November 2009 Archives

The children explored with themes of opposites this past week: in and out and light and dark. There was also a lot of group collaboration in cooking and playing together in the dramatic play area. Please take a look.

Children going in and out of the "house" underneath the monkey bars and pretending to be kitties and puppies.

Children using color gels to experiment with light and dark and color and no color.

Abby and Beatrix negotiating and working together on clicking and learning the alphabet.

Eva visited our classroom to make "French fries" with the children for snack. Different children visited Eva from time to time to help cut the potatoes. Some learned new "tricks" to cut the potatoes by observing each other.

Katie lying down as a patient while "Dr. Sam" checks on Katie's "illness."

Hello Parents,

Winter break is just around the corner, only one more week! We have had a really great start to the school year. Our class really feels like a community, the children are thriving, and friendships continue to get stronger. Unfortunately, we will have to say goodbye to some important members of our community, Vanessa, Katie, and Claire. This is a very big, and sometimes confusing, change for the children. We will be talking about this change over the course of the week with an emphasis on the many things that will remain the same. I have also arranged for the new student teachers, Davida, Michelle, and Megan, to come in for a visit. It helps ease the transition back to school in January, for the children to be welcomed by familiar faces.

As for recent happenings in the classroom, things have been busy as usual. The children have been watching the tadpoles closely and waiting for signs of change. They record their observations by drawing. So far not much has changed, but we think we saw signs of leg buds. By the time the children return from break hopefully the transformation will be more noticeable.

Birds have been a focus for many weeks. Between nest building (see "updates" for the story) and feeding the birds, the children have a keen awareness of the birds that live around the school. We have extended their explorations by incorporating the topic of migration into discussions of what animals do when the weather gets colder.

On Tuesday the whole class will be walking to the Bell Museum of Natural History. We will be visiting the Touch and See room as well as looking at dioramas that highlight some of the animals that the children have shown keen interest in. Since the animals are portrayed in their natural habitats, the children are sure to acquire new information about animal homes.

In the dramatic play area the children have been working together to send food up and down from the loft. With the teachers help, they devised a system using baskets and ropes to lift the food up and lower it down. Not only does this support problem solving skills, it also provides them with an opportunity to cooperate and negotiate turn taking. The teachers will continue to facilitate and extend the play in this area by encouraging the children to think of new roles so more children can become involved in this cooperative play scheme.

The addition of the mailbox to the writing center has inspired many children to send messages to each other. They search for their friend's name and picture in their mailbox slot before putting the letter inside. It is so exciting for them to announce, "You have some mail!" Not only does this support the literacy goals for the classroom, it reinforces friendship building. So, when your child is missing his or her peers over break, it might be a good time to suggest sending a message of friendship.

We will replace the glurch with playdough for this final week of school. The children have been very interested in representing their ideas through drawing, painting, and assembling small manipulatives. The moldable nature of the playdough will provide another way for them to express themselves.

On Thursday we will have our end-of-session party. Hopefully you will all be able to join us at 10:45 for a snack made by the children. We will have a short sing-a-long afterward and will present the student teachers with the thank-you gifts the children made for them. The small group documentation panels will also be on display so you can see the learning that took place over the past several weeks.

Thanks,
Amy

Lead Teacher: Elizabeth

Goals:
During our last week of school, our main goal is prepare the children for the upcoming break and the new student teachers. This week will include visits from the new teachers and goodbye snacks. We will be talking about these events during large group, snack, and throughout the day. Our curriculum for the week will focus on going deeper into themes that have been emerging, such as opposites, which will take on the form of light/dark on the light table and wet/dry in the sand table. We will also be focusing on dramatic play in the form of doctor and kitchen play, and on patterning and classification.

Art
• Easel: We will be exploring watercolors at our easel this week. Children will be able to experience the process of mixing water and paint in order to produce color of different intensities. This will provide an opportunity to explore color mixing and allow them to express themselves creatively.
• We will continue to practice cutting as well. This will be combined with collage in order to extend the cutting experience. The fine motor skills of grasping, squeezing, opening and clenching the fingers, and hand-eye coordination will be developed through cutting, spreading glue, and sticking the shapes to the glue.
Manipulatives
• Manipulatives that focus on ordering and seriation will be available. Blocks of different sizes can be stacked, lined up, and compared and contrasted. Boards with different color and height columns allow children to sort and arrange columns using different characteristics. Ordering and seriation are mathematical skills that lead to classification and patterning.
• Simple interlocking puzzles will be available, which help children develop the part-whole relationship. Interlocking puzzles are also important in visual discrimination, mental manipulation (the ability to hold an image in mind while rotating it, considering it from different angles, etc.), and hand-eye coordination, as children must examine the borders and shapes of the pieces in order to place them successfully.
Sensory
• Glurch will be a new medium available at the playdoh table. This is a mixture of liquid starch and glue, and is similar to Silly Putty. Children will be able to explore it with their hands and with tools. This experience will promote sensory awareness, fine motor strength, and social skills as children interact with each other to comment on what they are feeling and seeing.
• Water will continue to be available at the sand table, as will molds and scoops. Several children have begun to bury small animals in the sand or use larger ones dramatically, and we will therefore introduce small plastic insects into the table as a new element for this play. The sand table is an excellent place for social interaction, as children can look across at each other and observe what each other are doing. Turn taking and negotiation skills are rehearsed when objects and space must be shared.
Science
• The light table is still available in the cave this week. Small blocks of different shapes and sizes will be available to manipulate with the light table underneath. This highlights the light/dark contrast and produces shadows. The science area will enhance children's skills of inquiry, prediction, and experimentation.
• The science table will include a ramp display this week. Children will be able to explore different types and heights of ramps, using small cars and balls. They will be able to see, explore, and talk about which ramps are the fastest, which are the highest, and which are the longest. This is a continuation of an interest in ramps that has developed in the block area, and will provide a more focused exploration.
Math
• Ordering and seriation will be focuses in the manipulatives that will be available. We will also be counting during transitions to and from the gym and during large group, singing songs such as "One Potato, Two Potato, Three Potato, Four." We will also be patterning with our bodies (i.e., pat clap pat clap) which helps children internalize rhythm and pattern.
Dramatic Play
• The doctor and vet play will continue this week. A cot will be added so that children can take on the role of both patient and doctor. A desk with writing materials adds a literacy element to the area.
• The kitchen and home area is another space intended for dramatic play. With many children having participated in a "feast" this weekend, we expect many cooking and eating scenarios to take place. Dramatic play allows children to think abstractly by mentally transforming objects and people to fit the play scheme. It also promotes social interaction, negotiation, and cooperation, as well as allowing children to practice the events of real life. Please feel free to email us a sentence highlight about your weekend that will help us reconnect with your child (eg. car/plane trip, visit from Grandparents, new food eaten, etc.)
• The "little people" play will continue with the dollhouse and garages. Here, we will encourage children to act out scenarios that will help them learn conversation schemes and build the skill of symbolic representation.
Language and Literacy
• The writing center will be available for the children to practice writing on lined paper and explore tools such as alphabet stencils and rulers. This area will help the children develop a concept of print, such as recognizing directionality of print, symbolic representation, and alphabet awareness.
• We will also be incorporating literacy elements into the doctor/vet office. Children will be able to write "prescriptions," fill in medical charts, and take phone messages. An eye chart will expose children to environmental print. Writing that is embedded in play will help children realize the importance and usefulness of written language.
• We will continue to sing songs involving rhyming with and manipulating children's names, such as "Willaby Wallaby" and "The Name Game." Using a familiar word and manipulating it by adding a new beginning sound introduces children to segmentation and blending that are important literacy skills.
Construction
• Duplos will still be available in the block area, which provides a new medium with which to create tall towers and roads. The bond of these blocks to each other makes it easier to build vertically. When building up, children must consider balance, stability, part to whole, and symmetry.
Music
• During large groups we will be singing some old favorites as well as some new songs. We will continue to sing songs such as "Willaby Wallaby" and "The Name Game" in order to expand children's abilities to discriminate sounds in words and rhyme, both of which are important literacy skills. We will also use clapping, patting, and other movement in order to create patterns with our bodies and internalize rhythm.
Large Group
• During large group this week we will continue talking about the winter break and the upcoming transitions. We will discuss how the student teachers will be going off to new schools soon, and how the children will have new student teachers when they return from break. Discussing these big transitions will help the children prepare for and process the changes. Children will also have the opportunity to meet a few of the new student teachers, which will make the transition more concrete. Large group this week will also be used as a way to model some of the materials in the classroom. A book about going to the doctor and a short scenario involving a sick baby doll will help children have a script to use when playing in this dramatic play area.
Large Motor
• In the gym we will continue to use the parachute, which encourages group interaction, large motor control, and coordination.
• On the playground, we will be incorporating animal dress-up materials to encourage large animal play. Children will be encouraged to become different animals and move in new, interesting ways. Large muscle coordination and strength will be emphasized as the children hop, jump, crawl, gallop, and run.
• Trikes will be available on the playground, which are proving to be an enjoyable challenge for many children. Children must use leg muscles and coordination in order to push the pedals and propel themselves forward. They also use negotiation and turn taking when sharing the trikes.

Snack: Tuesday - Goodbye Party: Muffins, Bananas
Friday - Pineapple and Goldfish

Announcements
• Please continue to talk with your child about the upcoming transitions and break. If you have a family calendar, you may want to put an X on the individual days for the period of time that we will be closed for winter break. You can then make a ritual of crossing off the days until we meet again. This will provide a visual of the time we will be apart, as well as a good math experiences with recordkeeping and marking time.
• Thanks for the help from parents who organized our goodbye presents - and to all the families who contributed.
• Thank you all so much for your support this semester and for providing us with your wonderful children!

Songs
One potato, two potato, three potato, four!
Well, I made a batch of hot potatoes
Dropped 'em on the floor!!

Five potato, six potato, seven potato, eight!
So I stomped 'em into mashed potatoes
And plopped 'em on a plate

Nine potato, ten potato, can't believe my eyes!
The children ate 'em up and now they want some french fries!!!
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 fries!

Websites
www.starfall.com
The "ABCs" section has interactive activities that focus on letter names and sounds. This not only encourages literacy development (children enjoy repeating the names and sounds with the computer!) but also promotes computer skills such as mouse manipulation. Using a mouse requires a lot of hand-eye coordination!

From to ...

Can you believe we are already in our final week of the fall session? The first 10+ weeks have flown past and it has been a great start to the year. The children quickly got settled in the classroom, showing a growing level of comfort with the environment as well as with each other within the first few weeks. It was amazing to watch the friendships form as fast as they did, and watch the play grow in complexity so quickly. By going to the gym right away, it not only got our group's energy out right away, it also allowed for longer free-play. I feel that the longer time to get immersed in play themes played a vital part in our group's strong social connections and growing complexity with play themes this session. For young children it takes time to get comfortable with a new group and albeit it happened rather quickly with this group, they still needed ample time to let play themes develop. The biggest example of this came in the block area (as can be seen in our photo updates on the class webpage). The structures kept growing in size, detail, and numbers of those involved. For the next session, we will continue to support this strong cooperative and collaborative play, however shift more of our focus to going deeper with the learning involved with the play themes. The learning will stem from the children's inquiries and interests, as the teachers will bring in materials to support the play and learning of the children. There will also be more teacher-facilitated activities to support specific skill development and academic learning. The details will be posted once we get back, as the areas of interest and specific skill development will become apparent. I look forward to what the winter will bring! The learning potentials and possibilities are endless!

~ Don't forget, our "Good Bye" party for the student teachers is on Thursday, December 3! We invite all the families to come and join us for snack (starting around 10.30a) as well as for a sing-a-long to say goodbye to Elizabeth, Rachel, and Stacy. They will be taking the next step on their academic careers and wish them the best. It's been a great fall session, thanks to them! We will have three new student teachers when we come back from break (hopefully they can all make it on Thursday), as well as myself still there every morning! Conversations about how the new student teachers will be new members of the classroom as well as how Ross will still be there when your child gets back help make the transition back to school easier, especially after we have been away for a month.

~ Speaking of being the lead teacher, I wanted to share some news with everyone. As you know, there is an afternoon class that comes to Lab School on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoons (that's why there is another photo in your child's cubby). Nyna, the lead teacher in the afternoon, will unfortunately be leaving the Lab School and moving with her family to Ohio in December. I will be stepping in as one of the co-teacher in the afternoons starting in January. No, I'm not leaving the morning...I'm pulling double duty! It is going to be a busy 20 weeks working both classes, however I'm excited to work with both classes and see first hand how two groups of children use the same materials/environment differently!

~ With the "Good-Bye" party on Thursday, you may be wondering if we have school on Friday, December 4? Yes, we will have one more "regular" day of school before we take off for break

~ Be sure to take a look at the winter calendar on the website for important dates as well as possible all-school get togethers over break. A month is a long time to be away from school: especially when you are 3, 4, or 5yrs old! Attending those playdates as well as setting up individual playdates with specific friends from class are great ways to help your child stay connected to school, and are addition ways to make the transition back to school in January that much easier. If you have questions about setting up playdates for your child, please do not hesitate to ask Ross before we finish this week!

~ When we come back, odds are snow will have blanket all of Minnesota and the temperatures will be in the single digits (if we're lucky!). That being said - PLEASE BRING ADEQUATE WINTER WEATHER GEAR EVERY DAY! We will be venturing outside every day that the temperatures (actual temp as well as wind-chill) are above zero. Your child will need a warm jacket, hat, mittens, boots, and snowpants as well as anything else you feel your he/she may need to stay warm and safe while outside in cold. Please send the winter weather gear everyday, even when it's sub-zero outside...as it's better to have it here and not use it than have a mini heat wave and scramble to find boots/snowpants that are the right size. By the way - I'm still working on my "Guessing Child-Clothing Sizes" skills...I need more practice!

Thursday Dec. 3: Good-Bye party starting around 10.30p - come one, come all!
Friday Dec. 4: Last day of Lab School: have an enjoyable, restorative, and safe break!
Tuesday Jan 5, 2010: Children's first day back to Lab School (regular schedule)
Monday Jan 18: NO SCHOOL in recognition of Martin Luther King Day
Wednesday Jan 20: Creativity Night at the Lab School (more info to come in January)

Announcements
* Please continue to talk with your child about the upcoming transitions and break. If you have a family calendar, you may want to put an X on the individual days for the period of time that we will be closed for winter break. You can then make a ritual of crossing off the days until we meet again. This will provide a visual of the time we will be apart, as well as a good math experiences with recordkeeping and marking time.
*. Please feel free to email us a sentence highlight about your weekend that will help us reconnect with your child (eg. car/plane trip, visit from Grandparents, new food eaten, etc.)
* Thank you all so much for your support this semester and for providing us with your wonderful children!

Lesson Plan
Lead Teacher: Elizabeth
Week of November 30, 2009

Goals:
During our last week of school, our main goal is prepare the children for the upcoming break and the new student teachers. This week will include visits from the new teachers and goodbye snacks. We will be talking about these events during large group, snack, and throughout the day. Our curriculum for the week will focus on going deeper into themes that have been emerging, such as opposites, which will take on the form of light/dark on the light table and wet/dry in the sand table. We will also be focusing on dramatic play in the form of doctor and kitchen play, and on patterning and classification.

Art
• Easel: We will be exploring watercolors at our easel this week. Children will be able to experience the process of mixing water and paint in order to produce color of different intensities. This will provide an opportunity to explore color mixing and allow them to express themselves creatively.
• We will continue to practice cutting as well. This will be combined with collage in order to extend the cutting experience. The fine motor skills of grasping, squeezing, opening and clenching the fingers, and hand-eye coordination will be developed through cutting, spreading glue, and sticking the shapes to the glue.
Manipulatives
• Manipulatives that focus on ordering and seriation will be available. Blocks of different sizes can be stacked, lined up, and compared and contrasted. Boards with different color and height columns allow children to sort and arrange columns using different characteristics. Ordering and seriation are mathematical skills that lead to classification and patterning.
• Simple interlocking puzzles will be available, which help children develop the part-whole relationship. Interlocking puzzles are also important in visual discrimination, mental manipulation (the ability to hold an image in mind while rotating it, considering it from different angles, etc.), and hand-eye coordination, as children must examine the borders and shapes of the pieces in order to place them successfully.
Sensory
• Glurch will be a new medium available at the playdoh table. This is a mixture of liquid starch and glue, and is similar to Silly Putty. Children will be able to explore it with their hands and with tools. This experience will promote sensory awareness, fine motor strength, and social skills as children interact with each other to comment on what they are feeling and seeing.
• Water will continue to be available at the sand table, as will molds and scoops. Several children have begun to bury small animals in the sand or use larger ones dramatically, and we will therefore introduce small plastic insects into the table as a new element for this play. The sand table is an excellent place for social interaction, as children can look across at each other and observe what each other are doing. Turn taking and negotiation skills are rehearsed when objects and space must be shared.
Science
• The light table is still available in the cave this week. Small blocks of different shapes and sizes will be available to manipulate with the light table underneath. This highlights the light/dark contrast and produces shadows. The science area will enhance children's skills of inquiry, prediction, and experimentation.
• The science table will include a ramp display this week. Children will be able to explore different types and heights of ramps, using small cars and balls. They will be able to see, explore, and talk about which ramps are the fastest, which are the highest, and which are the longest. This is a continuation of an interest in ramps that has developed in the block area, and will provide a more focused exploration.
Math
• Ordering and seriation will be focuses in the manipulatives that will be available. We will also be counting during transitions to and from the gym and during large group, singing songs such as "One Potato, Two Potato, Three Potato, Four." We will also be patterning with our bodies (i.e., pat clap pat clap) which helps children internalize rhythm and pattern.
Dramatic Play
• The doctor and vet play will continue this week. A cot will be added so that children can take on the role of both patient and doctor. A desk with writing materials adds a literacy element to the area.
• The kitchen and home area is another space intended for dramatic play. With many children having participated in a "feast" this weekend, we expect many cooking and eating scenarios to take place. Dramatic play allows children to think abstractly by mentally transforming objects and people to fit the play scheme. It also promotes social interaction, negotiation, and cooperation, as well as allowing children to practice the events of real life. Please feel free to email us a sentence highlight about your weekend that will help us reconnect with your child (eg. car/plane trip, visit from Grandparents, new food eaten, etc.)
• The "little people" play will continue with the dollhouse and garages. Here, we will encourage children to act out scenarios that will help them learn conversation schemes and build the skill of symbolic representation.
Language and Literacy
• The writing center will be available for the children to practice writing on lined paper and explore tools such as alphabet stencils and rulers. This area will help the children develop a concept of print, such as recognizing directionality of print, symbolic representation, and alphabet awareness.
• We will also be incorporating literacy elements into the doctor/vet office. Children will be able to write "prescriptions," fill in medical charts, and take phone messages. An eye chart will expose children to environmental print. Writing that is embedded in play will help children realize the importance and usefulness of written language.
• We will continue to sing songs involving rhyming with and manipulating children's names, such as "Willaby Wallaby" and "The Name Game." Using a familiar word and manipulating it by adding a new beginning sound introduces children to segmentation and blending that are important literacy skills.
Construction
• Duplos will still be available in the block area, which provides a new medium with which to create tall towers and roads. The bond of these blocks to each other makes it easier to build vertically. When building up, children must consider balance, stability, part to whole, and symmetry.
Music
• During large groups we will be singing some old favorites as well as some new songs. We will continue to sing songs such as "Willaby Wallaby" and "The Name Game" in order to expand children's abilities to discriminate sounds in words and rhyme, both of which are important literacy skills. We will also use clapping, patting, and other movement in order to create patterns with our bodies and internalize rhythm.
Large Group
• During large group this week we will continue talking about the winter break and the upcoming transitions. We will discuss how the student teachers will be going off to new schools soon, and how the children will have new student teachers when they return from break. Discussing these big transitions will help the children prepare for and process the changes. Children will also have the opportunity to meet a few of the new student teachers, which will make the transition more concrete. Large group this week will also be used as a way to model some of the materials in the classroom. A book about going to the doctor and a short scenario involving a sick baby doll will help children have a script to use when playing in this dramatic play area.
Large Motor
• In the gym we will continue to use the parachute, which encourages group interaction, large motor control, and coordination.
• On the playground, we will be incorporating animal dress-up materials to encourage large animal play. Children will be encouraged to become different animals and move in new, interesting ways. Large muscle coordination and strength will be emphasized as the children hop, jump, crawl, gallop, and run.
• Trikes will be available on the playground, which are proving to be an enjoyable challenge for many children. Children must use leg muscles and coordination in order to push the pedals and propel themselves forward. They also use negotiation and turn taking when sharing the trikes.
Snack
Monday: B-Day & Homemade Graham Crackers in the Freezer
Wednesday: Party Snack (muffins by Becky)
Thursday: Pineapple & Rice Cakes

Songs
One potato, two potato, three potato, four!
Well, I made a batch of hot potatoes
Dropped 'em on the floor!!

Five potato, six potato, seven potato, eight!
So I stomped 'em into mashed potatoes
And plopped 'em on a plate

Nine potato, ten potato, can't believe my eyes!
The children ate 'em up and now they want some french fries!!!
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 fries!

Websites
www.starfall.com
The "ABCs" section has interactive activities that focus on letter names and sounds. This not only encourages literacy development (children enjoy repeating the names and sounds with the computer!) but also promotes computer skills such as mouse manipulation. Using a mouse requires a lot of hand-eye coordination!

Animal homes have been central to our discussions and observations of what animals do to prepare for winter. Nests are very visible in the leafless trees on the playground and the children's discovery of them has led to a creative cooperative nest building project.

Nests began to show up in representational artwork in the classroom...

...and then on the playground, where the children began adding nests to the trees.

The children spent some time planning where to place their nests. Despite finding deep nooks and crannies at the intersections of branches, the leaves and grasses they added fell out or blew away over time. I asked what they thought the birds and squirrels used to keep their nests in place. Piper said, "mud" and everyone else agreed with excitement.

Not only was the mud great for holding the nest together, Jillian discovered she could use the mud to form eggs to add to the nest. Soon Piper, Ella, and Nora began making eggs too.

Another opportunity for problem solving came up when Ella exclaimed, "My eggs keep rolling out!"

"It (the nest) needs sides." said Piper. She found a basket nearby that remedied the situation.

The teachers encouraged the children to carefully inspect the bird's nests in the science center so they could learn more about the way birds make their nests. We wondered if they would incorporate this new information to the nest building process outside. Piper noticed, "There is a hole in this nest, I think the eggs will fall out right here."

When I asked what we should do, Piper immediately responded, "We need some mud!"

It was clear that the children were transferring their knowledge from nest building outside to inside. To provoke new wonderings, the teachers drew attention to a nest that was woven with thin grass, no mud.

I asked, "How do you think the birds did this?"
Nora replied, "I think they had to use their beaks."
Augie said, "They had to weave it."

We decided to bring some weaving materials to the science area so the children could incorporate their new discoveries into the nest building process. Nest making this way proved to be much more difficult than using mud.

Arthur, "Hey, this egg keeps falling through."

Sarah, "I'm going to put my stick in this hole right here."

Mike, "Now the eggs won't fall through."

Piper, "I think it needs some feathers like the other one (made by the birds). How can they make it with no hands?"

The challenge of weaving is clearly leading to new wonderings about nests and birds...I wonder where else this journey will take us?

Here are a few photos from the short week. True both stories are related to building, but that might have something to do with the excitement that has come about with the addition of the new door in the block area. Also, this has been one of the main hubs were many children have come together: working with one another and reinforcing many important social goals as well as relationships forming in the classroom. The play has only grown in complexity as well as in popularity over the past 9.5 weeks. We will continue to bring opportunities to practice literacy, art, higher-level/critical think skills, as well as other developmental skills into the block area to support the overall developmental growth of all the children involved in the building excitement. However, I assure you great things are happening in other areas of the classroom as well as outside. Unfortunately we didn't capture as many photos in those areas during this short week. ENJOY!

Juliet, Alexis, and Hadley teamed up and created their own houses on a smaller scale, using the unit blocks, peg people, and carpet squares to furnish their homes. They talked with one another and negotiated where the walls should go, the size of each home, and what carpet they wanted inside. It was a great opportunity for the girls to work collaboratively. We also saw their interest in building carry over to the larger scale, hollow block house building.

The addition of the child-sized door to the block area has caused an explosion of new ideas, collaboration, and excitement in the block area. Many children were already working together with building houses, however there always seemed to be an issue with the houses being too short or too crowded. There was also the trouble with having a useable door that didn't disrupt the roof. The teachers thought about creating an actual door to not only help with the previously mentioned problems, they thought it would be an extension to the play and create new play themes while inviting new children to join in the building experience. It has done exactly that. Upon first use of the door, the houses were too small and could only fit a few children. Through discussions with the teachers as well as one another, the children realized they could expand the walls and make room for many children. Ross also told a story at large group to show the limitless possibilities of the door - sharing a story where a magical door led to the jungle, the ocean, and a new gym (that Ross didn't when he was in preschool). All you needed to do was use your imagination and it would appear on the other side. Ask your child about the story: where the door lead to? what were the things within each newly invented space? if they were to use the magic door, where would it take them and what things would they find? We would love to hear their ideas!

Please click on the following .doc documents for short updates with photos and quotes from the children from the last couple of weeks.

wednesday 18.doc

thursday 11-19.doc

monday 16.doc

making nests 11.23.doc

Enjoy!!

Dear Families,

It is hard to believe that the end of this session is coming to an end in just a week! It has been wonderful to watch as the children in this class have come together to create a strong community over the fall term!

The addition of the grocery store has offered new opportunities for social interactions in the dramatic play area. The children have taken on different roles as shoppers and as the cashiers. During the first week of the grocery store, a large group of children created a large house out of hollow blocks for the shoppers to live in. There was a crew who were building the house, asking the "shoppers" what kind of house they wanted. There shoppers began to collect food and make a kitchen area in side the house to store the food and cook.

The science area as been very popular with the addition of the live tadpoles, animal homes that the children have created, a nest making table, and DVD player with short video clips of animal migration. These new materials have renewed the children's interest in science and inquiry.

The children continue to delight at participating in cooking projects. The cooking table is usually busy no matter what the menu is for that day! Encouraged by the teachers, the children discuss which ingredients they are able to taste when we eat the cooking project for snack. The teachers also try to revisit the experience itself and the process of making snack with those who participated and allow them to share what they remember with their peers.

