Identity:
It is important to encourage drawing and creative confidence in young children. We introduced the children to a new way of examining themselves. This was similar to our monthly routine of working on self-portraits while looking at a mirror. However, by offering a distorted image of the child, a challenge was raised. For this provocation, each child was presented with a photograph of their face, except half of it was missing! They added details to the missing side of their face using an array of colorful markers. There was no right or wrong way of engaging in this activity. While the children were inspired to think critically, they were also given creative freedom. As teachers we have found that when children are given opportunities to freely explore, they feel good about themselves and their work.
Come check them out this week!
We also introduced a new game during circle time including picture cards with the first letter of their name on one side and their photograph on the other. As expected, they were all so excited to see pictures of themselves, and were even more thrilled when they realized that each of them had two identical! We focused on the first letter of our names and its letter sound, turning each card one at a time to reveal each child's face. Later, we played a memory matching game, encouraging the children to find their two matching cards by looking for the first letter in their name. We don't drill the ABC's in preschool, however we do feel that it is essential to expose children to developmentally-appropriate literacy activities in fun and engaging ways. Beginning with a child's name is the most natural way to work on letter recognition, letter sounds, and writing letters. In addition to incorporating letter work into our group time, we will practice new literacy skills on individual basis.
Power Ranger House:
For the first time this year, all of the children gathered in the block area for a collaborative building day. It happened to be during a morning where there was imaginative play going on that involved lots of running and busy bodies. The topic was "good guys and bad guys," a theme we see over and over again year after year. Whether it is pretending to be power rangers, superheroes, or Ningagos (a new craze I just learned about), we want to encourage the children to expand their play in productive and safe ways. I challenged them to build something for the power rangers and they were all on board! We spent most of the day at the block area building a power ranger house. The children worked together by passing each other blocks, helping with the heavier hollow blocks, and cheering each other on for their building techniques. I'm looking forward to seeing more block group structures this year!
Music and Movement with Alana:
We've been having music and movement classes with Alana every Monday. This week, Alana incorporated bean bags into the mix and encouraged the children to listen for her cues telling them where to put the bean bag or how to move with it. To end the session, we worked on calming our bodies with breathing techniques and using our imagination--something so useful for 2's and 3's.
Spanish with Mimi:
We discussed Halloween through a song that was introduced last week, which the kids loved and requested as soon as Mimi arrived. Mimi also worked on color recognition with the children by encouraging them to glue orange, green, and brown construction paper onto a pumpkin coloring page.
Los Monstros- Halloween song
