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Spring Weekly Lesson Plan: 5/13/13-5/17/13
Megan Lead Teaching
Overview:
We will discuss the life cycle and bury our classroom pet, CoCo. We will continue to learn about Spring, the life cycle, and what plants, flowers, and food needs to grow. We will watch, measure, and observe the plants we planted and identify changes in their physical properties. We will hypothesize what they will look like and how tall they will grow. We will continue to support the children's interest in community helpers, vehicles, and dramatic play by narrating and extending their play with open ended questions and ideas. We have intentionally chosen manipulatives this week that support valuable cognitive skills like sorting, matching, ordering, identifying, and classifying skills. We will move towards exploration and inquiry in our small group topics and support the children in comparing, contrasting, and processing information according to their own experiences.
Expressive Arts
**Materials: Easel, white thin paper, primary and secondary color paints, paint brushes
Rationale: To promote creative expression and continue to promote color mixing. To continue to provide opportunities for color recognition and awareness. To provide sensory input and encourage the children to use colors in a variety of ways. To provide a variety of materials for artistic materials.
Skills: Fine motor, exploration, creativity, artistic expression, turn taking, observation, color recognition
Sensory:
**Materials: bug visuals, bug home and food visuals, lily pad and pond visuals, green and blue play dough, gardening tools, impression tools, plastic bugs and spring animals, rocks, sticks
Rationale: To learn about homes and habitats of animals and bugs in Spring. To continue the creation of things using play dough. To encourage the children to act out ideas about gardening and creating things they see in nature. To increase their awareness of Spring and the new life, animals, and bugs that emerge. To provide materials for the children to provide homes and food for the bugs. To try out materials for cause and effect relationship. To encourage creative expression, imagination, invention, and persistence. To promote creations from visuals.
Skills: Sensory input, fine motor, dramatic and pretend play, creative expression, manual dexterity, observation, cause and effect, exploration, creativity.
**Materials: Water table, funnels, fish and ocean animals, bubbles, whisks, nets, and buckets.
Rationale: To continue the exploration of soap and encourage children to use their motor and problem solving skills to create bubbles. To provide spring, water, and ocean animals for the children to increase their dramatic play. To promote the use of tools for manipulating and investigating. To encourage peer interactions by cooperating and helping.
Skills: Communication, collaboration, problem-solving, fine motor, sensory input, observation, searching and scanning,
Science
**Materials: Plant and food visuals, garden visuals, childrens pea- planters, pea seeds, rulers, markers, stickers, watering cans, spray bottles, pots and seeds.
Rationale: To increase awareness of seeds, gardening, and planting. To promote independent gardening. To promote creative expression. To encourage children to discuss their ideas and make predictions about objects and natural events. To encourage children to use tools and their senses for investigation of the new materials. To integrate life cycles and promote responsibilities. To provide opportunities to observe and record changes in physical features.
Skills: Prediction, observation, discussion, ideas, responsibility, fine motor, hypothesizing, recording,
Dramatic Play
**Materials: Loft, farmers market design including: various fruits and vegetables, fake flowers, vases, plastic watering cans, shopping carts, baskets, grocery totes, checkout counter: paper money, credit card swiper and credit cards, cash register, calculator, farmers market visuals
Rationale: To introduce farmers markets. To increase awareness of growing foods. To build on children's interests of role play and taking on jobs. To increase awareness of buying foods. To introduce local farming. To make connections to plants in the classroom. To continue to encourage planting and shopping experiences and give the children opportunities to express their ideas and share materials. To provide materials, such as fruits and vegetables that allows children to see them as foods that keep our bodies healthy.
Skills practiced: Health related skills, communication, collaboration, try out new ideas, creative expression, symbolic play, discussion, pretend play, modeling, buying/selling skills, role play, peer relationship skills, sharing
**Materials: Baby dolls, doll clothing, diapers, doctor materials including stethoscopes, medicine bottles, syringes, and other doctor tools
Rationale: To build on the children's interest in caretaking and role playing by the continued use of doctors materials. To encourage children to use doctor tools as they have been modeled. To encourage the children to take care of their babies and each other.