Small groups have been a time for learning as well as developing new friendships and connections. It has been fun to see how excited the children are to be a part of the small groups! Children in each small group were excited to predict what they would see on their field trip and even more excited to reflect on their field trip experiences afterwards. Each small group prepared a final project and are excited to share it with the families on our end of the session party on Thursday, December 3rd, 2:15-3:30. The "Cooking's Small Group" project is now in our memories and tummies, since we ate it for snack last Thursday.

It has been a wonderful experience for me to have the opportunity to get to know the children and families in Dalia's class! You have all been very supportive and kind! Though I am sad to move on, I look forward to coming back to visit! Thank you for allowing me to share in a wonderful learning experience with your children,

Have a wonderful holiday!

Natalie

Weekly Lesson Plan
Week of: Nov. 23 - Dec. 2, 2009
Lead teaching this week: Rachel

Overview and goals
The classroom has been busy thispast week! The children are developing stronger friendships and playing cooperatively this week. A lot of activity has been happening in the block area as the children work together to make large houses for everyone to fit
into! The new activities this week will help encourage higher level thinking, as the students will hypothesize the measurement of different objects and answer questions that have more than one answer for the question of the day. As the first session comes to a close, we have truly seen many friendships blossom during the session. The children have become comfortable with the classroom routines and daily schedule. We feel it is important to establish this strong social community in the fall with the long winter break, as it makes coming back in January that much smoother. We will be opening the focus of the classroom to include more opportunities for higher-level thinking skills to be practiced as well as bringing in more teacher-facilitated activities.

Art center
Sensory material
~The glurch has run its course and we are ready for a new material. It will be
replaced with Plasticine clay. This is oil-based clay that does not dry, allowing the children to mold it into something day after day. This will give the children the opportunity to explore a new material and discover the similarities and differences between the other moldable materials we have had this year.
~We will add soap to the water table and invite the children to wash dishes and other materials around the room. This will support children’s fine-/large-motor skills and social interactions skills as they negotiate the use of tools and discuss what toys need to be washed. We also want to instill a sense of respect/ownership of the toys and
environment within each child. We talked at large group about how keeping
the toys clean and putting them away when they are not being used are two
ways to respect our toys.
Expressive material
~Since paint was a big hit earlier in the year we will bring it back next week at the
easel. There will be a variety of colors, including black and white so children can experiment and make various shades of familiar colors. Smaller paintbrushes will be at the easel in order to let the children practice more fine-motor skills and allow for finer-detailed paintings.
~Weaving boards will be introduced at the art table. Weaving creates great
opportunities to foster fine-motor strength/coordination as well as challenges children to focus on the over/under pattern involved with stringing the yarn through the weaving board. There will be a variety of yarn colors so they children can make their own creations. Later, larger strips of ribbon will be introduced as well as a larger loom for the
children to utilize their new weaving skills!

Science Center
~Many of our beans have sprouted and are growing quite feverishly! The children continue to visit them daily, watering their sprouts and comparing with others. We will hybrid the science focus of plant growth with the math topic of measurement. Unifix
cubes will be added to the table to help chart the growth of each child’s plant. The children will also be encouraged to take the cubes to other areas of the room and measure various objects. This will familiarize the children with the idea of measurement and foster a richer understanding of the comparison terms taller, longer, shorter, bigger, smaller (especially in regards to comparing their plants).

Math and manipulative Center
~Small Legos will be added to the manipulative center in order to support the continued interest in building and constructing. Legos offer a great opportunity to create “just the right thing” needed to extend a dramatic play theme: whether it be a new tool in the construction area or a new control/radio for the spaceship. We are seeing creations being incorporated into dramatic play and want to foster the creativity/imaginations of the children by encouraging them to think of Legos as a material that can be used in limitless ways!
~Marble ramps will be added to the small cave. We want to introduce the children to concept of motion and get them familiar with how the marbles move down the ramps, because later we will introduce the Marbleworks construction set. The children will be able to make a variety of structures using ramps, turns, and a variety of others unique pieces. This supports children’s fine-motor skills as well as their social interactions and
cooperative play as they work together to make structures. Also, it will support problem solving skills as the children experiment with how the marbles will travel through the structures.

Language and Literacy Center
~There has been some book making and note writing at the writing center over the past week. The books have been incorporated into block and dramatic play, being used as
maps and blueprints for a future building project. There will continue to be supplies for the children to create their books and write notes, and the teachers will be checking in to help dictate stories and instructions as needed.
~One big change this week is the closet by the sinks will be turned into a book nook. There will be pillows, comfy seating and books on tape in there. This will allow the children to get away from the busyness of the classroom and have some quiet time. Also, the books support their pre-literacy skills and familiarize them with new books.

Block Center
~This past week the children have been very busy building houses. They have been working together to make large houses and then use other materials around the room in their building, such as dog leashes as “internal electrical wires.” In order to support more house building pipes, string, and wire will be added. Also, there will be pictures of windows, doors and indoor furnishing that can be added/taped to the structures to support their building. One exciting thing that will be added is a door (or two) that the children can use in their house building play! All of this will support their large motor skills but also their problem-solving skills as they think about and figure out how to build
structures. It will also support their social skills as they work together to complete structures and share materials.

Dramatic Play
~Many of the children have expressed an interest in space and gravity, stemming from the science small group. In order to expand on these interests one of the caves will be turned into a spaceship cockpit. The children can go into the cave and pretend like they
are driving a spaceship! Control panels, keyboards, headsets, and walk-talkies will be available to make this cosmic travel come alive. This will support cooperative play as the children pretend to fly together as well as their imaginative play as they take off into space!

Large Motor
~The new set-up in the gym was a huge hit this week! The children loved the rolling hill and jumping to hit the ball. The set-up will be the same next week but there will be minor changes. Scooters will be added to the relay lane so the children can pull each other back and forth. There will also be new large group games for the children to play. This will support the children’s large motor skills and physical fitness.
~On the playground there will be shovels and buckets available in order to encourage the children to continue digging their huge holes. The soccer nets will also be put out so the children can use them to make goals. This will support their cardiovascular endurance.

Announcements/Reminders
~ Mark your calendar…we are having our “Good Bye” party for the student teachers on Thursday, December 3! We invite all the families to come and join us for snack (starting around 10.30a) as well as for a sing-a-long to say goodbye to Elizabeth, Rachel, and Stacy. See the newsletter posted on our classroom webpage for additional information.
~ With the party on Thursday, you may be wondering if we have school on Friday, December 4? Yes, we will have one more “regular” day of school before we take off for break.
~ Be sure to read the newsletter for additional information about important dates and ideas for things to do over our long winter break!
~Small Group groups are wrapping up this week. Elizabeth’s group will be making a trip to the pet store on Wednesday this week, and Stacy’s and Rachel’s groups will be venturing out next week. Permission slips will be sent home soon!

Snack:
Monday: Cheese & Crackers
Tuesday: Open Snack-Fries by made by the children
Wednesday: Open Snack-Rice Cakes
Thursday: NO SCHOOL
Friday: NO SCHOOL
*All snacks served with milk & water, unless otherwise specified*

Dear Families,

Can you believe there are only two more weeks of school before break? The fall semester has gone so fast. The classroom has been a busy and exciting place: children have been engaged in rich dramatic play and our small groups went on several field trips in the community. Last week Jessica's food small group took a field trip to the restaurant Ōm in downtown Minneapolis, and got a tour from the chef (Carolina's dad!). This week, Emily's music small group visited the MacPhail Center for Music in Minneapolis and had a private music class. This coming Wednesday the animal small group will be taking a trip to Como Zoo to conclude their exploration of animal habitats. In the classroom, children planted lettuce and lima bean seeds in dirt and discussed how plants grow. Children also started to work with clay, and will continue to explore clay techniques next week. At the water table, children determined if objects float or sank, and recorded their observations on a chart. This activity introduced children to the idea of forming and testing hypotheses and continued to expand their knowledge of the properties of water. Children's sociodramatic play has also really expanded in the past few weeks; children have become veterinarians, doctors, construction workers, and firefighters as they work on communication, sharing, and creative skills in the dramatic play and block areas.

Small Groups Update:

Music/Movement: The music/movement small group went on a field trip to MacPhail Center for Music in downtown Minneapolis. During our exploratory music class, the children played percussive instruments and the autoharp. We also created an art project, participated in creative movement activities and concluded with a parachute game. The children expanded on what we had talked about in our small group meetings about tone, rhythm and pitch by participating in all these activities.

Food: Over the past two weeks, our group has been discussing restaurants. We read books about restaurants and talked our own experiences at restaurants. We talked about different parts of a restaurant, such as the dining room and kitchen, and discussed different jobs at a restaurant. Our field trip to Ōm was very exciting! After putting our coats in the coat check and getting a coat check number, we went into the kitchen. We saw a big tandoor oven, smelled spices, squirted a giant hose in the sink, saw a huge mixer, an oven, and walked into a huge refrigerator. We saw the storeroom and soda machine. Then, children drew their favorite part of the kitchen and were treated to delicious cookies and fresh naan bread. This week, children have been representing their knowledge of restaurants by playing restaurant in the classroom. Children have taken on the roles of cooks, waiters/waitresses, and customers. Next week we will have cooking projects to wrap up our food small group.

Animals: Children expanded their discussion of animal habitats to the classroom pets. After examining the rats, the cockroaches, and the crayfish, children talked about what things the animals had in their habitats. Then, armed with magnifying glasses, the children headed out to the small playground to find signs of wild animal habitats.

End of term party:

We have had such a wonderful time working with all of the children and watching them grow, learn, and build friendships. To say goodbye to Nyna and the student teachers and also celebrate the end of a great semester, please mark your calendars for our last day of school event! On Thursday, December 3rd at 2:15, we will be having a party with a special snack and a sing-along. Family members are invited! Everyone will get a chance to meet Jenn, the new lead teacher, at the sing-along party. You will probably also see Jenn in the classroom during the last week of school as she visits and gets to know the children.

Thanks so much and have a great holiday weekend,
Jessica

During the past week, the children experienced some exciting changes to the room! Jessica introduced clay at large group and discussed how it is used to create objects, such as mugs, bowls and sculptures. To build on this awareness, the children were given the opportunity to freely explore the clay and used tools such as rolling pins and hammers. This week, as the children continue to explore the properties of clay, teachers will model and encourage representational designs. Last week, the children explored the scientific concepts of sinking and floating at the water table, and formulated their own hypothesis as to whether objects such as ping pong balls, feathers and golf balls would sink or float. Last week, the children also planted seeds into individual cups with potting soil while reviewing what a seed needs to grow. This week, we will explore a new topic at our science table as we continue to check for growth in the seeds. The children are now able to use magnetic balls and rods in order to explore the properties of magnetism. Finally, the back of the room has been busy with construction workers designing and constructing buildings. This week, the interest in construction will be expanded by providing materials such as pipes, carpet squares, representational pictures from the environment, and real doors to enhance the level of creative play.

Expressive materials:
- The drawing and collage table continues to feature a variety of collage and sculpture objects, such as tissue paper, caps, pom-pom balls, small wooden shapes, and yarn. These items strengthen children's symbolic representation, creative, and fine motor skills. Small chalkboards, chalk and erasers are a new addition to this area. As a result, children can continue to explore the properties of chalk which was previously available at the easel. The art table remains a place where children's fine motor skills and creativity are fostered in addition to opportunities for social interaction as the children share materials and collaborate with one another.

-As chalk exploration moves over to the art table, sponge painting with brightly colored paints is available at the floor easel. Children continue to show an interest in experimenting with textures as well as discussing creations with one another. Hand-eye coordination and fine-motor control continue to be promoted in this area.

-New musical instruments have been added to the middle cave this week to provide the children with a wider variety of sounds to include in their ever growing musical creations. Clackers, ethnic drums, maracas, tambourines, and triangles are available alongside the keyboard. The children continue to explore the CD player featuring Ella Jenkins rhythm songs. A voice recorder is also available so children may create their own recordings. Musical instruments promote the development of psychomotor, perceptual and listening skills, as well as developing creativity!

-The water table takes an exciting direction this week as children have the opportunity to wash toys and objects in our classroom! Recently, children have shown an interest in cleaning and dish-washing in the housekeeping area. Furthermore, this activity promotes a discussion of the various ways in which we use water. Soap has been added to the water as well as scrub brushes, drying racks, and water pitchers for the children to use. This activity will be initiated by washing toy dishes and giving the children an opportunity to locate other items in need of washing. The water table continues to be a place where social interactions are fostered.

-Clay continues to be available at the sensory table this week. New tools such as textured hammers allow children to enhance their creations with elements of design. Clay knives and rolling pins continue to be available. As the children continue to gain familiarity with how this material is used, teachers will begin modeling and facilitating discussions at the table about how to mold, shape and create symbolic representations with the clay. Clay art will be featured in the center of the table as a way to promote these discussions.

-Over the past week, the block area has literally been under construction as children have built houses, cars, and various buildings. Screwdrivers, hammers, saws, and pliers continue to be available alongside the hard hats and caution tape. This week, the hollow blocks have been expanded to include wooden doors. These doors complete any home or building the children create. In addition, piping and carpet squares are available to enhance construction projects. Finally, there are representational photographs of items such as store fronts, clocks, and windows. These may provide children with ideas of what to build, or what other elements could be included within their structure. The block area encourages the development of spatial terminology and explorations into balance and stability. In addition, blocks encourage the development of representational thinking and socio-dramatic play.

-The first cave features a new dramatic play opportunity this week. The cave has been transformed into a spaceship! A control panel, head phones and walkie-talkies are available. Furthermore, children are surrounded by stars, moons, and pictures of the solar system. By creating this set-up, it is hoped that new children will be drawn into the cave and that cooperative play, communication, and discussions of outer-space will be fostered.

- The housekeeping area continues to be a central area of play for many children. To build on the restaurant-themed play of some of the children, restaurant props such as menus and chef hats are available, along with the usual dolls, dishes, and plastic food. The housekeeping area strengthens children's perspective-taking, sharing, symbolic representation, problem solving, and communication skills.

-The computers continue to be available offering Millie's Math House and Sammy's Science House. These games build sequencing, 1-1 correspondence, and letter recognition skills. In addition, children are learning how to operate a computer, use a mouse, take turns and interact with each other while using computers.

-Thick parquetry blocks, also known as tangram shapes, continue to be available. These foster the development of shape, color, patterning, 1-1 correspondence, part-to-whole recognition, and matching skills. Counting games, and the abacus, also remain available. These activities foster 1-1 correspondence and counting skills.

-A beginning memory game is available this week. Children turn over picture cards, until they find a matching pair. In addition to memory, this activity supports concepts of recognizing similarities and differences as well as turn-taking.

-Assorted collection of puzzles fostering fine motor development, visual discrimination, shape recognition, and part-whole relations continue to be available.

-The third cave features the small Legos. Many children continue to show an interest in constructing with these miniature sets. Lego construction builds children's fine motor skills, representational skills, and social skills such as turn-taking and cooperative play. Dramatic play is also seen as many children are creating structures for the Lego people and interacting with one another.

-This past week, children followed written pictorial directions in order to plant their own seeds. We also discussed how seeds have roots that grow out of the seed. This week, we will continue to water and observe any changes to these seeds.

- Magnets are now being explored at the science center. We feel the children are ready for a new topic and magnets allow vast opportunities for critical thinking and question asking. Magnetic balls and rods serve many purposes as children can manipulate and play with them, while also observing magnetic properties and interactions. Furthermore, bar magnets and magnetic balls are available. As the children explore, it is anticipated that they will discover that not all objects stick to the magnet. This hypothesis will be tested as children experiment with applying the magnet to various objects. With this new topic we have attempted to provide a variety of activities to allow the children to investigate and enquire about the properties of magnets. Also, because the force of magnetism is a more abstract topic, we will introduce the idea now and may revisit similar experiments later in the school year to expand on prior knowledge. The science table continues to foster social interactions by allowing children to make discoveries and share ideas together.

-For the first time this year, the back room adjacent to the art table is available as a space for children to gather. This area was created with the intent of giving children a place to relax from the noisy activity of the classroom. Children are invited into this cozy area to listen to books on tape. Fabric and strings of lights drape overhead while a rug, couch and over-sized pillows provide comfortable areas for lounging.

-The book area continues to be another quiet space for children to relax. Books relating to building and construction are available as a way to tie into the activity in the block area. Classic stories that focus on familiar songs, rhyme and repetition are also available, building phonemic awareness and phonological skills. By reading a book and looking at illustrations, children are expanding their print awareness, while continuing to increase their vocabulary.

-The writing center continues to be a place where children write letters, and seal special projects into envelopes. Alphabet stickers and alphabet paper letters continue to be available in order to foster alphabetic identification.

-In the gym, there continues to be the rolling hill to promote balance and vestibular awareness. The A-frame allows children to jump and hit a hanging ball from the light supporting hand-eye coordination, depth perception, as well as jumping and landing skills. The monkey bars "attached" to the climbing wall create a raised climbing structure that challenges the children's eye-hand/eye-foot coordination and creates opportunities to safely take risks in the gym. Throughout the week, teachers will lead various relay games in a running lane to promote endurance, cooperation, and muscular strength.

-The playground continues to feature the climbing equipment, boat, and swings. Balls, tricycles, rakes, wheelbarrows, shovels, and wagons continue to be available. The playground is a place where children continue to develop gross motor skills and meaningful social interactions, while engaging in the natural world.

Snack:
Monday: String Cheese & Apples
Wednesday: Open Snack-Letter Cheese-Its
Thursday: Special party snack

Overview and Goals

This session is coming to an end and we will spend time talking about saying good-bye to our wonderful student teachers and winter break approaching. I will emphasize that I will be in the classroom when the children come back from break. We will continue to draw children's attention to life cycles all around us. We continue to notice the changes taking place with the trees and nature in general around our school, comparing the way these looked like at the beginning of the year and how these look now. We have talked about how these will look like during the winter. Full cycle will take place after spring and summer next year! Discussion about hibernation and other ways animals survive winter have allowed us to make one more connection to life cycles. During the next couple of weeks, we will expand and deepen our exploration of animals in winter and reintroduce the topic of migration. The tadpoles, our new classroom pets, will allow us to reinforce the cycle's concept as well as that of transformation. We will continue to support children's expression of what they know and what is interesting to them through art, conversations, songs and movement.

Expressive Arts

~We will introduce watercolors to our art area and encourage the children to use this new media to represent their ideas.
~Construction paper, natural collage materials, glue, scissors, tape, and markers are always available for the children to express themselves creatively.

Sensory Materials
~Glurch will be available this Monday. Next Monday the popular play-dough will be back and stay for the remainder of the session. We will allow the children to continue to create homes for animals while taking note and documenting their thoughts.

Dramatic and Symbolic Play

~The back of our classroom continues to be a busy place, where customers buy groceries and take them to their homes (built with our own hollow blocks). The teachers will spend more time supporting children's understanding of buying, taking groceries home, unpacking, and preparing meals out of them. We will also talk about money and give the children the experience of dealing with it.
~ Our hibernating cave continues to draw the children's attention and interest. Many children have gotten together to have "bear parties" and "look for food" before winter comes. Children's interest in bears is apparent to us; we will continue to provide opportunities for them to discover and discuss "bear life."
~Dresses, purses, ties, and vests are available in this area to support children's dramatic play scenarios.
~Tools and hard hats continue to be available by the hollow blocks area. Children seemed curious about building and excited to build their own homes out of blocks.

Science Center

~Our large science area continues to support different yet related topics of interest in our classroom. A variety of furs are available for the children to explore and think about which animals would need that kind of fur and why.
~ We are reintroducing the topic of migration as a solution for animals during wintertime. We will deepen children's explorations of these topic by allowing children to watch short clips related to migration, asking interesting questions and sparking children's curiosity around this theme. A short story, part told by the teacher and part filled in by the children will encourage children to ask questions and figure out their own theories related to this topic.
~The empty nests found in our playground will allow us to not only talk about which animals used to live in those nests and where have they gone... we have a nest weaving station by the science area to support children's inquiries on the migration topic as well as engage their problem solving skills while trying to make one!

Language and Literacy

~An assortment of papers, envelopes, colored pencils, staplers, tape is located in the writing center along with an alphabet. ~Mailboxes are situated in the literacy area. This week we will put children's pictures on designated spots and formally introduce how to use the mailbox.
~An assortment of books about hibernation, trees, animals in winter and old favorites are available in different areas of the classroom.

Math, Manipulative and Games

We continue to offer opportunities to deepen the children's understanding of seriation and sequencing. We also have patterning materials available. Patterning reinforces the concept of cycles by allowing the children to see and experience first hand the creation of cycles with simple materials. They are able to notice predictability and recognize relationships.
~Sequencing cards related to frogs and tress are available. Real tree photos at showing season changes are available for the children to order. The frog pictures allow children to follow the frogs' life cycle from egg to adult frog.
~Self-correcting Montessori cylinders are still popular in this area. Children feel proud and successful as they figure out the "rule" behind this activity.
~Mini pegs are available at the light table for patterning and creative expression.
~Mobilos, K-nex and pop oids are still popular creative building materials available in one of our caves. These creative building materials foster symbolic representation, creative thinking, manual dexterity and hand strength. We also have paper and pencils to encourage the children to plan or draw their already built creations and support symbolic representation.
~Puzzles support the development of part/whole relationships, synthesizing and had-eye coordination.
~Games with rules are a popular classroom activity. The children enjoy our "home" made memory and bingo games with our own classroom photos and photos related to topics of interest.

Block area

~Hollow blocks along with tools for building and hard hats continue to be part of our back of the room environment. Children have started to create more complex structures and use these to store the food bought in the store.
~The grocery store continues to be a popular place to socialize; this is especially true for the "small cooking group" participants, who had a first hand experience with going to the grocery store and finding specific ingredients for a cooking project (which the whole classroom delighted eating during snack last Thursday).
~The Unit blocks are often used to complement creations made with the pop-oids. K-nex or to add to animals homes. Children also use the unit blocks to add to the hollow block structures.
If there are any avid block builders within our families, we would love to have you in our classroom during free play and spark some new ideas during our construction times.

Large Motor

~Scheduled gym time is on Mondays. A relay running lane has been created to support teamwork and cardiovascular endurance. This lane will also provide space to practice motor patterns such as, skipping, galloping and hopping. The matted rolling hill promotes spatial awareness, directional awareness, and the ability to start and stop. It also promotes the development of core strength and cardiovascular and muscular endurance. The monkey bars are now attached to the climbing wall to promote climbing, reaching, and grasping. It also promotes the development of children's directional awareness, risk taking, and muscular strength and endurance. The children's depth perception, hand-eye coordination, climbing and jumping skills are addressed as they try out our new jumping station. This station features a hanging ball as a target for children to hit with their hand before landing. The beanbag toss fosters skills such as throwing, aim and accuracy, and hand-eye coordination.
~Our playground continues to provide the children with wonderful opportunities for running, ride tricycles, digging, climbing, balancing, crossing monkey bars and enjoy nature. Some days we bring a variety of toys and equipment for the children to use and other days they enjoy what nature provides.
If we have snow this week, we will introduce our wonderful sledding hill!!
Parent volunteers are always welcomed during this time, not only to support the teachers during this activity, but also to enjoy the children's shrieks and expressive faces.

Music and Movement/Large Group

~This week we will talk about saying good-bye to the student teachers.
~We will count-down how many days until winter break and how many days until school starts again.
~The concept of Migration; one more cycle in life will be reintroduced during large group and connect it to other cycles we have talked about. It will also connect with our bird nests' items and furs available in the science area.
~We will sing a new hibernation/migration song.

*Our End of the Session party will take place on Thursday, December 3rd: 2:15-3:30. All families are invited for snack, show of our small group documentation panels and sing-along. Please mark your calendars and join us!!

Hope to see you all,
Dalia

As we begin to wrap up the autumn session of the school year (wow...we're almost a third of the way done with the school year!), we want open our focus to include the fostering of higher-level thinking. With a strong social community established in the classroom, we feel we can really begin to challenge the critical thinking skills of the children through richer scientific question asking and hypothesis testing. The photos from this week are meant to reflect of some the ways we facilitating these opportunities.

Large group has become not only a time to sing songs, tell stories, and have fun...it has become a means of proposing questions and challenging the critical thinking skills of the children. One day Rachel brought the magnets from the science table to large group and asked the children what they knew about magnets. The children knew that magnets were things that stuck together, however Rachel challenged them with the question of why the magnets stick together. She also asked what things do magnets stick to, as the children also knew magnets don't stick to everything. One of the most puzzling concepts came about when Rachel faced the north sides of two magnets towards each other on a pencil (look closely at the first photo). As one magnet floated above the other, she challenged the children to get them to stick together. No one could...not even the other teachers. When she turned the top magnet over, they stuck! Although these concepts are very abstract, it is important for children to activities such as these to challenge their thinking and use their brains in new ways. The expectation is not to fully grasp why, but rather fuel the inquisitive mind and pushing the children to think about things in a new way: supporting the many areas of critical/scientific thinking skill development.

We have seen the higher-level thinking (hypothesis creating and testing) taking place in the water table as the children conduct "sink or float" experiments. With a variety of materials to investigate, the children have been overheard talking about whether the objects they were about to place in the water would sink or float. The repetition of the experiments from day to day also reinforced the child's understanding of the concept by consistently yielding the same results (i.e. every time Otto and Helena put the ping pong balls in the water, the floated...every time they put the golf balls in, they sank).

Another area where exploration and inquiry has been taking place is at the science table while the children have been exploring glurch. The children initially explored its properties by touching and stretching the material, however quickly became curious with figuring out how far it could stretch. Children held the glurch in outstretched arms and watch in amazement and wonder as it slowly made its way to the floor. Then, children began pulling it with a partner (as seen in the second photo), resulting in glurch strands longer than 10ft! These interesting discoveries will be leading us into a new focus on measurement as our fall session comes to a close.

We have also been creating small stories and looking at photos from the previous day with the children to help extend their play as well as help them recall what they did the day prior. As you know, house build has been very popular lately. By looking at pictures of the previous day's constructions, the children were more motivated to revisit the play theme as well as add more detail to their structures based off of what they saw in the photos (as exemplified in the last 2 photos with the plethora of "food" options located inside the large hollow blocks).

As there were field trips occurring throughout the week, there were many more opportunities to engage in one-on-one-conversation and intimate interactions with smaller groups of children. The teachers were able to model and support conversation in dramatic play as well as normal interactions.

Bob leading an activity that emphasizes body awareness and isolates body part movements, such as moving the mouth and elbows (shown above).

The children began noticing the pile of leaves and started raking them, lying in them, and throwing them up in the air to see them blow in the wind and land on each other.

