Snack: Halloween Cookies and Clementines
Book: Winnie the Witch Snack: Halloween Cookies and Clementines
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Snack: Pirate Booty, Cheese Sticks and Fruit Snacks Book: The Gingerbread Cowboy by Janet Squires This morning children had the opportunity to come into the office space, with the SMARTBoard, and and watch some movies that they made while in dramatic play. We noticed many things such as, fingers in front of the camera lens make it hard to see the players and the closer you get the easier it is to hear what is being played. Harlow: Look we're eating carrots. Harry: I was recording everything, even myself and my hand. Those are my fingers in the way. Eloise: I see me! I was just like walking and playing princess. Izzy: I like when we were playing queen and king with babies and a princess. Sigrid: Making movies is fun! When I stand still the movie is easier to see. Jack: I like when I see myself. We also talked about what might happen next and we made a plan. We visited the dramatic play area and looked at the materials, decided who would wear what first, who they would pretend to be, what they would play and who would make the movie. The children made all the decisions and shared their ideas at morning meeting. Sigrid: We will be playing marry wedding. I will be the movie maker and the director. If someone new comes over to play they can ask me what roles we still need, because that's what a director does. Sometimes you might have to wait or take turns. I will share the camera too, if someone else wants to be the movie maker. Harlow: I will be the marry girl. Izzy: I will be the second marry girl and I will wait in the blue dress until it's my turn. I will be a mom at the wedding until I am the marry girl. Mia: I will be the flower girl. I toss the flowers. Suzette: I will be the maid of honor. That's something special. Eloise: I will also be a flower girl. Harlow: Harry will be the marry too. We will take turns being Harry's marry. We have our plan. During our small group time many children came to the dramatic play area. Here are some conversations that happened... Sigrid: We must start with a red carpet. All fancy things have red carpets. Harlow: We need a place to walk and throw flowers. Eloise: How about chairs? We have guests. Mia: There's food at a wedding and music. Sigrid: Yes, we should dance at the end. Birk: I am going to be the dog Rocky. He comes to the wedding and eats dog food cupcakes. Eloise: Here you go puppy. Carly: Izzy I want to play with you. What can I be? Izzy: You can be anything you want to be, as long as you're happy. Carly: I want to be the girl at the wedding. Izzy: Okay, does that make you happy? Carly: Yes! Snack: bell pepper strips & Pirate Booty Book: Pumpkin Jack We had some additions to our snack today. Theertha came back with some cupcakes to celebrate & announce her baby brother. Also, Katie made carrot pudding with the children yesterday. We tasted it today and Katie brought ice cream to celebrate her birthday today! After all this we also went swimming! Such a fun day!! Snack: Ritz crackers & string cheese
Book: Room on the Broom We took time today to practice and preview our Halloween parade walk (inside part only) plus our destination, a performance in the high school band room. Trying something ahead of time and practicing the walk can help children to feel more comfortable when it comes to the actual event. So together we quietly and respectfully walked into the band room and took our seats on the floor. Very soon we were listening to the dynamic music being practiced by the band. Afterward we returned to the room and had a chance to talk about what we noticed while we were there. Some children shared feelings and still others found that the music started up their imagination. The children shared these thoughts: Birk: The louder music made me think about "Optimus Prime" and the quieter music made me think about "Autobots" and "Transformers"! Ellie: I was feeling it was loud and when we go back we need to tell them it was too loud. Brady: But not when they are playing. Morgan: I didn't like it! Brady: It's kinda like the wolf Carly: The person (conductor) was telling them what to do. They started to play when he said go. Eloise: the conductor uses his hands, so they know when to play the notes. Book: Where's My Mummy? Snack: Pretzels and Raisins The children are getting our outdoor classroom decorated for our Halloween Parade on Friday. They hung streamers, decorated pumpkins, and created other decorations to put on the house. We our asking families to donate 3 pumpkins, webbing, and black pipe cleaners to help create decorations for our outdoor space. If you can help us by donating materials, please let us know and thank you for your help!! Later, Carol Kaplan-Lyss joined us for music. She sang many songs that the children knew and other songs the children learned for the first time. They sangs songs, such as Hello, How Are You Today, Tingaloo, Polly Wolly Doodle, The Farmer and The Dell, The Cookie Monster Walk, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, Baa Baa Black Sheep, and the Lollilop Tree. Another video will be available on our website to view clips from our time with Carol. Snack: Popcorn and Carrots Book: The Giant Carrot by Jan Peck Today we continued our work with carrots. The book was a story about a family who worked really hard to plant and harvest a carrot. The carrot grew GIANT! We learned that even the smallest members in the family can do hard things and make a difference! Throughout the story every character in the book has an idea about how they could cook the carrot; juice, stew, relish, and