Skills: Creative expression, caretaking, role play, symbolic play, discussion, communication, collaboration, imagination, social skills
**Materials: Community helper vehicles- fire trucks, ambulances, and helicopters. Construction paper house with flames. Fire fighter outfits, hoses, hats, boots, and visuals.
Rationale: To expand on the children's interest in firefighters and increase their dramatic play by providing relevant materials. To provide a prop and visual of a house to increase dramatic play scenes and play. To encourage the children to dress and act out scenarios using the vehicles and dress up outfits. To spark interest in building structures and creating imaginative scenarios to use the vehicles in. To increase awareness of community roles and support the ability to recognize and describe the roles of workers in the community. To encourage children to work together to fight fires and help others.
Skills: Role play, symbolic representation, communication, collaboration, creative expression, cooperation, peer relationship and social skills, building, and fine motor.
**Materials: Household kitchen furniture, plates, bowls, cups, food, breakfast food set. Picnic table, picnic basket with sandwich making set, tablecloth.
Rationale: To continue the theme of spring and introduce picnics with warm weather and outdoor eating. To continue to provide opportunities for children to symbolically represent their experiences and promote curiosity about making and serving food for themselves and others. To continue to encourage collaborative cooking projects and give the children opportunities to express their ideas and share materials.
Skills: Role play, symbolic representation, communication, collaboration, creative expression, cooperation, social skills, spatial reasoning.
Math and Manipulatives
**Materials: Sorting and ordering tasks, potato-head set, matching tasks, color puzzles, spring and bug puzzles, habitat puzzles
Rationale: To provide materials that support problem-solving skills, hand-eye coordination, and fine motor control. To have puzzles that promote awareness and interest in Spring. To continue to support the concept of seriation, ordering, and exploring objects in relation to their size. To increase the awareness of color identification and patterning.
Skills: comparison, persistence, fine motor control, cause and effect, hand-eye coordination, seriation, problem-solving.
Language and Literacy
**Materials: Name booklet, paper with pictures and names, markers, stickers
Rationale: To help children's understanding of writing as a way to communicate. To encourage children to match their pictures with their names, as well as other children in the classroom. To have children recognize letters. To engage in writing letters to make words and/or names.
Skills: Fine motor, matching skills, color exploration, letter recognition, observation, comparison, searching and scanning
**Materials: A variety of books about planting and taking care of plants, vehicles, and community helper themes will be displayed in different curriculum areas as well as the reading nook. Human body and doctor books in the "cave".
Rationale: To continue to promote finding new information in books and applying it in play, while continuing to facilitate the development of the basic components of language and pre-literacy skills. To help the children gain knowledge and understanding by using resources. To provide a comfortable space to explore and read books with teachers.
Skills: Listening, speaking, reading, phonological awareness, alphabetical awareness, heuristic language, give and ask for information, turn taking.
Blocks
**Materials: Hollow blocks and unit blocks.
Rationale: To continue to encourage collaborative block building and making garages, firehouses, airports, and any three dimensional structure based upon the new materials provided. To support spatial and weight concepts when building a structure. To encourage collaborative play and cooperative learning. To encourage a safe environment.
Skills: Cooperation, collaboration, creativity, symbolic representation, large and fine motor, spatial concepts, construction skills (building), try out new ideas, turn taking, social skills
Large Motor
** Materials: Climbing wall, monkey bars to slide through the donut (the elephant), ladder bridge, mountain climber
Rationale: In the gym we have created a set-up to challenge the children's body awareness and spatial skills. The ladder bridge is a series of metal rungs leading up to a heightened area over a set of mats and then descends again. The mountain climber is a set of stairs going up and down, as well as an area to climb over a bar and down to the mats below. The monkey bars to slide through the donut (aka elephant) challenges the children to be aware of their body as they go through without bumping their bodies on the donut. The climbing wall has two sets of ladders for the children to climb up. The mat below allows them to jump down safely.
Skills: grasping strength, risk-taking, climbing up and down, arm and leg strength, jumping, stepping up/down, balance, spatial awareness, body awareness, coordinating movements, propulsive skills (swinging bar to bar).
