January 2010 Archives

Overview
The children continue to show curiosity and interest in building, light, shadows, patterns and measurement. To give direction to this curiosity, the teachers will ask the children questions as well as provide them with meaningful activities that will help stimulate the children's thinking about their experiences. Engaging in conversations with teachers and peers provides the children with the chance to listen to each other's views and thoughts. It also helps to keep the children focused so deeper learning can occur. The children have noticed that the amaryllis bulb in the science center is starting to grow, so this week we added a couple of measurement activities to the science center. To continue fostering feelings of community, the teachers have decided to turn the clay table into a collaborative work station where individual pieces can be added to a communal clay creation.

Creative Arts
- Beading: After witnessing the popularity of the glass beading activity on Creativity Night, the teachers decided to bring these highly motivating materials to the class as a way to experiment further with patterns, light, and translucence. We will encourage the children to bring their bead creations to the overhead projector or light tables to see how they affect one another.

-Easel: The children love to paint; they especially love to watch the colors mix together as they cover the whole paper with paint. To help the children further explore patterns, we have added tape to the easels. The children can use the tape to create patterns on the paper. Once the children's paintings are dry, they can then remove the tape to see the pattern that the tape left behind.

Sensory
-Earth Clay: The children have enjoyed working with the clay. We have noticed that they like to combine all of the earth clay together to create one large piece of work. Providing the children with one large clay board, rather than individual boards, presents them with the opportunity to collaborate, build community and develop new friendships as they create new designs.

Science
- The children have started to notice our rapidly growing amaryllis plant and are curious about how much taller it will get. We have added a growth chart to introduce the tools used for measuring height and length. The children will also have an opportunity to predict how tall the plant will get. We have also added chart for predicting height. Both activities will reinforce the scientific recording of observations and data.
- New raptors have been added to the cozy animal cave. When the raptors are squeezed they let out their raptor calls, the children have enjoyed listening to, and imitating, the calls of the birds. The children also love to engage in dramatic play by making the birds fly throughout the room.
-During our field trip to the raptor center, the children were introduced to the topic of wingspan and even had a chance to compare their own arm span to that of the raptors. To further develop the children's interest in wingspan, we have decided to add a wing/arm span chart to the science center; the children will be able to mark their own wingspan on the chart by putting up their picture. This activity will provide another opportunity to practice measurement skills and make comparisons as they record the span of their arms to classmates and various raptors.
- The back of the classroom has been rearranged to provide more space to
experiment with light, transparencies, and shadows. The children now have the room to make whole body shadows. They have already begun to experiment by moving their bodies closer to, and farther back from, the light source. They noticed that these movements affect shadow size and clarity. In addition to making body shadows, the children formulate guesses as to which of the objects from the array provided, will let light through and which ones will not.

Math and Manipulatives
-The manipulative cave has now been transformed into a lego den. The addition of multiple types and sizes of wheels has inspired the children to create race cars, jets, and trucks. The children's interest in speed and movement has sparked the creation of race tracks and ramps. To further encourage the children to experiment with movement, we have added ramps and tunnels to the outside of the lego den.
- The children have enjoyed experimenting with the new manipulatives underneath the loft. They have been creating new patterns with the egg peg boards. The egg peg boards and have allowed the children to practice one to one correspondence and color recognition. The children have also enjoyed building with the translucent legos. Through this activity the children are practicing part-whole relationships and they are experimenting with height and balance of their structures.

Literacy
- The writing center in the front of the room has been very busy. We have added a 16 drawer organizer labeled with the names and photos of each child. Each child's drawer holds small pieces of paper with their name. The children cut and sorted names all last week and have begun using them to address letters, make creative designs and books. Matching the letters and sorting out the names into the appropriate boxes is contributing to letter and letter sound recognition, which will enhance their beginning reading skills.

Dramatic Play
-The play kitchen has been moved to the very back right corner of the room. With this movement came the increased interest in restaurant play. The children have been enjoying mixing up lemonade and creating bird seed platters to serve to each other. The teachers will begin to encourage the children to create their own menus by providing the children with paper and pencils in the kitchen area.

Blocks
- The children enjoy interacting and building in the block area. The popular creations this week included the building of long race tracks, houses, obstacle courses, and fast space ships. The hollow blocks enhance the growth of their construction skills and problem solving as they work to build sturdy structures that represent their ideas. The children have also started to use the colorful fabrics to create roofs and bedding for their large block structures. Dramatic play and social negotiation are also a large part of this activity as children use these structures to support cooperative play.

Playground
- Over the past couple of weeks the children have enjoyed building with snow chunks and shoveling big holes in the snow. To help further support the children's interest in snow we have decided to add pails of water to the playground, this will allow the children to observe how water transforms into ice. The children will also be able to use the water to help stick the snow onto their structures. The sledding hill continues to be an active area. In addition to the rigorous physical activity provided by sledding, sledding can also be used as a community and friendship builder between Ross' class and our own.

Gym
- This week the children will get to explore the new gym set up. The children will be able to strengthen their muscles, body coordination, and spatial awareness by swinging on the rope swing and balancing on the beam. To support the children's throwing/catching skills and eye-hand coordination we have turned the blue donut into a throwing station. In order to support team building and balance we have added a bumpy mat island and scooter boards.

Snack
Monday: Fruit & Oat Bars by Class
Tuesday: Rice Cakes & Banana
Wednesday: Rice Chex & Apple
Thursday: Animal Crackers & Oranges
Friday: Pretzels and Applesauce made by Class

The children continued to explore the snow with great interest.

Elle and Lucia use mittens to dig and scoop snow.

Raya and Quinn go bare handed as they work in the snow tub.

For the last two weeks, we have offered ramps of increasing sizes. The children were thrilled with experimenting with wheels, balls, tubes and round dowels, some also used their own bodies or the sharks from the nearby water habitat to slide. And the distance things travel has increased as the ramps get higher. Here Henry Da tries a wheel on the boards we attached to the side of the loft.

Raya used a hammer to "fix" the ramp.

Compared to the start of the year, when construction building involved 4-6 blocks and where the focus was more on knocking over buildings as opposed to completing them, the children have recently begun to spend a full 20 minutes on more complex buildings which end up covering the entire back section. They have recently been building "fancy condo's" and chose to use some of the materials we had out for rolling down the ramps, (like the blue tubes) to elaborate on their buildings.

Naomi shakes some mint into her playdough. The addition of mint to the playdough table caused many children to act on cooking themes, talking of things they make at home, reading recipe cards we had made from earlier in the year (with foods parents told us were home cooking favorites.) They are learning some early reading skills (associating photos and print with meaning) and celebrated several birthday in the kitchen.