pudding. We discovered something interesting, at the end of the book there was a recipe for the item that the youngest family member wanted to eat... carrot pudding. During morning meeting we had a chance to taste the carrots, from our garden, and share our ideas about what we could cook. We voted and most of the children would like to try the recipe in the book and make a cake. Lucy: We could make carrot cupcakes! Morgan: Dinosaur carrots! Birk: We could shape the cake like a dinosaur. Harlow: How about just carrot cake. We made that last year too. Everyone: YES! Harlow: We need flour. Lucy: We need to chop the carrots up and milk. Izzy: It will taste like carrots too. We need eggs and sugar. Suzette: We will need to cook it and use frosting. Lucy: Cream cheese in the frosting mix. Lily: Cooked carrots get soft. Harlow: We will need a bowl. Lucy: And we will need a spoon. Later in the day we had the sensory table open where children could wash and scrub the carrots, real carrots were available to taste at the dramatic play table and our nature educator, Catherine, invited children to peel carrots. We will be cooking soon!!! Snack: Graham Crackers, Nilla Wafers and Apple Squeezers Book: Chicken Little by Rebecca and Ed Emberley Science and Nature Education Science and nature education provide open-ended experiences that expose children to the possibilities that exist within the physical and natural world. By participating in these experiences children practice observing, investigating, predicting, questioning, hypothesizing, and solving problems. As they explore, children begin to deepen their understanding of the characteristics of living things, the physical properties of objects and materials, and properties of our earth. Nature education provides children with a foundation for a life-long relationship between themselves, the earth and it’s natural resources. We started our morning in our outdoor classroom, where children had many different opportunities for play. Some children chose to harvest carrots from our bed. While doing this many things were noticed; size, color, the creatures in the dirt, etc. We also used cooperation to help one another! Then we shared our thoughts at morning meeting time. Harlow: I helped pick some of these carrots. I picked the ones like this and used a shovel. Harry: These two are the same color. This one is red. This one is smaller and this one is another color. Brady: This carrot was really hard. I dug really deep! Morgan: This guy and this guy, they are huge! Brady dig and I pull. Carly: I just know hoe to pull out the little carrots and I did. Jack: When this one I dug for came up, I think it shrunk. Eloise: Well, I think this one l asked Lucy to pull out. I'm not sure actually. Lucy: When we tried to get them out we had to wiggle them and then pull. Izzy: Those are little. The shape of them looks like a wiggle. This one is not the same size, but their the same color. They are different sizes. It will be fun to see what we do with the harvested carrots, so stayed tuned.... ![]() Book: Friendshape Snack: goldfish & grapes Milena Garganigo, Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning, and several teachers from our district visited our classroom today. Katie was selected last spring to participate in the Lab Classroom Leadership Program. This is a 2 year professional development opportunity within our district. Part of this experience involves observing in each others' classrooms. We are excited to benefit from the feedback these teachers can give us after spending time in our classrooms today! Here is some of the learning they observed today: Snack: raspberries, raisins, Cheez-its and cheese cubes Boo: Swimmy Today, during our Morning Meeting, two children shared their paintings with us from yesterday. Both Ellie and Birk took turns showing us their work, their painting and explained how they created it. They told us the steps it took: first placing tape and then painting it. Birk pointed to the white space that remained so even when painted. Ellie explained, "It's a game! If you land on this square you lose." Their was further experimenting and creating with tape and paint in the studio today. Here are some more images of the things happen in both our outdoor and indoor classrooms today: Book: Who is s the Beast?
Snack: Teddy Grahams and Raisins Carol Kaplan-Lyss joined us for music this morning. She will be visiting some Mondays to explore music through movement, song, and finger plays. The children sang the following songs with Carol: Wheels on the Bus, Clap your Hands, Way up Horsey, Tingaleo, Baby Shark, Skip to My Loo, What Does the Witch Say on Halloween Night, She'll be Coming Around the Mountain, and Spin, Spin Sugar Baby. Children will continue to experiment with music through using their body to create sounds, move to the music, and express oneself. Also, children use music and movement to express concepts, ideas, or feelings. Videos from today's music with Carol will be available on our classroom webpage! |
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This blog is created by Julie Abeles, Susan Goldwasser, Katie Graham and Kath Poppe, teaching team for the Family Center @ CHS. Archives
April 2016
Teacher Professional Development
You may know that the early release Fridays are designed for teacher professional development. This is a book the Early Childhood team of teachers have been studying this semester. Other professional development topics this fall have included; literacy & read alouds, health, wellness & mindfulness, the language of clay and becoming a reflective teacher.
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