Dramatic Play
Our school has turned into an underwater oasis! Luckily, we have our big yellow submarine to take us on all of our adventures. First, we make sure to gear up with all of our scuba diver equipment. We need our wetsuit, oxygen tank, goggles, and net. Once we are set to go, we load into the submarine and head off to explore the ocean. We love peering out of the windows to see what different types of sea creatures we can find such as; sharks, turtles, and whales. Once we even got attacked by an octopus! When we are feeling extra brave we come out of the submarine to try to catch fish with our nets. It is so fun learning about sea creatures and exploring the ocean with our friends.
Nature Area
We love looking into the science viewers and sharing what we see with our friends. We love seeing volcanoes, caves, mountains, and lands that have been destructed by floods and earthquakes!
Block Area
The trains will always be a classic for us. We love how versatile the tracks can be. Some days we feel like building one long line, other days we see how many loops we can make. We have new sea creature toys who have joined the block area! It is so fun to have them swim underneath the bridges and pretend they are in The Bay, but we have to keep an eye out to make sure none of them swim onto the tracks. We have also enjoyed playing with them in the house and making ramps for them to slide down.
Quiet Area
We have so many new books out that teach us about the ocean, scuba divers, and sea creatures. Our favorites are from, “Suzanne Tate’s Nature Series.” Each book talks about different sea creatures that are endangered and how helpful humans, like us, can save them! We enjoy reading these books on our own, with friends, and with teachers. When we’re not reading in the quiet area, we love to play with the babies. We put their clothes on, feed them a bottle, and then take them on adventures!
Music Area
In conjunction with our underwater theme, Teacher Charity has taught us two new songs that we’ve absolutely loved jamming to: “We Love the Beach” and the surfing song. We have so much fun singing and dancing to our old favorites as well, including “Lemonade,” “Happy Fluffy,” “Rockstar,” “May We Be Happy,” and “Where is Thumpkin?”
Art Area
Our ideas of how to use play dough have been expanded by Teacher Edurne who showed us how we could essentially “draw” with play dough. Using our hands, we molded play dough into different shapes and sizes and gently pressed them onto a piece of paper to create landscapes. We also made our own jellyfishes, complete with tentacles, faces, and hair, with colorful tissue paper and feathers. We love coming to school and being welcomed by our jellyfish each day. More importantly, we feel so proud seeing our work being displayed in the classroom and can’t wait to make more art pieces! And finally after waiting patiently for our paper mache hot air balloons to dry, we got to paint them!
Gross Motor Area
We have been having loads of fun learning different sea animal poses with Teacher Jessie! Some new poses we have enjoyed learning are turtle, whale, crab, octopus, jellyfish, dolphin, clamshell, and stingray. We especially love doing shark pose because we sing the baby shark song together while doing it, as well as starfish pose to rest our bodies when we get tired. It feels so good to work out our back muscles during yoga! On days when we are not doing yoga, we enjoy rocking back and forth on our boat while pretending to be fishermen casting nets to capture fish.
Cognitive Area
The translucent color blocks have been our go-to activity, providing us with a creative outlet to explore while also allowing us to express our ideas. We have been using them to build buildings and working with our friends to figure out the best possible arrangement so that we can create the tallest and sturdiest building possible. We have also been creating patterns with the blocks based on their shapes and colors. One day, we discovered that when we place one color block on top of a different color block and look through them from the top, it creates another color! Another activity that we have been highly invested in is the ocean-themed puzzle. Though challenging, we work hard with our friends to piece the puzzle together, starting with the border and then connecting other pieces to it. We feel so accomplished when we figure it out and see the resulting image!
Outside
No matter the weather, we stay busy outside! On stormy, wet days we love splashing in puddles and exploring our possibilities in the mud kitchen. We love getting messy and cooking cupcakes, meatballs, and soup for our friends. We also enjoy going on “mushroom hunts” - seeing what new mushrooms the rain has brought and then building homes around them, so as to protect them. Every now and then we like to add mushrooms to our kitchen creations!
On warm sunny days we love going “surfing” in the sand pit! It is fun to stack the blocks and practice our balance while we surf the waves. Drawing on the chalkboard has also been one of our favorite pastimes. We draw our families, treasure maps, boats, and for more detailed drawings we ask our teachers for help. When we want our creations to come to life, we build with the pipes. We have been creating pirate ships, rocket ships, boats, and tree-houses. This teaches us good teamwork because it takes a lot of friends to build such big things. Whether riding bikes, playing with the pipes/blocks, or swinging, we love being outside!
