Self portraits coming to life!

Good afternoon and happy Tuesday! The Birch room began the day by singing our morning songs, and reviewing our classroom agreements and jobs. So far, the classroom jobs have been a huge success and they seem to enjoy their responsibilities. Ask your child about our classroom jobs!

This morning, students built structures with blocks and light table pieces. Some children made patterns with blocks while others worked on a puzzle. The Birch kids are becoming puzzle experts!

We adventured out to the playscape in order to beat the heat! Students were searching for dandelions, flowers and bugs. Some students found a cicada that was relaxing on a log in the rockpit. One student was able to touch it before it flew away into the tree!

We returned inside and completed our self portraits out of loose parts! It was very interesting to experience the variety of ways on how the students identify themselves. Students were able to look in a mirror while completing their projects. Some students added ears, nostrils, eyebrows, lips and teeth and did a good job at identifying their eye and hair color.

"I have short hair. These need to be short."

"What color are my eyes? Do these match?"

 Look for your child's self portrait outside of the Birch class! They will be displayed shortly!

Self Portraits

Today we began studying self portraits.  This week we will work on "building" our self portraits with loose parts.   We will eventually build self portraits to hang outside our room.  Before we got started the children took a look at themselves in a mirror.  We talked about what they see;  " I have eyes.  I have a nose.  This is where my mustache goes."

"My eyes are blue."





 


"I'm sad because my mommy didn't let me have dessert. Now I'm happy because we went to the grocery store and I got my own cart."

"Here are my cheeks.  I'm done with my face."

 

"I need brown yarn. It can be my brown hair.  I need to wrap this around my belly. What do you have inside your bones?  This goes around it."

 

 

"I have eyebrows.  Now I need a neck. This will be better. This is my nose.  I need something else. I need legs. (as he shakes his knees) I'm using blue. Its my favorite color.  What's your favorite color? Now I need my smiley face."








We also played with soapy water and water beads.  There were lots of animal homes built.

 

 

Happy Monday! 

Forest Friday!

Good afternoon! The Birch room had a lovely morning in the forest! This was the first time the students could walk through the paths and observe the plants, trees, flowers and animals living in our beautiful forest.

While exploring, children collected rocks, worms, leaves and sticks. Several students used the sticks to separate plants that are overgrown on the walking path. A group of children found a "map on leaves" and were busy treasuring hunting! 

                                             
We discovered a huge tree that has fallen down! Some students said it got struck by lightning and another student shared how the tree was tired of standing so it decided to lay down.

One student conquered his fear of climbing over the big tree. He was hesitant about trying to climb,  but did not want to give up after watching other children climb over! After several attempts, he made it over the big tree! He shared with his friends, "Hey guys I climbed over! I want to go over there and start over." The Birch room was so proud of him for not giving up!

Have a great weekend with your child!

Deconstruction in Capers

Our room is focusing on construction and deconstruction during capers.  We had friends from our room and other rooms building different structures. 

"These are statues.  The rocks are the hats. They have to balance on their head."

"A tunnel for cars. This is a sliding door. This is locked and this is open."

 

 

We also did some construction with floam.  This is a new material that was introduced in our room.. The kids had fun exploring this materials and building objects. 

"Floam feels sticky and gooey."

"The lines (in the floam) make it sticky."

 

"I made my family.  brother, dad, baby, mom and sister."  "You make a head and a baby body.  My mom built me.  She made my head, arms and legs."  

We then did a deconstruction investigation. Yesterday Birch friends went out onto the playscape and collected items to take apart or deconstruct. Today we decided to deconstruct the tomatoes.  Before we did the deconstruction we made some predictions of what would be in the tomatoes. 

"seeds because they need to grow"

"theres red juice"

"spider or strawberry"   

As the students began to deconstruct the tomatoes they said: 

"The juice is coming out." 

"It knew there was juice in there!"

 

The students began to move the seeds around.  Some friends started counting them. "Its smelly and cold.

Then friends began to taste the tomatoes. 

"Its yummy"  

Once the deconstruction was over, we discussed the parts of the tomatoes.  

"It has skin like us! It holds the juice in." 

Please check out the other classroom blogs to see what else happened today

Spruce: http://afcspruce.blogspot.com/

Maple: http://afcmaple.blogspot.com/

Jobs, nature hunts and trains!

Wow, the Birch room accomplished a lot today! We began our morning with our usual routines and making choices in the room. Some students built blocks while others worked on a puzzle and designed with shapes.

Ms. Susie and I have been noticing a lot of friends asking to perform certain jobs during the school day, such as holding the green clipboard, being the line leader, counting how many students are present, along with other jobs. We held a classroom meeting to talk about how we should solve our problems when students want to perform certain jobs around the classroom and school. The class created six jobs:

1. line leader
2. clipboard holder
3. counter 
4. morning greeter 
5. spoon collector
6. agreement reader

The students worked very hard on writing these jobs to place under our classroom agreements. We plan to rotate these jobs and the students seem motivated to help out our class and school!

After our class meeting, some students went outside to collect other nature pieces that we can investigate. The students have been interested in taking things apart and studying the pieces of materials. The students collected all sorts of objects, such as rocks, sticks, acorns, and walnuts. A few students adventured into the garden and pulled a few tomatoes and raspberries! We are so excited to see what is inside of these special objects! 

To end our morning, we went on a walk! The class walked around the neighborhood and we stopped by the train tracks, hoping for a train to pass by. Guess what? We lucked out and we watched a train! The class returned to school just in time for lunch. Have a good afternoon!