It has been an exciting start of the school year! We have been making lots of new friends, learning the new schedule and routines, and having so much fun!
Dramatic Play
To start the year, we are exploring role playing in a familiar environment: a restaurant! We have enjoyed dressing up as chefs with our aprons and hats and cooking lots of delicious meals for our teachers and friends. We passed out menus and practiced taking orders on our clipboards, and worked hard to get the orders right. Sometimes we wanted to make different items than what the customer wanted- it was always a surprise! We worked hard to set the table for lots of friends, matching up the different colored plates and cups and even sometimes the food too! We enjoyed making coffee or juices for everyone and loved using all the different condiments.
Block Area
In this area we have been working hard making lots of different roads and structures for the cars. We turned the blocks into lots of different things, including fire stations, train tracks, freeways, and towers. We also have enjoyed playing in the doll house, and filling it with lots of furniture and people, sometimes even trucks and dinosaurs! The dinosaurs have been a big focus of our play and we love roaring and acting out different scenarios with them. The big and little construction trucks are fun too, and we have been using them to pick up and dump different objects from all over the classroom.
Nature Area
We have been very interested in bugs and animals and the shells remind us of snails. We pretend the shells have snails or crabs inside and we also use them to listen to the ocean. The view finders have also been very exciting, both to look at the different pictures inside, but especially to pretend we are taking pictures with a camera! We love walking around and telling our friends to “say cheese!”
Quiet Area
We love reading! We have spent lots of time with our friends reading books, both with our teachers and by ourselves. There are a lot of books that we are familiar with from home and the library, but many we haven’t read before too! We love the stuffed animals and puppets too, and often snuggle with them while reading, or bring them with us around the classroom.
Art/Literacy
We’ve enjoyed all of the different art activities and supplies, especially the sensory table full of beans and trucks, and the play doh. We have spent a lot of time making different shapes with the cookie cutters, trying to roll balls and snakes with our hands and using the scissors to cut different shapes out. We celebrated Wilder’s birthday by making a beautiful canvas painting that is now hanging up, and we also made our families and friends many drawings and creations with the markers and paper.
Gross Motor
We have lots of energy and love getting it out on the jumping mattress! We also love climbing up the ladder frame and sliding down onto the mattress. Sometimes we pretend to knock over our friends by sliding into their legs and it is quite funny for everyone! We have played a lot of “5 Little Monkey’s” and pretending to fall and hit our heads.
Cognitive Area
We have been really interested in the different puzzles, but not to put them together, we have more fun taking the pieces out and using them in different play! We always sort them back to the right spots though afterwards. The stackers have also been interesting and we like mixing the different shapes and colors and seeing how many we can fit onto one side. The bristle blocks have been fun too, with our new friends just discovering them while the rest of us continue to build lots of different vehicles.
Music Area
The pianos have been a lot of fun and we have been experimenting with sound a lot: playing hard or soft, with our hands or different objects, alone or together! Whenever we dance we get out the ribbons and scarves and lover twirling around with them. The rhythm sticks have also gotten a lot of use, but not always for music- sometimes they are wands or just pointers!
Outside
We have had so much fun outside together! With the few warmer days, we have loved playing with water in the mud kitchen, and watering all of our plants in the garden. We are very careful to make sure everything got some water and work together to help our plants grow! The sand pit is a lot of fun too and we have been trying to make sand castles as well as big holes. We love climbing on and under the structure, and pretend it is a lot of different things. The new stage has held lots of performances and turned into a pirate ship too! We love swinging together and drawing on the chalkboard too.