Classroom List

Alper
Antonio
Aoife
Aubrey
Charlie D
Charlie Elliot
Delilah
Frances
Georgia
Harper
Inga
Isaac
James
Leo
Maddie
Raymond
Rosie
Ruby

Teachers
Beth
Janet
Lisa
Dalia

If you misplaced your classroom pictures, please download the file bellow.

Dalia class pics 09 10-1.pdf

Overview and Goals
We will continue to focus on patterns and birds this week. We will also begin to emphasize rhyming words. Last week the children were introduced to rhyming during large group and snack time conversations. The topic of rhyming will be incorporated into several areas of the classroom this week. Small groups began last week and the children have enjoyed exploring the topics of art/sensory/music, birds, and castles.

Expressive Arts
-Children continue to use the easel in the front of the classroom. This week we will be using red, yellow, and blue paint. We will continue to paint with feathers to encourage creative expression with a variety of tools.
-This week we will be introducing a new activity to the art area. We will begin using beads and wire to explore shapes, colors, and patterns while promoting fine motor and creative skills.

Sensory Materials
-The children continue to spend time working with the earth clay. Last week we introduced making some very important shapes with the clay. This week will take the children's learning a step further by introducing tools.
-We did not spend much time outside in the snow last week due to the cold weather, so we hope to get outside and explore the snow this week. We will try to create molds and shapes with the snow while we are on the playground.

Dramatic, Symbolic Play and Blocks/Creative Building
- The children have spent a great deal of time in the hibernation cave this past week playing with the stuffed animals/birds and natural materials. This past week the children have discussed hibernation, animal families, and created a pet shop within the cave.
-The castle blocks and hollow blocks have been very popular this last week. The children have been working cooperatively to build race tracks, buildings, castles and other complex structures. Several children have incorporated props from other areas of the classroom to enhance their block play.
-The kitchen set has been moved to the back of the classroom. The children continue to engage in dramatic play themes such as party planning and picnics. Often the play extends into the loft area where the children combine literacy and dramatic play.
-The children have been creating many different things in the Lego area including race cars, fire trucks, homes, and garages. The legos will continue to give the children an opportunity to enhance fine motor skills and be creative in their building.

Science Center
-The children have been noticing the variety of birds and squirrels that visit the bird feeder outside of the classroom window. We will continue tracking their visits and comparing our sightings to those of the morning class.
-The children check daily to see if our tadpoles have grown legs. We will continue to discuss the life cycle of the frog as we anxiously await their legs to arrive. The children will continue to observe and record what they see.
-Feathers, tracks, birds, and nests will still be available for the children to explore. We have added an opportunity to learn about the different wingspan of birds while continuing to compare the colors of feathers found on various birds.
-This week we will begin exploring colors more closely. Children will have an opportunity to experiment with mixing three primary colors using colored water, pipettes, and test tubes. Colors will become an increasingly more important theme in our classroom in the coming weeks.
-Our light area has moved to allow the children an opportunity to experiment with light, shadows, and distance from the light source. In the past week the children have investigated how the projector works and have experimented with putting objects onto the projector. This week we will encourage the children to use their bodies to make shapes and shadows, and trace their bodies. Transparencies and markers have also been added to the area.

Language and Literacy
-The children have been utilizing the two writing areas, and we will continue to make those available to the children. This week we will introduce rhyming books to the children in large group. Each child will be given a book in which to write or draw pictures of rhyming words.
-Coloring pattern grids will still be available in the writing center to encourage the use of patterns throughout the classroom.
-Books about winter and animals in winter and snow will still be available to the children. Rhyming books have been added and will be incorporated into large group and end of the day read aloud to encourage the children to recognize rhyming words.

Math, Manipulatives and Games
-This past week we have focused on patterning with the children during large group time. We explored the concept of rhythmic patterns in music. The children continue to have many opportunities to make patterns with the button mosaics, lacing beads, unifix cubes, and patterning blocks.
- A ladybug patterning activity was introduced during large group last week and carried over into free choice time.
- Puzzles continue to be available to encourage children to pay attention to whole and parts, synthesizing and analyzing as well as refining their fine motor skills.
-Legos continue to support children's creative building, fine motor skills and strength, as well as cooperation and symbolic play.

Large Motor
-The set up in the gym has changed. The new arrangement features the famous rope swing to support upper and lower body strength and coordination while maintaining body balance. A climbing structure for spatial awareness, eye-foot coordination, balance, lower body coordination and turn taking. In a corner, there is throwing pit to support directional awareness, upper body strength and coordination, throwing-catching abilities, eye-hand coordination and agility. The big donut is surrounded by red/blue rolling mats to support team building, climbing uneven surfaces, spatial awareness, maintaining balance and upper/lower core strengthening. A mat jumping station supporting two-footed landing, lower body/core strengthening and coordination and strength perception. There is also an open tiled surface for cooperative scooter boards to promote team building, upper body strength and endurance, full body balance, spatial awareness and core strengthening. From time to time, we will offer kick bowling in the hallway to promote lower body coordination and offer opportunities to practice kicking skills.
-We hope to spend more time outside on the playground this week. We will continue to offer sledding to the children as well as encouraging creative use of the snow with shovels, buckets, and molds.

Music and Movement/Large Group
-Last week our large groups were held inside and provided several opportunities for movement, singing, and learning about patterns and birds. This week rhyming will be included in large group songs and motor activities. We will be playing rhyming games that allow children to share rhyming words and create some unique rhymes to familiar songs such as "Down by the Bay".

I enjoy spending time learning and interacting with each of your children. Their positive energy and enthusiasm for learning create a fun and inviting classroom community.

~Beth

The children continue to be fascinated with snow and ice in the classroom. It was especially helpful to have and manipulate these natural elements in the classroom because it was too cold for us to go out! Children have embraced dramatic play, learning how to include other children, use various forms of props, and negotiate roles and story lines with each other.

A variety of scissors were displayed with lined paper. The children were encouraged to pick scissors of their choice and cut or make snips along the lines of the paper. This activity strengthened their fine motor control and dexterity as they learned how to work the regular and adaptive scissors.

This is a story derived from the children about a bear family living in the cave. The children were negotiating to claim a space in the cave and sharing "food" with each other. Though they were all collaborating in a bear cave story, they each contributed to the story line by finding their own food and showing different bear personalities.

The bears were sleeping in the cave. Ellie bear said, "It's time to wake up! Lets get some food!" The bears stretch and begin crawling out of their cave.

