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It was a crisp day today during morning drop off. We went inside and had snack as normal, but switched up our regular schedule and our older friends went into kinderblossom following snack. The remaining primary class worked in centers and on notebooks. Colette worked on reading hands on a clock while Tristan worked on drawing different kinds of shapes across from her. Miya was concentrating on her fine motor skills with transferring items from one dish to another with various tools. Rhys and Dax went right to the construction area and worked on Legos and sky scrapers. To end our inside exploration most of us headed to our music basket and played different instruments while Colette was the conductor waiving her hands up and down to change the volume all our friends were playing. With the concert winding down we got our shoes on and went outside to expend some energy.
We got some new mock steering wheels installed on our playscape everyone used to drive the "school" around. Maya, Colette, Zoey, and Dax organized a big party again for nicks coming birthday. They made 4 different cakes and gave him presents like the "claw digger" that can be found around the playground. They even sang happy birthday perfectly to him. After the party everyone dispersed and did their own thing until lunch time came around. We headed inside for lunch then nap time. After everyone was up we started snack, Zoey made a rainbow out of the cucumber we were eating. One by one our friends finished eating and washed their bowls. Some friends still had a lot of energy so Lizzie took everyone who wanted to play on the deck outside while nick stayed in and did art with everyone else. Inside, Miya was coloring and mysteriously her paper was soaking wet while she coloured on it, we got a dry piece of paper for her and soon it happened again. The mystery was solved when we rolled her sleeves up. Miya had gotten her sleeves wet when she washed her hands last. 3:30 came around and it was time for Spanish. Everyone grabbed came inside and grabbed a mat and sat down to sing their favorite songs from miss Leona. Spanish went great and it's always fun to see them act out the songs like in one of our farm animal songs, they pretend to be the animals. Half an hour of Spanish flew by and it was time for outside pick up. We put on our shoes, counted off one by one in our line and headed out the door.
Back From the Holidays
We had a great day today, even with such a long break from school all of our sproutlets had no problem getting right back in the swing of things. Everyone was in good sprits during outside drop off and was eager to catch up with all their friends. As soon as we came inside, take our shoes off, wash our hands, and have snack. We had blackberries and bananas, and during our snack period Tristan decided to make a sculpture of his mom out of banana peels. Once we had cleaned up our snack area we moved to the big carpet for show and tell. Our older kids went with miss Ariel to kinderblossom while we split show and tell up into two time periods. The first person to go was Colette, who showed a book about cowboys which seemed to be a big hit with everyone. Next up was Dax who showed his transformer, who's leg unfortunately fell off midway through passing it around, but captivated everyone none the less. Thristan showed off his farmer truck next and was very happy to talk about the duties his farmers have. For the remainder of our inside time we opened up our stations and explored new material that was added this week. At ten forty five he went outside for a little energy expenditure. Tristan and Fax got word of nicks upcoming birthday so Tristan began decorating the dome while Dax started baking birthday cakes made of silica. With lunch time about to start we headed inside. After lunch a good story and a nap, everyone folded up their own nap mats and we had afternoon snack. Leina, Colette and Paige got a little silly with their tortillas and made monster masks with them. Following snack we finished our second round of show and tell which took longer than the first one, and only had enough time to go over our calendar and weather before we needed to depart the classroom for our outside pick up time. We had a lot of fun during pick up time. The girls owned a zoo which resided in the playscape. They had a tiger they fed and crocodiles that lived in the sand box. Toni came out and led a fun game on the dome climber which was a space ship for the remainder of the day. We had a great first day coming back from the holidays. We had smaller numbers at Greensprout today because of families leaving due to thanksgiving. Jette showed of his skills on the dome climber for most of the morning with periodic stints of running around the playground away from the girls. We played a game where the inside of the dome was an underwater base which teachers couldn't penetrate. After a bit of music outside (it felt like a Friday so we brought out the boo box) we went inside and had Kinderblossom first just to change things up. With just Jette, Leina, and Zoey everyone in the primary class went.