**Materials: Outdoors: Buckets, shovels, tricycles, dump trucks, wheelbarrows, construction vehicles, basketball hoop
Rationale: To provide children opportunities to engage in activities that challenge their physical skills including pushing, running, climbing, and jumping. To encourage social interactions, collaboration, and turn taking. To provide opportunities for pretend play and role play using the vehicles.
Skills: Fine and large motor, body manipulation, physical fitness, hand-eye coordination, cause and effect, turn-taking, observation, collaboration, role play
Large group
**Materials: Songs and rhymes led by teacher (gather, name, and topic songs and rhymes), seeds and dirt, demonstrations by teachers, community helper clothing worn by teachers for acting
Rationale: To continue discussing the changes that are affecting us including spring. To encourage rhyming skills and word play. To incorporate and model curriculum area concepts. To model activities and allow children opportunities to engage in large group focused activities.
Skills: Attention span, attending and orienting, respect for one another, following directions.
Music
**Materials: Piano, drums, drum sticks and shakers.
Rationale: To continue exploration of sound, volume, rhythm and social interaction. To promote social interaction by encouraging the children to play instruments both in large group and during free play. To encourage children opportunities to model behaviors they have seen. To promote musical expression through voice.
Skills: Creative expression and movement, mathematical concepts (beats and patterns), imitation, call and answer, communication, variants of volume
Snacks:
Tuesday: Applesauce and crackers
Friday: Rice cakes and craisins
Spring Weekly Lesson Plan: 5/13/13-5/17/13
Megan Lead Teaching
Overview:
We will discuss the life cycle and bury our classroom pet, CoCo. We will continue to learn about Spring, the life cycle, and what plants, flowers, and food needs to grow. We will watch, measure, and observe the plants we planted and identify changes in their physical properties. We will hypothesize what they will look like and how tall they will grow. We will continue to support the children's interest in community helpers, vehicles, and dramatic play by narrating and extending their play with open ended questions and ideas. We have intentionally chosen manipulatives this week that support valuable cognitive skills like sorting, matching, ordering, identifying, and classifying skills. We will move towards exploration and inquiry in our small group topics and support the children in comparing, contrasting, and processing information according to their own experiences.
Expressive Arts
**Materials: Easel, white thin paper, primary and secondary color paints, paint brushes
Rationale: To promote creative expression and continue to promote color mixing. To continue to provide opportunities for color recognition and awareness. To provide sensory input and encourage the children to use colors in a variety of ways. To provide a variety of materials for artistic materials.
Skills: Fine motor, exploration, creativity, artistic expression, turn taking, observation, color recognition
Sensory:
**Materials: bug visuals, bug home and food visuals, lily pad and pond visuals, green and blue play dough, gardening tools, impression tools, plastic bugs and spring animals, rocks, sticks
Rationale: To learn about homes and habitats of animals and bugs in Spring. To continue the creation of things using play dough. To encourage the children to act out ideas about gardening and creating things they see in nature. To increase their awareness of Spring and the new life, animals, and bugs that emerge. To provide materials for the children to provide homes and food for the bugs. To try out materials for cause and effect relationship. To encourage creative expression, imagination, invention, and persistence. To promote creations from visuals.
Skills: Sensory input, fine motor, dramatic and pretend play, creative expression, manual dexterity, observation, cause and effect, exploration, creativity.
**Materials: Water table, funnels, fish and ocean animals, bubbles, whisks, nets, and buckets.
Rationale: To continue the exploration of soap and encourage children to use their motor and problem solving skills to create bubbles. To provide spring, water, and ocean animals for the children to increase their dramatic play. To promote the use of tools for manipulating and investigating. To encourage peer interactions by cooperating and helping.
Skills: Communication, collaboration, problem-solving, fine motor, sensory input, observation, searching and scanning,
Science
**Materials: Plant and food visuals, garden visuals, childrens pea- planters, pea seeds, rulers, markers, stickers, watering cans, spray bottles, pots and seeds.
Rationale: To increase awareness of seeds, gardening, and planting. To promote independent gardening. To promote creative expression. To encourage children to discuss their ideas and make predictions about objects and natural events. To encourage children to use tools and their senses for investigation of the new materials. To integrate life cycles and promote responsibilities. To provide opportunities to observe and record changes in physical features.
