Dramatic Play
Following our love for the babies and acting out "house" roles, this area turned into a house complete with a kitchen, high chairs for the babies, and lots of cleaning supplies! We had a lot of fun dressing up like chefs or bakers and cooking up special dishes for our friends and for the babies. We talked a lot about what they like to eat and how to cook things. We loved the oven and the sink, and turned one of the cabinets into a microwave! We made a variety of foods including: soups, pizzas, cupcakes, and sandwiches. We loved using the eggs too- cracking them into dishes and also cooking them hard boiled! We loved cleaning the area too. We used the squirt bottles and sponges to scrub everything and made sure the tables were always wiped down. We also turned the squirt bottles into water guns and loved pretending to shoot each other and fires.
Art & Literacy
We really enjoyed sculpting different forms and shapes with the cloud dough. The texture was really fun and we pretended it was from the moon. We liked stacking bowls of it together and then crashing them down. We also had lots of fun with paint. We made a big collaborative posted and talked about what happens when you mix white into colors- how it is lighter or darker depending on how much we use. We tried the same colors with pom-pom painters next- making dots and lines and practicing pinching the clothes pins to be able to pick up the pom poms. We also did a lots of beading! We worked really hard to make lots of beautiful necklaces that we enjoyed wearing around.
Cognitive Area
We really liked putting together the alphabet puzzle and looking for letters that matched our own names. It was fun helping our friends look for letters that were in their names as well. We also enjoyed putting together magnatiles to create unique buildings, and of course still love crashing them down. The light table letters have also been exciting, using them to load trucks, pretending they are "biscuits," and handing them out to all our friends.
Nature Area
It was fun looking at the different types of animals with the view finders. We liked to use them as binoculars and "search" for different types of animals around the classroom. We also enjoyed using the magnifying glass to look for small insects. It was fun seeing how big or small our eyes get when we place the magnifying glass at different distances, and seeing what our friends look like with them.
Block Area
It was really fun using the dump trucks to carry and deliver different types of goods around the classroom! We carried lots of people, animals, blocks, and other materials around. It was also fun racing with our friends and finding an area to park tor dump the trucks together. The doll house and doll people got a lot of use too. We loved filling it with furniture and acting out different stories together.
Quiet Area
We continued to read lots of different books throughout the day. We really enjoyed reading to our friends as well. We liked pointing out the pictures and guessing what was happening in the story. We have some favorites that we read all the time and now sometimes can even recite the words from memory! The babies continue to get lots of love too and we bring them around all over the classroom.
Music Area
We really liked to dance along to the nutcracker with our ribbons and scarves. It was even more fun when we used our tambourines and shakers to add to the beat. We also made sure to have seats for our audiences to watch our performances! Some friends also enjoyed creating their own music together as a group with pianos and musical sticks and other friends danced to it.
Gross Motor
We really enjoyed playing on the new indoor climbing ladder (called a Pikler Triangle) and figuring out how to get to the other side. We turned it into a train and rode together and liked going underneath too. We also liked running through the tunnel and looking for our friends from the opposite ends. It was fun pretending the tunnel to be a “hiding” place and also rocking it back and forth together pretending it was a boat.
Outside
With a little bit of rain outside, we really enjoyed looking at how different the materials were when they were wet. We really enjoyed building huge castles in the sand area and digging gigantic holes for our friends to get in to "swim." It was also fun making “rain water soup” with different types of things we found around the backyard, adding them to buckets and pots full of the rain water. We also really liked playing hide n’ seek with our friends outside. Our friends also liked to pretend to be monsters after they were found. We used the pipes for lots of building including telescopes to explore what may be next to our backyard. We also used them to see airplanes and sea planes in the sky. We love going on the swing and slides together and had lots of fun climbing around on the structure. On one really rainy day we decided to go on an adventure to find puddles! We found some really big ones to jump in and even followed the water "rivers" to the drain- watching it pour down. We loved the rain!