The children were experimenting with flashlights and mixing colors using colored disks, stimulating perceptual awareness and cognition.

Doctor play has been emerging outside in the playground. Here, Katie told a couple of children, "Help, my eyebrows are falling off!" Maia and Beatrix took turns giving Katie "shots" on the eyebrows to fix them.

Kitty play is continuing in the classroom. The children were negotiating roles as the caretaker and kitties.

As the U of M grounds people were chopping up part of an oak branch, some of children had an opportunity to see the process. Some of the logs were transferred to our sand box area in the playground. Here the children were observing the logs and the mysterious hole that was created in the logs. Questions were asked, "how did this happen?" "What do you think happened here?" and "why?" One child answered, "The branches were cut so we can play with them...But the tree is sad because it got cut!"

Madeline writing a letter to Mom and Dad. As she was writing "Dad," she saw me write a D on another paper and said, "That's not how you write a 'D,' this is a 'D'!"

November 16, 2009

Dear families,

Another exciting week at the lab school is behind us! As our time as student teachers is winding down, it is consistently a pleasure to come to school and witness the joy and curiosity in each of your children. They have each shown growth over the past several weeks, and I have a great sense of pride to have been a part of this important time in their lives.

I enjoyed my week as lead teacher, and it was wonderful see all of my curricular ideas come to life in the classroom. The body awareness aspect of my curriculum took off with great gusto! The different sized paper cut outs of hands and feet sparked a lot of interest in size. Many of the children placed their hands over the cut outs to find "their" size. One of the children in Frances' class demonstrated his developing understanding of size by saying, "here's the baby feet, and here's the daddy feet." The mirrors in the classroom were a fun spot for children to examine their facial features and compare them with other children's features. Many funny faces were enjoyed as well.

Our large groups for the week were also focused on body awareness. The children enjoyed a new rendition of "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes." In Ayuko's class, we added a verse to one of our classroom favorites, "Open, Shut Them," which involved blinking and winking! Children in both classes had fun dancing to "The Freeze Song" in the gym, and they did a great job listening for the musical changes that indicated freezing and dancing.

Painting in the classroom took on a new life this past week as the children explored painting on pieces of standing plexiglass. Many of the children in the classroom are regulars at the easel and art table, but this plexiglass set-up seemed to invite some new children into the realm of art. Children enjoyed looking through the plexiglass to see one another. One child in Ayuko's class was thrilled to learn that he could paint over and cover up a teacher's hand that was behind the plexiglass. The game interested two other children who came over to join in the activity.

The music and dancing center have also been a highly-frequented area in the classroom. The children are becoming more familiar with manipulating the mouse on the computer to select one of five song buttons It is such a joy to watch the children as they experiment with the cause and effect of clicking and hearing music! Children in both classes have enjoyed listening to the different genres of music and dancing accordingly. We have seen a great deal of marching to The Imperial March from "Stars Wars" and lots of movement with flowing scarves to a classical piece by Johann Strauss. I was surprised to see how many of the children have shown preferences for certain types of music and musical instruments. Overall, this area has been a great creative outlet for many children, and teachers (just ask to see Teacher Bob's jig).

The dramatic play areas are an ever-popular place. We have been reveling in the amount of group play that has been happening in both classes. Many of the children in Frances' class took a trip on a train made of cardboard boxes. One child even declared, "We need tickets!" We have been seeing whole litters of kitty cats in Ayuko's class, complete with human caregivers and delicious cat food! These group play experiences are truly creating a sense of community between the children. I have enjoyed watching the blossoming relationships and emerging social skills as the children learn to share materials and negotiate play themes.

After a long and successful run, our grocery store recently came to a close. We send thanks to all of you who sent in your food containers, and to those of you who were able to clue us in as to what types of foods your child likes to eat and cook. This information was so helpful as we supported play from the grocery store into the play kitchen. The children were tickled when we offered just the right spice for their mac and cheese or knew that they liked soy nut butter on their toast. This home-school connection makes our classroom community lively and meaningful.

I have enjoyed my time as lead teacher. The children teach me so much each day; their curiosity and excitement is a reminder of the kind of attitude I hope to bring with me to class. So, it is with that curiosity and excitement that I look forward to lead teaching again next week!

Sincerely,
Becky

Announcements
• We are looking for a family to care for Peely during Thanksgiving break. If you are interested in helping out with our classroom gerbil, please let a teacher know!
• Please mark your calendars for our goodbye snack on Wednesday, December 2nd. It will take place on our second to last day of school at 10:15am. Please come and then spend the rest of the morning with us on the playground.
• Please consider hosting a playdate at an area park during the month of December. It will be nice for the children (and families) to connect during the long break. Let Eva know so the info can be in the calendar being prepared.
• During large group this week we will begin to talk about the winter break and the up-coming transitions. We will discuss how the student teachers will be going off to new schools soon, and how the children will have new student teachers when they return from break. Discussing these big transitions will help the children prepare for and process the changes, and it would benefit both the teachers and the children if you could discuss this at home as well.
• School will be closed on November 26th and 27th, due to Thanksgiving break. School will resume on Monday, November 30th.

Lesson Plan for Ayuko's Class
Lead Teacher: Becky
Week of November 23, 2009

Goals:
As the curriculum for this week developed, themes of opposites emerged; concepts of light and dark, wet and dry, tall and short, and large and small will be embedded in the various curriculum areas and large group times. In addition to supporting the children's exploration of opposites, we as teachers will also help them refine these explorations by highlighting "medium" and the middle of the extremes. We will continue this theme of finding a happy middle ground during play by supporting the children as they learn to consider their own desires as well as the desires of others.

Art
•Easel: After a two week break, the easel will return to the classroom. We will present dark paper and chalk for the children to explore. Students will learn color concepts, such as light and dark, and they will be able to use their fine motor skills to manipulate the chalk by blending and smearing.

Manipulatives
• Children will have the opportunity to use scissors at one of the manipulative ta-bles. We will present the children with lined paper and magazines so that they can practice the fine motor skill of cutting.
• New puzzles surrounding the themes of color, doctor, and animals will be avail-able. We will also incorporate a puzzle with interlocking pieces to scaffold de-veloping part-whole skills.

Sensory
• Modeling clay will be available this week at the play doh table. Modeling clay offers a unique opportunity as it will dry when exposed to air. Finished products can be painted and kept. Pictures of towers and tall buildings will be posted as inspiration for the children during their exploration of the new medium. Building with clay will support fine motor strength and precision, as well as creative ex-pression.
• Water will be added to the sand table so the children can experiment with the concepts of wet and dry. Molds and buckets will be available for the children to make sand castles and other structures. The sand table promotes sensory aware-ness as children feel and manipulate the sand; it is also a wonderful area for de-veloping social skills such as turn-taking.

Science
• A new, large light table will be presented in the cave area this week. Children will ex-plore the concepts of light and dark, as well as shadows. Translucent colored gels and discs will be available, along with flashlights and various natural materials to create shadows. The science area will enhance children's skills of inquiry, prediction, and ex-perimentation.

Math
• We will continue our exploration of weight and measurement this week. Children will be given the opportunity to use various measuring tools such as scales, tape-measures, and unit blocks. These mathematic opportunities will give children the chance to use their comparative thinking by finding out which item is longest, shortest, heaviest, and lightest.

Dramatic Play
• One of the dramatic play elements this week will be an area for playing doctor or vet, complete with tools and dress-up clothes. The area will be arranged in a spacious and thoughtful way so as to encourage social interaction. We as teachers will support the play by promoting empathy and other care-giving qualities.
• The kitchen and home area will be another focus in the dramatic play area. Children will have the opportunity to experiment in the play kitchen and go back and forth be-tween "home" and the "doctor" or "vet." This area will also promote social skills such as cooperation and play negotiation.
• The "little people" play will continue with the dollhouse and garages. Here, we will encourage children to act out scenarios that will help them learn conversation schemes and build the skill of symbolic representation.

Language and Literacy
• A new writing center will be presented for the children to practice writing on lined paper and exploring tools such as alphabet stencils and rulers. This area will help the children develop a concept of print, such as recognizing directionality of print, symbolic representation, and alphabet awareness.
• We will also be incorporating literacy elements into the doctor/vet office. Children will be able to write "prescriptions," fill in medical charts, and take phone messages. Writing that is embedded in play will help children realize the importance and usefulness of writ-ten language.
• The children have also been showing an interest in the workings of the computer. As such, we are going to have an alphabet program running so the children get the practice of pointing and clicking the mouse, as well as an animated phonics experience.

Construction
• In addition to the large, hollow blocks, new duplo blocks will be added to the construc-tion area. These blocks that click together will help the children build large, sturdy struc-tures that can easily be manipulated or combined with someone else's structure. We will also have a variety of duplo vehicles for the children to use and explore. Construction gives children the opportunity to use creative expression as well as learn the basic princi-ples needed for building, such as creating sturdy bases and symmetry. The large area for construction also encourages cooperation and group projects.

Music
• During large groups we will be singing some old favorites as well as some new songs. The theme of opposites will come up in songs such as "The Wheels on the Bus" and "Open, Shut Them." We will also be singing some silly songs that bring the children's attention to rhyming, such as "Willaby, Wallaby" and "The Name Game."

Large Group
• During large group this week we will begin to talk about the winter break and the up-coming transitions. We will discuss how the student teachers will be going off to new schools soon, and how the children will have new student teachers when they return from break. Discussing these big transitions will help the children prepare for and process the changes.

Large Motor
• During large group time in the gym, we will start to explore the parachute. Children will experiment with making the parachute go up, down, fast, and slow. This activity will strengthen large muscle groups while simultaneously allowing the children to work cooperatively.
• On the playground, we will be incorporating animal dress-up materials to en-courage large animal play. Children will be encouraged to become different ani-mals and move in new, interesting ways. Large muscle coordination and strength will be emphasized as the children hop, jump, crawl, gallop, and run.

Snack
Monday: Homemade Fries made by class & B-Day snack
Wednesday: Cheddar Bunnies & B-Day snack
Thursday: No School.

songs
"Open, Shut Them" (finger play)
Open shut them open shut them (open your hands and close them into a fist)
Give a little clap clap clap
Open shut them open shut them
Lay them in your lap lap lap
Creeping crawling creeping crawling, (walk your fingers up from your legs to your chin)
Right up to your chin chin chin (point to your chin)
Open wide, your little mouth (open your mouth wide and pretend to put your fingers in)
But do not let them in (hide your hands behind your back)

"Willaby, Wallaby"
Willaby wallaby (Name, but replace the first sound with a W: ie. Waia instead of Maia)
An elephant sat on (real name)
*Repeat

Goals:
As the curriculum for this week developed, themes of opposites emerged; concepts of light and dark, wet and dry, tall and short, and large and small will be embedded in the various curriculum areas and large group times. In addition to supporting the children's exploration of opposites, we as teachers will also help them refine these explorations by highlighting "medium" and the middle of the extremes. We will continue this theme of finding a happy middle ground during play by supporting the children as they learn to consider their own desires as well as the desires of others.

Art
•Easel: After a two week break, the easel will return to the classroom. We will present dark paper and chalk for the children to explore. Students will learn color concepts, such as light and dark, and they will be able to use their fine motor skills to manipulate the chalk by blending and smearing.

Manipulatives
• Children will have the opportunity to use scissors at one of the manipulative ta-bles. We will present the children with lined paper and magazines so that they can practice the fine motor skill of cutting.
• New puzzles surrounding the themes of color, doctor, and animals will be avail-able. We will also incorporate a puzzle with interlocking pieces to scaffold de-veloping part-whole skills.

Sensory
• Modeling clay will be available this week at the play doh table. Modeling clay offers a unique opportunity as it will dry when exposed to air. Finished products can be painted and kept. Pictures of towers and tall buildings will be posted as inspiration for the children during their exploration of the new medium. Building with clay will support fine motor strength and precision, as well as creative ex-pression.
• Water will be added to the sand table so the children can experiment with the concepts of wet and dry. Molds and buckets will be available for the children to make sand castles and other structures. The sand table promotes sensory aware-ness as children feel and manipulate the sand; it is also a wonderful area for de-veloping social skills such as turn-taking.

Science
• A new, large light table will be presented in the cave area this week. Children will explore the concepts of light and dark, as well as shadows. Translucent colored gels and discs will be available, along with flashlights and various natural materials to create shadows. The science area will enhance children's skills of inquiry, prediction, and ex-perimentation.

Math
• We will continue our exploration of weight and measurement this week. Children will be given the opportunity to use various measuring tools such as scales, tape-measures, and unit blocks. These mathematic opportunities will give children the chance to use their comparative thinking by finding out which item is longest, shortest, heaviest, and lightest.

Dramatic Play
• One of the dramatic play elements this week will be an area for playing doctor or vet, complete with tools and dress-up clothes. The area will be arranged in a spacious and thoughtful way so as to encourages social interaction. We as teachers will support the play by promoting empathy and other caregiving qualities.
• The kitchen and home area will be another focus in the dramatic play area. Children will have the opportunity to experiment in the play kitchen and go back and forth be-tween "home" and the "doctor" or "vet." This area will also promote social skills such as cooperation and play negotiation.
• The "little people" play will continue with the dollhouse and garages. Here, we will encourage children to act out scenarios that will help them learn conversation schemes and build the skill of symbolic representation.

Language and Literacy
• A new writing center will be presented for the children to practice writing on lined paper and exploring tools such as alphabet stencils and rulers. This area will help the children develop a concept of print, such as recognizing directionality of print, symbolic representation, and alphabet awareness.
• We will also be incorporating literacy elements into the doctor/vet office. Children will be able to write "prescriptions," fill in medical charts, and take phone messages. Writing that is embedded in play will help children realize the importance and usefulness of writ-ten language.
• The children have also been showing an interest in the workings of the computer. As such, we are going to have an alphabet program running so the children get the practice of pointing and clicking the mouse, as well as an animated phonics experience.

Construction
• In addition to the large, hollow blocks, new duplo blocks will be added to the construc-tion area. These blocks that click together will help the children build large, sturdy struc-tures that can easily be manipulated or combined with someone else's structure. We will also have a variety of duplo vehicles for the children to use and explore. Construction gives children the opportunity to use creative expression as well as learn the basic princi-ples needed for building, such as creating sturdy bases and symmetry. The large area for construction also encourages cooperation and group projects.

Music
During large groups we will be singing some old favorites as well as some new songs. The theme of opposites will come up in songs such as "The Wheels on the Bus" and "Open, Shut Them." We will also be singing some silly songs that bring the children's attention to rhym-ing, such as "Willaby, Wallaby" and "The Name Game."

Large Group
• During large group this week we will begin to talk about the winter break and the up-coming transitions. We will discuss how the student teachers will be going off to new schools soon, and how the children will have new student teachers when they return from break. Discussing these big transitions will help the children prepare for and process the changes.

Large Motor
• During large group time in the gym, we will start to explore the parachute. Children will experiment with making the parachute go up, down, fast, and slow. This activity will strengthen large muscle groups while simultaneously allowing the children to work cooperatively.
• On the playground, we will be incorporating animal dress-up materials to en-courage large animal play. Children will be encouraged to become different ani-mals and move in new, interesting ways. Large muscle coordination and strength will be emphasized as the children hop, jump, crawl, gallop, and run.

Announcements
• As winter break approaches, we are beginning to look for a family to care for Peely during the break. If you are interested in helping out with our classroom gerbil, please let a teacher know!
• Please mark your calendars for our goodbye snack on Tuesday, December 1st. It will take place on our second to last day of school at 10:15am. Please come and then spend the rest of the morning with us on the playground.
• Please consider hosting a playdate at an area park during the month of December. It will be nice for the children (and families) to connect during the long break. Let Eva know so the info can be in the calendar being prepared.

Snack
Tuesday: We may make our own toast for snack, Also banana.
Friday: No school

We have had a wonderful week with many new materials capturing the children's interest - and lovely fall weather for extended play outside. Please look at these photos in conjuction with next week's lesson plan, as many of the changes were introduced in the classroom today. For the first time since September, the water table was replaced with the sand table. As often happens, there was lots of activity on the first day, exploring sand with vehicles.

Today, we changed things up and added water to the sand to create sand that would pack and fill molds. Here Quinn explores the "pond" of water which children drew from to mix with the sand. Some added water to sand, others added sand to the water.

The scales still intrigued children - these were quite popular on the first day, today Naomi copied a teacher by putting two little animals on each side, giggling when the balance went lower as it contained more animals. Then she simply decided to pile many animals into one side.

The scissors had been out in the beginning of the year, but children were frequently frustrated by their use, or wanted to carry them around the entire classroom. We reintroduced them today and wondered what would happen. With more one on one attention, children experimented in their own way with using them to snip with one or two hands.

A new block arrangement trying to help children incorporate using cars with roads successful in inspiring children to do new types of building/driving. Here Beck uses the arches to make tunnels for his car.

We are also encouraging more use of the unit blocks. On Tuesday, Raya used them blocks to make a cage for the animals in the zoo.

Andreas and Henry Da also began to build a cage for the tigers. It became more and more complex. When Henry used the triagular block it seemed to remind him of a slide.

Sure enough, he began to see how the tiger cubs and even the pretend people could slide down his "slide."

On Friday, a new doctor office (combo vet and people) was opened. As usual, there was lots of interest at first as children, sensitive to novelty and curious about new materials, came to explore. We wonder if children have been to have their flu shots, this may be something they are recently familiar with.

To use the materials in a socially connective way, we encouraged children to check each other's stomachs, or their own, or a teacher's tummy. Many children brought their dolls in to be checked out. From their language, it's clear they are familiar with the story of getting sick:

Raya: "He's hurting," (said about the baby)
Teacher: "What part?"
Raya: "This part, his tummy."
Said to Eleanor, who's doll it was, "There, he's better."

Henry De: "Thumpa, Thumpa, Thumpa" (with stethescope on baby's chest.) He had observed Teacher Becky do this once on her doll.

Henry Da: "My fix my ear!" said after putting the otoscope into his ear.

Both days this week a small group went to the hallway for a jumping exercise. Thanks to Raya's mom, we have some photos of the Tuesday group. Jade and Naomi jump into the hoop from the step.

Brenna jumped between the two hoops. We are hoping that the occasional placement of children into small groups of two and three will help foster awareness of each other and social connection.

When we met for large group, we sang the wheels on the bus song - there's the bus.

We also had a guest visit from a pretend animal - ask your child what animal Teacher Bob pretended to be. We wanted the children to be aware of the animal fabric "costumes" which would be outside on the playground.

The new center of attention in the gym is the rolling hill. Children are learning to access it by going up the stairs. While many children attempted a log roll on Tuesday (as it was demonstrated by a teacher) today we left things more open. As you can see in this photo, a variety of methods were used to get down the hill. Lucia is hopping, Max has come down on his bottom, and Brenna appears to be preparing to crawl down on all fours. Other children came down "lizard style" on their tummies.

On Tuesday, Teacher Bob led us in a bean bag song. Troy is listening to the music, concentrating on where to place his bean bag next.

Lucia is placing it on her head,

Naomi has put hers on her ear - this is exactly the sort of body- vocabulary- motor planning we were hoping this week's curriculum would allow us to explore.

Who's this? It's Lucia's Grandpa Ron - he's got the beanbag on his tummy!

Outside we are beginning to see more and more whispers of social connection - whispers because you have to pay very close attention to spot them and occasionally help them along. Still they are there - when three children sit together at the picnic table, originally not interacting, but then pouring tea for each other when a teacher suggests that they are having a picnic together and models the tea pouring.

A Swing Story

Naomi is pushing the swing with her body. A teacher, noticing that Raya is near and is not engaged in play, suggests that she might want to help her push it. Sometimes the fun of a joint physical project can connect two children.

After a bit of pushing, Naomi starts climbing ON the swing. Sure enough, they are connected enough that Raya follows her on the swing.

After they both climb on, they get a push from the teacher and soon a new group has collected seeking a turn.

A Salad Story

Teacher Becky and Lucia are pretending to make and eat salad. When Henry De overhears their play, he calls out, "I want some salad." When he comes over, Lucia serves him a dried oak leaf and pretends to eat some herself. These beginning whispers of connection are growing daily and will likely intensify in the spring, as children increasingly move out of their own orbit and begin to find social connection more and more satisfying.

Here are the week's photo updates. As mentioned last time, I've added a bit more of the back story as well as tried to highlight the developmental support that's accompanying the photos. Let me know what you think of the new format.

As the children have the opportunity to come back to familiar materials and repeat/recreate similar play themes from the day(s) before, the play theme (in this case - block structures) grow in complexity as well as invite more children to combine ideas and work collaboratively.

Here are two photos of an elaborate house structure that involved many children in the classroom working together. Building houses was very popular over the previous few days. This house came about because one of the teachers read a book depicting all the steps needed to build a house (including the internal components: such as plumbing and wiring). The children started building the external structure as they had in the days before, however what made this house unique was everything "inside" the walls. Children began adding small blocks (a.k.a. "pipes") and wires/pipe-cleaners from the art area (a.k.a. "electricity wires") to the insides of the large hollow blocks, making this house complete.

Another area we've seen support with fostering/maintaining social relationships as well as cooperative play has been at the computers. Here Peyton, William, and Hadley work at one computer while Otto and Evan work at the other. Both groups were playing the same game, watching each other and working together to complete the puzzle. As you can see, the end result was quite humorous! This collaboration supports much more than the social relationships/friendships forming in the classroom. It creates fabulous (child-facilitated) opportunities to practice conflict resolution, negotiation, and compromising skills - all important things for young people to learn.

The water table has also created great opportunities for children to come together and support of social focus. Garrin first discovered that the hand pump's hose could reach into the neighboring funnel. Intrigued by the new creation, Cedrick came over to see what Garrin had done. Garrin explained how he could "...pump the water from the water table into the funnel and then it goes down into the bin." Nora, interested in the new contraption as well, joined the boys and the group worked together to pump the water. New hypotheses were created and tested as the group shared ideas about what else they could do to move the water from the water table to the bin located below.

Dramatic play creates countless opportunities for cooperative play and social support. Here, Alexis and Nora tended to the sick animals in the Animal Hospital. Children continued to stop by with sick puppies, kitties...even a sick tiger and a sick ostrich! A number of fascinating conversations came about during the treating/releasing of the patients that visited the Animal Hospital. Again, this was another great place where children had to talk with one another and compromise about using materials, negotiate who would be the patient and the doctor, as well as resolve conflicts about diagnoses.

Goals:
• As the sophistication of the children's play and their comfort at school increases, we have noticed increased verbal confidence and activity. To support these blossoming skills, we will pay close attention to engaging in and supporting conversations in the classroom. We will find the time and the opportunity to engage in one-on-one-conversation, as well as modeling and supporting conversation in dramatic play as well as normal interactions. This is of course something we normally do, but it seems ready for some extra attention at this time.
Art:
• The transparent plexiglass easels with small paintbrushes continue this week, offering unique opportunities for cognitive and social engagement. In addition to brushes, sponges will be offered. Sponges might be used as a brush, but they also suggest a new daubing technique for a different result.
Manipulatives:
• A variety of puzzles continue to be presented featuring themes of construction, body awareness, shapes, numbers, and letters. Puzzles challenge the children to use fine motor planning, problem-solving skills, and persistence.
• Several different activities will feature magnets and magnetic materials. The children will continue to use their creativity and scientific inquiry to attempt to manipulate objects and understand magnetic force.
• Sorting activities will also be provided. Grouping of like-objects is a precursor to more advanced classification skills, and sorting activities promote hand-eye coordination, fine motor development, and color and shape awareness. These manipulatives can also be used in exploring the concept and dimension of equality and weight on the balance beam scale.
Sensory:
• The water table will turn to sand this week, offering further experience in flowing material. The contrast offers an opportunity to make comparisons between substances and experience with a potentially three-dimensional material and offers many opportunities for creative and dramatic play.
• Play dough: children will continue to explore the idea of making tracks and prints in the dough. Children will also be encouraged to try to make prints of their own hands, fingers, and shoes. These prints will be used for observation and comparison to other prints. We will also experiment with filling moulds and enclosed space with play dough.
Science:
• Materials related to body awareness will remain for further investigation and extensions. With the children we will devise simple and organic and informal ways to measure hands and feet for comparison, offering both social and cognitive interactions.
• Balance beam scales will be placed in the room to investigate measures of a different kind ('equal' and 'weight') using a variety of manipulatives and other objects in the classroom, heightening the children's awareness of the physical world around them.
• In the cave, we will install a small light box and mirrors, which will encourage children to experiment with light and shadow, reflected images, and mixing colors using colored gels on the light board, stimulating perceptual awareness and cognition.
Dramatic Play:
• Small trucks and cars continue to be popular in the block area. These experiences provide social opportunities for the children and encourage turn taking and cooperation.
• Small dramatic play people and houses will continue to be available. The materials will be positioned next to the block area in order to help children bridge the various types of dramatic play that is happening in the room. These small manipulatives offer children the opportunity to act out familiar household themes and practice their symbolic representation skills.
• Picnics have emerged as an area of interest and will be supported with picnic baskets and picnic cloths to extend this dramatic play.