Skills: Prediction, observation, discussion, ideas, responsibility, fine motor, hypothesizing, recording,
Dramatic Play
**Materials: Loft, farmers market design including: various fruits and vegetables, fake flowers, vases, plastic watering cans, shopping carts, baskets, grocery totes, checkout counter: paper money, credit card swiper and credit cards, cash register, calculator, farmers market visuals
Rationale: To introduce farmers markets. To increase awareness of growing foods. To build on children's interests of role play and taking on jobs. To increase awareness of buying foods. To introduce local farming. To make connections to plants in the classroom. To continue to encourage planting and shopping experiences and give the children opportunities to express their ideas and share materials. To provide materials, such as fruits and vegetables that allows children to see them as foods that keep our bodies healthy.
Skills practiced: Health related skills, communication, collaboration, try out new ideas, creative expression, symbolic play, discussion, pretend play, modeling, buying/selling skills, role play, peer relationship skills, sharing
**Materials: Baby dolls, doll clothing, diapers, doctor materials including stethoscopes, medicine bottles, syringes, and other doctor tools
Rationale: To build on the children's interest in caretaking and role playing by the continued use of doctors materials. To encourage children to use doctor tools as they have been modeled. To encourage the children to take care of their babies and each other.
Skills: Creative expression, caretaking, role play, symbolic play, discussion, communication, collaboration, imagination, social skills
**Materials: Community helper vehicles- fire trucks, ambulances, and helicopters. Construction paper house with flames. Fire fighter outfits, hoses, hats, boots, and visuals.
Rationale: To expand on the children's interest in firefighters and increase their dramatic play by providing relevant materials. To provide a prop and visual of a house to increase dramatic play scenes and play. To encourage the children to dress and act out scenarios using the vehicles and dress up outfits. To spark interest in building structures and creating imaginative scenarios to use the vehicles in. To increase awareness of community roles and support the ability to recognize and describe the roles of workers in the community. To encourage children to work together to fight fires and help others.
Skills: Role play, symbolic representation, communication, collaboration, creative expression, cooperation, peer relationship and social skills, building, and fine motor.
**Materials: Household kitchen furniture, plates, bowls, cups, food, breakfast food set. Picnic table, picnic basket with sandwich making set, tablecloth.
Rationale: To continue the theme of spring and introduce picnics with warm weather and outdoor eating. To continue to provide opportunities for children to symbolically represent their experiences and promote curiosity about making and serving food for themselves and others. To continue to encourage collaborative cooking projects and give the children opportunities to express their ideas and share materials.
Skills: Role play, symbolic representation, communication, collaboration, creative expression, cooperation, social skills, spatial reasoning.
Math and Manipulatives
**Materials: Sorting and ordering tasks, potato-head set, matching tasks, color puzzles, spring and bug puzzles, habitat puzzles
Rationale: To provide materials that support problem-solving skills, hand-eye coordination, and fine motor control. To have puzzles that promote awareness and interest in Spring. To continue to support the concept of seriation, ordering, and exploring objects in relation to their size. To increase the awareness of color identification and patterning.
Skills: comparison, persistence, fine motor control, cause and effect, hand-eye coordination, seriation, problem-solving.
Language and Literacy
**Materials: Name booklet, paper with pictures and names, markers, stickers
Rationale: To help children's understanding of writing as a way to communicate. To encourage children to match their pictures with their names, as well as other children in the classroom. To have children recognize letters. To engage in writing letters to make words and/or names.
Skills: Fine motor, matching skills, color exploration, letter recognition, observation, comparison, searching and scanning
**Materials: A variety of books about planting and taking care of plants, vehicles, and community helper themes will be displayed in different curriculum areas as well as the reading nook. Human body and doctor books in the "cave".
Rationale: To continue to promote finding new information in books and applying it in play, while continuing to facilitate the development of the basic components of language and pre-literacy skills. To help the children gain knowledge and understanding by using resources. To provide a comfortable space to explore and read books with teachers.
Skills: Listening, speaking, reading, phonological awareness, alphabetical awareness, heuristic language, give and ask for information, turn taking.