Ellie bear said, "I found food, come back to the cave!" The other "cubs" grab their source of food to share. Alma bear found a shark that she thought her fellow bears could eat and share. Ely and Cormac found pegs.

After they finished their food, the children went back to sleep.

The children have been balancing and adding the blocks to make taller towers and vehicles to support their pretend play.

Since we didn't have a chance to go out this week, the children enjoyed digging for jewels in the snow in the classroom.

Small Group
Small groups met this week.

Edenia's sensory group (Cashton, Maia, Elliot, Abby, Sofia) had a sensory experience with making bubbles using sponges and hand mixers.

Darya's music and movement group (Max, Beatrix, Katie, Madeline, Sam) recently met to play instruments and dance.

Jeannine's food group (Otto, Ely, Cormac, Eba, Ellie, Alma) went on a "picnic" with her group.

Please remember that not every child at this age is ready to participate in such a group. Some children may choose to participate on certain days and not others. Though we encourage children to join us, it is their choice to participate on any given day.

Announcements:
-Valentines Day is fast approaching. While we make it a practice not to celebrate holidays in the classroom, we do facilitate a card exchange for those who wish to participate on this day. We find that it greatly supports the children's social connections to receive a card from their classmates. Making or addressing cards is also a wonderful way for children to work on emerging fine motor/writing skills. Whether your child draws a "message" or design on the card, put stickers on, glues something, or helps label the envelopes, (perhaps by taping or gluing the photos of the recipient,) there is probably something your child can do to participate in this ritual. We will put a copy of the photo page in your child's box. Please do not send candy or other gift as part of the greeting. At this age, they still are thrilled by a simple card and why ruin that innocence so soon in life? Imagine a child happily looking through their valentines, admiring each and every one, suddenly discovering a piece of candy. I've seen it. What happens is they move quickly to tossing away the other notes as garbage while they rummage through looking to see if there are more with candy. We will use lunch bags for the children to hold their notes, and will do the exchange on Thursday, February 11th.

-Please remember to sign up for the parent/teacher conference if you have not already done so. If you cannot sign up in person, please send me via email your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choice of time. Thank you.

-We are interested in posting family recipes. If you have a favorite (especially one in which your child helps out with), please send it in for us to post in this area as inspiration for variety of food creations. Thank you!

-Gym Jam is on Friday, February 5th between 6:30pm to 8:00pm. Bring the kids, the cousins, the neighbors the grandparents and come RUN AND PLAY! Watch your email for more info on location. Bierman Field is located on 15th Avenue SE. Enter between 5th and 6th St. SE - there will also be signs for you to follow.

-This Wednesday is the Coffee Hour with the Director, Barb Murphy, from 8:45 am to 9:45am. Come and ask questions on Lab School Curriculum, history, child development, or anything else. Barb is a great source of information, advice, support and laughter.

Lesson Plan
Lead Teacher: Edenia
Week of February 1st, 2010

Goals:
The focus for this week will be to support the children as they are learning to work together, acknowledge each other, and create a community. We would also like the students to learn, recognize, empathize, and express emotions with each other using words, signs, and photos. Changes in the classroom have been made to extend some of the curriculum ideas and to support the play themes the children have been involved with.

Art:
The children will begin to work on a collaborative piece of art. A table will have one large piece of paper for the students to draw on together. The piece of art will be displayed at the end of each day. Displaying their work will reinforce their pride and accomplishments. The art table will also have several types of scissors to allow the students to practice and strengthen their fine motor skills.

Manipulative/Math:
- There will be new puzzles incorporating the themes of self help, animals and vehicles.

-The stacking pegs will continue to be available with the peg boards. The children have been exploring how high they can make them before they bend over. As the children stack the pegs they are using fine motor movements and eye hand coordination. The pegs are promoting mathematical skills such as counting, balancing, and making patterns. This activity also supports turn taking as they stack together; it also is promoting problem solving skills as they figure out how high they can stack them before the pegs bend and fall.

-There will be measuring spoons and simple three step "recipes" for the students to make.

Sensory:
-Although making cookies continues to be a favorite choice in the playdough area, other baking ideas are emerging as well. To further these interests, we will expand the playdough area to include pans, bowls, and measuring cups. In addition, we will offer children the opportunity to add mint to the playdough, using a shaker bottle. There will also be bowls of cornmeal for the students to stir/measure into their playdough recipes. Creating with playdough allows children to develop small muscle control and use creativity and inventiveness. We are interested in posting family recipes. If you have a favorite (especially one in which your child helps out with), please send it in for us to post in this area as inspiration for variety of food creations. Thank you!
-Water will be making its way back to the sensory table as a concrete habitat for the marine animals. There will be scoops for catching fish as well as tongs to get the fish out of the water. As the students explore the habitat for the fish they will also have the opportunity to play out the Slippery Fish song. The song supports understanding of the food chain (the idea of the smaller animal getting eaten by a progressively bigger animal).

Science:
-The students will have the opportunity to hypothesize about which set of foot prints belong to what animal. -There have been longer and steeper ramps for the students to explore from the loft area. There will be a variety of rolling and sliding materials to experiment with speed, friction, gravity, and velocity.
Dramatic Play:
- The kitchen and playdough area are going to be combined in the front of the classroom to support the interest in food, creating recipes, and serving each other. This is going to be a significant change to their classroom which we hope will allow them to integrate all aspects of a kitchen into their cooking. For example, the students will have all of the baking items, place settings and food in one central location.
-The loft area has been stripped of large furniture to accommodate the multiple pretend play stories that happen in that area. This area promotes social skills such as cooperation and play negotiation in a familiar setting.
-The children have enjoyed using the materials in the "Repair Shop." Some children have taken on the role of the mechanic, asking the other children how they can fix their vehicle. Many children enjoy using the tow trucks to help bring the broken vehicles to the shop. There are shirts with name tags allowing the children to dress up like a mechanic. This will hopefully inspire them to go deeper as they see themselves as a mechanic. Throughout this play scenario the children are fostering social skills such as cooperation, sharing, and problem solving.