After kinderblossom Lizzie led a quick art activity and then opened up our centers, where jette spent most of his time in the coloured water mixing station, Zoey focused on the magnetic dolls where you can switch their clothes, and Leina did a bit of everything. With only 3 kids our transitions where much smaller so with just a few minutes left we went outside for 15 minutes to enjoy the weather before lunch. After a quick lunch our primary friends joined the toddlers for nap, all of our big friends took naps even though they say they don't need them. After snack we decided to have another story time, so we all cuddled up on the couch and read a story. Having regained all their energy we played in the construction area for a bit then they asked to go outside early. So granting their request we headed outside and jumped right into a hoola hoop tutorial with Ariel. She was doing some pretty dancing moves. Everyone tried a few times, but Leina was the only one to stick it out until she got the hang of one of the tricks Ariel was doing. Jackie brought out an expandable crawl tunnel that we played with for awhile until Nick and Jette came up with a game that captured everyone's attention for the remainder of the day. The game was like catch, but with a bucket as a glove. Nick would throw a soft ball in the air and o e of our friends would take a turn trying to catch it in their bucket. This was a very fun start to a great holiday weekend, and we hope all our families had a great thanksgiving.
All the F1 chaos didnt seem to bother our greemsprout friemds. Friday started off rather relaxed. We had an old friend, Zoë Myers, join us for the day. It was nice seeing all our friends pick up like she had never left. They spent most of our outside drop off time running around picking up feathers and playing make believe monster. Rhys was on a different mission, he was concerned with moving a large black tube around the playground for most of the morning, he even enlisted the help of paisley to move it up the playscape. Since it was such a great day we had snack outside, and brought music outside for a little Friday jam session. We were able to hold out for almost ten minutes before yo GABA GABA had to be played. After a little dance party and hula hoop competition we went inside for lunch. With a lot of energy used up today most of our friends focused on eating their lunch instead of visiting with their neighbors for the first few minutes of lunch.
After lunch we had a quick clean up then we had a captivating story time and everyone but a few kids were asleep as soon as the lights went out. After nap we took those who were up out on the deck to wake up our bodies while the rest of our friends slowly started getting up from their nap mats. Our cooking project was a home made PB&J this week. We used fresh raspberries and blueberries and everyone mashed it into a jelly. Then we took sunflower butter and made a sandwich. Half of the kids liked them as is, but the other half wanted to sweeten it up a little bit with some sugar in the raw. After everyone finished their homemade PB&J we had a quick circle time and talked about the coming holiday then it was time for Jackie's music session. Jackie brought instruments for everyone, ranging from tambourin to drums to harps. We had a good half hour session then it was outside pickup time.
Today started off with a change up, with Toni on vacation Dom stepped into the office to take care of business. Having just four kids in the primary class Lizzie stepped into the toddler room to fill Dom's spot. With just the four girls we disregarded our normal seating and sat together. While eating our apples and bananas Leina wanted to play a game of "I spy". After a few rounds it began to get silly as Colette's video will show. We spent the whole snack time visiting and talking about what we did last night and things we ate this morning. Once our allotted time was up we had a great circle time and talked about thanksgiving and things we traditionally do on the holiday.
