Happy Monday!

Throughout the week, K/PREK1 will be diving deeper into stories, specifically identifying the characters, setting, and specific events. Today, we read ‘The Napping House’ and while we were reading, we stopped and identified the new characters that were being introduced. At the end of the story (even before I could ask the question!), Lucy said, “And the setting is in a house!”. We talked about what the word ‘setting’ meant when referring to a book.

Afterwards, we worked as a team to complete the chalkboard activity. Three of our favorite books were dissected as we identified the characters and setting of ‘The Gruffalo’, ‘Cinderella’, and ‘Up, Up, Down’. I read each strip individually. For example, I read ‘Gruffalo, mouse, owl, snake, fox’. We decided that they were characters and not a setting before children identified the characters as being from ‘The Gruffalo’!

K.RL.2.3: Identify important elements of the text (e.g. characters, setting, or events).

PREK2 worked with Robert Munsch stories in group. Each child was given a Robert Munsch story and asked who the main character was in their book. They looked at the pages of their book and told the group and Miss Kim who the main character was.

Children had the opportunity to decorate their Valentines Day bag! We used heart stickers, markers, and crayons to cover the front and back of our bag.

*Just as a reminder, we will be handing out valentines on Thursday. If you have any questions, please ask!

Ruby and David worked together as they made their way through this Look and Find book. They identified different animals and remained completely engrossed in the book until the very last page. Animals is one of our favorite topics to learn about!

A group of our older friends made different ramps using wooden boards in the habitrail area. They tested each incline by placing toy cars at the top and observing which car hit the bottom first.

“It must not be forgotten that the basic law of children’s creativity is that its value lies not in its results, not in the product of creation, but in the process itself. It is not important what children create, but that they do create, that they exercise and implement their creative imagination.”

-Vygotsky

Breakfast– Whole wheat english muffin with peanut butter and fresh oranges/banana.

Lunch– Whole wheat pasta with butter and black beluga lentils, fresh oranges/banana, and fresh carrots/cherry tomatoes.

PM snack– Whole milk yogurt with craisins.

Wee Sprout– Fresh carrots/cherry tomatoes.

Have a terrific evening!

-Mindy

Link to pictures: WF 2/11

Good Afternoon.

“Everything you say to your child is absorbed, catalogued and remembered. ~Maria Montessori 

Please Note:  If you would like to send your child to school with Valentine’s Day cards on Thursday, that would be wonderful and I’m sure the kids would all love it!

We have eight children in the classroom and we would be more than happy to get you all a list of their names! They will be taped to your child’s cubby.

Our friends kept quite busy today! We love it when all of our little ones are fully and happily engaged.

We put our fine motor and hand-eye coordination skills to the test this morning. Jack even added in some of his wonderful imagination skills to add more enjoyment!  Puzzles are always fun, and we love them.  

The new puzzles that were donated are asked for daily and our friends spend quite a long time engaged in them. Jack took a couple of his puzzle pieces from the puzzle he was working on and flew them through the air and drove them on the table. He told Miss Marty, “Airplanes fly in the sky, and cars and trucks drive on the road.”

Zoe worked on utilizing her gross motor skills today by climbing on the habi-trail ladder. She has been working on this skill for a little while and was quite pleased with herself when she  achieved her goal of successfully getting over the ladder to the other side. Great job Zoe!!!

Breakfast: Whole grain English muffins with peanut butter and oranges.

Lunch: Whole wheat pasta with lentils, peas, and apples.

Snack: Whole milk yogurt with graham crackers.

Wee Sprouts: Fresh Cucumbers.

Have a wonderful evening!
Marty

LINK TO PICTURES:  https://1drv.ms/f/s!AtTCDmdhjIuljbNizc224wRvszeM4w

Good Afternoon!

Reading stories is a pretty basis and easily understood early childhood activity. Right?

Wrong. It’s not just books that we have available to use. It’s books, books on tape, and the never ending options of technology based activities. The article that I’ve attached below is a scientific study done by Dr. John Hutton, on 27 children around the age of 4. They presented stories to these children in three conditions: audio only, the illustrated pages of a story time book with a human audio voice-over, and an animated cartoon.

They looked at scans of these children’s brains while being read each of the three ways and the results were not all that surprising. Using the ‘Goldilocks method’, the results were as follows:

• “The audio-only condition was TOO COLD! There was evidence the children were straining to understand what was happening.
• The kid’s overall comprehension of the story suffered the worst in the animated condition aka TOO HOT.
• The illustration condition was what Dr. Hutton called JUST RIGHT.”

