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Showing posts from December, 2014

Little Birds

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Every holiday season the children make gifts for their parents. This year we sewed the sweetest little felt birds. Children love to sew. It's an exercise in patients for the teacher but worth it because it's really rewarding to witness the pride the children feel in their work. There is something about this "grown up" activity with a "real" needle that makes them feel very accomplished.  From start to finish their gifts were crafted with small capable hands.  This year we wrapped their gifts in paper towel tubes that were hand painted and glittered. Cards were signed with love and care all on their own or with some assistance.  It's really lovely to see the children's proud faces when they give their parents their gift.   Wishing everyone a happy Winter and a very, very merry new year!

Just A Box Of Straws

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One of the things that I love about Imagine is how the freedom we have as teachers allows for impromptu, spur of the moment and truly organic fun, discovery and learning to happen. We ordered these fun straws without any clear vision. We introduced them first in our red room and the first thing the children did was make letters. They discoverd that they could only make some of the letters because our straws did not bend. We had a great discussion about the letters that "curve". During our activity time the children made "candy cane" necklaces which was great fine motor, hand/eye coordination practice. Some of the children wanted to count the straw beads they were stringing. The next day the seniors took on the challenge of counting to 100 using the straws. We made bundles of 10s, counting all the way up till we reached our goal.  We love not knowing how new material will end up being used in our class. We wonder what we will do with them next. We'll keep you pos

Strong Hands

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Learning how to use scissors and practicing cutting are things we do in preschool. A great activity that always motivates children is this yarn/cutting provocation. We hang yarn from a small hoop and let them cut it all down. It's fun and a great way to get our little ones using scissors. The next step was for us to cut paper. We drew lines, straight and zig zagged and had the children follow the lines. We thought a great way to keep the scissor momentum going was by having the children make snowflakes. This activity allowed us to not only use our new found scissor skills but to have our first lesson in fractions. We folded our circles in "half" and in half again creating 4 "quarters". After our paper was folded we cut out little triangles. Unfolding our snowflake is always the most fun. Our snowflakes look beautiful in our window.

First Maps

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We hung up a map of the world in our red room. We explained that it was our Earth just like our globe but flattened out. This led us to a conversation about maps. "what is a map?" We talked about how maps can show different things. They can show us where the continents are on the globe and they can show us how to get from our home to our school. The children drew their first maps. We asked them to draw their map starting at their house and ending up in a destination of their choosing. We talked about the things we see on the way.

Planet Earth

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We used paper mâché on a balloon to create our big round Earth. We painted it blue to represent the water. We hung it from the ceiling because "the Earth is floating in space!" It made it a challenge to paint and the children needed to use some problem solving skills to get the job done. We used our watercolor pencils to add color to our "continents". Our seniors cut out the continents. We looked on the globe to find where to put our continent and glued them into place. What a beautiful Earth!

I Live on the Earth

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Before we started talking about dinosaurs we were talking about rocks. Rocks led to fossils, fossils led to dinosaurs. On this day we asked the question "where do we find rocks?" One of our friends told us " In the Earth". This led us to a conversation about the Earth.  We asked "What is the Earth?" One friend said "The land ", another told us, "The Earth is a planet" and  "It's in outer space and it's round and we live on it". We realized how much we already knew about the Earth but realized we had many unanswered questions. Some of the questions were, "How big is the Earth?","How fast does the Earth move?", "How many people live on the Earth?" We spent some time looking at our classroom globe. The children made their first drawings of our planet. Simply done with pencil on white paper.