This brought up the question, "How does it do that?" "Why does the water stay inside?" "What happened to it all?" So of course we ripped the diapers open to discover the silica inside. It surprised us that it looked and felt like snow! So we ripped open all of our diapers and put the cool, gooey contents into a bucket and took it outside to explore further.
We continued to enjoy the marble run, birthday cakes, and baby play today. We participated in a rather unusual experiment this morning. We dissected diapers! The children were challenged with trying to see how much water would an average diaper hold without leaking. We began with our pipettes. Dropping a few drops at a time and then turning the diaper upside down to see if the water was trapped or if the diaper would leak. Then we moved on to bigger droppers which hold more water. Still no leaking. Next, a few of us poured our whole cup of water into the diaper. Amazed there were still at no leaks. Finally, we poured whole containers of water into the diapers and were astonished that the diapers held every drop! This brought up the question, "How does it do that?" "Why does the water stay inside?" "What happened to it all?" So of course we ripped the diapers open to discover the silica inside. It surprised us that it looked and felt like snow! So we ripped open all of our diapers and put the cool, gooey contents into a bucket and took it outside to explore further. We finished out 2020 with a birthday party for Jesus! Thank you to the hosts of our party! The children had a wonderful time and loved it all! Thank you to all of you for the sweet gifts and heartfelt words. It is truly my pleasure and honor to work with these amazing children each week. Thank you for sharing your children with me. I am looking forward to 2021 and the exciting new challenges it will bring. Have a Happy and Blessed Christmas and New Year.
The children had so much fun this morning. It is exciting to see them really enjoying all the dramatic play we have been exploring these last few weeks. Today we bathed babies in the sensory tub, diapered and swaddled them, fed them, and made birthday cakes for them. We also had a really cool marble run on the light table that was a huge hit for everyone. I picked it up at Lakeshore last year and know they still have them in stock if you are looking for any last minute Christmas gifts. It really was quite popular with everyone. There is something so beautiful about taking care of a tiny new human that is completely dependent on their adult caregivers to meet their needs. Preschool age children feel it, especially when provided with the opportunities for role play. Through baby nursery play, preschoolers connect with very tender parts of themselves, increase their awareness as their view into a world outside of themselves is beginning to expand. Taking care of babies helps them strengthen their inherent nurturing skills, and expand their capacity for compassion. We loved weighing the babies, diapering, feeding, and bathing them. A highlight of the day was taste testing baby food. Some years I have students tell me that they are not babies any more and just refuse to taste the baby food. Not this year! Every one was eager to try. Some flavors were hits and some misses but every one enjoyed trying. We took a little break from the baby action to make some jingle bell art. We put some paper in a box lid with some bells and paint and shook it, dragging the bells through the paint, as we sang, "Jingle Bells". The marble run as the other major attraction this morning. The children all had a great time dropping the marbles down the track and following it through the tubs, around the ramps, and to the end. Marble runs are great for visual tracking, problem solving, cause and effect, sharing, language development, and the list goes on. We concluded our morning with a birthday celebration for one of our own Owls. Happy 3rd Birthday! It is hard to believe that Friday is our last class of 2020! We will be having a birthday party for Jesus! Come ready to celebrate!
We had another full morning. The children continued to enjoy the Starbucks store in dramatic play as well as the wrapping station. We also worked on our fine motor skills and painted with water colors. We broke out the pipettes again this morning. Today however, we pretended we were in a chocolate factory and we needed to fill the trays with "chocolate" to make the candies. The boys and girls loved filling their trays! We attempted another directed drawing this morning. The children drew a circle and added a little hook on top to make an ornament. They then filled it in with water color paints. Next week we will be learning all about babies and birthdays as we plan to celebrate Jesus' birthday!
