Back Together

 Today was a wonderful day with everyone back! You could feel the excitement in the air. Children were excited to eat breakfast together and play with each other. 

In the Forest today we asked children, "What games can you play with your friends?" Since part of our class was gone, we wanted to create a space for children to reconnect with one another. 

M - We are creating a mud fort! It is really messy. 

S - Yeah we have gotten the rope done.

R - Are you playing nature hunt, too?

B - We are playing among us, but no one is listening

Miss Brooke - Maybe you could call a meeting? 

B - There are 2 imposters... no wait 3.

E - Yeah I was confused. But that makes better sense

B - Okay so Omar, Me, Theo you are the imposters. Okay that's the meeting.

E - Okay we need to give them time to run away. Let's count to 10 then go! 

T - Okay!

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10... go!!! 

E - I got O! 

B - Imposters win!!!

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Children engaging in this kind of play allows them to deepen their vocabulary and literacy skills. They are able to tell stories and edit their thinking. Just like writers do! Continually, we see children deepening relationships and navigating the world with others.

Rainy Thursday

What a rainy Thursday we've had! Today we stayed inside to keep out of the rain and finally got to play in the gym! The Birch room has been waiting to play there and they finally got their chance! Some friends played with the dollhouse and others scaled the climbing wall. We also got out the foam blocks and some students decided to make an obstacle course. 

A: Let's make an obstacle course!

M: We can put the blocks down and the floor is lava!

They worked so hard together and the end result of the obstacle course was impressive and fun!

We came back to the room and got out some sensory bins with sand, beans, and split peas. We also added animals to the bins and some students decided they wanted to make a space for ocean animals and land animals. They were very imaginative in their play and had a great time.

We read a book about Dios de los Muertos and invited students to draw pictures of their families. They got really excited and some even used their family pictures from school as reference :)

Some students worked on a big train tracks project with blocks and worked together to make sure it went around the whole classroom. 

A: Let's build a train track!

B: It should go around the whole room!

E: Yeah! Let's make it so long!

It was so creative and amazing how hard Birch room worked together to create what was in their minds!

Full of Adventures

Today was a day FULL of adventures! Our class has been discussing how to transform part of our space into a building. Children had many ideas of what the space could become: restaurant, house, doctors office and more. As the days have gone by, they have continued to imagine ideas for this space and eventually it turned into our pumpkin patch. Now, the class has decided to take down the pumpkin patch and create something else. One thing they have decided on is to have a door. We have been waiting and waiting for a refrigerator box to show up outside of Lemcke's and today was finally the day! During our morning meeting we told them about the box outside and we made a plan. 

S - Are we going to go get the box? 

Miss Brooke - Yes we will go get the box! 

B - How are we going to carry that. It is way to heavy! 

Miss Brooke - I think we can do it. 

So on our walk we went. We walked to Lemcke's and got our big box. We walked back to the classroom carrying our box. They were so excited to work together and bring it back. 

Now the hard part begins... how do we use it?

A - I still want to use it as a door

S - Yeah for the building

B - Well I don't know if I want to do that anymore. I want to keep working on the mini-Ambrose stuff. 

Miss Brooke - Could we do both? Could both projects be going on at the same time? 

B - I don't know... I think that will be too complicated. 

M - Yeah it might be. But we could try!

C- We could try!

Miss Brooke - We will have to keep thinking about this and decide what we want to do!

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After this we walked all the way to the Sculpture Park and explored a new side! Quickly a new game emerged, Racers. Children were running around the paved sidewalk racing and timing each other.

Pumpkin Guts

Happy Tuesday! Today we finally broke open our pumpkin to take out the guts and seeds! Some friends were a little unsure at first:

B: Ewww it's so slimy!

A: Can you make the hole bigger?

So I took our carver and opened up the pumpkin to make a bigger hole.

B: Guys, let's take all of the seeds out!

C: Yeah!

Friends loved feeling the gooey pumpkin guts and trying to separate them from the seeds!

Other students kept working on our Ambrose small world. Today they decided to make the upper playscape since that was our zone. We used green felt for the grass and talked about what else we need. 

E: We need rocks!

M: We need a slide!

Students walked around the room and found lentils to use for our rocks.

M: Let's use these, they look like rocks!

B: We need a slide

E: I think we can use this (Holds up our wooden elephant)

We also had some choices on the light table for letter tracing which friends loved, especially with sorting the colors :)

 

A Whole New (small) World

Children have been discussing how they want our small world table to change from a mini forest to something else. On Friday we brainstormed different ideas that we could change it to. After much discussion, the children settled on creating a mini Ambrose. 

Our first order of business was to talk about the different areas we wanted to include. 

B - "I want to make the building"

C - "Yeah with all the classrooms!"

E - "I'll put us, then Sycamore, then the doors to the Hillside" 

M - "We need to remember when we build the snail to put all the little tiles all over it"

E - "Good idea"

C - "I'm drawing the little rocks on the bottom of the slide"

After much time, the small group illustrated a map of Ambrose that we will build on our small world table. Children discussed next steps for the table and how we will build some of these structures. 

How could we make some of these areas? 

"Well lets start with the school"

"We could make it out of clay?"

"Yeah I like that idea. We can color it the way we want to"

"What about a cardboard box?"

"Like a shoe box?"

"I don't think that will be big enough, all of my shoe boxes are square"

"Well a grown-up shoe box is more of a rectangle. Would that work?"

"Yeah maybe. I would need to see it."

"Sounds like y'all would like some clay and possibly a shoe box to see if that will work"

"Yes that is what we will need"

"I want to do just one area at a time, because this is a big project."

"Yeah, I agree! We can't do it all in one day"

Children were using creative thinking skills, cooperation, and literacy skills to construct the map. They also used spatial reasoning to depict the map in an accurate way.

Stories in the Forest

Our class projects and ideas have been centered around community. We haven't explored that word yet, but it is clear that our interests stem from this. Keeping this in mind, our question to explore today was "What stories live in the forest?" Since children often play group games, we wondered what would happen if we asked them to think about their games as stories. 

B - "Every time they have a meeting we show up. They will never get to make a plan!"

M - "Hold on to the crystals girls. Don't let them go. I found them on the ground. Let's keep looking for more."

Other students were standing watch to make sure the crystals are safe. 

Let's play a new game. This time bad guys are all around us and we have to hide out in the forest. Now we have to build hide outs. 

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Children have been experimenting with a kind of play called "games with rules". This is when children come up with rules to accompany a game. Usually this involves a heavy hand from the teacher, however, our class makes this up on their own. They negotiate with each other to determine the rules of the game and enforce it with each other.

It has been so exciting to watch their bonds deepen as each day continues and how that affects the games they create. 

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Ask your child about a fun game we played as we walked to The Forest today! It was a rhyming game where we said a silly word that rhymed followed by the right word. 

"Not Miss Wooke, Miss Brooke!" 

Thursday Play

Hello Birch families! Brrr today definitely felt like fall, so we bundled up and headed out for a walk. We walked down Lockwood and stopped by the fire station! Lucky us, the doors were open so we got to see the firetrucks! It was such a special treat and definitely made everyone's day. 

When we got back, some friends made cloud dough. The recipe is:

6 cups of flour

1 cup oil

What you end up getting is a silky powdery/dough which they loved! We put molds and measuring cups in and they started making cupcakes and cookies!

Other students wanted to draw and made some really beautiful pictures!

We went back outside and played in the mud kitchen. Some of the children were making smoothies in the kitchen on this cold day!

Someone else made delicious stew.

It was just a great day and we had so much fun playing together!