• This week, using cardboard boxes and unit blocks, a zoo will go under construction, extending the dramatic play we are seeing in the small house and among the trucks and blocks. We are hoping to extend the dramatic play among the 'house', the zoo, and a construction area building, creating diversified possibilities for dramatic play interactions, and the children's use of imagination. Parents can support this theme with natural conversations at home about visiting a zoo, or perhaps with books that reference zoos in some way. If you would like to share, we would be happy to hear any anecdotes about past zoo visits that you might have. Also, should you have any shoeboxes you can donate, we could use about ten of them for a little zoo train.
Language and Literacy:
• The dramatic play centers will incorporate many literacy elements. Signs and labels will be used where appropriate and best make the literacy connection for the children.
• Road signs and traffic regulations will be enforced in the block area to help extend vehicle and road play. • New books surrounding our themes of the zoo and animals, body awareness, construction, and fall will be added to the classroom.
• Many children have been showing an interest in letters and letter sounds. We will continue to support this interest by pointing out alliteration, beginning sounds of words, and letters in the children's names.
• Given the increased interest in letters, we will set up a writing center to help create additional opportunities and motivations to investigate printed communication.
Construction:
• Cardboard box construction continues as a catalyst for large group projects! We will continue to encourage the children to use their imaginations, and each other, in order to make large structures such as trains and busses. This area promotes creative thinking, large and fine motor development, and many pro-social skills such as sharing, collaboration of ideas, and turn taking.
• Augmenting cardboard boxes will be shoeboxes, providing materials that could possibly make a zoo train.
• Large hollow and small unit blocks are available for construction. Many of the children have been exploring roads and ramps, and both vehicles and children have traveled the pathways. We will continue to support the play in this area and help to extend the road construction play by adding road signs and stoplights.
Music and Movement:
• Children continue to explore the musical instruments in the music corner. We will offer the children some new ways to create rhythm. New drums and a shaker-making station will be available.
• We will continue to have songs available on the computer to which children can listen and/or dance. Materials such as ribbons and scarves will also be available to encourage creative movements inspired by the different types of music. This area allows children to explore creative expression, increase body awareness, and engage in many sensory-rich experiences such as listening to different sounds and using their bodies to interpret different types of music.
Large Group:
• We will continue to emphasize body awareness, but as social skills steadily emerge, we will also begin to emphasize more social stories. The children's play indicates increased interest in dramatic scenarios and cooperative undertakings. Story selections and activities will reflect this interest, supporting their natural social development.
Large Motor:
• Cozy Coupes will be replaced by the faster yellow sports cars this week. Also available, will be two low pushcarts, which should promote cooperative play and turn-taking. Basketball hoops and balls of different sizes will continue to be available as well. Ball play increases hand-eye coordination, helps to build balance and large muscle groups, and is a wonderful way to spark social interaction.
- A new set up in the gym has the following elements: A relay running lane has been created to support teamwork and cardiovascular endurance. This lane will also provide space to practice trickier motor patterns such as, skipping, galloping and hopping. The matted rolling hill promotes skills such as spatial awareness, directional awareness, and the ability to start and stop. It also promotes the development of core strength and cardiovascular and muscular endurance. The monkey bars are now attached to the climbing wall to promote climbing, reaching, and grasping. The children's depth perception, hand-eye coordination, climbing and jumping skills are addressed as they try out our new jumping station. This station features a hanging ball as a target for children to hit with their hand before landing. The bean bag toss fosters skills such as throwing, aim and accuracy, and hand-eye coordination.

Snack: Tuesday - Kiwi and Multigrain Cheerios
Friday - egg free muffins baked by Ross' class

Dear families,

Another exciting week at the lab school is behind us! As our time as student teachers is winding down, it is consistently a pleasure to come to school and witness the joy and curiosity in each of your children. They have each shown growth over the past several weeks, and I have a great sense of pride to have been a part of this important time in their lives.

I enjoyed my week as lead teacher, and it was wonderful to see all of my curricular ideas come to life in the classroom. The body awareness aspect of my curriculum took off with great gusto! The different sized paper cut outs of hands and feet sparked a lot of interest in size. Many of the children placed their hands over the cut outs to find "their" size. One of the children in Frances' class demonstrated his developing understanding of size by saying, "here's the baby feet, and here's the daddy feet." The mirrors in the classroom were a fun spot for children to examine their facial features and compare them with other children's features. Many funny faces were enjoyed as well.

Our large groups for the week were also focused on body awareness. The children enjoyed a new rendition of "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes." In Ayuko's class, we added a verse to one of our classroom favorites, "Open, Shut Them," which involved blinking and winking! Children in both classes had fun dancing to "The Freeze Song" in the gym, and they did a great job listening for the musical changes that indicated freezing and dancing.

Painting in the classroom took on a new life this week as the children explored painting on pieces of standing plexiglass. Many of the children in the classroom are regulars at the easel and art table, but this plexiglass set-up seemed to invite some new children into the realm of art. Children enjoyed looking through the plexiglass to see one another. One child in Ayuko's class was thrilled to learn that he could paint over and cover up a teacher's hand that was behind the plexiglass. The game interested two other children who came over to join in the activity.

The music and dancing center have also been a highly-frequented area in the classroom. The children are becoming more familiar with manipulating the mouse on the computer to select one of five song buttons It is such a joy to watch the children as they experiment with the cause and effect of clicking and hearing music! Children in both classes have enjoyed listening to the different genres of music and dancing accordingly. We have seen a great deal of marching to The Imperial March from "Stars Wars" and lots of movement with flowing scarves to a classical piece by Johann Strauss. I was surprised to see how many of the children have shown preferences for certain types of music and musical instruments. Overall, this area has been a great creative outlet for many children, and teachers (just ask to see Teacher Bob's jig).

The dramatic play areas are an ever-popular place. We have been reveling in the amount of group play that has been happening in both classes. Many of the children in Frances' class took a trip on a train made of cardboard boxes. One child even declared, "We need tickets!" We have been seeing whole litters of kitty cats in Ayuko's class, complete with human caregivers and delicious cat food! These group play experiences are truly creating a sense of community between the children. I have enjoyed watching the blossoming relationships and emerging social skills as the children learn to share materials and negotiate play themes.

After a long and successful run, our grocery store recently came to a close. We send thanks to all of you who sent in your food containers, and to those of you who were able to clue us in as to what types of foods your child likes to eat and cook. This information was so helpful as we supported play from the grocery store into the play kitchen. The children were tickled when we offered just the right spice for their mac and cheese or knew that they liked soy nut butter on their toast. This home-school connection makes our classroom community lively and meaningful.

I have enjoyed my time as lead teacher. The children teach me so much each day; their curiosity and excitement is a reminder of the kind of attitude I hope to bring with me to class. So, it is with that curiosity and excitement that I look forward to lead teaching again next week!

Sincerely,
Becky Barth

Overview
At the end of last week the children transformed the back of the classroom into a forest by hanging the cardboard trees and branches they painted. Excitement filled the air as they saw the changes taking place. Outside, they extended their animal home making by building nests in the crooks of the trees. They incorporated materials they found on the playground such as sticks, hay, leaves, bark and even mud! To reflect the children's excitement and continued interest in animals and animal homes, we have rearranged the classroom to enlarge our science area. The children will soon have an opportunity to set up a home for some real animals. Tadpoles are coming to the science area soon!

Creative Arts
-The children have almost completed the collaborative Plexiglas painting. Please stop in to see the panels hanging in our windows. Plexiglas painting will continue at the easel. This will allow the children to see each other through the Plexiglas as they paint at the same time.
-To provide a new painting medium for the children to experience, we will introduce watercolor on Tuesday.

Sensory
-The children continue to manipulate the glurch in new ways. This week we will add markers. Emphasis will be not only on adding color and line, but changing the lines and designs by moving and stretching the glurch.

Science
-The animal homes the children have created are on display along with plastic animals that the children can use to pretend and act out dramatic play scenarios.
-The terrarium that will house the tadpoles is ready and waiting with clip boards for children to draw their ideas of what the tadpoles will need in their new home.
-Animal fur has been added to support discussions about how animals stay warm, and what they do when colder weather comes.
-The nest building project on the playground brought new questions to our conversations about birds. How do the birds build nests- they don't have hands? How do the nests stay together? The bird's nests in the classroom will be investigated with "new eyes" now that the children have experienced the challenge of the nest building process.
-The seeds the children planted continue to grow. Plant care has been very important to the children and they have begun participating in the watering of ALL the classroom plants!

Math and Manipulatives
-Seriation and sequencing will continue to be available with a focus on trees and frogs. Several photographs of the playground trees at various stages of their life cycles are available for sorting and ordering. A puzzle showing the life cycle of a frog will also be highlighted.
-The children brought the mini-pegs to the light table early last week and have been busy with them everyday since. They have been used for sorting, ordering by size, patterning, and even dramatic play!
-Pop-oids, Mobilos, and K'nex support the children's construction skills and knowledge of part-whole relationships as they build various vehicles and spaceships.

Literacy
-A mailbox has been added to the writing center in response to the children's continued interest in writing letters. Each child has their own mail slot labeled with his or her name and photo. This addition will support the growth of the many friendships that have been forming gradually since the beginning of the year.
-The writing center has new stamps depicting animals. As the children use the stamps and name the animals, we will encourage them to pay attention to the sounds that begin those names. The teachers will support the children in matching sounds to letters and facilitate adding animal stamps to our alphabetical word book/dictionary.

Dramatic Play/Blocks
-More picnic baskets have been added to the dramatic play area to support the children's play in the loft. The loft continues to have camping cookware and food, which the children use on their camping, hiking, picnicking and treasure hunting excursions.
-The woodland animals have been relocated to the hibernation cave, an area more focused on the things animals do to prepare for winter. It has hollow blocks, fabric, sticks and wood sticks that the children can use for building shelters.
-The children continue to use construction tools to fix and build hollow block structures such as houses, trucks, and buses.

Large Motor
-A relay running lane has been created to support teamwork and cardiovascular endurance. This lane will also provide space to practice trickier motor patterns such as, skipping, galloping and hopping. The matted rolling hill promotes skills such as spatial awareness, directional awareness, and the ability to start and stop. It also promotes the development of core strength and cardiovascular and muscular endurance. The monkey bars are now attached to the climbing wall to promote climbing, reaching, and grasping. It also promotes the development of children's directional awareness, risk taking, and muscular strength and endurance. The children's depth perception, hand-eye coordination, climbing and jumping skills are addressed as they try out our new jumping station. This station features a hanging ball as a target for children to hit with their hand before landing. The bean bag toss fosters skills such as throwing, aim and accuracy, and hand-eye coordination.

Snack
Monday: Graham Crackers made by Class & Banana
Tuesday: Large Rice Cakes & Banana
Wednesday: Cheese & Apples
Thursday: Animal Crackers & Kiwi
Friday: Muffins made by Ross' Class

Dear Families,
With just three weeks of school left it seems like the beginning of the end. It's very sad to think of our time at the lab school being over and these students that we have come to know moving on to meet a new batch of student teachers! My first week of lead teaching proved to be an eventful one, with picture day in both classes, a visit from a dance student, and a short week for Frances' class. We also made applesauce together in Frances' class and have been delving deeper into our small group projects in Ayuko's class. It was great to see the children becoming more comfortable with each other this week, which manifested itself through group play episodes and increased levels of sharing and cooperation.
The back of our classroom underwent a major shift last week--we moved the kitchen into the loft and switched the grocery store and construction areas in order to provide a larger space for construction with cardboard boxes. My hope was to connect the grocery store with the kitchen so that the children could bring food home and use it in kitchen play. As they became familiar with this set up, we began seeing children "call" the person in the grocery store to ask for apples or mac and cheese to be brought home for dinner. Several children worked together to mix, stir, and bake pretend cakes and soups. One child decided that if we ate spices, they might be hot, which created a short scenario between a few children of fanning our tongues and then pretending to drink water.
As the grocery store play began to fade out, one child discovered that the corner of the loft/kitchen made a neat little area for "pets" to sleep and hide in, which led to an ongoing theme of pretending to be kitties. Several children crawled around the room on all fours, meowing and pretending to eat food out of dishes on the floor. We even had a kitty picnic, where the "people" in the scenario gathered food and dishes and took the kitties to an area of the room which became the park. Approximately five children then pretended to have a picnic and take a nap. It was great to see such an extended group dramatic play experience! Children were imitating each other, sharing materials, negotiating both space and the direction of the story line, and communicating their ideas.
I had wanted to infuse new materials into the science center, so we introduced a magnet display. This began as a simple exploration of magnetic wands and a few metal objects. The simple fact that the wands jump together when you bring them close was pretty interesting. While exploring the classroom with her wand, one child discovered that the wands stuck to the back door of the classroom, which is made entirely out of metal. This was an exciting discovery and led to tests of the table legs and door knobs found around the room. The next step was to introduce paperclips, which are interesting to watch fly up to the magnet when it is dipped into their bowl. Several children also discovered that they are hard to remove from the wand once stuck.
Music has continued to be an important part of our day. We have been exploring instruments both in large group activities and during free play. We have been playing the CDs brought in by families during free play time, and several children come over to dance or play along on various instruments. This week we turned the computer into a juke box with a selection of five different pieces of music that children can choose themselves. Children have had a great time using scarves, bells, and shakers to express themselves through creative movement. I also wanted to emphasize rhythm during my large group times, so we sang songs such as "We're Going on a Bear Hunt," "The Stick Song," "Ram Sam Sam," and "The Hokey Pokey." These songs have strong beats that the children could experience with their bodies while clapping, patting, or moving. "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" was quite exciting as we sang about discovering the bear in the cave and then running out of the cave, through the river, up and down a tree, and through the tall, tall grass.
I enjoyed stepping into the leadership role during my first lead teaching week, and I'm excited to be able to revise my strategies the next time around. It's a great feeling to have put thought into the curriculum and room arrangements and then watch the children explore, manipulate, and expand upon what is presented to them. Thank you all for your support and for providing us with such wonderful children.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth

Last week, children continued their scientific explorations into the structure and function of seeds. Children dissected a variety of fruits and vegetables while comparing seed size, shape, and function. After learning more about seeds in large group, children began to germinate lima bean seeds. This week, children will plant seeds, discuss plant growth, and examine plant structure. Last week, Jessica's small group visited a restaurant and got a behind-the-scenes tour; to extend dramatic play and build relationships, several restaurant props will be available in the housekeeping area. Another big event in our room last week was the transformation of the dramatic play area into an animal hospital; children explored the different roles in a veterinarian's office and examined animal x-rays. To build on children's interest in doctors and hospitals, this week, the animal hospital will become a "people" hospital, with hospital scrubs, x-rays, and bandages. In addition to the hospital play, many of the children also began to focus construction and building. To extend this play and build relationships, several toolboxes with toy tools, hard hats, and construction tape will be available in the back of the room. Finally, clay will be featured at the art sensory table this week. In an effort to familiarize the children with this material and to maximize their exploration of it, many of our large group discussions will center on clay--its properties, uses, and forms will all be discussed.

Expressive materials:
-The drawing and collage table will continue to feature a variety of collage objects, such as tissue paper, caps, pom-pom balls, puzzle pieces, and yarn. In addition, small wooden shapes, Popsicle sticks, and boxes will be provided to encourage children to start experimenting with the concept of sculpture. These items strengthen children's symbolic representation, creative, and fine motor skills.
-At the easel, children will get to choose between painting with tempera paints and drawing with chalk. After children gain familiarity with the properties of chalk, spray bottles with water will be introduced, children can then explore the effects of wet chalk on paper. Painting and drawing develop children's fine motor, eye-hand coordination and visual discrimination skills.
- The middle cave will continue to house a variety of musical instruments such as hand drums, chimes, xylophones, and a keyboard. New instruments will include rain sticks, guiros, and microphones. In addition, a CD player will be included in the cave; children can listen to songs we have sung in class or play instruments along to Ella Jenkins' rhythm CDs. Musical instruments develop children's psychomotor, affective, and perceptual skills. In addition, they promote aesthetic appreciation, the development of rhythm and beat, and listening skills.

-New objects at the water table will encourage children to explore the concepts of sinking, floating and color change. A variety of objects such as ping pong balls, wiffle balls, plastic caps, foam, aluminum foil, and cork will encourage children to experiment and form their own hypotheses about what makes an object sink or float. In addition, pipettes, food coloring, salt, and ice will be available for children to explore how different variables affect color change and water composition. These scientific explorations encourage children to problem solve, form and test hypotheses, and compare and contrast. Children also develop the social skills of negotiation and compromise while sharing objects and conducting experiments at the water table.
-Clay will be available at the art sensory table. This will be many children's first encounter with real clay (not play dough or art dough), so this week children will be encouraged to explore the properties of clay and develop basic techniques. Clay tools such as plastic knives and rolling pins will be provided. Children will be encouraged to create objects or sculptures that teachers will document with photographs. Working with clay develops children's fine motor control, symbolic representation, and creativity skills.

- The animal hospital will become a people hospital this week. Children have expressed interest in diagnosing and curing human ailments, so a variety of hospital props will be provided to extend this play. Hospital scrubs, stethoscopes, patient gowns, blood pressure gauges, reflex indicators, ace bandages and toy syringes will be provided. In addition, charts, books, and models about bones, muscles, and body parts will complete the hospital. This area promotes the development of social skills such as perspective-taking, compromise, and negotiation. In addition, it serves as an introduction to anatomical concepts such as bone and muscle structure.
-The first cave will continue to be a Lego-building area. In addition to the large Duplo blocks, small Legos will also be provided. This area builds children's fine motor skills, representational skills, and social skills such as turn-taking and cooperative play.
-The housekeeping area continues to be a central area of play for many children. To build on the restaurant-themed play of some of the children, restaurant props will be available, along with the usual dolls, dishes, and plastic food. The housekeeping area strengthens children's perspective-taking, sharing, symbolic representation, problem solving, and communication skills.

- Last week the children experienced the computers in our room for the first time this year. The teachers were pleased to see children taking turns, helping one another and independently problem solving with the games. Children are able to choose from Millie's Math House or Sammy's Science House. These games build literacy, numeracy and scientific skills. In addition, children are learning how to operate a computer, use a mouse, take turns and interact with each other while using computers.
-Items at the manipulatives center will encourage the development of numeracy and sequencing skills. Thick parquetry blocks (tangram shapes) foster the development of shape, color, patterning, 1-1 correspondence, part-to-whole recognition, and matching skills. In addition, they foster symbolic representation skills, as well as the development of eye-hand coordination and manual dexterity. Counting games, an abacus, and geoboards also foster the development of 1-1 correspondence and number recognition. Sequencing card games and puzzles are also available; these items develop sequencing skills, which are an important pre-requisite for reading. A variety of transportation-themed puzzles will also be available; these items develop manual dexterity, eye-hand coordination, and part-to-whole recognition.

-Children will continue their exploration of seeds and plant growth at the science center. Pots and dirt will be available for children to plant seeds. Children will also study the germination of their lima beans. There will also be a variety of activities that will allow children to explore, observe, and discuss plant growth; materials such as a range of seeds, flowers, and plants will help children develop perceptual and observational skills such as generalization, comparison, and problem-solving.

-The book area contains non-fiction books about construction vehicles such as dump trucks, steam shovels, and steamrollers. Fiction books by authors such as Jonathan London (author of the "Froggy" series) and Eric Carle will also be in the book center. In addition, storybooks featuring rhyme and repetition, and music-centered storybooks will be available. Books with rhyme and repetition build children's phonemic awareness and phonological skills, which are important emergent literacy skills.
-The last cave will continue to house flannel boards and flannel pictures from familiar stories. The flannel boards promote literacy skills in two main ways: children build their sequencing abilities when they re-tell familiar stories and children build their creative skills and strengthen their knowledge of narrative structure when they compose and narrate original stories.
-The writing center continues to house a variety of different kinds of paper and pretend "mail" items. These items encourage children to begin experimenting with the many uses of print. To foster the development of alphabetic identification and writing, alphabet stickers and alphabet paper letters will be included at the writing center.

- To extend children's dramatic play centered on building and construction, the block area will feature several toolboxes with a variety of toy tools such as hammers, wrenches, nuts, bolts, saws, and drills. Construction hats will also extend this play theme. Large pieces of cardboard will encourage children to add new elements to block buildings. The block area encourages the development of spatial terminology and explorations into balance and stability. In addition, blocks encourage the development of representational thinking and socio-dramatic play.

The gym continues to feature a variety of structures that promote large motor development and social interaction. The monkey bars contain rope to develop children's upper body strength and balance. The large blue "doughnut" mat has been placed on its side so that children can crawl through it into the small play structure. This also fosters dramatic play inside the play structure while developing upper body strength, coordination, and muscular endurance. In addition, the back of the gym includes a target for kicking/throwing soft balls and bean bags. This fosters children's dynamic balance and propulsion skills. The mats have been set up in a pyramid/stair-step shape to foster children's dynamic balance, flexibility, and agility. Finally, the A-frame ladder is set up in a triangle shape. Children are able to work on their locomotion and balance skills with this familiar structure.
-The playground continues to be a place where children can develop gross motor skills, build relationships, and explore the natural world. Children continue to enjoy using the large and small rakes to rake up huge piles of leaves from the oak trees. Ropes hanging from tree branches build upper body strength and encourage the construction of large leaf piles into which children enjoy jumping. Tricycles, wagons, wheelbarrows, toy trucks, and shovels also continue to be available on the playground.

Snack:

Monday: Graham Crackers made by class & Banana
Wednesday: Open Snack-Animal Crackers
Thursday: Open Snack -Rice Cakes

Weekly Lesson Plan
Weeks of Nov 16 - 20, 2009
Lead Teaching This Week: Elizabeth

Overview and goals
With an abundance of new materials, a classroom pet that went missing for a few days, and the introduction of the computers...this week has been extremely exciting for the children! Social interactions and cooperative play seem to continue to increase, while creativity is on the rise. Children have started to develop scientific inquiry skills as they investigate magnets and search for clues of the missing pet. Numerous children participated in cooperatively building a house within the block area while others have spent time expressing themselves creatively through modeling clay and open-ended art. This week as children begin to explore items that sink and float, different strength magnets, and the slimy material of glurch: promoting a new focus of scientific investigation and questioning asking/testing. New materials and modification of old ones will also continue to support cooperative play and creative expression.

Art Center
Sensory
~ Throughout the past weeks, children have explored the properties of water. Our focus will dive deeper toward a scientific inquiry of sinking and floating. Various materials including assorted balls, feathers, foam, wood and tin foil will be available, as well as checklists where children can make their predictions and test their hypotheses of whether items will sink or float. The water table will continue to support scientific inquiry, hypothesis testing, critical thinking, as well as social interaction as children discuss their findings.
~ In the classroom, the children have used the modeling clay in many creative ways this past week. As our time with the clay comes to an end, we will move on to the sensory-rich material of 'glurch', a mixture of liquid starch and glue. After building awareness of the material as children investigate the consistency, materials will be added including scissors, wires, and cups. Teachers will help facilitate deeper investigations of the properties of the glurch using these materials. These materials will also support observation, scientific inquiry and social interaction as children collaborate together in exploring this new material.
Expressive
~ The large floor easel continues to be a popular for children to express their creativity. So far this school year we have focused on using the medium of paint in many different ways. This week, we will introduce the chalk to the floor easel in order to encourage exploration of a new art medium. The chalk will continue to be available to promote both fine and large-motor skills.
~ Last week we began to introduce liquid watercolors at the large floor easel. Because of the popularity, we will continue to have watercolors available at the art table. Open-ended collage materials will also be available to foster creative development and encourage social interaction.
~ The music cave has been a popular place over the past few weeks as children have expressed their creativity through creating new instruments and playing old ones. This week there will be a CD player in the music cave for the children to operate with popular classroom songs. Children can practice literacy skills with reading CD cover as well as continue exploring rhythms and beats together as they play alongside the music.

Science
~ Some of the seeds have sprouted! Children will continue to have the opportunity to observe and document their seeds' growth this next week through the use of our classrooms' digital cameras. As well as the seed growth, we will continue our investigation of magnets. This past week, many children started to explore the concept of magnetism as they tested various materials to see if "they would stick." To expand this exploration and promote further opportunities for critical thinking and scientific inquiry, new materials including different strength magnets, will be added and teachers will begin to facilitate deeper discussions. Magnetic connectors will be added for children to support fine motor, as well as express their creativity while exploring the topic of magnets.

Math and Manipulatives
~ Two new set of manipulatives including tan-a-grams and 'rig-a-jig's' will be available this week to promote shape and color as well as increasing symbolic representation while working on fine motor skills. Geoboards will continue to be available allowing children to create shapes and demonstrate shape recognition. Puzzles will continue to promote visual discrimination, shape recognition, and part-to-whole relationships.
~The computers continue to be a popular spot for many children. Millie's Math House supports many mathematical concepts including sequencing, grouping, comparing amounts, and counting.
~ Many different children have visited the Lego cave through the past few weeks. To expand play we will add smaller Legos alongside the Duplos. As children develop creations we will add pictures to inspire. Legos will continue to allow children an opportunity to practice fine motor movements, support creativity, cooperative play as well as, create symbolic and representational objects.

Language and Literacy Center
~Many construction and road signs have been incorporated into children's play this week. We will continue to encourage children to utilize the writing center as a resource to enrich their play while practicing fine motor skills and promoting letter recognition and pre-literacy skills. This week we will encourage the children to create an alphabet poster that we can hang in the writing center as a reference as they begin to recognize letters and sounds.
~New books will be available at the reading coach for children to enjoy looking at with themselves or a teacher.

Block Center
~In the block center, construction and transportation continue to be the central themes. This past week, children have utilized hard hats within their play as well as transformed blocks into many different types of tools. To support the cooperative play that continues to increase daily, tool boxes and other building materials will be available for children to incorporate into their story lines. The blocks will continue to be a great area to foster creativity and rich cooperative play.

Dramatic Play Center
~ Many sick animals have been treated at the animal hospital in the past few weeks. As children begin to treat other sick children, we will follow the children's lead and shift our focus from an animal hospital to a doctor's office. Various props including models of head and teeth, x-rays, and pictures of muscles and bones will encourage children to think about what is inside our bodies and how do they work. Children can utilize their experience from previous play as well as their own connections to experiences at the doctor's office to facilitate play. The area will continue to support cooperative play, body awareness, and problem solving as children work together to ensure all patients are treated.

Large Motor
~ A new gym setup this next week will hopefully excite the children as much as it excites the teachers. There will be a rolling hill to promote balance and vestibular awareness. The A-frame will allow children to jump and hit a hanging ball from the light supporting hand-eye coordination, depth perception, as well as jumping and landing skills. The monkey bars have also been "attached" to the climbing wall to promote a raised climbing structure that will challenge the children's eye-hand/eye-foot coordination and create opportunities to safely take risks in the gym. Throughout the week, teachers will lead various relay games in a running lane to promote endurance, cooperation, and muscular strength.
~Warm weather this past week has increased the energy and excitement in outdoor play. Bikes, shovels, wagons, and the rope swing continue to be popular on the outdoor playground. Hollow blocks have been used to build bridges over the wholes within the sand. In addition, this week we will add soccer goals in order to promote kicking at a target, as well as cardiovascular endurance.
~Teachers will begin to facilitate games at story time including Animal Barnyard and Mr. Fox in order to promote large motor skills and expend extra energy at the end of the day.

Announcements and reminders
~ Parent Discussion groups will be meeting again this week on Tuesday.
~ The Lab School will be closed next week on Thursday and Friday. There will be school on Wednesday, Nov. 25!

Snack
Monday: Graham Crackers made by Amy's Class & Banana
Tuesday: Open Snack-Rice Cakes
Wednesday: Open Snack-Pretzels
Thursday: Open Snack- Letter Cheeze-Its
Friday: Muffins made by Class

The children playing in the vet's office began exploring all the medical equipment. They were using past experiences from their own check-ups to recall the names and functions of this equipment. They then began to transfer this knowledge into caring for the stuffed animals.