Language and Literacy:
-There will be new books related to the themes in classroom, such as architecture/building books, alphabet, and emotion books.
-Favorite family recipes will be posted in the playdough area as a reference for children to use when recreating experiences of cooking, eating, and serving.
-Feeling words such as mad, happy, tired, and sad will be posted along with photographs of children displaying different emotions to allow children to begin recognizing and labeling their emotions.
-Documentations of children acting out stories and exploring different play themes will be posted throughout the classroom for children to use as a reference to their play.
Construction:
-The large hollow blocks and unit blocks are still available for the children to use in the repair area. The children started using the ramps to roll wheels from the repair shop in the cave. They are investigating the speed and distance the wheels, pegs, and rods can travel. Along with the ramps the classroom has shown interest in building rocketships and "fancy" condos to support their dramatic play themes of taking trips to the moon. We will add smaller lighter building blocks for the students to heave up onto their "tall" structures. The large area for construction continues to encourage cooperation and group projects.
Large Motor:
-The gym has been changed to continue to support children's use of balance, coordination, strength, and endurance.
-Outdoors, colored and "glittery" ice molds will be buried in the snow for the children to find by digging with their hands or with various tools. Shovels, scoops, and pails will continue to be available outdoors to support the use of upper body strength. In addition, children will have the opportunity to push trucks and wheelbarrows and pull sleds through the snow to foster endurance.
Large Groups:
There will be further discussion about emotions, what they look like, and the correlating American Sign Language (ASL)signs. We will incorporate movement experiences during large group that involve the entire body and coordination. These activities are promoting following directions, large motor development, and spatial awareness.

Snack:
Monday: Birthday snack, Fruit & Oat Bars by Amy's class
Wednesday: Cheddar Bunnies & Banana
Thursday: Cheese & Crackers

Weekly Lesson Plan
Week of 2/1-2/5
Lead Teaching this week: Stephanie

Overview and Goals:
As we have been stuck inside the majority of the week, due to blistering cold weather, the children have been really excited to see Mama rat and her babies grow over the last week. They quickly became a focal point for several activities that took place in the classroom; including documenting the changes occurring with the babies via diagrams and charts, creating hypothesis about what they eat and how they are changing, having conversations about how the rats use their sense of smell to search for food, as well as making toys and pictures for the baby rats at the art table. This has been a great way to support or focus on higher-level thinking as the children continue to investigate Mama, her babies, and all the other class pets - especially the tadpoles as one has grown all its legs and continues to increase in size!

Art:
Expressive: The children have been very creative with the materials at the art table. Binoculars for dramatic play, toys for the rats, and pictures for traveling have been a few things we have seen created at the art table. To extend this artistic expression, we will add new materials at the table for the children to utilize in their creations. These materials include pipe cleaners, textured paper and fabrics, as well as buttons to help spark new ideas and new possibilities.
Sensory: We have completed our focus on the sense of touch in the flax seed table and ready to challenge the children's thinking in a new way! Because there seems to be a predominate interest in building and creating materials around the classroom, we would like to introduce pullies, levies, tubes, and tunnels for the children to explore with the flax seed. These materials will stimulate problem solving techniques, increase discussion throughout the classroom, as well as introducing way to figure out how new "machines" work. Also, we will continue exploring clay as we introduce new materials (e.g. nuts, bolts, washers, and scraps of plastic pipes) to stimulate new means of manipulating the clay: fostering creative and artistic expression, symbolic representation, and fine motor skills.

Science:
We will switch gears from the olfactory sense to the sense of taste. All the sense work together in giving our brain information, however smell and taste seem to be the two that work the closest together, and we want to help the children learn about the companionship of these sense as well as how they work independently. Matching the taste of certain foods (oranges, bananas, olives, etc.) to their corresponding scent will stimulate the children's thinking how these senses are connected. We will also learn about the different kind of taste buds on the tongue and how they help our brains know if we are eating something sweet, salty, spicy, and so on. Graphs and charts will continue to be in this area to stimulate mathematical thinking, scientific reasoning, and continue the practice of collecting data like real scientists.

Manipulatives:
Because the children have just begun to explore the matching games in the manipulative area, we will continue to use these materials this week; adding a new "nuts and bolts" matching game that fosters reasoning skills, comparing sizes, as well as supports fine-motor skills. We will also introduce cranks, gears, and other mechanical devices in this area to support the interest in building/creating while fostering mechanical thinking and investigations about how things work. This also supports the part-to-whole relationships, fine-motor skills, and hypothesis creating/testing. With these manipulatives in place, we will encourage the children to think critically while solving the problems accompanying these tasks. Skills addressed in this area of the classroom also include solving problems independently as well as with peers through discussions. In addition, the DUPLOS have created new opportunity for the children to build new structures. With the interest in travel, we will add an airport that the train tracks can connect to, extending the play and giving the trains a "destination." The new additions will stimulate peer interaction and creative thinking, as well as the development of fine motor skills. Pictures of the children's creations will be placed in the caves to help the children recall previous structures built and stimulate new creations.

Literacy Center:
Many postcards, pictures, and drawings were made last week, fostering literacy and fine motor skills. When the children enter the literacy center they use stamps, markers, and assorted papers. To encourage the children to focus more on their writing skills, we will introduce alphabet and number boards to help improve the children's letter recognition as well as encourage them to practice writing their ABC's. As children learn to create these letters they are also beginning to develop their pre-literacy skills and are preparing for writing skills to come.

Dramatic Play:
Though the children continue to take trips, we want to support the adventurous thinking taking place in the blocks. The suitcases are moving to the house and all an "all purpose supply store" is moving in! Nuts, bolts, wire, washers, boxes, etc will all be available to help fuel the "internal" building taking place in the blocks. With these new materials, the children will be able to expand their imaginations and create new structures.

Blocks:
The interest in transportation continues to live on in the block area! Recently we have seen the children expand on their building ideas and have observed the children adding internal components to their buildings and vehicles. We will help facilitate the incorporation of the new materials from the "supply store" to support the children's new ideas and visions with building. These new materials will continue to support collaboration, cooperative play, negotiation skills, as well as create opportunities to have discussions about how machines actually work. This focus will encourage higher-level thinking, promote scientific inquiry, as well as stimulate deeper investigation related to figuring out how different machines work.

Outside/gym:
There is a new gym set-up! A rope swing, mat-jumping station, throwing/catching corner, balance beam bridge, scooter boards, and climbing structure made out of tumbling mats (nicknamed "Bolster Island") will be available in the gym this week. The new set-up will support, upper/lower body strength and coordination, muscular endurance, agility, spatial awareness skills, depth perception, core strengthening, balance, eye-hand/eye-foot coordination, over-/under-hand throwing, catching, and opportunities to practice team building and turn taking skills. Also, as the weather slowly warms up, we are hoping to head out to the playground as much as possible this week. Sledding, digging/shoveling the snow, and searching for tracks continue to be favorite activities while we're outside. Please remember to keep sending your snow gear, as we hope to get outside and shed the build sense of "cabin fever."

