Dramatic Play
Since we love creating pretend food for our friends and storefronts to sell it in, this area became an Ice Cream Shop! We had so much fun making different cups and cones with all the different flavors. The toppings were also very exciting to add on top, and we even had to-go containers if anyone needed to take some “home.” We practiced our selling skills using the cash register and collecting money, though we still have more fun handing it out! We had to be very careful when scooping the ice-cream out of the container so that it wouldn't spill, and then packed it down tight so our friends wouldn't lose it either. We loved getting to make our friends, teachers, and parents ice-cream and everyone definitely left our shop with full bellies!
Block Area
We can never go wrong with the trains and train tracks! We love putting the tracks together to create different routes for our trains to travel continuously on, sometimes short circular ones and other times long, winding ones. As some friends build the tracks and work to ultimately create a loop, other friends enjoy playing with the figures in the doll house. We have also taken a special liking to the ramps. We lean them against the shelf at various levels and roll balls down them, taking note of how fast they go. We occasionally add in bumpers so that when one ball goes down the ramp, it can hit the bumper and get accelerated onto another ramp.
Nature Area
Our anticipation to see our baby chicks continues to grow each day, especially since we all got to see them growing inside their shell during candling! For almost all of the eggs, we got to see glimpses of the yolk, air space, developing eye, and veins! We are hopeful that they all will hatch!
Quiet Area
We love perusing through our All About Us pages and telling friends about the pictures and illustrations on our personal page. It is fun looking at their pictures and learning about their family members as well as the places they have gone. With the unceasing excitement of the chicks’ arrival, we have been reading lots of books about them to learn about their development. Some books we have reread countless times are: “Where do Chicks Come From?” “Eggs to Chickens,” “Hens for Friends,” “Who Hatches the Chick?” and “Chicks and Chicken.”
Art Area
In celebration of Earth Day and taking inspiration from Teacher Charity’s song, “We Love Everyone,” we worked collaboratively to illustrate the Earth, using paint for the vast land and ocean and adding different creature stickers as final touches. At Mano’s, we have created our favorite animals out of boxes! First, we painted our boxes. Next we painted some features of the animal we were making, and finally, we added ears, noses, and other identifying parts of our animals with feathers and pipe cleaners. It was rather exciting seeing the different animals our friends made and felt like we had a mini zoo when we brought them back to the school! We also had fun cutting up colored paper into different sized and shaped pieces to use in making our own collage. After carefully cutting the paper and selecting which to use as well as where to put it, we pasted it onto a piece of white paper. Each of our collages looked very different from that of our friends, and so it was interesting hearing our peers discuss their creations. Some friends made a collage of their face while others stuck to a more abstract piece. Either way, the whole process was amazing!
Gross Motor
We are still enjoying our rocking boat, and riding it with all of our friends! We often plan out where we are going to go and always try to go as fast as possible. Lately we have been taking our treasure maps with us too, and pretend to be pirates or treasure hunters. During yoga, we have been practicing lots of different poses, especially loving all transportation (boat, plane, train, street cleaner) as well as animals. Teacher Jessie brought her drumagain and we have been loving playing it along to the chant rhythm.
Music
Because of our dramatic play area, we of course had to do the Ice Cream Song! We definitely have our favorite songs that we continue to always request and love doing, though it has been fun to try out some new ones too! We love when Charity comes every week and then practice throughout the week on our own too. We have lately been using the pianos to play charity songs nad many of us have gotten really good and knowing the tunes and the lyrics.
Cognitive Area
The magnatiles are still so fun and engaging and we have enjoyed building lots of boats, airplanes, houses, and vehicles. We especially love to get small items, often the alphabet letters, or the people and animals from the block area, to put inside our creations and them enjoy knocking it down and revealing everything inside!