"This is called a stethascope. You use it to hear hearts like this on the kitty."

When asked what the heart beat sounded like Athena open and closed her hand saying,"thump, thump, thump. Like that."

"When an animal gets hurt you have to wrap it like that so it feels better." - Adam

"The bag is for my tools that I use to help the ostrich feel better."- Robert

Will remembered that in a doctor's office they wore gloves and masks. We then decided to go look for gloves and figure out how to make masks. When asked what we could use to make masks Will thought we should paper and string. When the paper was uncomfortable the children asked about using tissues. The children used problem solving skills and creativity to make their own props from resources in the school.
"You have to cut the string long enough to go all the way around your head for the mask." -Will

When asked why gloves and masks needed to be used Will responded,"So the germs don't get on everything."

After taking care of the animals the children began to use that knowledge to care for one another. "Kate, you have to not move and I will fix you. I'm the doctor." - Carolina

The teachers introduced water colors last week, which was a new medium for some children. They quickly used their problem solving skills to figure out how to create with this paint. They even began explaining the process to other children.

Athena, "You have to put it in the water, then in the paint then the color shows up on the paper!"

"When you push the brush harder in the paint the color gets darker on the paper. Watch! Now I changed the water to blue, too!"

Athena then explained to Addison how the water colors worked. "After it's wet you put it in the paint then the paper. You're using blue like me!"

The children learn to work together as a group, follow directions and experiement with air movement while playing parachute games in the gym.

The children lift the parachute down by their toes, up above their heads then quickly back to their toes to create a big air bubble in the parachute. This activity benefits children's understanding of dirctional awareness and following instructions.

One of the goals for this week was to support meaningful interactions amongst children, while building their confidence in their own unique skills, preferences, and physical characteristics. Below you will see some of these connections and skills evident and blossoming.

After the children found their own hand size, they compared them to their teachers and peers. The footprints became an unexpected hopscotch-like game. The children took turns jumping onto the next larger footprints, displaying skills of one-to-one correspondence.


New forms of writing utensils--such as thin markers and pencils--ignited the children's interests in drawing, tracing, and writing at different areas of the classroom.


Plexiglass paint offered a chance for the children to paint and work together on the same surface. Children painted while also watching their peers, and learned new methods to mix and paint.

Picture 211.avi Picture 212.avi
As the children learned to use the mouse on the computer, choosing a song of their liking, they also had opportunities to explore creative expression and increase body awareness. As the children listened to different sounds and music from the computer, they used their bodies to interpret what they heard.

It seems the combination of the small dramatic play dolls, house, and the kitchen/grocery theme led the children to role play, pretend, and explore the concept of care taking. While some children chose to be household pets, such as a cat or a dog, others chose to be the caretakers, and took their pets to the "park" to have "picnics."

One child, wanting to start a stacking slide, informed and gathered a group of children to participate.

As the children "washed" baby dolls, the children demonstrated their ability to care for a baby: carefully washing the hair, the body, and singing to it. Once the baby was clean, they took the baby out to dry it.

*Mark your calendars for joining our good-bye snack (with the student teachers) and free-play on the playground! We hope you can join us on Wednesday, December 2nd.

*Thank you for signing up to do the laundry! We will have another sign up sheet for January after winter break!

*Parents can support the zoo theme (in the classroom) with natural conversations at home about visiting a zoo, or perhaps with books that reference zoos in some way. If you would like to share, we would be happy to hear any anecdotes about past zoo visits that you might have. Also, should you have any shoeboxes you can donate, we could use about ten of them for a little zoo train.

Lesson Plan for Ayuko's class
Week of November 16th
Lead Teacher: Bob

Goals:
• As the sophistication of the children's play and their comfort at school increases, we have noticed increased verbal confidence and activity. To support these blossoming skills, we will pay close attention to engaging in and supporting conversations in the classroom. We will find the time and the opportunity to engage in one-on-one-conversation, as well as modeling and supporting conversation in dramatic play as well as normal interactions. This is of course something we normally do, but it seems ready for some extra attention at this time.

Art:
• The transparent plexiglass easels with small paintbrushes continue this week, offering unique opportunities for cognitive and social engagement. In addition to brushes, sponges will be offered. Sponges might be used as a brush, but they also suggest a new, daubing technique for a different result.
Manipulatives:
• A variety of puzzles continue to be presented featuring themes of construction, body awareness, shapes, numbers, and letters. Puzzles challenge the children to use fine motor planning, problem-solving skills, and persistence.
• Several different activities will feature magnets and magnetic materials. The children will continue to use their creativity and scientific inquiry to attempt to manipulate objects and understand magnetic force.
• Sorting activities will also be provided. Grouping of like-objects is a precursor to more advanced classification skills, and sorting activities promote hand-eye coordination, fine motor development, and color and shape awareness. These manipulatives can also be used in exploring the concept and dimension of equality and weight on the balance beam scale.
Sensory:
• The water table will turn to sand this week, offering further experience in flowing material. The contrast offers an opportunity to make comparisons between substances and experience with a potentially three-dimensional material and offers many opportunities for creative and dramatic play.
• Play dough: children will continue to explore the idea of making tracks and prints in the dough. Children will also be encouraged to try to make prints of their own hands, fingers, and shoes. These prints will be used for observation and comparison to other prints. We will also experiment with filling moulds and enclosed space with play dough.
Science:
• Materials related to body awareness will remain for further investigation and extensions. With the children we will devise simple and organic and informal ways to measure hands and feet for comparison, offering both social and cognitive interactions.
• Balance beam scales will be placed in the room to investigate measures of a different kind ('equal' and 'weight') using a variety of manipulatives and other objects in the classroom, heightening the children's awareness of the physical world around them.
• In the cave, we will install a small light box and mirrors, which will encourage children to experiment with light and shadow, reflected images, and mixing colors using colored gels on the light board, stimulating perceptual awareness and cognition.
Dramatic Play:
• Small trucks and cars continue to be popular in the block area. These experiences provide social opportunities for the children and encourage turn taking and cooperation.
• Small dramatic play people and houses will continue to be available. The materials will be positioned next to the block area in order to help children bridge the various types of dramatic play that is happening in the room. These small manipulatives offer children the opportunity to act out familiar household themes and practice their symbolic representation skills.
• Picnics have emerged as an area of interest and will be supported with picnic baskets and picnic cloths to extend this dramatic play.
• This week, using cardboard boxes and unit blocks, a zoo will go under construction, extending the dramatic play we are seeing in the small house and among the trucks and blocks. We are hoping to extend the dramatic play among the 'house', the zoo, and a construction area building, creating diversified possibilities for dramatic play interactions, and the children's use of imagination. Parents can support this theme with natural conversations at home about visiting a zoo, or perhaps with books that reference zoos in some way. If you would like to share, we would be happy to hear any anecdotes about past zoo visits that you might have. Also, should you have any shoeboxes you can donate, we could use about ten of them for a little zoo train.
Language and Literacy:
• The dramatic play centers will incorporate many literacy elements. Signs and labels will be used where appropriate and best make the literacy connection for the children.
• Road signs and traffic regulations will be enforced in the block area to help extend vehicle and road play.
• New books surrounding our themes of the zoo and animals, body awareness, construction, and fall will be added to the classroom.
• Many children have been showing an interest in letters and letter sounds. We will continue to support this interest by pointing out alliteration, beginning sounds of words, and letters in the children's names.
• Given the increased interest in letters, we will set up a writing center to help create additional opportunities and motivations to investigate printed communication.
Construction:
• Cardboard box construction continues as a catalyst for large group projects! We will continue to encourage the children to use their imaginations, and each other, in order to make large structures such as trains and busses. This area promotes creative thinking, large and fine motor development, and many pro-social skills such as sharing, collaboration of ideas, and turn taking.
• Augmenting cardboard boxes will be shoeboxes, providing materials that could possibly make a zoo train.
• Large hollow and small unit blocks are available for construction. Many of the children have been exploring roads and ramps, and both vehicles and children have traveled the pathways. We will continue to support the play in this area and help to extend the road construction play by adding road signs and stoplights.
Music and Movement:
• Children continue to explore the musical instruments in the music corner. We will offer the children some new ways to create rhythm. New drums and a shaker-making station will be available.
• We will continue to have songs available on the computer to which children can listen and/or dance. Materials such as ribbons and scarves will also be available to encourage creative movements inspired by the different types of music. This area allows children to explore creative expression, increase body awareness, and engage in many sensory-rich experiences such as listening to different sounds and using their bodies to interpret different types of music.
Large Group:
• We will continue to emphasize body awareness, but as social skills steadily emerge, we will also begin to emphasize more social stories. The children's play indicates increased interest in dramatic scenarios and cooperative undertakings. Story selections and activities will reflect this interest, supporting their natural social development.
Large Motor:
• Cozy Coupes will be replaced by the faster yellow sports cars this week. Also available, will be two low pushcarts, which should promote cooperative play and turn-taking. Basketball hoops and balls of different sizes will continue to be available as well. Ball play increases hand-eye coordination, helps to build balance and large muscle groups, and is a wonderful way to spark social interaction.
• Children are continuing to show improved skill in the gym. We will support the children as they explore climbing on the A-frame ladder, swinging on the rope swings, going down the slide, and jumping off of the mat-mountain. The new gym arrangement increases risk-taking ability, strengthens alternate-feet climbing and endurance, and helps to refine coordination.

Overview and Goals

As the winter season approaches, we continue to discuss how animals survive in the cold. The children have been interested in exploring the topics of hibernation and animal homes, extending hibernation into their dramatic play scenarios! As we continue to discuss hibernation and create different types of animal homes we will expand our discussions and talk about how fur and body fat help animals to survive in cold climates. This will be our last week of meeting in small groups. At this moment, each group is planning, elaborating and preparing for their culminating projects. The culminating projects are being planned, drawing elements from previous meetings and putting it all together in a meaningful way. Parents will be able to read, see and hear about the small groups during our last day of this session. We have enjoyed watching new friendships and connections blossom within our small groups and the class as a whole! The children in Dalia's classroom continue to show enthusiasm for routines such as our weekly trip to the gym and weekly cooking project and for new experiences like small group field trips!

Expressive Arts

~Painting at the easel continues to offer opportunities to express and create with wide and narrow brushes. Brown, yellow and red paint continue to be offered at the easel with the addition of white paint this week. Children will be able to experiment and discover what happens when white paint is mixed with the other colors.
~An assortment of construction paper is available for the children, along with crayons, markers, colored pencils, scissors, glue bottles and, glue sticks. This allows the children to express themselves freely.
~See-through acrylic panels are available for painting with a variety of colors. The panels are long which allow multiple children to paint together at one time. We see this as an opportunity to build our classroom community by cooperatively painting the acrylic panels. When the panels are complete we will display them by hanging them in the windows!
~Clipboards with paper and thin markers continue to be available in the Mobilo, K'Nex and Popoid cave for the children to record and draw pictures of their building creations.

Sensory Materials

~Glurch continues to be a very popular sensory activity! The children observe how the glurch sticks to itself and stretches rather then breaking apart. This week we have pizza cutters to encourage the children to experiment with cutting the glurch to see what happens! The plastic jewels and straws remain available for glurch experimentation.
~This week the sand table is being replaced with the water table where tubes, funnels, cups and pitchers are introduced. The children will be able to experiment with the movement of water through different sized funnels as well as foster the concept of conservation, and continuing social interactions.

Dramatic and Symbolic Play

~The housekeeping area has been transformed into a Grocery Store! The Grocery Store is located in the back of the classroom next to the loft. The area currently includes a large shelf with sections for vegetables, fruits, cereal, crackers, grains, canned goods and, grocery baskets. The dairy and meat items are stored in the wooden refrigerator. Each section of food items is labeled with a price just like in a real grocery store!
Grocery bags, a cash register and "pretend Dollars" in denominations of 1, 5 and 10 to spend will add realism to this experience and enrich it with a math component.
~In order to enhance the children's experiences in the loft "tree house," we have added "picnic" like materials such as dishes, picnic baskets, blanket and cooler. We will continue to support children's interactions and community building taking place in this area
~Dresses, vests, and ties are located in the back of the classroom with keys, purses and wallets to support the children's socio-dramatic play ideas. These items are now located on the opposite side of the loft from the grocery store. Many children use these items to take "trips" around the classroom and to visit the grocery store and the loft area.
~Hard hats and tool boxes have been moved next to the large hollow blocks to allow for easy access during large block building. Children continue to use the tools to work cooperatively to create and fix a variety of structures.
~The first cave continues to be our hibernating cave and is being used extensively during open exploration times! The brown bear costumes continue to be a popular choice for "hibernating" dramatic play. The children have been exploring not only the "sleep" piece of hibernation; they are interested in figuring out what foods the different animals eat.

Science Center

~The seeds that the children planted with Elizabeth continue to grow and change! The children can observe and measure the growth of the seeds in our pots. We will encourage the children to think about what is necessary to help our seeds continue to grow and give them the opportunity to water the plants with spray bottles.
~To take our focus on hibernating and animal homes one step further, we have added real fur on one of the science tables. The children will be able to see and touch the different kinds of furs (textures, sizes and colors) and engage in discussions regarding its purpose in animals' lives. The children can engage in comparison by observing the different colors, textures and sizes of fur at the table. Questions such as "which fur is the softest," "which animal did this fur come from" "what part of the animal did this fur come from" will help to spark the children's' thought processes about the purpose of fur.
~An animal track match game has also been added to the science area. The children can compare different types of animal tracks; animals that have hooves and animals that have different numbers of toes.
~The science table with a variety of types of nests continues to draw the children's interest. The large paper wasp nest and several sizes of birds' nests are investigated daily with the magnifying glasses.

Language and Literacy

~As the children continue to write letters, an assortment of papers, envelopes, colored pencils, thin markers, staplers, tape remain available in the writing center.
~This week we will add name cards for each child in the class to the writing center. These cards will support the children with letter and name recognition.
~We are introducing mail boxes into our writing area. We will encourage the children to send messages to one another. If you are interested in leaving a message for your child, please let us know and we will put it in his/her mailbox to be found!
~Books about fall harvest and animals that hibernate and migrate continue to be featured in the book area.
~Squirrel books, special animal books, and tree books are located in the loft "tree house."
~A basket of books about tools and building will remain on the shelf under the hard hats, helping to spark new building ideas.
~The computer center remains a popular area! The children help each other to access different games as well as give each other hints on how to use the mouse and shut down the computers at the end of playtime.

Math, Manipulatives and Games

Currently we have materials on the manipulative shelf that help the children to practice, comparing, and seriating objects by size, sequencing pictures, and patterning.
~The self-correcting Montessori cylinders with sizes from small to large and the seriation wooden puzzle with pegs that all support the theme of progression from one size to the next.
~Mats with handprints and footprints with sizes from small to large will be available to continue to foster the concept of seriation.
~Various puzzles support the development of part/whole relationships, synthesizing and hand-eye development.
~Memory and lotto games continue to be popular with Dalia's class. The children have been working on the animal mothers and babies lotto together to complete each set. They also continue to practice turn taking when playing the fruit memory game.
~The plastic boards and pegs have been moved onto the light table. Working with patterns helps children predict what will happen and recognize relationships. Placing the small and large pegs into the peg boards also give the children opportunities to engage their manual dexterity.
~The second cave with Popoids, Mobilos, and K-nex remain available so that children can continue to
share their creations with each other. The Popiods have become "robots" while the K'nex have been made into "snowflake catchers." All of these small building materials allow children to engage in symbolic representation, creative thinking/building, manual dexterity, and hand strength.

Block area

~Hollow blocks are available in the back of the room allowing children to engage in social interactions while using mathematical and spatial concepts as well as creative abilities to build in this large area of the classroom. The steering wheels continue to be available as additions to the many cars that the children have built. They also have begun creating more complex shelters, such as castles.
~The Unit blocks are placed near the caves and close by to the hollow blocks to encourage children to use these in different areas of the classroom. This week have the children's pictures onto popsicle sticks mounted onto small square blocks to create "people" to use with the unit blocks.

Large Motor

~The gym has been redone! The "Rolling Hill" is introduced this week, allowing children to roll down the hill different ways supporting coordination skills as well as self-control and turn taking. The A frame remains in the middle of the room with the large donut at the base for the children to jump into. Balancing, coordination, depth perception and jumping skills are being fostered. The monkey bars are available providing climbing opportunities, upper body strengthening, and upper and lower body coordination.
~We have been fortunate to have such wonderful weather when we have gone out onto the playground these past couple of weeks! We will continue to go outside to the playground as the weather permits.
Digging is an activity that children have been choosing in different areas of the playground for different dramatic play themes. Digging for treasure and digging to "find the bottom" of the sand box have been popular digging themes. Buckets, wagons, paddles, trikes and a variety of cups and plates are available to encourage digging, upper and lower body strength and social play. Rakes continue to be available, and the children have enjoyed using both large and small rakes to maintain the large leaf piles. Jumping into the large leaf piles also helps the children to develop lower body strength and body awareness.

Music and Movement/Large Group

~We will continue to build community through singing the welcome songs daily during large group time.
~We will use the "Animal Action Song" to explore how animals movement through the children's' creative actions.
~To deepen our understanding of how animals survive in cold temperatures, we will conduct an experiment to help children understand the importance of fur and blubber in animals.
~The book "The Bear Snores On" will be introduced during large group to connect with the children's dramatic play "bear parties" that have been acted out in the bear cave over the past week.

Natalie

These photos should be read along with Becky's newsletter of November 15th, commenting on the activities planned for her lead teaching.

Children explored the concept of size of hand and feet in different ways: Raya by jumping a small bunny on the different sized foot prints,

Beck by jumping his own feet, hopscotch style up the series of feet,

Brenna compared the footsize of a stuffed doggie,

Raya's big sister talked more specifically about the size differences with her sister and Andreas when she stopped by on Friday morning.

Henry De used his hand to compare with the size. We began to call the biggest hand "the grandpa hand" and Beck had his grandpa check the size when he came to visit on Tuesday.

Henry Da looked at the photos of previous children and how they explored the hands. We have tried to post photos of children investigating nearby to prompt comments and reflection.

Naomi compared the doll's hand to the smallest hand, which some children took to calling "the baby hand."

Painting on the plexiglass offered a familiar activity with new materials. Here Max paints on one side and Jade and Lucia's pants show that they are on the back side.

Children danced to the music chosen on the computer. 5 styles were available. Here Eleanor, Raya and Beck dance with Bob,

...and Friday a different group danced with Becky. Raya and Henry De share a smile while Quinn and Henry Da look on. Troy is choosing the music at the computer.

Balance scales were in use on Friday, Henry De put on small animals,

Troy and Jade put on wooden cars and shakers.

Outside, children are beginning to explore the fire pole, which requires teacher support.

Social connections come about in different ways - sometimes one child will copy what another child is doing - perhaps a distinctive position exploring.

Other children explored the special environment of the tall grass. Elle and Henry De were first in,

...followed by Abbie,

....then Henry Da considered coming in,

and Quinn explored the tops of the tall grasses. One child called them "wheat."

Over the past two weeks, the children have expressed an increasing interest in stories about animals. Initially, we focused on nonfiction. The children were especially intrigued by the life cycle of frogs and other animals that are born from eggs. As time progressed, the children expressed an interest in fictional stories about animals. Recently they have been constructing a story of their own. The children have shared many ideas, which I recorded into a list. As facilitator, I am helping the children work together to put their ideas into a collaborative story.

Our group continues to explore a variety of materials and art mediums. Most recently, the children were introduced to glurch, which is a mixture of glue and liquid starch. When looking at the glurch through their individual plastic bags, many of them guessed that it was playdough. Once they opened their bags, they were surprised to find something quite different and were very excited and intrigued with the new texture. As the children squished the glurch between their fingers, they described its characteristics: "It feels sticky!" "It smells like glue!" "It feels like glue!" The children also used the glurch to create symbolic representations such as a jumprope, snake, hotdog, and pancake. They discovered that they could manipulate their glurch in different ways by cutting it with scissors and using their hands to stretch it wide, roll it long, and make imprints in it. While the children are engaging in these hands-on experiences, my role is to foster a sense of togetherness by facilitating conversation and play. I also choose materials and activities that will promote opportunities to practice important social skills and prosocial behaviors such as sharing, turn taking, and helping each other.

In the music small group, we have been learning about all different aspects of music. After making box guitars, we decided that we wanted to compare them to real guitars. The children really loved the guitars. We also had out drums, and when we played together, Sam noticed that we were a little bit like a band. This led us to learning more about bands and being rock stars. We made a stage out of hollow blocks, because when were talking we figured out that bands usually performed for people on stages. After making our stage we dressed up like rock stars by wearing sunglasses, ties, feather boas, and vests. We put it all together by grabbing some instruments and playing along to some music while we pretended to perform on our stage. We noticed that we had been doing a lot of dancing on our stage, so next we decided that we should learn a little bit about dancing. Then we listened to some music and danced along, some of the music told us how to move our bodies, and some of it we were able to make up our own dancing. Next, we will be going back to learn more about rhythm and how everything we have learned thus far connects to it.

Hello Families!
Now into the month of November, the children have been introduced to a lot of new activities and experiences in the classroom!

Since discovering the squirrel nests on our nature walk and the playground, we have been discussing further where animals live, and what they do to prepare for colder weather. Now on display in our science area are three real bird's nests. The children have been observing the intricate nests closer and talking about what animals live in them, what the nests are made of, and how the nests stay together. The addition of the bird feeder to the window has allowed the children to carefully observe bird and squirrel eating habits. Some children are noticing that the squirrels are particularly hungry and can't seem to stay away from all that food!

Cooperative dramatic play has been centered in the loft/treehouse and with the animals that live in the sand table. The loft/treehouse is now set up with dramatic play food, a picnic basket, and various utensils. Most of the time, the children pretend to make food so they can go on a camping trip. In the sand table, the children are having fun pretending the animals are families, burying their animals in the sand, making pathways and tracks for their animals to follow, and singing songs with their animals. Others like to fill small containers with sand so their animals can have food to eat or so they can take a bath or go for a swim inside. In the sand table, the possibilities seem endless.

In the gym, the children are energetic to try many of the new activities available. They especially enjoy taking turns sliding down a large round donut, jumping from a high stack of mats into bean bags, and sliding down a matted slide. Overall, it's great to see the children's enthusiasm and willingness to take risks! On the playground, the children continue to rake and gather leaves for the large leaf pile underneath the rope swing. Once the leaves are gathered and raked, they love running and jumping into them as well as falling from the swing into the pile. Some of the children also enjoy working together with children from Ross's class to dig one giant, deep hole in the sand. Their muscular endurance to dig for so long and to dig so deep is impressive.

As a reminder, small groups continue to meet three times a week so don't forget to read the small group updates online as well!
Sincerely,
Claire

Dear Families,
It is hard to believe that is November already. The children are getting very comfortable in their routine at school as they continue to grow and share ideas and interests with each other. Social skills are increasing at large group and at snack time and new friendships are forming. We use the children's interests to guide our decisions in setting up their environment. We make changes based on observations of the children's play and their conversations, and inquiry. The children are really starting to notice materials in the room and make connections with each other and build upon what they have learned.
Our discussion of trees and what changes occur in the fall has brought about a lot of exploration, dialogue and creative dramatics in many areas of the classroom. Our class seeds have sprouted and the children examined their roots and stems and helped to plant them. They have been comparing which one was the first to grow, and which one is the tallest. The children have been busy creating animal homes out of natural materials and have connected this theme to the nests in our science area, the habitats in our sand table, and the real logs in our hibernation cave. Our cave has fuzzy brown bear costumes, small wood circles and pictures of hibernating animals where the children are pretending to make nests, and hibernate through the winter! We have talked about hibernation and migration in large group and these are terms that the children are using in song and movements. Some children have been coloring woodland animals at the writing center while others have been playing the matching game taking turns with friends and using pinecones for game markers. We have seen creative nature collages and painting with fall colors using the small paint brushes fostering fine motor skills and creative expression.
The loft that is decorated as a tree house/forest has been changed into an observation place with soft pillows and books where construction workers look down, saw, pound and repair all parts of the wooden structure. Below is a table with blue prints for children to design their own ideas with rulers, pencils, and erasers. Some children are very detailed in this area including doors, windows, and even writing some letters to represent words on their work. Tool boxes and construction hats have become a popular place for children to gather together building with the hollow blocks cooperatively. Other children have made menus in the housekeeping area and have delivered the food wearing costumes to the construction workers in the block area! It is exciting to see how the children continue to investigate their environment and create new learning experiences together.
Glurch has been a new sensory attraction in our classroom and the children have explored the flexibility and elasticity of this material while hiding jewels inside. As one child held up the glurch treasure to show the table, another child commented that it looked just the bats sleeping upside down from our hibernation pictures. We delight in hearing their ideas and watching how they learn from their peers.
Our small groups of "cooking" "frogs" and "transportation" have been meeting together for several weeks and this has been a great opportunity for children to shape and guide the topic based on their interests. Field trips and projects are in the planning stages and excitement levels are high as the children are able to take their hands on experiences to a new level. We want to continue to enrich the children's learning experiences and create a sense of wonder in the process.
We have such an incredible group of children and supportive families. Thank you for sharing your child with me in my student teaching at the lab school. The children continue to teach me so much about what they know and demonstrate so many ways they are learning. I am amazed and grateful for this meaningful teaching experience.
Thank you,

Mary Beth Erickson

Dear families,

The semester is going by so fast! We have just completed our seventh week and what a joy it has been to witness the children forming meaningful relationships with peers and teachers! Our exploration of seeds has continued at the science table as children have cut open squash, apples, green peppers and other fruits and vegetables. This has led children to discuss how to plant seeds and what they will need to grow. Children have also enjoyed exploring the properties of water at the water table! With the addition of measuring containers, funnels, and water wheels, children are able to freely explore and share ideas and discoveries with one another. Free play continues to be a time where teachers notice children's changing interests and curiosities and integrate them into future planning.

Small Group Updates
Music/Movement: What an active group! The children have discussed how music can sound differently. One of our favorite activities is creative movement using streamers. The children have noticed that fast music is often loud, slow music is often softer, and some music even combines the two! Children have also enjoyed singing favorite songs such as Finger Family, Five Green and Speckled Frogs, and Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. The exploration of real musical instruments has also been of great interest! The children have explored holding, and creating original music on the guitar and violin. We saw how both of these instruments have many physical similarities, but are different in how they are held and played. Furthermore, the children were fascinated by comparing a child's violin and bow with the full-sized instrument.
One of the greatest advantages of the small group setting is seeing how the children are getting to know one another! Relationships are fostered as children explore common interests.

