Imagine

We set up a number of activities that promote prewriting skills. These activities help a child develope and practice certain skills that are necessary before they begin writing. Our seniors did their first journal entry. They traced straight, zig zag and curving lines.

This week we talked a lot about friendship. What does it mean to be a good friend? How do we make and keep friends?  This led us to have a great conversation about kindness. "Kindness is being nice to our friends". We realized we needed to make more kindness sticks for our classroom. Together with a friend the children painted brightly colored kindness sticks. We give a child a kindness stick when we witness one child being particularly sweet to their classmate. If your child comes home with one ask them why they got it. We added a song about friends to our morning meeting.  Friends friends 123 All my friends, all my friends, are here with me You're my friend  You're my friend You're my friend 123 All my friends are here with me

We transformed our nature table into a temporary cutting station. We noticed the children's interest in using scissors about the same time we realized many of our young ones didn't know how to hold them much less cut with them.    We set this up and invited the children to cut to their hearts content. The table was supplied with different thicknesses of paper, foil, yarn and plastic straws.  This activity allowed the children to use their hand muscles while practicing fine motor skills.

I overheard one of our young ones being very excited when he thought two like items were the same. " look these are the  same!" It started me thinking about creating a provocation that would encourage the children to match shapes. It's simple but the children really seemed to feel a sense of accomplishment when they matched all the shapes. One of my friends called me over to the table saying " Look! I did it, I did it! Bright colored chalk on black paper and a basketful of shapes. Sometimes it's the simplest things that children enjoy the most. It gave us a great opportunity to talk about size, colors and shapes. We used words like "same" and "different".

A new school year has begun, bringing with it a new co-teacher for me, fresh new faces to our school and a pack of little ones who have moved over from our two's room. It's always a bit of a shock how young they are. I am always needing to remind  myself that slow is the very best speed.  We spend the first weeks of school getting to know each other, learning the classroom rules and generally just getting the hang of this new world that is the preschool. Our seniors are always such a big help with the little ones. Yet another reason why I love mutli age classrooms. It's great for our older kids to feel big and important and it's sweet that our new friends want to be seniors someday just like their helpful older friends.  We took a lot of pictures this week. Photography is a very useful tool in our classroom. It helps us get to know our friends, remember things that happened and gives us opportunity for reflection. While looking back on our first week in pictures I was s...

With a strong focus on representational art we thought it would be interesting to introduce the children to the concept of non representational or abstract art.  Line, shape and color have been themes running through our summer. This was a different type of art experience that allowed them to revisit these concepts. We had the children use a black sharpie to draw one continuous line without lifting the pen from the paper. The line can be straight, curvy, zigzagging or loopy. When they were done we invited them to color in the shapes using watercolor pencils.  They turned out bright, vibrant and beautiful.

This project grew organically while searching for inspiration in books for various art ideas. Because this class has been very interested in representational art all summer, we brought these books in to allow the class to further their exploration in drawing while also practicing following directions.  Our illustration book gave us step by step instructions detailing how to draw various animals. The interested children picked a subject and began practicing the various shapes that made up their subject with pencil. After drawing their animal of choice they outlined the animal in marker to mark a clear boundary in order to practice staying inside the lines.  Is this animal a mammal, reptile, etc?  What color do you think this animal is?  What environment do you find these animals in? These were some of the questions we asked during and after.  Doing this repeatedly provided us endless chances in practicing lines, shape, and realism. They are a great extension to o...