The dramatic play area has been receiving a lot of attention lately. The children are loving the few little changes to the area that help make it different each week. Today the kitchen was moved around a bit. The children loved pretending they were in Starbucks, mixing coffees, selling cupcakes and cake pops, and of course working the register. We also worked on lacing. This is a difficult fine motor skill to learn. One hand has to manage the string while the other carefully threads a tiny bead onto the tip of the lace and then, the hand holding the lace has to move to allow the bead to drop down the string. We are more successful with our big chunky beads at this point but it is always fun to challenge ourselves. Just look at the concentration on each of their faces! Another very popular activity this morning was working in Santa's Workshop. Again, this is something very simple you can do at home. I had a stack of oversized dominos that I put on the table along with a basket of stick on bows, rolls of tape, and squares of wrapping paper. The children had a blast wrapping the dominos and giving them to a friend as a gift to unwrap! Their imaginations were really into it! They were so excited to choose a domino, decide who they were wrapping it for, wrap it just the way they wanted and present it to a friend with all the excitement and joy of gift giving. The recipients were just as excited to receive the gift and unwrap it. Not only was this a great exercise in imaginary play but it was also a fantastic fine motor workout. Most of us had never used tape before on our own. As you and imagine there was an excessive amount of tape used but the children were empowered to try again and again. Individually, I worked with each child to discover the end of the tape dispenser and how it had "teeth". We gently ran our finger across the edge and learned how to pull the tape down in order for the "teeth" to cut the tape free from the roll. Once we were successful with cutting the tape, we had to manage to stick it to the wrapping paper and secure the domino inside. For some this was a bit frustrating, trying to get the sticky side on the paper and not our finger. We were determined to figure it out. The bows were also sticky backed and we had to carefully remove the backing to attach them to our gifts. So many amazing challenges built into one activity and yet we had so much fun no one was aware of how hard they were working! Some of the conversations overheard while wrapping and gifting to friends: "This stuff is sticky!" "Look what I got for you!" "I wonder what it could be? Oh my, a block! Thanks so much!" "Awe, thank you for my present." "Here, open it, open it!" "Can you help me hold the paper tight?" "I like this paper, it looks pretty with a bow on it." "Here, I made you a present." We also explored other offerings today. We will continue wrapping and taping on Friday. See you then!
We couldn't very well have a cookie week without tasting several varieties. So this morning Tootsie brought us three of her favorites for us to try. After we enjoyed sampling the cookies we had the opportunity to vote for our favorites. This was the highlight of our day for sure! Some cookies were immediate likes and others not so much! Most of us had a difficult time deciding which was our favorite. In the end we were able to identify which flavor was our favorite and vote accordingly. We discussed which flavor had the least votes, and questioned whether there was an overall favorite or if it was a tie. We did pretty well interpreting the data. The rest of our day was comprised of more dramatic play, making some special ornaments for Christmas, building the North Pole with blocks and enjoying each others company. Next week we will find ourselves acting as busy little elves while we help Santa wrap gifts at a wrapping station and help each other keep warm with our dramatic play which will become Starbucks.
The children arrived this morning to find our dramatic play area transformed into a bakery! What an exciting day. Developmentally, we are finally ready to explore all the wonderful things dramatic play adds to our classroom. In fact, this is almost the only thing the children were interested in doing today. They really loved just PLAYING! It was so much fun to just sit back and listen to their play develop. Although it may look like play to us, the amount of true and valuable learning that is taking place is amazing! Social interactions, vocabulary development, dress up, sharing, co-play were all happening today. Once the boys and girls washed their hands they couldn't wait to begin exploring. The cash register was a big hit today. Everyone was interested in taking a turn with it. Many children also enjoyed wearing the aprons while they were baking. Some of the conversations overheard today: "Cookies for sale! Who wants to buy cookies?" "Careful they are hot." "Can I sell you 2 cookies and give you $3 back?" "Here you go, this mixes the cookies." "How much do you want to pay for them?" "Now we have to use these (oven mits) so we don't get burned." "Crack the eggs here." "Do you like these cookies?" We enjoyed decorating our own gingerbread man during art. We worked our fine motor muscles by squeezing the glue bottles and adding little gems. Some of the children also drew on their cookies. We also enjoyed music where we got to sing a lullaby to a baby doll. We also sang Jingle Bells with real bells! Tootsie brought us new play dough and some fun Christmas cookie cutters. We flattened out the dough and stamped cookies for Tootsie to come nibble on. It was a wonderful day! We all missed each other during our week off. Friday we will get to taste test real cookies and vote for our favorite! Yummy! See you then. Don't forget to wear your school t-shirts!
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Why Blog?Here you will find little snippets of our days together. When my children were in preschool and would come home I would always ask, "So, what did you do today?". All they ever said was, "Played." That didn't tell me much. I hope this blog will be a place to share what we have done and help you ask more directed questions of your child. You will see first hand just what we do after you kiss your little one goodbye in the morning. It will also be a great place to visit and see just how much your child has grown and learned throughout the year. Archives
March 2024
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