Food: In the food small group, we have been exploring different types of vegetables. We peeled, chopped and looked at them under magnifying glasses. The children then sketched them in their journals. We discussed the textures and smells of the vegetables, as well as different ways we could cook them. We also talked about how they grow in gardens or on the farm, and whether they grow above ground or underground. We are starting to discuss restaurants, such as the different areas and jobs in a restaurant, and appliances used in a restaurant. Next Wednesday we will be taking a field trip to Om, a new Indian restaurant in downtown Minneapolis, where Carolina's dad (the chef) will give us a tour.

Animals: We have been looking at tiger pictures, acting like tigers, and seeing what humans can do that tigers cannot. Now we will move into other jungle animals and explore that kind of habitat.

Upcoming Dates of Importance
**Nyna will be out of town Thursday, November 19 - Monday, November 23
**There is no school Thursday, November 26 due to Thanksgiving break.

Thank-you!
Emily

This last week, the children explored cutting up different fruits and vegetables in order to compare the seeds from different foods. They have gotten a magnified view of the insides of pumpkins and their seeds. They felt the different outer textures as well the insides, which we found were usually cool and sometimes slimy! The children also discussed how some foods, such as carrots and potatoes don't have seeds. They determined that if it grows under the ground the food doesn't have any seeds. Taking the exploration of seeds to the next level, there will be germination kits set up for the children to sprout seeds. At the water table children were exploring different ways water can move, the children experimented with the pumps and problem solved about transferring the water from one container into another container. They poured different amounts into funnels and watched wheels turn as water cascaded down. The children will be able to further explore how water can move as we introduce tubes that run along the inside of the table. Children will be able to use these with funnels, different size cups, and containers. The music cave was alive with children inspired beats, rhythms and songs. The children will have more opportunity to explore these instruments as well as make some of their own. Children were working together in the building of space ships and a mail trucks in the hollow blocks. To help support cooperative dramatic play skills in our block area, there will be some pulleys and buckets available this week.

Expressive materials:
-The drawing and collage table will remain an area where children can use a variety of materials to creatively express themselves in an open-ended manner. Tissue paper, pieces of yarn, and colored pom-pom balls will be available to help develop creativity. In addition, paper cups, rubber bands, and tissue boxes will be available for children to make their own musical instruments. This area remains a place where children's fine motor skills and creativity is continually fostered.
-Orange, green, blue, and purple paint will be available at the easel. This week, sponges as well as small paint brushes will allow children to paint with more texture and detail while continuing to practice hand-eye coordination and fine motor control.
-Musical instruments will continue to be featured in the middle cave. Children will be able to use the keyboard and different percussion instruments to explore rhythm and beat. Musical instruments support the development of psychomotor, perceptual and listening abilities, and creative development.

Sensory
-The water table will continue to be open for exploration on how water moves through different spaces. Tubes and funnels will be attached and various measuring containers will be available so the children can experiment with water movement and volume. Through parallel and cooperative play, social interactions are developing and the children are sharing ideas.
-Water color paints will be available at the sensory table this week. In the center of the table will be different harvested vegetables and other natural autumn materials. Children will be encouraged to paint their own representation of these objects. This encourages development of symbolic representation and fine motor control.

- The children have been closely observing the rats and talking about how to care for them. This curiosity about how to care for animals sparked the idea to have a veterinarian clinic in our dramatic play center. Doctor's lab coats, medical instruments, a variety of animals x-ray prints, and stuffed animals are available and ready for exploration. This area supports creativity, role-playing, and social interactions. Vet related books will also be available to help incorporate literacy and print.
-The first cave will be a Lego building center. Lego boards and large Legos will be available as well as some Lego animals and people. Dramatic play opportunities will promote fine motor skills, cooperative play, and communication skills.
-The housekeeping area will continue to be available in the center of our room. Babies are incorporated into this set-up along with high-chairs and baby bottles. Whether they are taking care of the babies, cooking, or running a restaurant, the children are using cooperative play skills, symbolic representation, and the sharing of resources.

-Square and circular stackers will continue to be available to support height and length comparisons, patterning, counting, hand-eye coordination, color identification, and visual discrimination skills. This last week the children were using them to build different flying machines and motor vehicles.
-Assorted puzzles supporting fine motor development, visual discrimination, shape recognition, and part-whole relations will continue to be made available.
-We've added the computers to the room! Two computers have been placed near the front of the room where children can play math games and observe when others play on them. Parallel play, hand-eye coordination, and the sharing of ideas are observed when children play games on the computers.

-The children have been experimenting with cutting open different vegetables and fruits with pumpkin cutting knives. Dissection and exploration of the seeds hidden inside will continue to be available. -To further the exploration of seeds there will be germination kits set up. The children will be able to sprout seeds using cotton balls and small plastic bags. Books on seeds and growth will be available to help in forming hypotheses about what will happen next. Scientific reasoning and comparing the different stages of growth will help to build social interactions. -Books about seeds, harvest vegetables, and animals are featured in the book area. This area exposes children to new vocabulary, expands their print awareness, and story sequencing. Children continue to enjoy sitting on the couch and looking at books during the free-play, as well as before and after snack time. -Flannel boards that enable the children to act out some of their favorite stories will continue to be available in our third cave. This incorporates dramatic play and social interactions as the children can create their own stories using characters from several fairytales, including a fire-breathing dragon! - To help support expansion of their dramatic play, there will be pulleys and buckets in the block area. This will support gross motor development and encourages children to engage each other either for help or for participation. The use of pulleys requires planning and some experimentation. In their planning they are participating in cooperative play and higher order thinking skills. They are also improving their language and communication skills when they explain their play to newcomers and teachers. -Peg people, large cardboard strips, and wooden cars and planes will continue to be available to help expand the play in the block area. -The children enjoy the gym set-up that features monkey bar swings, a blue donut mat, and a large target to aim at. There are ropes hanging from the monkey bars that the children can swing, climb up, and twist around on. These swings build upper body strength and children are encouraged to use their body weight to propel them forward and back on the swings. The large blue donut mat is upright, creating a hole used for wild animals to jump through or when grabbing hold of the handles, a child can walk around the inside, going upside down. Balance, coordination, muscle endurance, and upper and lower body strength is developing as well as dramatic play that fosters social interactions. The back of the gym features a large target that children can use for aiming while throwing and kicking balls. Dynamic balance and propulsion skills are building with this activity. Some mats have been stacked in a pyramid style that helps children build their flexibility, agility, and balance while they climb over it. The A-frame ladder is set up as a low triangular structure to walk over. The children can work on their locomotion and balance skills when on this structure.

-Our playground continues to feature the climbing equipment, swings, tricycles, and wagons. The children have been working together to rake the leaves into a big pile before jumping into it. We also have a rope swing over the leaf pile area. Many of the children have discovered that it is fun to let go of the rope and fall into a pile of leaves! Rakes, wheelbarrows, and shovels will continue to be available. The children will continue to have opportunities to dig in the sand, swing, run, climb on the equipment, and play with yard toys as well as observe the natural environments found on our playground.

Snack:
Monday: Bagels & Cream Cheese
Wednesday: Open Snack - Cheddar Bunnies
Thursday: Open Snack - Pretzels

Dear families,

Thank you for the gift of your children each Tuesday and Friday. They are a delight to work with. Last week was my opportunity to plan curriculum and lead the day in class. Here are some highlights for me.

I have to be honest and say I have been learning from my mistakes as much as I have from my successes. In my eagerness to promote appreciation of our natural and native environment, I learned how easy it was for me to fashion a 'thinking' lesson rather than a more experiential lesson appropriate to the ages of the children. (Perhaps my two teenage daughters have me 'thinking' a lot lately.) And so I adjust. A head on structural comparison of the specifics of native prairie plant species became a lot less important than which seed floated the most (orange butterfly weed), and how to keep it up, or, what kind of animal might live in the hollow knot of a branch, or, what does the inside of the green gourd look like? Will it look the same as the orange pumpkin? We cut them open to find out. The children, on their own, found out whether the gourds floated or not, by putting them in the water table (mixed results, pending more advanced study design). They also thought to see if Peely the gerbil would like some of the seeds. Eager to bring all of my knowledge to them, I had briefly overlooked that they are already 'scientists' and natural empiricists, already supremely inquisitive and experimental by nature. What I need to do is supply them with the material and watch and listen to their thoughts, and support their many discoveries.

In dramatic play, I am happy to see the grocery store doing a pretty brisk business every day. It has been interesting to see the level of play detail grow over time, from simple filling of shopping baskets, to requests for a 'money card' (credit card) with which to make a purchase, and more detailed playing out of dramatic scripts, from scanning products or manually entering product codes, to sending the groceries down the conveyor belt to be bagged. A few children have even taken their groceries 'home' to the play kitchen. In addition to signage, the grocery store has also involved literacy with pads of paper by the register to 'sign' or write out receipts with. The store has offered many opportunities for detailed dramatic play as well as cooperative social interactions. I'd also like to thank all parents for stocking our store with a wonderful selection of products.

It's a pleasure to watch the changes occurring in 'vehicular' block play. Simple roads eventually required ramps. Numerous 'collisions' required social negotiations on rules of the road. In the days ahead, we are wondering if the roadway will reach and incorporate play in the dollhouse.

Changing painting tools at the art easel proved a real draw for some children who had been a little ambivalent about painting. Painting with wood rollers, bumpy rollers, and foam brushes was just plain exciting. Interestingly, adding black paint also appeared to be a powerful draw for particular children. We don't know whether it was the high contrast it offered, or the more graphic effect of black line against color. Of course, we never want to force children to do art, however much we might want them to try it, so we will always look for different ways to invite children into a positive experience with it, watching for their interests, and finding ways to invite them to new experiences.

Play dough--what can I say. It is the substance that is always magic. This past week we have seen various tracks left in it, by a variety of animals and vehicles, challenging the children to think of evidence of things not present. Children continue to learn to roll snakes, a fine motor skill. And for a number of children, it remains an area of sensory solace, a comforting place to be and a comforting thing to do, an activity around which social possibilities arise.

We are experimenting more with making music, listening to music and dancing to music. We are discovering some pretty avid dancers as well as many curious children interested in dancing and hope to do more of it in the weeks ahead. And thanks for sending in music, and letting us know about your children's favorites.

My first week as lead teacher was very busy. I appreciate all the support and understanding from all parents and my colleagues in the classroom. One learns very quickly about the importance of a good, strong team.

I'm looking forward to seeing your children this week - and planning curriculum for them again in another week or so.

sincerely,

Bob Reilly

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Lesson Plan for Frances' Class
Week of November 9th
Lead Teacher: Becky Barth

Goals:
As the children become more comfortable in the classroom, personalities and social interactions are blossoming. To support this, we will offer opportunities for personal observation and reflection to help the children build confidence in their own unique skills, preferences, and physical characteristics. We will also assist the children to share these special traits with one another to encourage meaningful interactions. These interactions will reinforce small and large group play patterns that are emerging in the classroom.

Art:
Plexiglass easels will be provided at the art table. The transparent surfaces will give the children an opportunity to see each other and engage in social interactions while making art. Small paint brushes will be available to extend the children's fine motor development, and examples of painted portraits will be hung in art area for inspiration.

Manipulatives:
• A variety of puzzles will be presented featuring themes of construction, body awareness, shapes, numbers, and letters. Puzzles challenge the children to use fine motor planning, problem-solving skills, and persistence.
• Several different activities will feature magnets and magnetic materials. The children will continue to use their creativity and scientific inquiry to attempt to manipulate objects and understand magnetic force.
• Sorting activities will also be provided. Grouping of like-objects is a precursor to more advanced classification skills. Additionally, sorting activities will promote hand-eye coordination, fine motor development, and color and shape awareness.

Sensory:
• At the play doh table, children will continue to explore the idea of making tracks and prints in the dough. We will also encourage the children to try to make human prints using their hands, fingers, and shoes. These prints will be used for observation and comparison to other prints.
• In the water table, we will use bubbles and cloths to "wash" baby dolls. This sensory experience will also help to promote caregiving attitudes.

Science:
• The science corner will feature activities and materials that are centered around body parts and awareness. We will compare hand and feet sizes, measure our heights on the wall, and use mirrors to examine our facial features. We will reinforce emerging body part vocabulary (e.g. elbows, knees, eyes, ears, etc.), and practice the scientific process of observing and describing what we see.

Dramatic Play:
• We have been excited to see children "shop" at the grocery store and bring the food home to the kitchen area. We will continue to support and bridge the dramatic play that is happening in these two areas. We will add price tags, coin slots, and signature/receipt pads to enhance emerging math and literacy skills.
• Small trucks and cars continue to be popular in the block area. New trucks as well as road signs will be added to extend dramatic play themes of driving on the roads. These experiences provide social opportunities for the children and encourage turn-taking and cooperation.
• Small dramatic play people and houses will continue to be available this week. The materials will be positioned next to the block area in order to help children bridge the various types of dramatic play that is happening in the room. These small manipulatives offer children the opportunity to act out familiar house-hold themes and practice the symbolic representation skills.

Language and LIteracy:
• The dramatic play centers will incorporate many new literacy elements. Writing pads and pens will be available in the grocery store and the home area for children to sign and make receipts, make shopping lists, and take phone messages. The magnetic alphabet refrigerator magnets continue to be a popular element to our play kitchen.
• Road signs will be introduced in the block area to help extend vehicle and road play.
• New books surrounding our themes of body awareness, construction, grocery stores, and fall will be added to the classroom.
• Many children have been showing an interest in letters and letter sounds. We will continue to support this interest by pointing out alliteration, beginning sounds of words, and letters in the children's names.

Construction:
• Large hollow and small unit blocks are available for construction. Many of the children have been exploring roads and ramps, and both vehicles and children have traveled the pathways. We will continue to support the play in this area and help to extend the road construction play be adding road signs and stop lights.
• The cardboard box construction has been a catalyst for large group projects! We will continue to encourage the children to use their imaginations, and each other, in order to make large structures such as trains and busses. This area promotes creative thinking, large and fine motor development, and many pro-social skills such as sharing, collaboration of ideas, and turn-taking.

Music and Movement:
• As children continue to explore the musical instruments in the music corner, we will offer the children some new ways to create rhythms. New drums and a shaker-making station will be available.
• We will have songs available on the computer to which children can listen and/or dance. Materials such as ribbons and scarves will also be available to encourage creative movements inspired by the different types of music. This area allows children to explore creative expression, increase body awareness, and engage in many sensory-rich experiences such as listening to different sounds and using their bodies to interpret different types of music.

Large Group:
The activities for large group this week will be centered around body awareness and creative movement. We will read books and sing songs that increase the children's awareness and vocabulary of body parts. New materials and songs will be used to explore different ways of self-expression. We will also continue to encourage children to participate in the group activities so as to feel a part of the classroom community.

Large Motor:
• A soccer net will be available on the playground for children to practice aim and kicking. Basketball hoops and balls of different sizes will continue to be available as well. Ball play increases hand-eye coordination, helps to build balance and large muscle groups, and is a wonderful way to spark social interaction.
• Children are continuing to show improved skill in the gym. We will support the children as they explore climbing on the A-frame ladder, swinging on the rope swings, going down the slide, and jumping off of the mat-mountain. The new gym arrangement increases risk taking ability, strengthens alternate-feet climbing and endurance, and helps to refine coordination.

Snack:
Tuesday - Rice Crackers and Bananas
Friday - Oranges and Chex

Announcements:
This Thursday and Friday (November 12 and 13) the Oleanna Book Sale will take place in our gym. You are invited to take a look at the selection of Children's books and Parenting Books available. A percentage of what is purchased comes back to the Lab School. We will also take a small group of children down to buy a book for our class.

We are organizing a "laundry team" for the classroom. If you are willing to take home a small bag of towels and wash them for us that would be greatly appreciated. Please look for the signup sheet on the door.

Please take a look at the website under Frances - Parent Newsletter - Teacher Bob has written a reflection describing his first week of student teaching and his impressions on how the children used the various curriculum areas he set up. There are also photos from this past Tuesday under Update.

Parent Discussion groups will be happening again this week. They will be talking about things families should know as they get ready to transition to kindergarten. Times are Thursday Nov 12 9:00am to 10:30am and 1:00 to 2:30pm and Tuesday evening, November 17th from 6:30 to 8:00pm. Take a look at the homepage under Current Parents for more information. You may bring children along.

Although it is fall, there is a committee of parents that is already thinking spring! The Lab School's annual fundraiser, the Spring Soiree, raises funds for student scholarships, primarily via a silent auction. This event has become one of the most anticipated events of the year. The Soiree is an opportunity for parents and friends of the Lab School to enjoy an adult-only time while snacking on appetizers and sipping on wine.

The committee feels it is important to begin soliciting businesses for donations before the holidays begin, and they are willing to do the difficult part of asking. But they need our help. Many businesses are more likely to make a donation if there is a personal contact. For example, if you have been taking your children to the same swim school for years or you've golfed on the same course for years, we would love to solicit a donation in your name. What we need from you is the contact information. Amy Wozniak, Max's mom, will mail a donation solicitation in your name. (That's right - she's willing to do the part we all hate - asking for something, we just need to let her know who to contact.) It would be helpful if you could email Amy Woznaik a contact name and business address for any businesses that you patronize and think would be willing to make a donation to support our school. Amy's email is aks5344@hotmail.com Thank you for your support!

Well, we survived pictured day! Truthfully, I'm looking forward to seeing our group photo...it should be an interesting one. I'm amazed they are able to "settle" that many young bodies long enough to snap a photo. Speaking of...here are our "visual updates" from last week. I'm going to start attaching a bit of the story with the photo to help increase conversations at home, as well as help shed more light on the story behind the photograph. As always, if you have any other questions about what's going on, please let me know!

Nigel, Garrin, Oliver (background), and Evan (foreground) discussing the many things being build with the LEGOS
The cave has created many opportunities for children to play cooperatively, as well as help children discover "new" areas of the room! These conversations and collaborative play themes are fostering our ever-growing social community that we are working hard to establish in the classroom this fall

A group diligently planting seeds at the science table.
As the children observed the sprouting of the pumpkin seeds (in the cotton ball pouches), they quickly exclaimed they needed to be put in the dirt so they could "keep growing." A growth chart will be posted in the science area to chart the continual growth of our seedlings

Garrin and Cedrick talking with Stacy about the paper making.
Garrin thought hard about why the paper needed to be chopped up into tiny pieces. He and many others created hypotheses and got to test them with Stacy at the paper making station (And all the paper samples should FINALLY be dry from sitting out over the weekend!)

Nigel and Evan building another elaborate vehicle in the block area.
These two use the small unit blocks as controls, supports, and various engine parts - as you can see in the photo with the smaller blocks inside the larger hollow blocks. Lots of planning and thinking going on!

Cedrick and Helena working together on playing the piano in the music cave.
They showed each other how to make different sounds by pressing different keys as well as played other instruments together

On Thursday we had a visitor from the dance department - Kelsey. She had different movement activities for the children to try that stretched their bodies, and got them moving in creative ways: supporting our focus on teacher-directed activities in the gym. She wrapped up with a favorite song: Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes!

Weekly Lesson Plan
Weeks of Nov 9 - Nov 13, 2009
Lead Teaching This Week: Stacy

Overview and goals
The last week has been a very productive week. We made our own paper and took our class picture. The children took advantage of the new materials available in the classroom (i.e. story telling in the felt board cave, construction sites, trains in the Lego cave, water exploration and planting of our own seeds). The children are displaying an ever-increasing level of comfort with each other and the teachers, and because of this we continue to see new social interactions emerging in the classroom. This week we will continue with the positive momentum by adding in new materials and slightly tweaking what is already there. We will be adding the computers to the classroom in order to allow the children opportunities to explore forms of technology while practicing cooperation/negotiation skills. Creative expression, building, animal care and scientific inquiry will continue to be central themes for the up coming week.

Art Center
Expressive Materials
~ The art table will have our staple collage materials and an abundance of markers, crayons and paper. The availability of these materials has led to some new and exciting creations. Last week we saw construction signs and a robot snake! The consistent availability of the open ended art supplies allow the children to extend their play from other centers, practice their fine motor skills, and facilitate social relationships.
~ The easel will continue to be available in the art center. However, we will be experimenting with bubble painting. The bubble paint invites the children to paint by blowing bubbles mixed with tempera paint at the paper. When the bubbles pop they create various shapes and patterns. There will be pipe cleaners bent into various forms to use for blowing bubbles. Not only is this activity fun, but it also allows children to see the many forms creativity can take. Inviting children to see familiar things such as bubbles in a new manor help to facilitate creative though processes not just in artistic expression, but in everyday life, too.
~ The musical cave continues to be a popular spot for many of the children. The addition of the piano, bells, and sand blocks enabled the children to further their individual musical exploration. Musical instrument making materials will be available for the children to try their hand at creating their very own rhythms and sounds creating an opportunity for further musical exploration. Some of the materials we will have available are toilet and paper towel rolls, tissue boxes, and rubber bands. There will be premade examples of drums, maracas, and guitars to assist the children in creating their own musical instruments. The topic of musical instrument making will be introduced at large group and will continue to be available in the music cave over the course of the week. The open-ended materials will allow the children to create new and exciting instruments.
Sensory Materials
~ Last week, the water table consisted of introductory water movement materials. Materials such as pumps, funnels and paddle-wheels will continue to be available. We will have plastic tubing with funnels attached to the table to begin looking at water movement. Turkey basters will also be available for hypothesis creating/testing related to water movement. The new materials will promote inquiry, prediction making, exploration and continual social interactions.
~ We will have new modeling clay available this week. The children have explored the properties of clay and what it can become: allowing for not only a sensory experience but a creative one, as well. The modeling clay will allow the children to create pieces of art or representational objects. The clay can be left over night and can be painted the following day if the child desires to do so.

Science Center
~ We have planted our very own seeds! We will have a documentation board allowing the children to track the growth of their seeds. As we continue to observe our seeds' growth process we will introduce the new topic of magnets. We feel the children are ready for a new topic and magnets allow vast opportunities for critical thinking and question asking. As the children will begin to investigate the properties of magnets, we will have various materials to test as well as magnetic object hunt available throughout the classroom. Lastly we will have sand and metal filings mixed in containers for the children to sort out. With the new topic of magnets in the science center we have attempted to provide a variety of activities to allow the children to investigate and enquire about the properties of magnets. Also, because this is a more abstract topic (force of magnetism), we will introduce the idea now and may revisit similar experiments later in the school year to expand on prior knowledge.

Math and Manipulative Center
~ Stringing beads will continue to be a focus in the manipulative center. Fine-motor skills will continue to be addressed with the addition of new types of beads and stringing materials. Children will also be able to expand their knowledge of various types of patterns one to one correspondence as well as continue to develop hand to eye coordination. Geoboards will also be available allowing children to create shapes and demonstrate shape recognition.
~ This last week Legos were very successful in facilitating new interactions between children. We saw trains and large complexes being built as well as new friendships. There will be more boards for building added to the cave by mounting them on the wall. This will allow the children to view the Legos as a material that can be used for building structures, but also making pictures, and symbolic items to be used in other areas of the class. Legos will continue to allow children an opportunity to practice fine motor movements, support creativity, cooperative play as well as, create symbolic and representational objects.

Language and Literacy Center
~ As the focus on the mail center decreases we will phase in new forms of language and literacy. There has been an increase in sign making though out the classroom. We have seen caution signs for construction sites and animal hospital signs for the hospital lobby. With this focus we will encourage the children to create their own signs. We will have example of some common signs the children know and see often as well as some not so common. The children will be able to create their own signs from the example given. This will allow for the demonstration of letter recognition and emerging reading skills. Social interaction will be a large focus of the literacy center as children collectively create props for their play.

Block Center
~ As always, the block area is very busy. Creative structures continue to spring up in the back of the class. Cars, trucks, boats, and building continue to be the main focus. To create new roles in building and cooperative opportunities we will add pulleys and ropes to the block center. The addition of buckets for block transportation will reintroduce the building play theme while allowing for unique problem solving opportunities and scientific knowledge of simple machines.

Dramatic Play Center
~ The animal hospital continues to be extremely popular. We have seen animals being delivered by buses to the hospital, animals receiving "many" bandages and even waiting lines to see the vet. We will add various props to encourage children to think about what is inside our bodies and how do they work. The addition of new props such as transparencies displaying X-rays with broken bones and internal organs will also help to facilitate further play. The area will continue to support social relationships, cooperation and body awareness.

Large Motor
~ The gym will continue to have swings from the monkey bars, A-frames turned upside-down, a mat mountain with a triangular mat slide, and a throwing target. These will allow the children opportunities to engage in activities that foster balance, climbing, landing, depth perception, throwing, and hand/eye coordination. The teachers will also be facilitating various games to encourage teamwork: such as, Ball Balance, Choo-Choo Train, Big Snake and Big Turtle. Ask your child to tell you about the games they played in the gym!
~ We continue to have a large pile of leaves available for jumping and a rope swing in one of our playground's trees. Last week we brought out hollow blocks for the children who have been very interested in digging and construction. The hollow blocks will continue to be available for use on the playground. Child sized rakes will be available for raking up leaf piles in addition to the bikes, wagons, shovels, and buckets allowing for open-ended play. We will also have the soccer balls out this week inviting children to run and kick. The compost bin continues to be a point of interest for the children. We will be bringing out leftovers from snack daily to add to the bin and continue to observe what is happening in the bin. With the planting of our seeds in the class some of the children have become interested in planting seeds on the playground as well. We will continue to encourage them to dig and bury seeds to see what happens to seeds when they are in nature.

Snack
Monday: Birthday Snack (Nigel)
Tuesday: Apples and Sunflower Butter
Wednesday: Birthday Snack (Peyton)
Thursday: Cheddar bunnies
Friday: Applesauce made with Rachel and pretzels
*All snacks served with milk and water, unless otherwise noted*

Nora and Ella painting a tree trunk together.

Jacob and Alex making "space ships" with the K'nex.

David and Michael practicing their throwing skills.

Overview
The children have been starting to build homes for animals. In addition to making homes in the sand table, many children have enjoyed constructing animal homes with natural materials, wire, and playdough. Teachers will continue to facilitate conversations that and record the children's ideas about how animals are preparing for winter. Additionally, later this week we will begin painting a plexiglass prism. This will be a collaborative, community building project that builds upon the classroom wide interest in painting. Once dry, the paintings will be on display in the windows.

