hearts with puffy paint.
We chose pastel purple, pink and red for our colors to paint the hearts. While some of us preferred to feel the puffy paint with our fingers others of us enjoyed painting our hearts AND feeling the paint.
Breakfast: Whole grain oatmeal with honey and apples.
Lunch: Farm fresh scrambled eggs , whole wheat butter toast, peas and banana.
Snack: Whole wheat Ritz crackers with hummus.
Have a wonderful night.
Marty
LINK TO PICTURES: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtTCDmdhjIulj64vJVS__rWhkrsVvw?e=DssvRT
Good Afternoon!
Enjoy the pictures from our day!
Breakfast– Whole grain oatmeal with honey and fresh banana.
Lunch– Farm fresh scrambled eggs with whole wheat bread/tortilla, fresh cantaloupe, and fresh green peppers.
PM snack– Blue corn chips with hummus.
Wee Sprout– Fresh green peppers.
Have a wonderful evening!
-Mindy
Link to pictures: WF 2/12
Good Afternoon!
We read ‘Listening to My Body’ in K/PREK1 which is a book from our MACK collection. We’ve been adding books that are relevant to this collection as the year has progressed. Listening to My Body focuses on one character that shares different experiences that he’s been through and how it made his body feel.
We talked about sensations that our body feels and completed a couple of exercises to see what sensation our body would get: rubbing our hands together quickly for twenty seconds and taking our index finger and lightly/slowly tracing the lines on our palm were two exercises we did. After we traced the lines on our palm, N shared “My hand tickles!”. Once we were done rubbing our hands together, Grady said, “My hands are warm and tingle!” This allowed children to share a story or two that they thought of that correlated to the experience we were reading about.
Afterwards, we talked about the story and different elements of the text. I wrote children’s answers down as they shared.
MACK: Children will practice strategies for managing strong emotions of their own and how to navigate the strong emotions of the people around them.
K.RL.2.3: Identify important elements of the text (e.g., characters, settings, or events).
PREK2 read ‘What Would Darla Do?’ which is another story from our MACK collection. Throughout the story, children can choose whether or not Darla makes a good decision or bad. Depending on what they choose, the end outcome will reflect those decisions.
I strolled through Teacher Tom’s blog yet again this afternoon and found a short article where I found a quote that struck a cord:
“This is the world of early childhood, a place where the most important things happen, not according to schedules we make, but rather according to the spaciousness of seasonal processes, developmental stages instead of more and faster deadlines; processes that are as old as humanity.”
“You can’t hurry the seasons, but you can count on them. There’s no place for more and faster when it comes to young children. When our butterflies are ready, they will emerge, and not one moment sooner.”
http://teachertomsblog.blogspot.com/2020/02/when-our-butterflies-are-ready-they.html
Breakfast– Whole Grain Cheerios with fresh pears.
Lunch– Shredded cheese on whole wheat flatbread, fresh pineapple, and fresh snap peas/green beans.
PM snack– Homemade pineapple/orange/banana smoothie and whole grain bagels with cream cheese.
Wee Sprout– Fresh green beans/snap peas.
Have a wonderful night!
-Mindy
Link to pictures: WF 2/11
Good Afternoon.
Today Miss Rowan thought it would be a great idea to have a picnic. She lay down her picnic blanket and spread out cups and plates for her to eat all kinds of yummy foods.
She told Miss Marty that she wanted to eat alone with no friends. Rowan had a glorious time. She then happily cleaned up all her dishes and went off to find bears.
Breakfast: Whole grain Chex cereal and banana.
Lunch: Whole wheat bread with no nut butter, carrots and pears.
Snack: Whole grain/wheat bagels with cream cheese.
Wee Sprouts: Cucumbers.
Have a great evening.
Marty
LINK TO PICTURES: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtTCDmdhjIulj6xXpuoEk_c7PsTxKg?e=C73xUy
Good Afternoon.
We are enjoying our big blocks today. Whole engaged with them we pretended that they are boats and sang, Row Row your Boat as we sat in them.
We then headed outside for some fun playing in the cold snow.
Some of us sought out the fresher snow and ate it, while others just had fun playing with it.
Breakfast: Whole wheat English muffins with butter and oranges.
Lunch: Whole wheat pasta with butter and shredded turkey, cucumbers and pears.
Snack: Whole milk yogurt with graham crackers.
Wee Sprouts: Cucumbers.
Have a wonderful night!
LINK TO PICTURES: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtTCDmdhjIulj6w2FTwcuiS1s4AcEA?e=Yur974
Happy Monday!
Hope everyone was able to enjoy their weekend!
In K/PREK1, we read ‘Thidwick, the Big-Hearted Moose’ which is about Thidwick allowing various animals to live on his horns. But eventually, there are too many animals and something quite drastic happens—ask your child to share the ending of the story with you!
Once we were done, we focused on various aspects that make up the story including characters, setting, and specific events. I wrote the words as they threw out ideas. This week, we’ll be focusing on identifying characters, setting, and events, which is something we talk about quite a lot in group.