Additional Announcements:
Be sure to get your enrollment for next year turned in by Monday, February 1 to reserve your child's spot for next year! If you have any additional questions, please let Ann Ruhl Carlson or me know!
Coffee hours with Barb will be happening this week! There are taking place on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings from 8.45-9.45a and Wednesday afternoon from 12.45-1.45p. This is a great opportunity to sit down and chat with Barb, please try to make it in!
GYM JAM this Friday, February 5th from 6.30-8p. Bring the family and tell your friends! This fun and exciting evening will be held at Bierman Athletic Field. Let me know if you have any questions.

Snack:
Monday: Fruit & Oat Bars by Amy's class
Tuesday: Open Snack-Multigrain Cheerios & Raisins
Wednesday: Open snack-Rice Cakes
Thursday: Open snack-Trader Joe's Letter Crackers
Friday: Pita & String Cheese

Please sign up for a time below! During the winter conferences, we will talk in greater detail about your child's overall development. Because the meetings last about an hour and are more formal, please plan childcare accordingly. The meetings will happen either in the parent/teacher lounge behind the kitchen, in the classroom, or in my office. If these dates and times do not work, please let me know and we can try to arrange another time. Thanks!

Also, this schedule will be updated daily. Please check back for available times. If emailing your request, please remember to send your top 3 availabilities.

Third Week

Monday, Feb 22

5p _____Juliet_____

6p _____Oliver______

Tuesday, Feb 23

11.30a ____Peyton___

1p _____Evan_______

2p _______________

Wednesday, Feb 24

8a _______________

5p _____Estelle_____

Thursday, Feb 25

5p _____Helena_____

6p _____Ella________

Friday, Feb 26

11.30a ____Cedrick___

12.30p ____William___

1.30p _____Otto_____

2.30p _____Nora_____

Updates from week of 1/25/10

Mama and her babies . . .

It was too cold to go outside this week, but the children enjoyed the extra time playing in the gym . . .

The children continue to explore and utilize their new skills throughout the classroom . . .

Working with clay . . .

Using the hollow blocks to build a submarine . . .

Hope you all have a fantastic weekend! We will see you next week.

Updates from Week of 1/20/10:

The train caves . . .

Several children built a large bus for all to ride . . .

Creative art and sensory exploration . . .

Making banana pancakes for snack . . .

Lead Teacher: Edenia

Goals:
The focus for this week will be to support the children as they are learning to work together, acknowledge each other and to create a community. We would also like the students to learn, recognize, empathize, and express emotions with each other using words, signs, and photos. Changes in the classroom have been made to extend some of the curriculum ideas and to support the play themes the children have been involved with.

Art:
The children will begin to work on a collaborative piece of art. A table will have one large piece of paper for the students to draw on together. The piece of art will be displayed at the end of each day. Displaying their work will reinforce their pride and accomplishments. The art table will also have several types of scissors to allow the students to practice and strengthen their fine motor skills.

Manipulative/Math:
- There will be new puzzles incorporating the themes of self help, animals and vehicles.

-The stacking pegs will continue to be available with the peg boards. The children have been exploring how high they can make them before they bend over. As the children stack the pegs they are using fine motor movements and eye hand coordination. The pegs are promoting mathematical skills such as counting, balancing, and making patterns. This activity also supports turn taking as they stack together; it also is promoting problem solving skills as they figure out how high they can stack them before the pegs bend and fall.

-There will be measuring spoons and simple three step "recipes" for the students to make.

Sensory:
-Although making cookies continues to be a favorite choice in the playdough area, other baking ideas are emerging as well. To further these interests, we will expand the playdough area to include pans, bowls, and measuring cups. In addition, we will offer children the opportunity to add mint to the playdough, using a shaker bottle. There will also be bowls of cornmeal for the students to stir/measure into their playdough recipes. Creating with playdough allows children to develop small muscle control and use creativity and inventiveness. We are interested in posting family recipes. If you have a favorite (especially one in which your child helps out with), please send it in for us to post in this area as inspiration for variety of food creations. Thank you!
Water will be making its way back to the sensory table as a concrete habitat for the marine animals. There will be scoops for catching fish as well as tongs to get the fish out of the water. As the students explore the habitat for the fish they will also have the opportunity to play out the Slippery Fish song. The song supports understanding of the food chain, (the idea of the smaller animal getting eaten by a progressively bigger animal.)

Science:
The students will have the opportunity to hypothesize about which set of prints belong to what animal. There have been longer and steeper ramps for the students to explore from the loft area.
Dramatic Play:
-The children have enjoyed using the materials in the "Repair Shop." Some children have taken on the role of the mechanic, asking the other children how they can fix their vehicle. Many children enjoy using the tow trucks to help bring the broken vehicles to the shop. There are shirts with name tags allowing the children to dress up like a mechanic. This will hopefully inspire them to go deeper as they see themselves as a mechanic. Throughout this play scenario the children are fostering social skills such as cooperation, sharing, and problem solving.
The kitchen and playdough area are going to be combined in the front of the classroom to support the interest in food, creating recipes, and serving each other. This is going to be a significant change to their classroom which we hope will allow them to integrate all aspects of a kitchen into their cooking. For example, the students will have all of the baking items, place settings and food in one central location. The loft area has been stripped of large furniture to accommodate the multiple pretend play stories that happen in that area. This area promotes social skills such as cooperation and play negotiation in a familiar setting.
Language and Literacy:
There will be new books related to the themes in classroom. (architecture/building books, Alphabet and Emotion books)
-Favorite family recipes will be posted in the playdough area as a reference for children to use when recreating experiences of cooking, eating, and serving.
-Feeling words such as mad, happy, tired, and sad will be posted along with photographs of children displaying different emotions to allow children to begin recognizing and labeling their emotions.
-Documentations of children acting out stories and exploring different play themes will be posted throughout the classroom for children to use as a reference to their play.
Construction:
-The large hollow blocks and unit blocks are still available for the children to use in the repair area. The children started using the ramps to roll wheels from the repair shop in the cave. They are investigating the speed and distance the wheels, pegs, and rods can travel. Along with the ramps the classr has shown interest in building rocketships/fancy condos to support their dramatic play themes of taking trips to the moon. We will add smaller lighter building blocks for the students to heave up onto their "tall" structures. The large area for construction continues to encourage cooperation and group projects.

Large Motor:
-The gym has been changed to will continue to support children's use of balance, jumping, overhand throwing, and climbing. We will also have a bowling game out in the hallway.
-Outdoors, colored and "glittery" ice molds will be buried in the snow for the children to find by digging with their hands or with various tools. Shovels, scoops, and pails will continue to be available outdoors to support the use of upper body strength. In addition, children will have the opportunity to push trucks and wheelbarrows and pull sleds through the snow to foster endurance.
Large Groups:
There will be further discussion about emotions, what they look like and the correlating American Sign Language (ASL)signs. We will incorporate movement experiences during large group that involve the entire body and coordination. These activities are promoting following directions, large motor development, and spatial awareness.

