Dramatic Play
We have brought the SF Zoo to school! We practice being good zoo keepers by feeding the animals multiple times a day and making sure they stay in their correct homes. It is fun to be in charge of the keys and ensure that all of the cages are locked. Sometimes, when we are feeling extra silly, we like to pretend that we are the animals! We have our friends gently close the cages for us, while we experience what it would be like to be an animal in the zoo. After a long day’s work we even like to pretend to be the water animals, and cool off in the pool. It’s so funny to see how many of us we can fit. We love closing up the zoo at the end of the day and making sure the animals get a good night’s rest.
Nature Area
We have discovered that the magnify glasses can help us on our bear hunts! We use them to look closely at the bear tracks to see which way he could have possibly gone. Our hunt has yet to be successful, but we can assure he is not under the couch!
Block Area
The people and cars in block area have wanted to explore, so we built them roads! Some roads lead to the house where the people can park their cars and then climb the ladder. Other times the roads have towers on them so the cars have to maneuver around them. It is fun to build together and share our ideas with each other. We even found a new way to use the ramps…we ski with them! It is very challenging to try to move, but we love how silly it makes us feel.
Quiet Area
Reading stories is one of our favorite things to do, especially on Love Day when we were extra cozy in our pajamas. It feels so nice to group around a book and look at the pictures with our friends. When there’s no parents or teachers available to read books to us, we don’t fret, we just read by ourselves. We even like to step into the parent role and read to our babies.
Music
Teacher Charity has inspired us so much that we now feel confident to have concerts of our own. Our friend, Ollie, has felt so inspired that he brings his own ukulele to practice alongside her. On days other than Thursday, we grab some scarfs and ribbons and sing any Charity lyrics we can remember. It is fun to explore our music abilities on our own, but we will always love a jam session with Teacher Charity. Some of our current favorites are; “Lemonade,” “Get Your Booty Out of Bed,” and “Scarf Dance.”
Art
Our creativity juices have been flowing this month. We have explored so many different mediums of art. At Mano’s we have practiced our sculpting skills by creating our very own clay monsters. We also explored creating self-portraits with felt. One of our favorites (also the messiest), was playing with paper-mache. We realized that even though our projects might not turn out the way we hoped, it is still fun to go through the experience. It is so cool to see how our friend’s creations end up turning out, as well as our own.
At school we have been doing group projects to help decorate the walls of our classroom. It is exciting to come to school and see our art hanging on the wall. We love creating art for our families and friends, especially with Love Day coming up! Using stickers, glitter, and scissors, we create masterpieces filled with love. The best part is seeing our friend’s faces light up when we put them in their cubbies!
Gross Motor Area
We have been enjoying working on our coordination skills with Teacher Jesse. She has introduced us to a fun new way of yoga called, TOE-ga. It is so silly to try to grab pompoms with our toes, but it really helps us with our balance and focus. We have also learned new animal poses to match the ones in our zoo. A few that we have learned are; penguin, crocodile, cheetah, gorilla, and bear.
Cognitive Area
We have had so much fun building with the Magna Tiles and love showing our creations to our friends and teachers. We’ve built space ships, castles, delivery vehicles with alphabet letters inside, and robots to name a few. The Magna Tiles with wheels remind us of rollerblades so sometimes we try to stand on them and skate, being careful so as to not fall off.
Outside
The weather has been pretty cloudy and rainy lately, but that has not stopped our play, it just means our mud kitchen gets busier! We love getting our hands dirty as we knead lumps of mud to make muffins, pies, and cakes and cooking up lots of yummy dishes for our customers. Aside from dessert, we specialize in making soups, pizzas, and casseroles. Our restaurant not only boasts delicious food to satisfy customers, but on somedays there’s also a live band that performs on stage! We pretend to play the piano and sing songs like “Let it Go” and “I’m Still Standing.” We also entertain our customers by dancing on the stage, sometimes dancing ballet and other times showing our moves by dancing freestyle. When we’re not operating our restaurant and band, we work diligently with our friends and teachers to build trains and boats using the blocks or pipes. This often leads to lots of pretend play about going to the North Pole and being sailors who are searching for hidden treasures while also avoiding sharks and sea monsters in the ocean. We also like reenacting the plots of some our favorite movies, including “The Little Mermaid” and “Coraline.” With all the rain that we’ve been getting, the kale in our garden has grown and we’ve been having them as healthy snacks in between our play. Playing in the rain has been so exciting that we can’t wait until it rains again!