Before we completed calendar, we looked at various equations and talked about the terms greater than, less than, or equal to. The first few questions dealt with equal signs and addition. The last couple of questions revolved around greater than and less than. We use an alligator mouth as a reference. The alligator always wants to eat the bigger number so friends worked together to identify the bigger number and which number the alligator would eat.
K.RL.2.3: Identify important elements of the text (e.g., characters, settings, or events).
K.NS.7: Identify whether the number of objects in one group is greater than, less than, or equal to the number of objects in another group.
In PREK2, friends each got a turn to circle the greater number when working with two numbers. For example, Sophia explored the numbers 7 and 3 and was able to identify that 7 was greater, circling it at the end.
The rest of our day consisted of stories, art table creations, new dress up clothes, and some fresh air.
What a start to our week!
Breakfast– Whole wheat toast with butter and fresh pears/banana.
Lunch– Whole wheat noodles with shredded chicken and butter, fresh oranges/pears, and fresh carrots.
PM snack– Whole milk yogurt with fresh pears.
Wee Sprout– Fresh snap peas/cherry tomatoes.
Have a wonderful night!
-Mindy
Link to pictures: WF 2/10
Good Afternoon and Happy Friday!
Today we engaged in a fun sensory activity…. shaving cream
We took cars and washed them and zoom’ed them through the fluffy white cream. It reminds of us the snow we are experiencing outside, just not the coldness. 
Breakfast: Whole grain brown rice cakes with cream cheese and oranges.
Lunch: Turkey and cream cheese roll-ups with whole wheat bread, mixed veggies and banana.
Snack: Pretzels and Mozzarella string cheese.
Have a wonderful weekend.
Marty
LINK TO PICTURES: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AtTCDmdhjIulj6pfMuA-5OwZxtxkXA?e=tTcTtX
Happy Friday!
Our day started with a food exploration! Miss Kim brought in a variety of new foods for children to test including, lime, kale, pocky sticks, and olives. There were a few friends who enjoyed the limes but most of us displayed a very sour face afterwards! 
A few friends showed interest in the movement of our fish today which prompted a drawing session where children had the opportunity to sit down in front of the fish tank and draw what they saw using pastels. A wide range of friends chose to come and draw. Some friends noted the big trees in the fish tank while others noticed smaller details.
Franklin asked to play ‘Go Fish’ this morning which lead to several rounds with various friends jumping into each round. This week, we’ve been talking about the terms ‘more’ and ‘less’. Even in the game of ‘Go Fish’, children identified who ended up with the most matches. The last round that we played, myself and Franklin had five total matches. Another child excitedly said, “Hey! You have equal matches!”
After we played ‘Go Fish’, the dinosaur match game was requested. Penny and another peer explored mixing the dinosaur parts to see what the new dinosaur name would be! Penny worked with letters and letter sounds as she created new dinosaur names.
Breakfast– Brown rice cakes with peanut butter and fresh pears.
Lunch– Ham and cream cheese roll-ups, whole wheat tortilla, fresh pineapple/pears, and fresh snap peas.
PM snack– String cheese and goldfish.
Wee Sprout– Fresh pepper/cucumber.
Have a fantastic weekend!
-Mindy
Link to pictures: WF 2/7
Good Afternoon!
In K/PREK1, we’ve been talking about different text genres. We’ve highlighted fiction, fairytale, and poetry so today, we read a non-fiction story that focused on the life cycle of horses. A few fun facts that we learned:
K.RL.3.1: Recognize familiar narrative text genres (e.g., fiction, nonfiction, fairytales, poems).
In PREK2, children focused on the equal sign and what that means. Each child was given a number and they had to use manipulatives to come up with the number that was equal.
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“I never pretend to know what kids will learn on any given day and, honestly, any teacher who does is either deluded or blowing smoke. No one can possibly know what another person is going to learn. You can hope. You can plan. You can lecture yourself blue. You can even, if you’re especially clever, trick someone into learning something, but the idea that one person can “teach” something to another, except under narrow circumstances, is one of the great educational myths.”
While I was searching through Teacher Tom’s blog this afternoon, this specific blog caught my eye. The notion that children can be taught something at any given time is interesting. Children learn from one another every single day and most of the time, children have to be ready to soak in facts or new skills but it’s no something that can be forced at this age.
“And still, despite my utter lack of “teaching,” the kids who come to our school are learning. How do I know? I watch them. I listen to them. I remember when they didn’t know and then I hear them saying and see them doing things that demonstrate that now they do. And even though I’m not teaching them, they mostly learn exactly what I want them to know.”
http://teachertomsblog.blogspot.com/2020/01/not-teaching.html
Breakfast– Kix and fresh pears.
Lunch– Brown rice with shredded beef, fresh pineapple/apple, and fresh pepper/cucumber.
PM snack– A variety of whole wheat crackers and peanuts.
Wee Sprout– Fresh cucumber/pepper.
Have a wonderful evening.
-Mindy
Link to pictures: WF 2/6