Creative Arts
-We will continue to provide cardboard "tree branches" at the easel for painting. The children have been very busy making trees, soon our classroom will turn into a forest.
-The collaborative painting project will give the children the opportunity to socialize and practice positive peer interactions while working together.
-At the light table is an assortment of natural materials for the children to arrange or sort in creative ways. Playdough and wire are also available for those who choose to connect the materials or create animal homes.

Sensory
-The children have enjoyed becoming familiar with glurch by stretching and squeezing it, and by burying colorful gems in this unique material. To allow the children to further explore glurch, we will add scissors as a new way to manipulate the glurch and practice fine motor skills.
-The sand table has sticks, shovels, rocks and animals to support animal related dramatic play.

Science
-We have planted a sunflower seed, a kidney bean, a pumpkin seed, and an Amaryllis bulb. The children will be encouraged to continue to monitor the growth of the plants by measuring the plants as they sprout. Additionally, the teachers will facilitate and record conversations relating to plant care. We will then post the children's ideas in the science area. Some children have already expressed an interest in the subject, and so the conversation should be exciting!

Math and Manipulatives
-To reinforce the concept of seriation, we will revisit the photos that have been taken of the playground trees over the past two months. As a group, the children will decide how to place them in an order that reflects what they have witnessed.
-Daily, the children create unique, wheeled k'nex, pop-oid, and mobilo structures. The teachers will continue to reinforce the children's new interest in building ramps for their wheeled structures. The children practice problem solving skills as they adjust the ramps to maximize the distance their vehicles will travel.

Literacy
-The library area and the loft will continue to have books that support the current topics changing seasons and animal homes.
-At the writing center, the children have continued to enjoy using the classroom dictionary to practice writing and learning letter sounds. They also regularly write letters to teachers, peers, and parents.

Dramatic Play
-To support the children's sociodramatic play in our treehouse loft, picnic baskets and camping utensils have been added to the loft. The kitchen has new food to prepare and use on the picnics.

Blocks
-The children continue to use the tools in conjunction with the hollow blocks to construct structures such as ramps, houses, buses, and monster trucks. The children often collaborate with each other about how to make the structures sturdier, longer, and taller.

Large Motor
-The children have been interested in finding new ways to use the equipment in the gym. For example, the children have been sliding down the side of the large donut by turning onto their stomach, and sliding down feet-first. By sliding down this way, the children exercise their core muscles, as well as their upper arm strength as they are able to guide themselves down the side. Additionally, the children exercise their lower body muscles and their flexibility as they twist in unique ways while jumping from the stacked mats. The children have also been practicing the accuracy of their throwing skills by aiming balls at a target.
-On the playground, the children have been very involved with the leaves. They pile them, jump in them, rake them, and fill wheelbarrows with them. The hollow blocks will continue to be provided to support the creative building project that has been taking place in the sand.

Snack
Monday: Large Rice Cakes & Banana
Tuesday: Popcorn
Wednesday: Vanilla Yogurt & Graham crackers
Thursday: Apples & Sunflower Butter
Friday: Bagels & Cream Cheese

Overview and Goals
The children and teachers have been busy observing many of the natural changes that occur as the season progress. This week we will continue to discuss animal homes, especially those of hibernating animals. We will continue to encourage the children's explorations of animal homes and how these can be built in different ways. Indoors and out on the playground, observations of different animals lead to many new discoveries. Additionally, our classroom's small groups continue to investigate and explore. This week Elizabeth's "Transportation" group heads to a car dealership, Mary Beth's "Cooking" group plans to discuss food they would like to prepare, and Natalie's "Frog" group continues to focus on a frog's life cycle. We continue to strive to create nurturing and positive environment where the children feel respected, and we strive to provide opportunities for the children to engage joyfully in many hands-on activities as they build knowledge of the world around them.

Expressive Arts
~Easel painting continues to offer the opportunity to paint with wide and narrow brushes at the same time so children can make comparisons and explore their options. The children have tried making small and large brush strokes on the easel and observing the different lines they can make.
~An assortment of construction paper is available for the children, along with markers, colored pencils, scissors, and glue sticks. This allows the children to express themselves freely.
~Small thin paint brushes with a variety of paint colors in natural tones and fall colors will continue to be available for students, allowing them to explore different color combinations and make their own creations.
~See-through acrylic panels will also be available for painting. These panels enable the children to experience painting on a very smooth surface. The transparent nature of these panels allow children to see their peers painting on the other side, which encourages social interactions as well as creative expression.
~Our blueprint drawing area, located near the unit blocks, will continue to encourage creative planning and expression of building projects. The children have already begun to draw blueprints for houses and castles.
~Watercolors and paint brushes will be available for students to paint with on the light table near the caves. This new paint will allow children to investigate the way light and colors interact, and encourage artistic expression.

Sensory Materials
~Glurch continues to be a very popular addition to our classroom, and the children enjoy stretching this elastic material and decorating it with colorful plastic "jewels." In addition to these "jewels" we will give each child their own straws that can be used to inflate the glurch like a balloon.
~The sand table continues to provide children with opportunities to combine sensory experiences and investigation with social interaction and symbolic play as they use the animals, rocks, trees with hibernation and habitat themes. The children have enjoyed creating mountains of sand for the animal figurines to climb, and digging holes for other animals to use as hiding places.

Dramatic and Symbolic Play
~The housekeeping area continues to evolve in the back of our classroom. The area currently includes different types of food, dishes for serving, and different food magazines and menus. Look for changes coming halfway through the week. The kitchen will become a "Grocery Store" complete with grocery bags, a cash register, and shelves stocked with different food. Please send in any empty food boxes you have at home to give our grocery store a realistic feel. This area will provide students with more complex experiences involving food, and allow them to use pretend play to explore and expand their understanding of the common experience of shopping for food.
~Dresses, vests, and ties are located in the back of the classroom with keys, purses and wallets to support the children's socio-dramatic play ideas. Many children use these items to take "trips" around the classroom.
~Hard hats and tool boxes are very popular and instrumental in the children's working cooperatively at building and construction with the large hollow blocks. These tools help build racecars, castles, and have helped to "fix" the ladder to the loft, as the "builders" communicate and cooperate.
~The first cave continues to be our hibernating cave habitat for a variety of animals. In addition to various stuffed woodland animals, several natural wood pieces, including small cut branches and larger logs, allow children to build homes for hibernating creatures. Also, the fuzzy brown bear costumes in this cave give the children opportunities for symbolic and dramatic play. Children's social interactions expand in this area as they become familiar with the animals and their actions in their habitat.
~In order to support the frequent "trips" taken by many of the children, the loft "tree house" will contain a picnic basket and blanket. This dramatic play experience will facilitate community building and symbolic representation.

Science Center
~Together, we planted all of the seeds that the class helped to germinate (kidney bean, corn, oak tree, and pumpkin seeds). The children can observe and measure the growth of the seeds in their pots of dirt. We will encourage the children to think about what is necessary to help our seeds continue to grow.
~Other pumpkin and sunflower seeds continue to be available for sustained observation with magnifying glasses and also for a counting or sorting activity with tweezers and a grid for comparison at the seed science table. While sorting out the seeds, children can count the seeds, or try to make a pattern with the different seeds.
~The display of different nests, including a large paper wasp nest and several different birds' nests, has attracted the attention of many children. They have made connections between wasps' nests and birds' nest, and investigated how eggs fit into the different birds' nests. Exploration of these different nests provides inspiration for children's creations at the "animal homes" creation center.
~Located in the entryway of the classroom, the "animal homes" creation center contains straw, wood shavings, sticks, pinecones, and other natural items for the creation of different types of animal homes. After only one week, the children have created many different burrows, dens, and lilly pads for hibernating animals using play dough. This week, pipe cleaners will also help us to connect sticks and twigs as we build new animal homes.

Language and Literacy
~As the children continue to write letters, an assortment of papers, envelopes, colored pencils, staplers, tape remain available in the writing center.
~The writing center continues to have pictures of animals that hibernate or migrate, such as hedgehogs, birds, squirrels, and frogs. The children have already enjoyed coloring the sheets, as well as using them to read more about some familiar animals. We will also add scissors and glue sticks.
~Books about fall harvest and animals that hibernate and migrate continue to be featured in the book area. Some other classic children's storybooks have also been added.
~Squirrel books, and special animal books are located in the loft "tree house" area and many children continue to enjoy reading them as they snuggle together in the comfortable pillows available.
~A basket of books about tools and building will remain on the shelf under the hard hats, helping to inspire the children as they build and plan new structures.
~The computer center remains a popular area where children engage with various children's software games, practice taking turns with peers, and help each other navigate different activities.

Math, Manipulatives and Games
In addition to our continued work on matching, sorting, comparing, and seriating objects by size, this week we will also introduce patterning.
~We have some self-correcting Montessori cylinders with sizes from small to large, as well as a seriation wooden puzzle with pegs that all support the theme of progression from one size to the next.
~Various puzzles support the development of part/whole relationships, synthesizing and hand-eye development.
~Memory and lotto games have been a great addition to our classroom, including a memory game with our class pictures, and one with different fruits. The children really enjoy reviewing the concept of same and different as they identify their peers and teachers.
~Plastic boards and small pegs support children's concepts of repetition and patterning. Working with patterns helps children predict what will happen and recognize relationships. Patterning facilitates children's ability to make generalizations about number combinations and counting strategies.
~Animal mothers and babies lotto and woodland animal bingo games are also popular with our class. The children are having exposure to the animals and hibernation as well as playing cooperatively with others in a game with "rules," which is a cognitive milestone. Teachers support these games with positive encouragement of social interactions and turn-taking.
~The second cave with Popoids, Mobilos, and K-nex remain available so that children can continue to share their creations with each other, while engaging in symbolic representation, creative thinking, manual dexterity, and hand strength. Also, as children record their creations on the provided clipboards or show their trucks and robots to their peers, they develop self-confidence.

Block area
~Hollow blocks are available in the back of the room allowing children to engage in social interactions while using mathematical and spatial concepts as well as creative abilities to build in this large area of the classroom. The steering wheels continue to be available as additions to the many cars that the children have built. They also have begun creating more complex shelters, such as castles.
~The Unit blocks are placed near the caves and close by to the hollow blocks to encourage children to use these in different areas of the classroom. Some different car ramps have recently shown up in this area. In addition to the unit blocks we have wooden airplanes and cars to encourage children's symbolic play and socio-dramatic play with the vehicles.

Large Motor
~The recently changed gym continues to provide interesting physical challenges for all of the children. Swings at the monkey bars foster climbing, hanging, muscular endurance, upper body strength, balance, and vestibular movement. The donut attached to the slide support spatial awareness, flexibility, balance, risk taking, and core muscle strength. Many of the children especially enjoy throwing soft balls at a large target as well as different numbered bins as they practice aiming, throwing, hand-eye coordination, catching, trapping, and kicking. The metal A frame and bridge encourages climbing, balance, hand-eye coordination, spatial awareness, and alternating feet, as well as supporting upper body strength. A mat mountain is very popular with the children and is for climbing up and down, jumping and fostering risk-taking, spatial awareness, and depth perception. The children can frequently be found taking turns leaping off of the mats into soft bean bag chairs below.
~We will continue to go outside to the playground as the weather permits. Buckets, shovels, wagons, paddles, and a variety of cups and plates are available to encourage digging, upper and lower body strength and social play. Many children have begun digging for "treasure" in the sand. Rakes continue to be available, and the children have enjoyed building large leaf piles and then jumping into them. There are also many hay bales to walk and balance on. In addition the playground has monkey bars, swings, slides, and paths to ride and run on. We encourage children to be active and support the development of building their stamina and endurance.

Music and Movement/Large Group
~We will continue to sing welcome songs and the names of all the children, building community in our classroom. The children will also get a chance to explore their feelings while moving creatively to "If you're happy and you know it!"
~As we continue to discuss how animals prepare for winter, we will focus on the way different animals create homes and hibernation places. We will sing some new songs about animals and where they live.
~Hibernation as well as animal home building and life cycles will be highlighted through two different books. Apple Trouble describes an unlucky hedgehog who builds a home but then cannot fit into it, and the classic children's tale The Very Hungry Caterpillar discusses preparing for a long sleep as well as creating a different type of home, a cocoon.

Elizabeth

* The Oleanna book sale will be in the gym on Thursday and Friday of next week (November 12th and 13th).

* Parents are also encouraged to check out the parent discussion groups taking place on Tuesday and Thursday! The topic is "Things Parents should know about the Transition to Kindergarten." The dates and times of the discussion groups are as follows: Thursday, November 12, 9:00 - 10:30 a.m. (Room 108), Thursday, November 12, 1:00 - 2:30 p.m. (Room 105), and Tuesday, November 17, 6:30 - 8:00 p.m. (Room 108). For more information, please click on the Parent Discussion Group page.

NEWSLETTER--Ayuko's Class

by Bob
November 7, 2009

I have to be honest and say I have been learning from my mistakes as much as I have from my successes. In my eagerness to promote appreciation of our natural and native environment, I learned how easy it was for me to fashion a 'thinking' lesson rather than a more experiential lesson appropriate to the ages of the children. (Perhaps my two teenage daughters have me 'thinking' a lot lately.) And so I adjust. A head on structural comparison of the specifics of native prairie plant species became a lot less important than which seed floated the most (orange butterfly weed), or, what kind of animal might live in the hollow knot of a branch, or, what does the inside of the green gourd look like? Will it look the same as the orange pumpkin? We cut them open to find out. The children, on their own, found out whether the gourds floated or not, by putting them in the water table (mixed results, pending more advanced study design). Eager to bring all of my knowledge to them, I had briefly overlooked that they are already 'scientists' and natural empiricists, already supremely inquisitive and experimental by nature. What I need to do is supply them with the material and watch and listen to their thoughts, and support their many discoveries.

In dramatic play, I am happy to see the grocery store doing a pretty brisk business every day. It has been interesting to see the level of play detail grow over time, from simple filling of shopping baskets, to more detailed playing out of dramatic scripts, from scanning products or manually entering product codes, to sending the groceries down the conveyor belt to be bagged. A few children have even taken their groceries 'home' to the play kitchen. In addition to signage, the grocery store has also involved literacy with pads of paper by the register to 'sign' or write out receipts with. The store has offered many opportunities for detailed dramatic play as well as cooperative social interactions. I'd also like to thank all parents for stocking our store with a wonderful selection of products.

It's a pleasure to watch the changes occurring in 'vehicular' block play. Simple roads eventually required ramps. Numerous 'collisions' required social negotiations on rules of the road. Last week, a child suddenly commented, "We need stop signs!" Another child playing cars heard this comment, and after a second dashed off, immediately returning with a hardcover picture book, which he stood up against the roadway, quietly proclaiming, "Stop sign!"--a real bit of symbolic invention. In the days ahead, we are wondering if the roadway will reach and incorporate play in the dollhouse.

Changing painting tools at the art easel proved a real draw for some children who had been a little ambivalent about painting. Painting with wood rollers, bumpy rollers, and foam brushes was just plain exciting. Interestingly, adding black paint also appeared to be a powerful draw for particular children. We don't know whether it was the high contrast it offered, or the more graphic effect of black line against color. Of course, we never want to force children to do art, however much we might want them to try it, so we will always look for different ways to invite children into a positive experience with it, watching for their interests, and finding ways to invite them to new experiences.

Play dough--what can I say. It is the substance that is always magic. This past week we have seen various tracks left in it, by a variety of animals and vehicles, challenging the children to think of evidence of things not present. Children continue to learn to roll snakes, a fine motor skill. And for a number of children, it remains an area of sensory solace, a comforting place to be and a comforting thing to do, an activity around which social possibilities arise.

We are experimenting more with making music, listening to music and dancing to music. We are discovering some pretty avid dancers as well as many curious children interested in dancing and hope to do more of it in the weeks ahead. And thanks for sending in music, and letting us know about your children's favorites.

My first week as lead teacher was very busy. I appreciate all the support and understanding from all parents and my colleagues in the classroom. One learns very quickly about the importance of a good, strong team.

A lot of cooperation and collaboration came out this week as the children worked together in acting out stories, especially when they were outside. Children are acting out more complex scenarios, with each role more defined. As you browse through the pictures, you will see moments when children interacted and conversed together, with and without teacher facilitation.


Children experiencing the roles of "cashier" and "customer." Cashton bringing the groceries "home" to the loft to make some food.

Otto exclaimed, "I want to play ring around the rosie!" and asked children and teachers to play with him. He gathered a group to start the song.

Children "hiding" from a "monster." They said to the teachers, "you have to be quiet..."

Everyday children were experiencing shaving cream in a different way. The children felt the shaving cream, spread it up the arms and tray, and squeezed it between their fingers. After spreading the shaving cream on the tray, children started making tracks and patterns with their fingers. By Thursday, letter blocks were provided as tools to make prints on the shaving cream and experiment with cause and effect.

The children have been curious to see how the magnets work at the science table. Since there are a limited amount of wands, children are encouraged to take turns and share using the wands. Madeline and Alma approached the science table together and Madeline handed a wand to Alma and said, "Here you can have this one."

Kelsey doing a directed large motor activity in the gym. We pretended to chew an imaginary bubble gum, blow it, have it pop, and peel it off. All the children participated.

This is a play that began between Maia and Cashton, without teacher facilitation. Maia made a "birthday cake" for Cashton at the water pit. Soon after, their play transferred to the kitchen area. More children started to join "the birthday party" - Children asked to have their own birthday cakes, which Maia made in the kitchen. She lit the "candle" for each child who had their "birthdays" that day while the rest of the children sang the "happy birthday" song for each other. The children had a family style meal, passing each other small pieces of cake. Within a 20 minute period, various children came in and out of this play scenario.

Lesson Plan for Ayuko's Class
Week of November 9th
Lead Teacher: Becky

Goals:
As the children become more comfortable in the classroom, personalities and social interactions are blossoming. To support this, we will offer opportunities for personal observation and reflection to help the children build confidence in their own unique skills, preferences, and physical characteristics. We will also assist the children to share these special traits with one another to encourage meaningful interactions. These interactions will reinforce small and large group play patterns that are emerging in the classroom.

Art:
• Plexiglass easels will be provided at the art table. The transparent surfaces will give the children an opportunity to see each other and engage in social interactions while making art. Small paint brushes will be available to extend the children's fine motor development, and examples of painted portraits will be hung in the art area for inspiration.

Manipulatives:
• A variety of puzzles will be presented featuring themes of construction, body awareness, shapes, numbers, and letters. Puzzles challenge the children to use fine motor planning, problem-solving skills, and persistence.
• Several different activities will feature magnets and magnetic materials. The children will continue to use their creativity and scientific inquiry to attempt to manipulate objects and understand magnetic force.
• Sorting activities will also be provided. Grouping of like-objects is a precursor to more advanced classification skills. Additionally, sorting activities will promote hand-eye coordination, fine motor development, and color and shape awareness.

Sensory:
• At the play doh table, children will continue to explore the idea of making tracks and prints in the dough. We will also encourage the children to try to make human prints using their hands, fingers, and shoes. These prints will be used for observation and comparison to other prints.
• In the water table, we will use bubbles and cloths to "wash" baby dolls. This sensory experience will also help to promote caregiving attitudes.

Science:
• The science corner will feature activities and materials that are centered around body parts and awareness. We will compare hand and feet sizes, measure our heights on the wall, and use mirrors to examine our facial features. We will reinforce emerging body part vocabulary (e.g. elbows, knees, eyes, ears, etc.), and practice the scientific process of observing and describing what we see.

Dramatic Play:
• We have been excited to see children "shop" at the grocery store and bring the food home to the kitchen area. We will continue to support and bridge the dramatic play that is happening in these two areas. We will add price tags, coin slots, and signature/receipt pads to enhance emerging math and literacy skills.
• Small trucks and cars continue to be popular in the block area. New trucks as well as road signs will be added to extend dramatic play themes of driving on the roads. These experiences provide social opportunities for the children and encourage turn-taking and cooperation.
• Small dramatic play people and houses will continue to be available this week. The materials will be positioned next to the block area in order to help children bridge the various types of dramatic play that is happening in the room. These small manipulatives offer children the opportunity to act out familiar house-hold themes and practice the symbolic representation skills.

Language and Literacy:
• The dramatic play centers will incorporate many new literacy elements. Writing pads and pens will be available in the grocery store and the home area for children to sign and make receipts, make shopping lists, and take phone messages. The magnetic alphabet refrigerator magnets continue to be a popular element to our play kitchen.
• Road signs will be introduced in the block area to help extend vehicle and road play.
• New books surrounding our themes of body awareness, construction, grocery stores, and fall will be added to the classroom.
• Many children have been showing an interest in letters and letter sounds. We will continue to support this interest by pointing out alliteration, beginning sounds of words, and letters in the children's names.

Construction:
• Large hollow and small unit blocks are available for construction. Many of the children have been exploring roads and ramps, and both vehicles and children have traveled the pathways. We will continue to support the play in this area and help to extend the road construction play be adding road signs and stop lights.
• The cardboard box construction has been a catalyst for large group projects! We will continue to encourage the children to use their imaginations, and each other, in order to make large structures such as trains and busses. This area promotes creative thinking, large and fine motor development, and many pro-social skills such as sharing, collaboration of ideas, and turn-taking.

Music and Movement:
• As children continue to explore the musical instruments in the music corner, we will offer the children some new ways to create rhythm. New drums and a shaker-making station will be available.
• We will have songs available on the computer to which children can listen and/or dance. Materials such as ribbons and scarves will also be available to encourage creative movements inspired by the different types of music. This area allows children to explore creative expression, increase body awareness, and engage in many sensory-rich experiences such as listening to different sounds and using their bodies to interpret different types of music.

Large Group:
• The activities for large group this week will be centered around body awareness and creative movement. We will read books and sing songs that increase the children's awareness and vocabulary of body parts. New materials and songs will be used to explore different ways of self-expression. We will also continue to encourage children to participate in the group activities so as to feel a part of the classroom community.

Large Motor:
• A soccer net will be available on the playground for children to practice aim and kicking. Basketball hoops and balls of different sizes will continue to be available as well. Ball play increases hand-eye coordination, helps to build balance and large muscle groups, and is a wonderful way to spark social interaction.
• Children are continuing to show improved skill in the gym. We will support the children as they explore climbing on the A-frame ladder, swinging on the rope swings, going down the slide, and jumping off of the mat-mountain. The new gym arrangement increases risk taking ability, strengthens alternate-feet climbing and endurance, and helps to refine coordination.

Snack:
Monday: Banana & Letter Cookies
Wednesday: Apple & Cheddar Bunnies
Thursday: Corn Muffins & Honey

Small Groups:
• Becky's group has been meeting to explore themes such as vehicles, construction, and ramps. After exploring the ways that toy cars move on block ramps, the children were thrilled to discover a "natural" ramp in the building to test their cars on. Most recently, the children used this ramp to test a variety of objects, such as rolling pins, balls, books, and dolls to determine which items would roll and which items would not.
• Bob's Woodland Animal Small Group met for the third time this past week and seems to be coming out of the woods. Cardboard boxes were introduced as a material for them to work with and alter as they chose. They became houses not only for animals but also for fire trucks and the children themselves. We will see where developments take us.
• Elizabeth's Peely Group has been exploring different aspects of caring for a pet. We have constructed toys for her out of found materials, cleaned her cage, and observed her behavior. The children have enjoyed discovering what she does when given toilet paper tubes and pieces of wood.

Today we had two wonderful large group experiences which connected a number of children in the same activity - inside building a "train" and outdoors playing in the leaves. In both situations the children seemed aware that what they were doing was enhanced by the special fact that others were doing the same thing. These are some of those "magic moments" which set the stage for intentionally engaging with others further down the line at school.

Inside, the play in the grocery store continued popular, with Eleanor using a cart,

and Raya and Abbie intrigued by the new "coins." Many children tried to find a place to insert the coins (Abbie is trying to fit them into a slot on our "mock cash registers." This made us realize that we need to make a box for this purpose.

With the store now placed near the kitchen, we have encouraged the natural progression of "taking your food home and unloading it in the kitchen." Becky helps Henry Da unpack while Quinn looks on.

Across the way many children joined a teacher in informal singing and instrument playing, or explored the instruments on their own. Discussions arise about playing the instruments "too loudly" which encourages children to assert their needs and encourages others to change their volume in response. Here Elizabeth works with Jade and Andreas in singing. It has been helpful to know from parents what some favorite songs are as we have been able to research the words and have them ready, or can play a CD.

An explosion of interest in letters is evident with many children enjoying touching, carrying and naming many letters. Here Troy and Henry Da engage in parallel play with the magnetic letters.

After several sessions of using screws and nuts to construct random buildings, someone jumped into a box, called it a "train" and the magic grew. When we ran out of boxes, a teacher suggested using a chair. Children began to bring over other chairs and the train grew quickly. We sang a few train songs - you could tell by the children's faces and willingness to stay in place that they knew they were part of something new and satisfying - connected play around a purpose with others.

In the gym, Lucia climbs up the A-frame, Eleanor peeks up from below.

We have connected the A-frame in a new setup which requires three different kinds of climbing. We turned one of the sections on its side to make for a more challenging angled climb - care needed to be taken to not drop straight down between the rungs.
Abbie crosses the middle "bridge" section while Jade comes up the new section.

"Mat Mountain" was a new addition this week which appears just suited for the problem solving and motor planning skills of the group. Children must determine how to get up to the middle by either climbing on some tippy bolsters or coming up the new triangle wedge. Once up, they can come down a variety of ways. A few of them have taken to jumping on the top - or even offering hands to another to form a circle. They look at each other with some interest - as though they are aware they have achieved a special status (height) in the room.

We also experimented throwing balls down - some children tossing them, others using the ramp. Here Brenna throws the ball off the mountain.

Outside, Lucia noticed that the "water" wheel (currently being used inside in the water table) functions the same way by putting sand in it - though later discovered that if TOO much sand is dumped in, it needs a little "help" to move through the little hole.

And then there were the leaves. Despite the many days of rain we have had, the oak leaves were dry and crunchy and perfect for loading and raking. We had Beck's dad with us to help make a big pile. Here Quinn and Andreas rake and explore sitting in the leaves,

Henry De loads and dumps his wheelbarrow multiple times to add to the pile,

Quinn and Beck help load the wheelbarrow,

...and Brenna explores the sensation of being half hidden in the leaves. There is something safe and comforting about losing the bottom half of your body in the leaves, kind of like being in a pool of water.

Naomi, Beck, Raya and Henry Da enjoy the leaves and each other's company in them. We talked about how it felt a little like being in Peely's cage - and the children tried making a little nest in the leaves the way Peely does with her bedding - (See photo at top of Beck.) We'll hope you enjoy any leaf raking you have to do this weekend and hope to have a few more days of this glorious fall weather for leaf play at school next week!