Snack: Tuesday: Special K Snacks and Bananas
Friday: Rice Cakes and Oranges

Announcements:

Don't forget to turn in your application form and deposit on Monday, February 1st for next years Lab School enrollment.

Valentines Day is fast approaching. While we make it a practice not to celebrate holidays in the classroom, we do facilitate a card exchange for those who wish to participate. We find that it greatly supports the children's social connections to receive a card from their classmates. Making or addressing cards is also a wonderful way for children to work on emerging fine motor/writing skills. Whether your child draws a "message" or design on the card, put stickers on, glues something, or helps label the envelopes, (perhaps by taping or gluing the photos of the recipient,) there is probably something your child can do to participate in this ritual. We will put a copy of the photo page in your child's box. Please do not send candy or other gift as part of the greeting. At this age, they still are thrilled by a simple card and why ruin that innocence so soon in life? Imagine a child happily looking through their valentines, admiring each and every one, suddenly discovering a piece of candy. I've seen it. What happens is they move quickly to tossing away the other notes as garbage while they rummage through looking to see if there are more with candy. We will use lunch bags for the children to hold their notes, and will do the exchange on Friday, February 12th.

Gym Jam is at the end of this week. I messed up the date in my last email, so hope you all know that it's this FRIDAY Feb 5th. Bring the kids, the cousins, the neighbors the grandparents and come RUN AND PLAY! Watch your email for more info on location. Bierman Field is located on 15th Avenue SE. Enter between 5th and 6th St. SE. 6:30pm to 8:00pm is the time.

This Tuesday is the Coffee Hour with the Director, Barb Murphy, from 8:45 am to 9:45am. Come and ask questions on Lab School Curriculum, history, child development, or anything else. Barb is a great source of information, advice, support and laughter.

Dear Families,
Here is a new song we learned this week, the name of a book we read and the last two recipes for our delicious snacks...

A wise old owl with a pointed nose,
Two pointed ears and claws for his toes,
He sits in a tree, and he looks at you,
Flaps his wings and he sings, "Whoo, whoo."

Listed as "traditional" for the tune, with lyrics by Jane Browne. It can be found in a book and CD set called "Kids Make Music! Twos & Threes!" by Lynn Kleiner.

We read "Good-Night Owl!" by Pat Hutchins

Banana Bread (by Lisa)
3/4 cup canola oil
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups mashed bananas
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup white flour
1 tsp soda
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 cut chopped nuts (if desired)
Bake 1 hour at 350 in a greased bread pan

Granola Bars (by Beth)
2 cups rolled oats
3/4 cup packed brown sugar (we used only 1/2 cup)
1/2 cup wheat germ
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup raisins
3/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup honey
1 egg (beaten)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients after mixing. Pour honey, beaten egg, oil and vanilla into the well. Mix well. * The original recipe said to use your hands, but we use spoons and it worked just fine. Pat mixture into greased 9X13 pan. Bake 30-35 minutes at 350 degrees. Cool for 5 minutes. Cut into bars while still warm.

ENJOY!!

• 12:30-1:15 (weather permitting) playground (12:30-1:00 sledding/free play. 1:00-1:15 Structured activities... large motor/nature component, discussions/large group)

*On Mondays we will spend less time outdoors to make sure we can enjoy time in the gym.

• 1:15-1:45 inside... clothes off, explore time

• 1:45-2:00 large group (if we didn't have one outdoors)

• 2:00-2:30 small groups

*On Mondays we will go to the gym after small groups

• 2:30-3:00 free play *(cooking will take place during this time on Wednesdays)

• 3:00-3:15 snack

• 3:15-3:30 dismissal

*Cooking days will take place on Wednesdays... we will eat the special snack on Thursdays so that we are not tight on time.
The plan is to bake/cook during free playtime, unless we are having a no-outdoors day.

Dear Families,

We have had a great month getting acquainted with the children, and we have enjoyed meeting many of the parents and siblings also. The girls and boys have been eager to explore our discovery areas and to try new activities. They seem confident talking to their classmates and cooperating when they engage in building or creating a dramatic play scenario. They are getting lots of practice with fine motor skills as they use the wide variety of colorful manipulatives available in the classroom. Many of the children have enjoyed painting at the easel and molding shapes with clay. We have seen amazing structures created by the children using the large, hollow blocks and the castle blocks.

The children have adjusted well to the new routine of starting our day on the playground. Sledding has been a popular activity, as well as digging in the snow, pretending to cook with snow, and playing hide and seek in the snow. They have also enjoyed putting out birdseed and looking for tracks. Thank you for helping them to remember all the winter apparel that keeps them warm and dry for these playground activities.

The students have been excited to see birds at our bird feeder and to start keeping track of the birds that we see on a chart. So far we have seen male and female cardinals, chickadees, sparrows, and squirrels. They have been curious to examine and touch the stuffed pheasant, the nest, and the feathers on our bird table. The Raptor Center was a wonderful experience that extended their learning about birds to include raptors such as owls, falcons, eagles, and the red-tailed hawk. We purchased some stuffed animal raptors to add to our winter cave.

After using the light projector to see what different objects look like when placed on the screen, we are now extending that discovery area to encourage them to use their own bodies to make interesting shadows on a sheet or wall. Those of you who were able to attend Creativity Night were able to see their curiosity and their expressiveness as they engaged in this activity. Although one child can enjoy this experience alone, it also encourages social interaction and collaboration among students as they develop dramatic play scenarios using the shadows.

The children have had a lot of fun with the new gym arrangement. They love pushing the scooter/cars and driving up to the service station for gas. Running on the elevated mat walkway and jumping into the doughnut hole filled with pillows have been popular activities, too. The gym will have a different look and address additional skills next week.

We are using a variety of experiences and materials to help children begin to recognize patterns, duplicate patterns, and make their own patterns. We are talking about patterns with colors, patterns with rhythms, repeated patterns of words in books, and patterns in nature. We will continue to emphasize different types of patterns in the coming weeks.

We have begun to have conversations about rhyming words and impromptu rhyming games at snack time. Rhyming words will become more of a focus in the next two weeks, and we will give the children many opportunities to identify words that rhyme and to make up their own rhyming words. Color is another theme that will be introduced soon with a variety of discussions and hands-on experiences. Music, books, and movement activities are often used in large group to review information from previous lessons and to introduce new concepts.