Blocks
**Materials: Hollow blocks and unit blocks.
Rationale: To continue to encourage collaborative block building and making garages, firehouses, airports, and any three dimensional structure based upon the new materials provided. To support spatial and weight concepts when building a structure. To encourage collaborative play and cooperative learning. To encourage a safe environment.
Skills: Cooperation, collaboration, creativity, symbolic representation, large and fine motor, spatial concepts, construction skills (building), try out new ideas, turn taking, social skills
Large Motor
** Materials: Climbing wall, monkey bars to slide through the donut (the elephant), ladder bridge, mountain climber
Rationale: In the gym we have created a set-up to challenge the children's body awareness and spatial skills. The ladder bridge is a series of metal rungs leading up to a heightened area over a set of mats and then descends again. The mountain climber is a set of stairs going up and down, as well as an area to climb over a bar and down to the mats below. The monkey bars to slide through the donut (aka elephant) challenges the children to be aware of their body as they go through without bumping their bodies on the donut. The climbing wall has two sets of ladders for the children to climb up. The mat below allows them to jump down safely.
Skills: grasping strength, risk-taking, climbing up and down, arm and leg strength, jumping, stepping up/down, balance, spatial awareness, body awareness, coordinating movements, propulsive skills (swinging bar to bar).
**Materials: Outdoors: Buckets, shovels, tricycles, dump trucks, wheelbarrows, construction vehicles, basketball hoop
Rationale: To provide children opportunities to engage in activities that challenge their physical skills including pushing, running, climbing, and jumping. To encourage social interactions, collaboration, and turn taking. To provide opportunities for pretend play and role play using the vehicles.
Skills: Fine and large motor, body manipulation, physical fitness, hand-eye coordination, cause and effect, turn-taking, observation, collaboration, role play
Large group
**Materials: Songs and rhymes led by teacher (gather, name, and topic songs and rhymes), seeds and dirt, demonstrations by teachers, community helper clothing worn by teachers for acting
Rationale: To continue discussing the changes that are affecting us including spring. To encourage rhyming skills and word play. To incorporate and model curriculum area concepts. To model activities and allow children opportunities to engage in large group focused activities.
Skills: Attention span, attending and orienting, respect for one another, following directions.
Music
**Materials: Piano, drums, drum sticks and shakers.
Rationale: To continue exploration of sound, volume, rhythm and social interaction. To promote social interaction by encouraging the children to play instruments both in large group and during free play. To encourage children opportunities to model behaviors they have seen. To promote musical expression through voice.
Skills: Creative expression and movement, mathematical concepts (beats and patterns), imitation, call and answer, communication, variants of volume
Snacks:
Monday: Cucumbers and crackers
Wednesday: Rice cakes and craisins
Thursday: Applesauce and crackers
Weekly Lesson Plan for Ross' Class
Week of: May 13 - 17, 2013
Lead teaching this week: Team teaching
Overview/goals: Hello families! With all of the rain from this past week we are hoping the plants outside will continue to grow. Last week, the children placed a popsicle-stick with their picture on it next to the budding hostas in front of the building, and will get an opportunity to observe and record the changes. This may be something fun to look at on your way in each morning, too! The teachers also noticed the children spending less time in the classroom coffee shop; therefore real food and drinks have been brought in to reengage the children. The children have been given the opportunity to sell, make, and serve the food/drinks, giving them the connection of what a real coffee shop job is like. Next week the children will continue selling "kid tea" and receiving their snack from the coffee shop. The teachers are thinking of changing the dramatic play area this week, too, so the children will get an opportunity to give their ideas about what the next area could be! As we get closer and closer to the end of the session, we want to start bring closure to some of our classroom explorations that have taken place this spring, as well as over the course of the school year.
Expressive Art (drawing table, clay table, paint easel):
• Materials: Drawing table: Paint, paint rollers, Styrofoam plants, Styrofoam blocks; Clay table: clay, cutting tools, wire, branches; Painting easel: paint, paper, and paint brushes
• Rationale: Experimenting with different ways to transfer designs from Styrofoam onto paper continues to be popular at the art table, thanks to Liam's sister, Alma, whom introduced this activity to the children last week. Color mixing and collaborating at the easel has also continued. The children are mixing primary colors to create new colors. Black and white paint is also available to create different hues. Story telling will continue at the clay table, using the materials at the table to help act out stories. A pirate story was told last week, which included a princess and a queen. The children created pirate ships and castles to go along with their storytelling.