We headed into stations after circle and Colette and Paige made a bee line to the water mixing activity. Three colours are in jars with one empty bowl, the idea of the activity is to mix colors to make new ones. Colette discovered mixing yellow and red yields orange. Paige followed suit and the two of them mixed colours for the next ten minutes. While Paige and Colette were busy with the rainbow, Leina and Zoey were busy in the art center. Leina was using a pair of scissors that cut paper with a wavy boarder that soon became the standard in paper cutting. In the middle of work time we had a fire drill and talked about the importance of knowing what to do incase of a real fire. We all left our work and put our shoes and coats on and headed outside to the parking lot to join the rest of Greensprout for the fire drill. Once everyone was checked off we went inside to clean up our work then out to the back yard for some play. Coming in we washed hands and had lunch then a quick story and went into the toddler room for nap. Following nap, Leina and Zoey headed for kinder blossom with Ariel while Colette and Paige stayed with nick and made turkeys with our hands. With just the two of them we were able to get more technical with our hand turkeys by using multiple colours for the bird. We used trial by error in getting the layers just right and now Colette and Paige said they would be happy to help their friends tomorrow with making their own. Once Leina and Zoey were back from kinderblossom we had snack then headed to the math center to work on our number skills. We started with a tactile exercise that helped with motor skills that required the use of tweezers to fill trays with the correct number of beads. After a bit of counting everyone wanted to do some more art to fill out the rest of our inside time. Finishing pictures for mom and dad, all five of us headed outside for pickup time. We started this Wednesday outside playing a game of Hide and Seek with Miss Lizzie. We had everyone outside participating in the fun. I just have to say that we have some really good hiders on our hands! The game of Hide and Seek turned into a game of tag as more friends arrived and it began to become harder for everyone to find a hiding spot. Once Mr. Nick arrived we came inside for snack, before we sat down at the table we all took off our shoes and practiced hanging up our own jackets n the coat rack. All the kiddos are really getting the hang of it :-p
We sat at the table to enjoy tasty watermelon and cheerios. As the kiddos began to finish up and wash their bowls they headed to the carpet with Mr. Nick to have circle time. After we sang songs, discussed the date and the weather the kiddos noticed Miss Lizzie was holding a mystery box, she gave hints for the kiddos to try and guess what was in the box. As soon as she said it was red and a fruit everyone all at once yelled out APPLES!! They are all correct! She had an apple for each Shining Star to come to table and polish. As we were polished apples we discussed apples grow on trees and many apple trees growing together is called an orchard. Once we got our apples all shiny and clean we put them in the basket in the table to eat tomorrow! We then came back to the carpet to discuss what centers we wanted to go to. Miss Lizzie and Mr. Nick also explained we have new math games and puzzles to explore. Leina Paige and Miya wanted to take time at the sensory table sorting and transferring rice and pasta into different containers. Dax, Tristan, and Rhys went to the building and constructions center to build houses, towers, airplanes, and trains! Maya, Colette, Leina came to our math center to explore the new puzzles and to continue play with our color mixing activity. While the Shining Stars were playing in centers Miss Lizzie brought one at a time to make their own apple tree! We used brown paint on our forearm to make the tree trunks and our fingers to dab red paint on the leaves as apples. Once everyone had made their tree we had an amazing orchard to hang in our classroom! When we went back outside before lunch we all had a great game of soccer and catch! Some of us played soccer as the others played toss with all the balls we could find on the playground! All the kiddos' hand eye coordination is getting very strong and we are catching more and more balls each day! After nap time and snack we gathered at the carpet for a breathing activity, each kiddo received a feather and laid on their back to practice deep breathes. We put the feather over our mouth and we inhaled through our nose and exhaled out our mouth we got to watch the feather float up in the air! As we were practicing our deep breathes we chatted about when are good times to use deep breathes. The kiddos quickly said when we are sad or upset, or to calm our bodies down. We also discussed sometimes after we run around a lot we can use deep breathes. As we were finishing up Mrs. Leona walked in our room and it was time for Spanish! YAY! During Spanish the kiddos sang and danced to two of their favorite songs. One of which they use scarves to wave around and twirl with. We did this song and dance a second time because the kiddos love it that much! The other song we use bells to wake our friends after they had been asleep. We said adios to Mrs. Leona and headed outside to end our day watching a beautiful butterfly fly around us by the sandbox! See everyone tomorrow! |
AuthorJodie Goldberg, Ashley Wooten and Alex Cummins Archives
March 2015
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