It’s quite an interesting article that focuses on the type of reading that is best for the development of children.

https://deeprootsathome.com/storytime-science/

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We spent our morning conducting a science experiment. We taped a long piece of white paper to the ground. Each friend got to test our different items. They picked an item (button, pom pom ball, wood tile, glass bead, etc.) and placed it on the catapult before letting go to see how far the item went. Once it landed, we marked on the white paper how far it went. After a few friends tried it out, we were able to start making educated guesses about what would happen to each item and how long it would go based on what had happened previously.

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”

-Maya Angelou

Breakfast– Rice cakes with peanut butter and fresh pears/banana.

Lunch– Peanut butter on whole wheat tortilla, block cheddar cheese, fresh pineapple/banana, and fresh carrots/cucumber.

PM snack– Pretzels and block cheese.

Wee Sprout– Fresh cucumber/carrots.

Have a terrific weekend!

-Mindy

Link to pictures: WF 2/8

Happy Friday! I hope you all had a great week.

“We must therefore create a favorable environment that will encourage the flowering of a child’s natural gifts.” ~Maria Montessori

We would like to wish Rose a very happy third birthday today! Happy Birthday Rose  

Miss Rebekah and friends were happily engaged with the rhythm sticks and music this morning.

Miss Rebekah played music that told our friends what motions to use with their sticks. We used our listening ears quite nicely to mimic what the illustrator told us to do with them. We also utilized our color recognition skills to say what the color of our sticks were that we were using.  It was a fun time.  

Breakfast: Whole wheat toast toast with butter and cinnamon, and banana.

Lunch: Whole wheat bread with peanut butter, mozzarella string cheese, peas, and banana.

Snack: Whole grain cheese crackers and cheddar cheese.

Wee Sprouts: Strawnana organic Kefir (A treat from Rose for her special birthday snack.)

Have a fantastic weekend.

Marty

LINK TO PICTURES: https://1drv.ms/f/s!AtTCDmdhjIuljbJzS6YtJ4AX3ekM0A

Good Afternoon!

**We are asking for scrap paper donations. Our art production has been in over drive lately so if there’s scrap paper that you’re willing to donate, we would gladly take it off your hands . Thanks!

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This week during K/PREK1 group, we’ve been exploring different text genres. As I pulled out our book for the day, ‘Engelbert the Elephant’, friends quickly commented, “That’s not real!”. A discussion started about what text genre this story would be from and after thinking for a moment, Lucy raised her hand and said, “Fiction!”. Throughout the story, we talked about how certain events couldn’t be real such as an elephant going to a ball with a queen!

K.RL.3.1: Recognize familiar narrative text genres (e.g., fiction, nonfiction, fairy tales, poems).

In PREK2 group, children used square gems to solve greater than and less than problems. Miss Kim put an equation on the ground such as three gems on one side and four gems on the other. She put an alligator between the two sets of gems and told children that the alligator wants to each the bigger number. So, when it was Ruby’s turn, she turned the alligator mouth towards the group with four gems instead of one gem meaning that four is greater than one.

Our day is full of movement, peer interaction, concentration, questions, gross motor and fine motor, and several other activities that challenge us. At the end of the day, we leave with our cups full of happiness and satisfaction. HOWEVER, most times it is hard to talk about what we did during the day. On Monday’s, we’ll ask kids what they did over the weekend and most times, we get the response, “Nothing..”, even though majority of the time weekends were full of fun and engaging activities!

I’ve blogged about this suggestion before but looking at the blog can elicit detailed stories about what kids did during the day. Children see a picture of themselves dancing with scarves and they’re able to recall when they were dancing to a given song and the feelings that they felt at that time. We try our hardest to take pictures of every kid during the day as this is a great way to get conversations going about daily activities.

Our days are often filled with playdough pizza, TV’s built with LEGOS, or a zoo created by a couple of four year old children. Talk about interesting story starters!

Breakfast– Kashi Blueberry Clusters and fresh pears.

Lunch– Brown rice with shredded chicken, fresh oranges/pears, and fresh cucumber/cherry tomatoes.

PM snack– Peanuts and whole wheat crackers.

Wee Sprout– Fresh cucumber/cherry tomatoes.

Have a wonderful night.

-Mindy

Link to pictures: https://1drv.ms/f/s!AtTCDmdhjIuljbItLUPn9Geqkgd_Xg

Good Afternoon All!

