The Color Green

Today we finished the rest of The Color Monster and started talking about the color green. Throughout the morning, there were many invitations using the color green. One being a sorting activity. Children were able to look at a collection of materials and sort them.

Miss Brooke: "What are you noticing about these objects?"

O: "I notice some are lighter green and some are darker."

S: "Yes me too!"

Miss Brooke: "Could you sort them into piles?"

O: "I'm going to put these over here" 

S: "This Lego is very dark. I'm going to put this in a different pile"

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M and M had many different piles going. They used the Pantone book to guide their sorting. At the end, M and M merged several piles. I asked why. 

M: "Well they were kind of similar."

M: "Yeah the light made it look a little different." 

M: "Now we have two different piles instead of so many."

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Practicing sorting allows children to look closely and notice differences. These are import skills, especially when thinking critically. Children came up in pairs and in groups of three which allowed everyone to engage. 

The Color Yellow - Happy!

Happy Monday! What a wonderful day we've had! We began our journey into colors and emotions by reading "The Color Monster" and stopping at the very first color: yellow! In the book, the color yellow is tied to being happy, so we explored the color and emotion today. After we read about it, we had yellow/orange invitations out for the children to explore. Lots of friends loved coloring with these colors and showing what makes them feel happy:

"I'm coloring me!"

"These are superheroes and a snail."

"I'm drawing my family. And ice cream!"

To finish out or yellow/happy exploration, we went on a color walk! The Birch room found so many yellow things around the neighborhood and had so much fun doing it.

Before lunch, we had to celebrate some birthdays! One friend has a birthday today and we also celebrated the July/other August birthdays as well :)

Forest Day

Happy Friday, friends! What a great first week we have had in the Birch Room. Today was our very first forest day and the children were so excited to explore! Some of our friends have been before and for some of our friends it was a completely new experience. They had such fun running around, climbing trees, and playing with Sycamore friends. 

When we got back to school, we talked about what we noticed in the forest. Some friends said:

 

"There were lots of spiders!"

"One of the teachers told us we could take the spider web down because it was in our way, but we didn't want to!"

"The forest looked different than last time I was there!"

Have a wonderful weekend :)

Spaceships in Outer Space

Lots of fantasy play at work in our block area today. T, B and F were exploring outer space with their spaceship filled with Astronauts and Aliens. We were able to see communication, teamwork and critical thinking. 

T: "F get in get in!"

B: "It is going to space"

F: "Okay"

T: "I need to put my thing in there. Oh, got it!"

T, B, F: Putting Lego people in the spaceship

B: "Wait, my guy needs to go in there"

T: Rebuilds the spaceship

T: "C'mon, c'mon!!!"

B: flies his guy away, "Goodbye guys!"

T: "It's gonna close."

F: "Oh no, oh no. Look."

T: "His arm came off."

B: "Here's a new guy"

T: "Oh no he's falling in"

T, B: "Let's go"

B: "Beely, jeely, keely. That means come back home."

Fantasy play is a great way for children to engage with literacy when they are emergent readers and writers. They are doing things that authors do: creating storylines, editing, revising and so much more. 

Walking Wednesday

We were able to beat the heat and finally get out on a walk! Children were very excited to get buddied up and go on the walk. Many students were collecting treasures, looking at sticks, and listening to things around them. 

M - "I hear something!"

C - "I hear it too!" 

A - "It's an airplane!"

M - "I hear something else"

M - "I think its bugs"

T - "You are right, it is bugs" 

Later on the walk, we got to see a dog, her name is Belle. Lots of the kids were so excited to see her. Some were happy just looking from afar. 

We have been feeling many big feelings today! We've been discussing how to identify these emotions.

Homes For Animals

 

Happy Tuesday! Today we began exploring animals and homes for animals. We set out animals and blocks to see what our friends did! One friend came over and began building. 

She grabbed the dolphins and began lining them up. "This one is the biggest, this one is the smallest. This one is medium." 

She grabbed blocks and started lining them up, kind of like an outline of a square. "This is a dolphin families home! The daddy is a whale, the mommy is a dolphin, and the baby is tiny and blue."

She decided she needed water inside. "They need water!" She starts looking around at what she can use and spots the scarves. "I can use a blue scarf!"

She gently placed a butterfly on top. "This butterfly opens up the door when you press it."

"Come in daddy and mommy, the water is nice!"

Another friend began building a home for a couple of tigers. "It's a double home! One on top and one on bottom!"

We also got to dance with scarves and play in the collaboratory, seeing as it was extremely hot today! We made it outside for about 15 minutes before we decided to head inside before we all melted :)

Chickens on the Hillside

Today was our day for the Hillside and it was great to see all of our class interacting and playing together. A group emerged by the snail engaged in some fantasy play. T and M were leading their farm. 

One farmer, A: "We have cows, and chickens, piggies, and snonkeys" (snonkeys - donkeys that poop all the time). 

T, M, and M were gathering feed and taking it into the "coop" (the Snail). The chickens changed from being imaginary to a real person! 

He let the farmers know that he was hungry with many "bawk, bawk, bawk!!!" 

Their farm evolved into more and more animals. The group of farmers grew and grew, but each child had an important job. 

Lacey, Brooke and Riann want to say we had a great first day! Our group cares a lot about each other and has done a good job of taking care of each other. We really enjoyed those donuts too! 

Here are some fun pictures we go throughout the day!