During the past week, the children experienced some exciting changes in the room! The musical instruments could be heard down the hallway as children used drums, maracas, sleigh bells, and wooden xylophones to create their own music, rhythms and beats. The water table continued to be a collaborative place where animal habitats were constructed amongst foliage, rocks, and lily pads. In addition, children continued to send letters and packages to classmates in the post office area. Our field trip to the Dinkytown post office allowed children to mail personal letters to their homes. The children have also continued to show an interest in the science table. Both the balance and scale have sparked many discussions about which pumpkins are heavier. On Thursday, some children began cutting open squash! This week, the science table will build off of this interest by including a variety of fruits and vegetables including cucumber, apple, pear, squash, and green pepper for the children to cut open and explore. Expressive materials: -The drawing and collage table will continue to have a variety of leaves and natural materials available. Children have also begun using toilet paper rolls, colored tissue paper and pieces of yarn in their creations. In addition, materials such as paper tubes, tissue paper and rubber bands will continue to be available for children to create their own musical instruments. This area remains a place where children's fine motor skills and creativity are fostered. -Red, green, blue and orange paints continue to be available at the easel. This week, leaves will be placed on the sides of the easel, and children will be encouraged to paint what they observe the leaf to look like. This encourages the development of symbolic representation. Smaller brushes will allow children to paint with more detail, while continuing to practice eye-hand coordination and fine motor control. -Musical instruments will continue to be available in the middle cave. A keyboard will now be available allowing children to create music with different pitches. Percussive instruments such as maracas, hand drums, and sleigh bells will continue to be available as children explore rhythm, beat, and dynamics. Musical instruments promote the development of psychomotor, perceptual and listening skills, as well as developing creativity! -The water table will take a new direction this week as children will have the opportunity to freely explore the scientific properties of water. Water wheels will now be available, allowing children to see how water can move through space. In addition, various measuring containers will be available as a way for children to observe and experiment with liquid volume. The water table continues to be a place where social interactions are developing as children share ideas with one another. -Glurch will be available at the sensory table this week. This mixture of liquid starch and glue provides children with a delightful sensory experience as they attempt to stretch and pull it apart. In addition, gems will be available for children to press and mold into the glurch. This exercise promotes fine motor development. Scissors and glurch markers will also be available to extend fine motor development as well as eye-hand coordination. -After our trip to the Dinkytown post office last week, our post office in the room has been alive with children writing letters to one another and family members. Children have shared many social interactions as they create these projects. New stationary and stickers will be added to this area as a way to keep the interest going. Various postal stamps, maps, an adding machine, telephones, mail packaging, and the blue mailbox will continue to be available. Mail-related books will also be available as a way to incorporate literacy and print. This area continues to promote fine-motor development, creativity, role-playing, and social interaction. -The first cave will feature a new farm set-up this week. A large wooden barn, various farm animals, and tractors will be available. This allows for new dramatic play opportunities as children continue to explore various animal habitats. This area will also promote fine motor skills, cooperative play, and communication skills. -The housekeeping area continues to be available in the center of the room. This week, the babies and stuffed animals will be incorporated into this set-up, as children often use the materials interchangeably. Through cooking with one another, feeding the babies and taking walks around the block, the children are learning cooperative play skills, symbolic representation and using shared materials. -Square and circular stackers will continue to be available to promote color identification, height and length comparisons, counting, eye-hand coordination, and visual discrimination skills. This past week, children were busy building towers and planning how high they could make them. -The wooden Montessori stacking puzzle will continue to be available as children continue to develop counting skills and eye-hand coordination. Children have enjoyed experimenting with their own strategies of completing this puzzle. -Assorted collection of puzzles fostering fine motor development, visual discrimination, shape recognition, and part-whole relations will continue to be available. -This past week, children began to experiment with cutting open squash using pumpkin knives. This activity will be expanded to include more varieties of fruits and vegetables for children to dissect and explore the seeds hidden inside. The large scale and balance will continue to be available as a way for children to formulate hypothesis and use scientific reasoning while comparing/contrasting natural objects. The science table is another area where social interactions are fostered as children make discoveries together. -The book area continues to be a quiet space for children to relax. Books about fall, animals, habitats, and trees will continue to be available. By reading a book and looking at illustrations, children are expanding their print awareness. Classic stories that focus on familiar songs, rhyme and repetition are also available. -Concepts of storytelling have also been expanded into our third cave. Flannel board stories relating to human and animal life will be available for exploration this week. This activity incorporates dramatic play, social interactions, and literacy as children create their own plots and themes. -The peg people will be relocated to the small block area this week in order to promote dramatic play and social interaction. -The hollow blocks continue to be used in the construction of cars and spaceships. Children have made many trips to Target with babies and pets. We will continue to support children's dramatic play in this area and encourage play between the housekeeping and hollow block areas. The block area will now include large pieces of fabric and cones with large sticks to support the fabric. Large clips will also be available for attaching fabric to blocks as a way to expand children's play. -The gym set-up continues to feature the monkey bars with rope swings fostering dramatic play and upper body strength. Children have also demonstrated problem-solving skills should they become twisted in the ropes! The large blue "doughnut" mat has been placed on its side so that children can crawl through it into the small play structure. This also fosters dramatic play inside the play structure while developing upper body strength, coordination, and muscular endurance. In addition, the back of the gym includes a target for kicking/throwing soft balls and bean bags. This fosters children's dynamic balance and propulsion skills. Many children have enjoyed using the bean bags to play catch with other children and teachers. The mats have been set up in a pyramid/stair-step shape to foster children's dynamic balance, flexibility, and agility. Finally, the A-frame ladder is set up in a triangle shape. Children are able to work on their locomotion and balance skills with this familiar structure. -The playground continues to feature the climbing equipment, boat, and swings. Children have also enjoyed playing in the leaves, and watching the seasonal changes unfold. Tricycles, rakes, wheelbarrows, shovels, and wagons continue to be available.

Snack:
Monday: Pumpkin oatmeal made by class & graham crackers
Wednesday: Letter Cookies
Thursday: Rice Cakes

Taking a closer look, and touching the bark of a tree...

Many of the trees still had leaves.

The children found it interesting that other trees nearby didn't have any leaves at all.

Discovery of a wasp's nest.

Jillian getting ready to swing from the oak tree.

Clare jumping into the giant pile of leaves.

Katie, Piper, and Sam making the pile bigger before Sarah jumps in.

Overview
The children have been extremely interested in the woodland animals in the sand table. They have been digging caves and stacking sticks to make homes and hiding places for the animals. Last week on our nature walk we saw bird, squirrel, and wasp nests, which added to the children's interest in animal homes. To further the children's learning about animals that live in trees, we will make available some real birds nests and a wasp nest in the science area for the children to examine more closely. We will also have some new books about animals for reference and will continue conversations about what animals do when the weather gets colder.
Creative Arts
-The children have been enjoying painting on tinfoil. This week they will have an opportunity to use their creative painting skills on a new surface: colored cellophane.
-At the easel we have planned a community-building project that incorporates the classroom wide love of painting. The children have the option to paint cardboard branches to add to our loft/tree house. We will provide both big brushes and smaller brushes so the children can use them to create the appearance of different textures on the branches. We will add the branches to the trees that line the loft. This activity will showcase the children's own artwork and give them a sense of ownership of the classroom. Also, by decorating our classroom with the children's own art work, it will bring their attention to each other and inspire more creativity.
Sensory
- Children have been enjoying manipulating the sand in the sand table by molding, digging, pouring, and burying. We will continue to have all the forest/nature props to support the new imaginative and cooperative play that has been taking place.
-We will be introducing glurch as a new sensory experience. Glurch is a stretchy, stringy, pliable substance that will provide new opportunities for manipulation.
Science
-One of the science tables is going to have different types of nests for the children to examine with magnifying glasses. We will have both real nests, and some pictures for comparison.
-The other science table will continue to have seeds and sprouts. The children have been enjoying hypothesizing what the different sprouts will look like the next day, and also predicting whether or not they will grow into the fruits and vegetables that we took the seeds from. Also, we will be providing a grid and tweezers for the children to put seeds into. While good for fine motor development, it also provides the children an opportunity to take a closer, more careful look at individual seed characteristics.
-Outside of the window by the reading couch we are hanging a bird feeder to attract birds. This will give the children a chance to observe the different kinds of birds that live around the school.
Special Interest
To provide the children with an opportunity to combine creativity and design with their interest in animals, we have set up an animal home building workshop. There are small cross sections of branches, wire, wood shavings, straw, acorns, leaves and playdough bases to give support to these materials. While building awareness of what animals do to prepare for winter, this activity also gives the children a chance to work with wood. Using tree segments will allow children to take a closer look at the inside of a tree. In addition to facilitating conversations about animals the teachers will also encourage the children to think about other ways that trees are used by animals and people.
Math and Manipulative Area
-We will continue to focus on, seriating and sequencing activities. An example of one of the sequencing activities is the growth cycle of a tree starting as a seed and ending as a tree. The children have an opportunity to put the pictures in order of what happens first to what happens last. An example of one of the seriating activities is a shape board with different height pegs. The children place each peg into the proper shape cut out on the board in order of shortest to tallest.
-Mobilos and popiods are still very popular. We added k'nex to challenge the children in new ways.
Literacy
-The writing center continues to be a place for the children to make menus for our restaurant, write books and letters. We added a classroom dictionary for the children to add words with pictures for reference as they practice their writing skills. This book is set up alphabetically and will help the children to recognize letters and begin to learn letter sounds.
-The book center in the loft features books about animals and their homes. The comfy pillows are there to give the children another place to go when they want to relax and read. We will also be orienting the children to look out the windows to watch animal behavior.
Dramatic Play
-We will be continuing to support the children's restaurant play during both free play and snack time. Menus and order taking forms are props that support this form of play in the kitchen area.
-The woodland animal cave continues to be a popular place for the children to make homes for the different types of animals. We added bear costumes to the cave as well to help support imaginative play.
Blocks
-The addition of tools and hard hats to the hollow block area has inspired the children to take on roles of builders as they put together homes and vehicles. The children pretend that they are using a hammer and nails to make their structures sturdier. The tools have also given the children the chance to work through negotiating turn taking.
Large Motor
¬-The wall ladder supports children's core, upper, and lower strength as they climb up and jump down to the mat.
-The horizontal ladder helps support the children's development of depth perception and balance as they walk across and climb down.
-The large donut attached to the side of the slide has been very popular for climbing on top of and sliding down to the ground with a teacher's help. This helps the children develop lower body strength as they try to land upright, and also provides an opportunity for risk taking.
-A stack of mats for the children to climb helps support lower body strength. When they jump down and aim to land on a beanbag they are developing core muscle strength.
-The monkey bars have ropes attached for the children to swing on. Each rope is tied on to the monkey bars by both ends to create a loop. This enables the children to swing back and forth while sitting on the rope. Both balance and core muscles are being strengthened when the children engage in this activity.
Playground
¬-On the playground we have raked a big pile of leaves in the sand box for the children to jump into. This fosters development of large motor muscles, and helps them learn about negotiating turn taking. We have also added a rope to one of the big trees for the children to swing from. Another pile of leaves is below this rope for the children to jump into. This activity develops upper body and core muscle strength as the children try to hold themselves up on the rope and then aim to jump into the leaf pile.
-Last week we put up the squirrel/bird feeders that we made from pine cones, sunflower butter, and birdseed. We have been and will continue to observe the changes to these feeders that show us that the animals do live on the playground and are eating from our feeders.
Snack
Monday: Letter Cheeze-Its & Banana
Tuesday: Mixture-Chex-Cheerios-Cheddar Bunnies
Wednesday: Letter Cookies & Kiwi
Thursday: Graham Crackers & Apple
Friday: No School

Please click here to download our classroom magazine issue number 2. Photos, small groups' updates, recipes, songs, a short article about cooking, upcoming birthdays...

issue number 2.doc

Overview and Goals

Our classroom is actively exploring the seasonal changes in trees and animals. This week we are expanding the topic of hibernation to categorize different types of hibernators and also to include animals that migrate. There is much to discover and investigate with this study of nature. In addition our class small groups are sparking children's interests as Natalie's small group of "Frogs" goes on a field trip this week, Elizabeth's small group of "Transportation" is building specific designs, and Mary Beth's small group of "Cooking" is preparing their own snack in the kitchen this week.

Expressive Arts
~Easel painting is offered with wide and narrow brushes at the same time for children to make comparisons and explore their options.
~An assortment of construction paper is available for the children, along with markers, colored pencils, scissors, and glue sticks to express themselves freely.
~Small thin paint brushes with a variety of paint colors in natural tones and fall colors is set out on trays with shiny paper for children's creations.
~A new blue print drawing area is near the unit blocks with rulers, pencils, and paper to encourage creative planning and expression of building projects.
~The writing center has new pictures of animals that hibernate or migrate that can be used for coloring or might be used as decorative letter with print. Print near the table will include: Draw the house you will build. What will your house look like? Where will the doors or windows go?

Sensory Materials
~Glurch is our new tactile sensation this week. It is made up of glue and liquid starch and has an amazing stretchy pliable texture that can be manipulated, shaped and cut with pizza cutters and scissors.
~The sand table provides children with opportunities to incorporate their sensory investigation with their symbolic play in using the animals, rocks, trees with hibernation and habitat themes. It also provides unlimited opportunities for social interactions.

Science Center
~Our classroom exploration of seeds has some exciting news! The acorn, pumpkin, bean, and corn seeds that were planted have changed dramatically. The children can notice the roots and stems growing in almost all the baggies displayed on the science bulletin board. We will encourage the children measure these new discoveries and determine which ones are ready to be planted in our classroom. Some questions include: Where is the root? Why do seeds grow roots? What is the stem for? Which seed has changed the most? How do you know when the seed is ready to be planted?
~The seeds that were not planted are available for continued observation with magnifying glasses and also for a counting or sorting activity with tweezers and a grid for comparison at the seed science table. Questions include: Which one has the most? Which one has the least? Are the seeds different sizes? How can you make a pattern of seeds?
~Our second science table displays authentic birds' nests and a wasp nest. The children can examine the nests with magnifying glasses and look at the photographs of the animals that live in these nests. Some questions to spark their curiosity and further thinking include: Who lives in nests? How do they build a nest? What holds the nest together? Do all the nests look alike? What is different about them?
~We will encourage children to make connections to notice the connections between how the animals live and what changes are made in preparation for winter. (Some animals go to sleep for the winter, some only nap and snack to survive the winter, some migrate to a warmer place, and some grow warm winter coats.)

Special Interest
~We have a special interest area in the front part of the classroom; children will be able to create their own dream homes for their special animal friends and help them get ready for winter. Real twigs, branch pieces, acorns, wood shavings, glue, and
wire are available on a woodworking table close by the science and sensory tables. This is a great way to connect different areas of our classroom and the topics being investigated. Natural resources, hibernation, animals and their homes, and building are all interconnected in this special area. Check it out!

Dramatic and Symbolic Play
~The housekeeping area continues to evolve in the back of our classroom. This area includes cooking, and cutting Velcro food in half and serving food and ordering off menus. When the customers are not in the housekeeping area, the cooks have been seen taking the menus to the construction site, maybe they will offering food delivery!
~Dresses, vests, and ties are located in the back of the classroom with keys, billfolds and wallets to support the children's socio-dramatic play ideas.
~Hard hats and tool boxes are very popular and instrumental in the children working cooperatively with building and construction with the large hollow blocks. There are sounds of tools sawing and hammering in unison, and children's laughter.
~The first cave continues to be our hibernating cave habitat for a variety of animals. The stuffed animals include a variety of sizes of bears in addition to skunks, frogs, turtles, hedgehogs, and a squirrel. There are photos in the cave to support the children's learning about hibernation and this cave gives the children opportunities for symbolic and dramatic play. Children's social interactions expand in this area as they become familiar with the animals and their actions in their habitat.

Language and Literacy
~An assortment of papers, envelopes, colored pencils, staplers, tape is located in the writing center along with an alphabet.
~The writing center has new pictures of animals that hibernate or migrate that can be used for coloring or might be used as decorative letter with print.
~Blank books have been made available for children to write or draw for use in the cooking area or to create their own ideas to take home.
~Books about fall harvest, and animals that hibernate and migrate are featured in the book area.
~Squirrel books, and special animal books are located in the loft "tree house" area that has been set up with comfortable pillows as an observation area.
~A basket of books about tools and building is located on the shelf under the hard hats.
~Computer center is available for students with children's software games and an opportunity for children to practice taking turns with peers.

Math, Manipulative and Games
We continue to work on matching, sorting, comparing, and seriating objects by size.
~We have some self correcting Montessori cylinders with sizes from small to large, as well as a seriation wooden puzzle, pegs and stacking tower that all support the theme of progression from one size to the next.
~Animal, tree, and additional theme puzzles support the development of part/whole relationships, synthesizing and hand-eye development.
~Memory and lotto games have been a great addition to our classroom especially the one called "Dalia's class". The children really enjoy matching their own pictures as well as their friends and it encourages taking turns, social interactions and additional practice with everyone's name at school.
~Animal mothers and babies lotto and woodland animal bingo games are also popular with our class. The children are having exposure to the animals and hibernation as well as playing cooperatively with others in a game with "rules" which is a cognitive milestone. Teachers support these games with positive encouragement of social interactions and taking turns.
~The second cave with Popoids remains available for symbolic representation and creative building with clipboards and thin markers for recording their ideas or creations. In addition a new building material is available this week called Kinex. This new building material facilitates symbolic representation and creative thinking as well as expression with fostering manual dexterity, eye-hand coordination, pincer grasp and hand strength. When children share materials for building, social interactions are also shared.

Block area
~Hollow blocks are available in the back of the room allowing children to engage in social interactions while using mathematical and spatial concepts as well as creative abilities to build in this large area of the classroom. The steering wheels continue to be available and we are adding the cardboard doors and windows (painted by the children at the easel). The tools and hard hats have been an important connection to cooperative block building for many in our classroom.
~The Unit blocks are placed near the caves and close by to the hollow blocks to encourage children to use these in different areas of the classroom. In addition to the unit blocks we have wooden airplanes and cars to encourage children's symbolic play and socio-dramatic play with the vehicles.

Large Motor
~The gym has a variety of stations which began last week. Swings at the monkey bars foster climbing, hanging, muscular endurance, upper body strength, balance, and vestibular movement. The donut attached to the slide support spatial awareness, flexibility, balance, risk taking, and core muscle strength. Balls are available for target practice, and support aiming, throwing, hand-eye coordination, catching, trapping, and kicking. The metal A frame and bridge encourages climbing, balance, hand-eye coordination, spatial awareness, and alternating feet, as well as supporting upper body strength. A mat mountain is very popular with the children and is for climbing up and down, jumping and fostering risk taking, spatial awareness, and depth perception.
~We will continue to go outside to the playground as the weather permits. Buckets, shovels, rakes, wagons, paddles, and a variety of cups and plates are available to encourage digging, raking, upper and lower body strength and social play. There are so many leaves to play in and hay bales to walk and balance on. In addition the playground has monkey bars, swings, slides, and paths to ride and run on. We encourage children to be active and support the development of building their stamina and endurance.

Music and Movement/Large Group
~We will continue to sing welcome songs and the names of all the children building community in our classroom. A new silly song called Willaby Wallaby will feature a rhyming game with each of the children's names in large group this week.
~We will review the children's hibernation knowledge and expand on more than one kind of hibernation. A "true" hibernator eats a lot of food and look for a safe place to spend the whole winter in caves, dens, or burrows. Some animals that are not "true" hibernators do not hibernate for the whole winter instead they are like nappers and snackers! We will have some group participation acting out the long and short kind of hibernation that animal's exhibit.
~ We will review what children know about migration and observe the V pattern that some birds fly in, as well as discuss some other animals that migrate besides birds like Monarch butterfly, Canadian geese, ducks, and some kinds of bats.
~We will introduce a song called "I'm in the mood" by Raffi that gives the children the opportunity to choose the movement for the class to follow.
~We will have an interactive story that the children can help "read" called First The Egg with sequencing of events in nature that repeat in a cycle like the seasons.

Mary Beth

Weekly Lesson Plan
Weeks of Nov 2 - Nov 6, 2009
Lead Teaching This Week: Team

Overview and goals
The children have been very active this week! Many have found favorite areas in the classroom to visit as well as favorite play themes to participate in over the course of the last six weeks. This repetition of activities and stories supports the children's utilization with materials over time, however we also want to help the children see that there is more to school than the block area or the art table. In order to encourage continual growth in all developmental domains, we will incorporate new and exciting activities to help children explore "new" areas of the classroom: such as papermaking, Legos, as well as new musical instruments (i.e. a keyboard and sandpaper blocks). We will also continue to observe our seeds and their growth in the science area, as the seeds have begun to sprout! With these new activities, we hope that the children will gain new interests while expanding on old ones. The new materials and areas will also encourage cooperative play and new social relationships.

Art Center
Expressive Materials
~ Expanding on the theme of book making, this week children will have the opportunity to make their own paper through a teacher facilitated activity. The art table will continue to have collage materials as well other open-ended materials including markers, crayons, colored pencils, and colored paper. These supplies will foster creative development, artistic expression, fine-motor strength/coordination, as well as encourage social interaction.
~A few children have explored natural print making materials at the easel last week. To continue to support this exploration of print making and creative development, the large easel will be available with other miscellaneous items including foam rollers, feather dusters, and variously-shaped blocks that will allow for different prints/applications of paints.
~Music has been a theme through many children's play the past week. Musical instruments have promoted social relationships and creative expression. Musical instruments - including hand drums, xylophones, maracas, and jingle bells - will continue to be available in one of the caves for the children to use. Through exploration of the materials and large groups children will continue to develop a beginning knowledge of music elements: such as beat, rhythm, tone, and meter.

Sensory Materials
~ As we phase out the animals at the water table, new materials including pumps, paddle-wheels and tubing will shift our focus to exploring the topic of water movement. Materials will promote the development of inquiry, problem solving, and creativity as well as social interaction. As children become familiar with the properties of water, we will add soap for children to investigate how this changes water properties.
~ At the clay table, awareness has been built as many children have begun to explore the properties of the clay through the use of different tools. The clay has been a great way for children to practice fine motor strength and coordination. This week, through teacher modeling and large groups, we will begin to promote the development of molding and shaping the clay into representational objects. We expect to see creative models emerge as children begin to mold their ideas into clay.

Science Center
~The past week, children have observed different seeds at the science table. As seeds continue to sprout children will have the opportunity to begin to observe and track their growth through the use of classroom digital cameras. Different seeds will be available for children to compare and make predictions about their growth, supporting the development of scientific inquiry and observation.

Math and Manipulative Center
~This week stringing beads and shoelaces will be added to the manipulative center. This will help fine-motor skills. It will also support one-to-one correspondence, patterns, and hand to eye coordination.
~In one of the caves there will be legos added in order to offer something new in the classroom. The legos will encourage more social relationships and interactions. It will also support creativity and cooperative play when they build structures together. . They will also have a chance to practice fine-motor skills.

Language and Literacy Center
~We continue to have daily visitors at the literacy center, writing of letters to other students as well as family members, and using the mailbox in the classroom to "send" them. The mail center will continue to be available this week and the supplies will be replenished. This will continue to support social interaction and relationships. It will also support early literacy skills. We encourage you to talk to your children about mail and mailing letters back to school and maybe even to classmates.

Block Center
~There continues to be a lot of creative building happening in the block center. We have seen, police helicopters and boats this week. In order to keep the block center new and exciting we will introduce large pieces of fabric and cones with large sticks to support the fabric. Large clips will also be available for attaching fabric to blocks. It is our hope that the introduction of new materials for building will reintroduce children who have taken a break from the block center back into the dramatic play themes and building.

Dramatic Play Center
~There has been a lot of activity in our animal hospital this last week. We have seen animals being nursed back to health, operations, and even animals "hatching." The animal hospital has been so popular that we are going to expand it to allow more children to play in the area at a time. We will also introduce more props and new animals to extend the play. The area will continue to support the forming of social relationships, turn taking as well as cooperation.

Large Motor
~ In the gym this week there will be swings from the monkey bars, A-frames turned upside-down, stacked mats, and a throwing target. This set up will allow the children to practice balance, climbing, landing on a flat surface with two feet and absorbing their landing, depth perception, throwing, targeting, and hand/eye coordination with using the balls.
~ Mid week last week we introduced a large pile of leaves available for jumping and a rope swing. The two have been a hit and will continue to be available on the playground. Child sized rakes will be available for raking up leaf pile allowing the children to make their own pile for jumping. As always the bikes, wagons, shovels, and buckets will be available to play with. Of course at this time of year we must go day by day with the weather. If the snow comes we will need to alter our play ground plans but, the presence of snow will allow us to have just as much fun!

Special Interest
~Picture will be talking place on Tuesday this week! Don't forget to send in your order form WITH payment if you are interested in purchasing pictures this year. Individual portraits will be taken as well as a class photo. It will be a bit of a busier day, but a conversation at home about how the day will be different can help make the change in routine go smoothly.
~NO SCHOOL on Friday. Remember to stay home and have fun!

Snack
Monday: Sunflower Butter Sandwiches
Tuesday: Open Snack-Letter Cheeze-Its
Wednesday: Open Snack- Graham Crackers
Thursday: Open Snack- Letter Cookies
Friday: No School

*All snacks served with milk and water, unless otherwise noted*

Here are the updates from last week's small group meetings. Take a look!

Elizabeth's Group: Abe, Garrin, Hadley, Juliet, Nigel, Oliver
Small Group Newsletter ELIZABETH1.doc

Small Group Newsletter ELIZABETH2.doc

Small Group Newsletter ELIZABETH3.doc

Small Group Newsletter ELIZABETH4.doc

Small Group Newsletter ELIZABETH5.doc

Rachel's Group: Alexis, Cedrick, Estelle, Helena, Otto, William
Small Group Newsletter RACHEL1.doc

Small Group Newsletter RACHEL2.doc

Small Group Newsletter RACHEL3.doc

Small Group Newsletter RACHEL4.doc

Small Group Newsletter RACHEL5.doc

Stacy's Group: Ella, Evan, Nora, Peyton, Riley
Small Group Newsletter STACY1.doc

Small Group Newsletter STACY2.doc

Small Group Newsletter STACY3.doc

Small Group Newsletter STACY4.doc

Small Group Newsletter STACY5.doc