“Our care of the children should be governed not by the desire to ‘make them learn things’, but by the endeavor always to keep burning within them the light which is called intelligence.” ~Maria Montessori

Enjoy the pictures from our Thursday!

Breakfast: Whole grain Cheerios and oranges.

Lunch: Whole grain brown rice with shredded chicken, fresh tomatoes, pears.

Snack: Whole wheat rice cakes with cream cheese.

Wee Sprouts: Squash bites.

Have a nice night!

Marty

LINK TO PICTURES: https://1drv.ms/f/s!AtTCDmdhjIuljbILMp7tfQCdY-6CTw

Good Afternoon.

“Education must start from birth.” ~Maria Montessori

Jack really enjoys the newly introduced magnet sticks with balls. He made a very long line of the magnets and was proud of creation.

This activity enhances a child’s color recognition and shape acknowledgment. We can also utilize our skills in mathematics and science. What a fun activity all around!

With Valentine’s Day quickly approaching we decided it would be fun to paint some Valentine hearts. We used red, white, and pink paint to paint our beautiful creations.

Breakfast: Whole grain Kix and apples.

Lunch: Farm fresh scrambled eggs with cheese, whole wheat toast with butter, cucumbers, and pears.

Snack: Whole wheat Ritz crackers with hummus.

Wee Sprouts: Cucumbers

Have a great night.

Marty

LINK TO PICTURES: https://1drv.ms/f/s!AtTCDmdhjIuljbEy2fQ7HuqZdlO42g

Good Afternoon!

Enjoy a few pictures from our day!

Breakfast– Whole grain oatmeal with honey and banana.

Lunch– Scrambled eggs with whole wheat tortilla, fresh pears/banana, and fresh cucumber/cherry tomatoes.

PM snack– Tortilla chips and hummus.

Wee Sprout– Fresh cherry tomatoes.

Have a great night!

-Mindy

Link to pictures: WF 2/6

Good Afternoon All.

“Growth is not merely a harmonious increase in size, but a transformation.” ~Maria Montessori

Today we kept very busy doing all sorts of different activities throughout the classroom.

Whether it was a fine motor, gross motor or early literacy activity our friends had a great time and kept very engaged. It was a busy but awesome day!

Breakfast: Whole grain Cheerios, Chex and Kix cereal and apples.

Lunch: Whole wheat flatbread with hummus, peas, and oranges.

Snack: Whole grain raisin cinnamon bagels with cream cheese.

Wee Sprouts: Carrots.

Have a nice night!

Marty

LINK TO PICTURES: https://1drv.ms/f/s!AtTCDmdhjIuljbAl_a0F3OFh4xH0ww

Good Afternoon!

K/PREK1: Last week, Miss Charlotte brought use several cartons of eggs! We love fresh eggs and enjoyed getting to see her. This prompted the book choice for today as we focused on non-fiction stories. We read ‘Chicken and Egg’ which taught us about the process of a chick being born and what happens inside of the egg. It takes roughly 21 days for a chick to hatch from it’s egg. Throughout those 21 days, there are red veins that are in the yolk which give the chick food and air to survive. A friend said, “Yeah, like our veins!”, and pointed to the veins in their arm.

As each friend was called to roll up their mat, first they took two dice and rolled them. They counted the white dots on each dice and had to say which dice had more dots. We used the following terms: ‘more’, ‘less’, ‘most’, ‘least’, and ‘one’.

K.RL.3.1: Recognize familiar narrative text genres (e.g., fiction, nonfiction, fairy tales, poems).

K.NS.9: Use correctly the words for comparison, including: one and many; none, some and all; more and less; most and least; and equal to, more than and less than.

PREK2 friends explored Montessori beads. After looking at them, they had to place them in order from smallest to biggest! Children were able to correctly place them in order from smallest to largest based on the area each square took up.

We brought a little nature inside today! Children were anxious to explore charcoal as they did a charcoal sketch of nature elements. After friends used the charcoal to sketch the still life, they used their fingers to shade. We talked about shadows that we observed as well as the different angels at which friends were looking.

“Scientists have recently determined that it takes 400 repetitions to create a new synapse in the brain—unless it is done with play, in which case, it takes between 10 and 20 repetitions!”

-Dr. Karyn Purvis

Breakfast– Corn chex and fresh apples.

Lunch– Hummus on whole wheat flatbread, fresh oranges, and fresh carrots/cucumber.

PM snack– Cottage cheese and whole wheat cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese.

Wee Sprout– Fresh cucumber/carrots.

Have a great evening.

-Mindy

Link to pictures: WF 2/5