We started our small groups this week, and small group time will be wonderful avenue for learning, fun, and social skills development during the next several weeks. The first couple of weeks will be spent exploring various aspects of our topics, and then the children will be choosing which aspects to explore in greater detail. Beth's Castle Group includes Georgia, Aubrey, Isaac, Leo, Charlie D., and Alper. Janet's Bird Explorers group includes Frances, Delilah, Raymond, James, Charlie B., and Antonio. Lisa's Art/Sensory/Music and Movement group includes Ruby, Harper, Inga, Rosie, Aoife, and Maddie. The small group times will be a great adventure for all of us!

It has been inspiring to watch the children learn through exploration of materials and cooperative pursuits with other children. As we engage them in one-on-one conversations, we are often able to discover and share their ideas, ways of thinking and wonders. These ideas and questions are discussed with the children and later on addressed by the teachers in future lesson plans. The children delight at sharing their thoughts and opinions during large group discussions, and we experience the satisfaction of learning together as a group. We always welcome parents to join us in the classroom and share a story, book, activity or join us for an afternoon of fun and discovery!

Warmly,

Janet

REMINDERS

Parents are invited to attend a coffee hour with Barb, our director, next week. The coffee hours will be held on Feb. 2nd and Feb. 3rd from 8:45-9:45 am and also on Feb. 3rd from 12:45 to 1:45 pm.

Family Gym Jam is coming up soon. Families are invited to join the fun at Bierman Field on Feb. 5th from 6:30-8:00 pm. Gopher athletes will be available to engage children in various activities. It will be a fun way to raise money for new gym equipment.

If you haven't signed for winter conferences with Dalia, please do so A.S.A.P

Thanks!

The main focus of the play this week was travel. There have been numerous destinations as well as participants! The play has created great opportunities for children to work together; talking about where their trip will take them, what they need for the trip, how they'll get there, who will be what character during the travel, and so on! The stories also continue to grow in complexity, as the children revisit storylines from the previous day. Ask your child where they've traveled to or if they've helped get another group to their destination by building a vehicle or transporting the group themselves.

***

Mama had her babies! It's been the buzz around the classroom, with many children eager to go in and take a look at Mama's 11 babies! Now you can share in the excitement at home!

The children have been VERY excited to catch a glimpse at the babies, however Mama has been very protective. We have seen them go from having only pink coloring and being extremely tiny to growing slightly larger and developing the black head and stripe (similar to Mama's coloring). We will be taking photos and drawing/record our observations to help document the growth of the babies! It happens fast and the next week should be quite exciting with hopefully more movement as well as the open of the eyes! Ask you child about the changes they're observing with the baby rats, it can lead to some great scientific discussions!

We have also had some fascinating changes happening with the tadpoles! Not only did they get bigger over break, one has sprouted hind legs! Many children have been intrigued by this amazing transformation and continue to check daily to see if there are any new developments! Similar to the baby rats, we will begin photo documenting their growth to compare the changes that take place each week!

Here are a few stories from the past week. As the winter session continues, we hope to add multiple stories each week: highlighting some of the specific vignettes taking place. Some may focus on an individual child, while others with tell the story of a small group of children or a large theme taking place in the classroom. The stories are great opportunities to talk with your child and help them share about the play happening each day!

Our first story shows the "loss" of one of our beloved additions to the classroom: the door. This door for the block area was created in the fall and has been an amazing addition (and catalyst) for MANY great dramatic play stories since it joined our classroom. One day, the door split into two pieces. After trying to think about what we could do, Garrin got the idea of gluing it back together. "We'll put glue all the way along here [pointing to the snapped side of the door], and squeeze it together!" We got some wood glue, some more children, and did exactly that: Garrin glued the edge and then everyone squeezed the pieces together. Quickly, the children got tired and we tried to come up with another solution to keep the door pieces together. Tape! Having the children hold the door in place, pairs of children pulled pieces of duct tape across to hold the door in place. We checked the door after two days and...IT WORKED! The door is back in operation, however only temporarily, as we have plans to make a more permanent repair.

One of the popular areas where the dyads have blossomed has been at the easel. Many children having been coming together to create collaborative paintings. Here, Juliet and Riley worked on painting a snowman. They negotiated the colors to be used, size/location of the body, and placement of "accessories" such as the hat and face. Others observed this and we're inspired to invite another child to join him/her, painting together and using rich language to create the perfect cooperative masterpiece!

Another exciting story that has developed this week is the addition of "Mama" rat. After a discussion during large group about how one of our rats died while we were on break, the children said they wanted another rat, "because the other is sad now that it's all alone." Upon hearing this, Eva said she had a pet rat that was about to have babies and would let our class take care of her AND her babies once they were born. The children have been very excited for the babies to arrive and they should be here any day!

The first week back, we wanted the children to have the necessary time to reconnect with one another as well as meet/build rapport with the new student teachers. After watching the play during the first week, it was quite clear that the children were comfortable with the new teachers and getting back into the routines, as well as very eager/excited to see one another! The play has been active, and it appears that the children haven't missed a beat! They're picking up right where they left off and continuing to build on play themes each day (both old stories from the fall as well as new stories that have been created since we've been back)

We have also seen the reconnection between specific friendships during the first week. Dyads have been popping up around the room, sharing great ideas about play and supporting many great social/communication skills between the children. We have overheard lots of negotiation about the play themes as well as comprising of ideas in order for the pair to reach their common goal/vision for the play. It's been quite exciting to watch these reconnections take place!

Weekly Plan for Jenn's 3PM Class
January 25th - January 28th, 2010

Overview and Goals:
The children's interest in travel and transportation continues! This play theme has blossomed in multiple areas of the classroom and continues to grow each day. The children continue to build rich play scenarios, practice negotiation with peers and work cooperatively towards common goals. As the children openly explore and use materials in the classroom, the teachers will support and encourage meaningful interactions among peers. During the upcoming weeks, we will focus on building and strengthening the children's social competencies as they play.

Expressive Arts
• We have added additional pastel paint colors at the easel. The teachers will continue to encourage collaborative work to allow children opportunities to practice compromise, negotiation, and to engage in social interactions as they share their ideas with peers.
• Collage materials of various sizes, shapes, and textures are available for the children to explore and use as a means of creative expression. We will encourage the children to use the materials available to make their own props for travel as they play in the back of the classroom.

Sensory Materials
• Measuring cups, scoops, paddle wheels and many other materials continue to support the children's play at the flax seed table. New sorting items and textures will be added to the table to expand experiences with texture and to allow opportunities for the children to utilize their new knowledge associated with the sense of touch.
• We will be introducing playdough at the tables this week. Cars, trucks, and letter shapes will continue to be available for the children to use as they stamp and make prints using this new medium.