• Skills: Creative/artistic expression, social skills, symbolic representation, experimentation, fine motor skills
Sensory Table:
• Materials: Soil, plastic insects, rocks, plastic trees/plants, plastic shovels and spades, grass seeds
• Rationale: Last week the children enjoyed using their imaginations at the soil table, by creating different scenarios for the insects. They explored the soil and built different homes/buried the insects. Many children tried to bury the large rocks and then ask other children to try and find them. Some children created "bad guy" and "good guy" insects and played various games following that theme.
• Skills: Fine motor skills, collaboration with peers, exploration of components of soil
Math/Manipulatives:
• Materials: Fraction puzzles, various shape puzzles, alphabet puzzles, story telling vinyl pieces; the nook: story telling pieces
• Rationale: The fraction puzzles have continued to be a challenging one for the children to figure out. They enjoy the challenge and will sometimes work together to help put together the pieces. The 3D/spatial rectangle puzzle has also been a popular and challenging puzzle that challenges the children's spatial planning/problem solving. These puzzles will continue to be the main focus of our table.
• Skills: One-to-one correspondence, fine motor skills, learning about/comparing fractions, part-to-whole relationships, shape recognition, letter recognition
Literature Center/The Nook:
• Materials: Rubber stamps, markers, pencils, scissors, paper and white boards
• Rationale: The story pieces in the nook continue to be popular among the children. After watching Laura P retell the "Jack and Jill" nursery rhyme, the children have started using the pieces to tell their own invented stories. The teachers will continue to bring the story pieces to large group and tell new stories in hopes to spark the interest in some new storytellers. The literature center will remain the same since the children are still interested in using the rubber alphabet stamps to write messages.
• Skills: Pre/early literacy skills, letter recognition, fine motor strength, phonemic awareness, creativity skills
Dramatic Play:
• Materials: "Coffee Shop" props (to-go coffee cups, lids, mugs, pitchers, cash register, our "own" money), food "making" materials (beads, puff balls, small squares, bottle caps), kitchen/cooking props (hand mixer, plates, our "own" oven, pans), coffee beans, measuring cups/spoons.
• Rationale: We had lots of fun in the coffee shop last week; we decided to make our own "kid tea" this week and sold it in the coffee shop. The children took on roles like the cashiers, customers, and servers. This also got them excited to use the food making materials, again. In addition to using the materials to make our own food we decided to make our own "kid" tea this week and sell it in the coffee shop. This week we will continue to use these materials to make more food and also may bring in another food item to sell out of the coffee shop for our the possible "grand closing" of the coffee shop, as we also feel ready for a new dramatic play set-up.
• Skills: imaginative/creative play, peer relationships, large motor skills, symbolic representation, connection to surrounding community/real-life experiences, math skills (measuring).
Block Area:
• Materials: Large hollow blocks, small shaped blocks, ramps, traction pads, wheels, keyboards.
• Rationale: We saw a plethora of TIVs, rocket ships, police cars, and stage building (to act out our own plays) in the block area last week. We have been busy working with the new materials that were added last week, like the wheels. During the play with the car building a few of the children used the wheels as fuel to put in their cars. This week we will continue to use these new materials to add onto the structures we build. With only a few weeks left in the school year we will start to wrap up some of these stories in the dramatic play area.
• Skills: Large and fine motor skills, problem solving, peer relationships.
Large-motor:
• Materials: Gym: Monkey bars w/ connected slide and donut hole, a-frame balancing bridge and climbing walls Playground: wheelbarrows, shovels, wagons, tricycles and soccer balls
• Rationale: In the gym: The children have enjoyed our new gym set. The A-frame balancing bridge and the monkey bars have been a hit this past week. The children will continue to explore the new set up. They will be able to challenge themselves physically to get to the top of the climbing wall, which they are eager to jump down from. On the playground: A frisbee has been introduced on the playground and the children have created rules for taking turns when throwing it. With the more spring-like weather lately, there have been worm hunts and digging for worms as well. Hopefully as it warms up, tricycles and wagons will be able to be used every day.
