Dramatic Play
The dramatic play area turned into a construction site! We had a lot of fun fixing and building with our construction tools. We loved packing our tool box with everything we might need and dressing up with hard hats and tool belts. We especially loved finding lots of things to hammer and using the saws to cut open all the boxes. After we worked together to get them open, we enjoyed playing peek-a-boo and hide-and-go-seek in them! Sometimes things in the classroom became broken and needed construction workers to fix them. We used the cones to block off areas to keep them clear, but also as jumping obstacles! We really enjoyed using the measuring tape to measure tables, shelves, and especially our friends’ feet- we found everyone has REALLY big feet!
Art & Literacy
We really enjoyed using the jumbo dinosaur stamps for creating a piece of our classroom art! There were stegosauruses, tyrannosauruses, and more! It was fun looking for the different types of dinosaurs and guessing their names. Some of them had really long names, but they were fun to say. The construction site sensory bin was lots of fun and we loved playing in the beans. The little vehicles were very busy scooping and dumping "rocks" and making roads. We also really liked playing in the snow bin! There were many hidden snow animals living in it and we practiced our fine motor skills with the pinchers trying to find and pick them up. We had a lot of fun looking and sorting them into a bowl. We also liked pretending the snowballs were blueberries; we made super delicious pies with them! We also loved making our snowflakes and then seeing the surprise of them turning into ornamnets with our pictures on them!
Cognitive Area
We continue to enjoy using the magnatiles to create buildings with unique designs and stories. Our friends really enjoyed working together to create really tall buildings; it was most fun when we were able to crash the building down together. We also really enjoyed figuring out the how to open the different types of locks on the latch board and finding letters in the alphabet puzzle. We love pointing out the letters in our name and are starting to recognize other friends letters too.
Nature Area
It was fun looking at the different animals through the view finders. We enjoyed searching for the stuffed animal that matched the ones we saw through the lenses. Sometimes, we would help our friends’ find one that matched the one they saw. We are still exploring the magnifying glasses and love putting them up to our (or a friend's!) eyes and talking about what we see.
Block Area
We really enjoyed loading the dump trucks with different items and bringing it to an unloading site. We line up cones around the dumpsite so that our friends would know as well. We also really liked parking the dump trucks into their own lots- the rock sign-in table became a great parking spot! At times there weren’t enough room, so we built more with blocks. The elevator, crane, and conveyor belt have been very useful to load and unload blocks and people. The ramps still get lots of use and we love making long tracks with tunnels and seeing how far we can get the balls to roll.
Quiet Area
We continued to read books throughout the day. With the gloomy weather, we really enjoyed grabbing a holiday themed book and snuggling on the beanbag. We enjoyed learning and talking about all the different holidays that happen in Winter. We really enjoyed pointing out the items in the different stories that reminded us of the way we may celebrate for the holidays. the babies have been getting lots of love too, and we often read them stories and rock them to sleep- making sure all their "needs" are met.
Music Area
We have been playing lots of music for our friends to dance to and especially love having dance parties together with the scarves. Our favorites have been the Nutcracker and any of Laurie Berkner's songs (but especially the goldfish one!)
Gross Motor Area
We had a lot of fun jumping on the mattress with our friends. Sometimes, we liked holding our friends’ hands while jumping; it makes us go really high together! The horse still takes us on lots of rides and becomes a lot of different vehicles depending on our play.
Outside
We really enjoyed playing “doctor’s office” during outside time. We did lots of checkups and took care of all our patients. There were also nurses that helped. After the checkup we were sure to give out medicine too! We also loved pretending to have restaurants and served lots of foods like pizzas and pastas. We love playing in the sand pit and were pretending to be turtles crawling around and buried each other in the sand too! We love going on the swing, especially all together and spin round and round until we are dizzy! We picked lots of carrots in our garden, and loved watching them pull up from under the dirt. We tried the kale too- it was very exciting when we used it in soup the next day! the climbing structure is still a big staple in a lot of our play, becoming a mountain, delivery truck, school bus or restaurant. We have been working really hard trying to climb up the rope ladder-the hardest part- but also have just as much fun or more playing while hanging on it!