August 15th, 2012

Greetings,

Wednesday has been a full social frenzy! We had our largest group yet including new and old friends! Cooper has been visiting for the week and will spend one more day here at the Sprout before he is back on a lil vacation time then hitting up the big Kindergarten! We welcomed a new friend to our class, Maya Tackett! She is 4 years old and walked in with enthusiastic energy and a sweet smile! During AM snack today, we all went around our table formally introducing our name, age, and fun fact about ourselves! Friends were sharing one act of kindness after the other to help Maya settle into our routine. Mo and Cooper took Maya under their wing when it came time to “sharing a lesson” on how we wash dishes after snack.

This sparked an interesting conversation in that we explored the types of tones in our voice used when we “offer help or direction” to a friend and how each tone makes our friends feel. There tends to be a slight bit of bossyness/attitude when friends feel the need to remind other friends how we do particular routines in class and to Nick and my surprise we heard an echo of soft and slow voices direct Tristan, Miya, and Rhys to the dish line!

After snack we all worked on making “money/coins” out of construction paper for purchasing tickets! Sprouts used real coins to trace circles and had to use lots of focus when it came down to cutting them out! Leina, Cooper, and Miya were able to master a circle cut out and then offered to help other friends get the hang of using scissors in a “funny way just for circles”

We set up a few games out on the deck that required friends to count out a certain number of coins in order to receive a ticket that would buy them a round in the games. This was totally a hit! They all waited so patiently for their turn to play and would wave their tickets around as a past time!

We were headed out of the deck area when Collette ran into her brother Ancel who was making his way out on the deck! Ancel was in need of some helping getting the door fully opened so Collette said “Here I am teacher and I can open this for you” She then followed him out and continued “teaching him” how to find tennis balls on the deck. She then told me that she needed to stay out on the deck because she was Ancel’s teacher. This sparked an idea! I nominated Collete, Mo, Paige, & Mia ( As they love to travel in a pack) to be special Pre-Tot teachers for the morning! The 4 helped set up the Pre-Tot’s lunches and with excitement offered to be models for lunch time. The 4 girls had lunch and nap time with the Pre-tots and were so excited to take on the teacher role for the small group of 4 new pre-tots! I was reminded by the rest of the Primary class that they too will be used as teachers for the toddler room “next week” which sounds like a great idea to Nick and Toni!

Naptime stories have been really fun lately as the kids have specific requests for Toni to make up a story instead of reading a book. They were particular to say that they like “seeing my faces and hearing my funny voices” instead of trying to see pictures over their friends heads. There was a request to tell a “scary story” today and so I told a story about an old lonely blue house that lived at the top of a lonely green hill! There was a good 13 minutes of pure silence as they all anticipated what was going to pop out of these 2 mysterious closets in this scary house!

Our snuggle times have become so warm and loving that it is now routine that each Sprout get tucked, tickled, and kissed by Toni while Nick is the “best at giving good pats” We are so happy that our group loves to love J

We had another “way too short” (as an hour and a half was not enough) work time in our classroom today. We have been having it after nap as we want to take advantage of the cooler mornings for as much outdoor exploration time! The kids still have lots of materials to manipulate, explore and master and so we look forward to exploring the rest of the week.

Wednesdays afternoons are always exciting as we get a visit from Leona and her awesome Spanish fun! For some sprouts, Leona could not get her soon enough as I am hearing Spanish song after Spanish song hummed and sung during work time!