• Skills: Peer relationships, upper/lower body strength, dynamic and static balance hopping, jump/landing skills, propulsion skills,
Announcements/special interests:
• The all-school camping trip is this weekend! For those not planning to spend the night, I hope you'll still be able to join us for the events on Saturday. See the flyer of the Lab School homepage for more information.
• It's our dish week next week, and we would really appreciate help from the parents one last time!
• Believe it or not, the end of the year is almost here, and that means we'll be celebrating in a few ways. We have the Pizza Party on Tuesday, May 28 from 6-7.30p. We also have our "End of the Year" party schedule for Thursday, June 6. More details will come in the next week about times and possible locations, so stay tuned!
Snack:
Monday - Bagel pizzas
Tuesday - Celery & Sunbutter
Wednesday - Carrots & rice cakes
Thursday - Popcorn
Friday - Applesauce & crackers
** All snacks served with a choice of milk or water, unless otherwise noted**
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Overview
As the spring weather is now cooperating we will dive into observation and exploration of the natural world outside of our classroom. To support children's interest and curiosity of our natural world, we will be collecting worms from the playground for our science table. This will provide children with an opportunity to investigate, compare and contrast them to the mealworms. To foster children's curiosity of the natural world, we will also be exploring our outdoor environment by going on a "Spring Scavenger Hunt". Inside our classroom, seeds have started sprouting and this week we will be transferring them into cups/pots. We will be hypothesizing what our plants will look like and how tall they will grow. We will also be observing the physical changes in our plants by measuring them and documenting their growth in charts. Lastly, we will be adding natural materials from the outdoors to our collage table which will give children opportunities to explore their creativity by using them in imaginative ways.
Expressive Arts
-Materials: clay, wire, wooden tools, construction paper, markers, crayons, glue, paper, scissors, natural materials (twigs, leaves, rocks, flowers), and cardboard squares.
-Rationale: This week we will continue to use clay as a sculpting medium. To support and enhance the children's interest in the creation of three-dimensional sculptures wooden tools are added to the clay table. At the collage table we will add various natural materials such as twigs, leaves, rocks, and flowers for the children to experiment with and explore. These natural materials will encourage children to use them in a variety of ways and explore their creativity. -Skills: Creative exploration, imagination, symbolic representation, self-expression, fine motor control, color recognition, creative risk-taking, and hand/finger strength.
Sensory
-Materials: sand table, sand, water, gems, sifter, various insects (plastic), scoops, shovels, molds, foliage, sticks, and plant stems.
-Rationale: Building on the children's experiences with wet sand and creating homes for the plastic insects in the table; we have added more natural materials to the table. The children were making homes out of flower stems, so we have added sticks and foliage in order for them to add more detail to their homes.
-Skills: Imaginative and cooperative play, scientific thinking, problem solving, construction skills, fine motor skills, sensory exploration and stimulation, creative expression, and social interaction.
Light Table
-Materials: Real flowers, labeled pictures of flower parts, magnifying glasses, tweezers, and clipboards.
-Rationale: The flowers have been moved from the science table over to the light table. The children have been interested in dissecting the flowers and examining the different parts that the flower is composed of. On the light table the children will be able to see through the petals and leaves and have a closer look at the structure of a flower.
-Skills: Sensory stimulation, exploration, inquiry, observation, asking questions, hypothesizing, comparing, informative language, descriptive language, fine motor skills, and social interaction.
Science
-Materials: Labeled pictures of the sequence of planting a seed, soybean seeds, cotton balls, plastic bags, clipboards, a marker, charts depicting the life cycle of a soybean plant, prompting questions, soil, pots, worms, magnifying glasses, ruler, and plant growth charts.
-Rationale: To continue fostering children's interest in how the plant life cycle works we will be transferring the sprouted beans into cups/pots. This will allow children to hypothesize what their plants will look like and how tall they will grow, observe the physical changes in their plants by measuring them and documenting the growth in their charts. To facilitate children's growing interest in the lifecycle of a beetle at the science table we have also added worms that children collected from the playground.
-Skills: Sensory exploration, observation skills, sequencing, critical thinking, mathematical and logical thinking, pre/early literacy, informative language, and descriptive language, scientific inquiry, drawing conclusions, reasoning, knowledge of the natural world, asking questions, hypothesizing, use of magnifying glasses
Math and Manipulatives
-Materials: Insect builders, marble runs, unifix cubes, manipulative puzzles, sewing needles, embroidery hoops, yarn, fabric, torn clothing items, lacing cards
-Rationale: This week we will continue to use the sewing materials to keep fostering the children's fine motor skills and problem solving skills. We have changed out the math cave with new materials. The children now have insect builders that when put together resemble bugs. The children will be able to connect the pieces and create their own bug. The unifix cubes will allow the children to continue practice counting using one to one correspondence and to practice number operations using a new material.
-Skills: Problem solving, cause and effect relationship, early math concepts, number recognition, counting, number operations, symbolic representation, peer negotiation, hand-eye coordination, fine motor control, imagination, creative exploration.
Language and Literacy
-Materials: Name cards, paper, various writing utensils (markers, colored pencils), scissors, tape, a variety of books, envelopes, pre-made booklets, vocabulary words, story writing prompts, simple mazes, spring bingo, labels and stickers from the post office area, example of money.
-Rationale: The literacy table has materials available to encourage the children to write letters to classmates, writing down stories, etc. The children have also been very interested in making money for their flower shop. We have provided some examples of what bills look like in order for the children to have something to reference as they make money to add to the classroom flower shop.
-Skills: letter recognition, fine motor control, pre-/early literacy skills, alphabetic principle, phonemic awareness, artistic expression, cause and effect, problem solving, executive function skills (inhibitory control)
Dramatic Play
-Materials:
Loft Area: stove, refrigerator, sink and other assorted wooden kitchen furniture, dishes, different types of food, ponchos, scarves, raincoats, boots, hats, and sunglasses.
Flower Shop: flowers, cash register, order forms, baskets, ribbons, vases, aprons, wallet, and purses.
Dramatic play cave: stuffed animals, open-ended fabrics, picnic basket, picnic blanket, food, flowers, flower box, watering cans, bees, seeds, hoes/rakes, and gloves.
-Rationale: Our flower shop is going to continue to be present in the classroom. The children will continue to have opportunities to buy, sell, and arrange flowers and bouquets. They will also be able to use the money they have made at the literacy table to buy the flowers that they order. In the dramatic play cave we will continue to have the flower box, picnic materials, and animal friends. The children will be able to continue to have picnics and gather flowers to use in the flower shop.
-Skills: Role-play, symbolic representation, social interactions, social problem solving, discussions and conversations related to the spring season, self-help, listening, communication, negotiation, and indoor-outdoor connection.
Blocks
-Materials: hollow blocks, unit blocks, ramps, wood boards, big fabric pieces, steering wheels, pvc pipe, maps
-Rationale: The children will continue to have access to the block materials to encourage their ongoing interest in building. They have been building houses for different animals (jaguars, cheetahs, sea otters, etc.). The children have also continued their interest in creating plays and performing them with various props found around the room.
-Skills: construction skills, dramatic play, symbolic representation, problem- solving, mathematical concepts such as symmetry and geometry
Large Motor
-Materials: Climbing wall, monkey bars to slide through the donut (the elephant), ladder bridge, mountain climber
-Rationale: In the gym we have created a set-up to challenge the children's body awareness and spatial skills. The ladder bridge is a series of metal rungs leading up to a heightened area over a set of mats and then descends again. The mountain climber is a set of stairs going up and down, as well as an area to climb over a bar and down to the mats below. The monkey bars to slide through the donut (aka elephant) challenges the children to be aware of their body as they go through without bumping their bodies on the donut. The climbing wall has two sets of ladders for the children to climb up. The mat below allows them to jump down safely.
-Skills: grasping strength, risk-taking, climbing up and down, arm and leg strength, jumping, stepping up/down, balance, spatial awareness, body awareness, coordinating movements, propulsive skills (swinging bar to bar).
Snack
Monday - Toast & orange juice
Tuesday - Carrots & rice cakes
Wednesday - Celery & sunbutter
Thursday - Popcorn
Friday - Applesauce & crackers
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