Math & Manipulatives
• New patterning games have been added to the area to continue the exploration of patterns, as well as support the social interactions that accompany the cooperative production of the games.
• New puzzles are also available to support problem solving, the concept of part-to-whole and eye-hand coordination.
• Duplo leggos have been added to train caves to further support the children's creative track building and symbolic play.

Language & Literacy
• We will be adding a mail box to the writing center this week. The children can continue to write postcards and now send/deliver mail as well. Various types of writing paper and tools are available for the children to use as they engage in writing activities.
• The children enjoy spending time with books and discussing stories with peers. We will continue to support their interests by making books readily available throughout the classroom in addition to our library.

Science Center
• A tactile sorting game can be found at the science table. Children can use their sense of touch to differentiate between soft and hard as they sort the objects.
• The new science cave is an extension of our science center. It is currently filled with an array of materials (fabrics, furs, shells, etc.) for the children to manipulate and further explore textural differences.

Dramatic & Symbolic Play
• The kitchen/home area has become a favorite destination during the children's "travels". We will continue to support this extension of travel play theme as well as other interests such as cooking and dress-up.
• The travel store, with props such as suitcases, maps, tickets, and travel accessories, has been a big hit in the classroom. This dramatic play area continues to support the children's ongoing interest in travel and transportation.

Block Area
• The children have enjoyed using the hollow blocks to build various modes of transportation (busses, trains, airplanes). We will continue to support their interest in travel and transportation with these materials.
• The unit blocks are also available for the children to utilize in the back of the classroom as they create and build structures to use in their dramatic play.

Large Motor
• The cars, driving track, obstacle course, and climber will continue to be available this week. The children enjoyed driving around the track as well as stopping by the gas station: both to fill up as well as keep on the general maintenance of their automobiles. We hope to utilize the gym space more this week.
• The children have enjoyed sledding this week on the playground. We will continue to have fun sledding as well as building structures in the snow. Buckets of water and paintbrushes will be available to help solidify and strengthen the children's snow structures.

Snack
Monday: Graham crackers (by Ross' class) & bananas
Wednesday: Sunflower butter sandwiches
Thursday: Multigrain Cheerios & oranges

Special Announcements:
• The Lab School's annual "Gym Jam" will be held at Bierman Field on Friday, February 5th from 6:30 - 8pm.

• Continue to check www.weather.com (zip code 55455) for information regarding the outdoor temperature each day.

CLASSROOM NEWSLETTER ROSS' CLASS JANUARY 13, 2010

The winter session is in full swing and the children have quickly reconnected with one another as well as with the new teachers. Albeit cold outside, the energy and excitement levels are high in the classroom. We anticipate many interesting investigations into the worlds of physical and life sciences during the winter session. We want to challenge your child's critical and scientific thinking skills as we explore the various changes in the life cycles of our classroom pets. When we came back from break, one of the rats as well as one of the tadpoles had died, and this lead to interesting questions and discussions with the teachers and peers about how and why the animals died. It also led us to the addition a new pregnant black and white rat named "Mama." Within the next few days, Mama is due to have her babies and we are excited to learn about babies rats and watch them grow! On the topic of growing, one of the tadpoles has sprouted hind legs and has also piqued the curiosity of the children! These amazing changes with our pets have been key areas of interest and will continue to be a way to support the higher-level thinking of your child. We will challenge the children to think critically about how and why these changes have occurred as well as encourage them to record their observations through photographs, drawings, and dictated notes via the teachers. These goals of promoting higher-level thinking will be one of the main goals over the course of the next 10 weeks, and will be taking place all around the classroom!

REMINDERS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

~ There is a PAC meeting on Thursday January 14 @ 7p. Please attend if you can, as your voice and ideas are an important part of helping the Lab School community create the strongest learning environment possible for your child!

~ NO SCHOOL on Monday January 18 in recognition of Martin Luther King Day.

~ Creativity Night is fast approaching! It will be on Wednesday January 20 from 6 - 7.30p. This is a fun and engaging evening for you and your child, as you have the opportunity to explore various materials/activities around the school. Relive the days of your childhood while getting to experience the richness of the Lab School environments with your child; taking a peek at what joys and great learning opportunities they get to experience while they're here! Explorations with clay will be available in our room. We will also have a special guest artist that is a practicing ceramic artist join us for the evening! Opportunities to explore various sensory materials will be available in Frances and Ayuko's room. Experiences with light and shadows will be taking place in Amy and Dalia's room. Lastly, there will be a featured artist leading dance and creative movement activities in the gym! It is a great experience and we hope you can make it!

~ The Parent Discussion Groups will be meeting again, talking about guidance and limit setting. The meetings will be Thursday January 28 from 1.15-2.30pm, Friday January 29 from 9-10.15a, and Tuesday February 2 from 6.45-8p.

~ Barb has set up another round of "Coffee with the Director" and is inviting you all to have a chance to sit down and chat with her! The meetings will be on Tuesday February 2 from 8.45-9.45a and Wednesday February 3 from 8.45-9.45a AND 12.45-1.45p. Hope you can make it to one of the coffee hours!

~ GYM JAM is just around the corner! Friday February 5 from 6.30-8p the Lab School will be inviting families and friends to the Bierman Athletic Field to run, jump, throw, catch, and play with various U of MN Gopher athletes while raising money for new gym/motor-related equipment. The GYM JAM is our winter fundraiser to help replace broken/worn-out equipment for our gym and playgrounds. This year we hope to replace one of the large jumping- (more like landing-) mats that has seen better days, as well as some of the tricycles and "push-cars" on both the toddler and multi-age playgrounds. Yes, we hope to raise money for the new equipment, however (and more importantly) we want you and your family to have a fun and memorable evening out during these cold winter months!

Weekly Lesson Plan
Week of 1/25/10 - 1/29/10
Lead Teaching this week: Nadine

Overview and Goals - Many exciting things took place in our classroom last week! The children planned trips, built elaborate block structures, dug into sensory materials, and thoroughly enjoyed the snow. Also, as many of you know, Mama had her babies last week (11 to be exact!). We kept her tucked away in the nook so she could rest and care for her babies, but now they are old enough for us to observe and look at up close in classroom. We will use Mama and her babies as a catalyst to promote a life science focus. We will have discussions, create hypotheses, observe and record the babies, as well as create graphs and charts related to the growing family. This experience will promote higher-level thinking, scientific inquiry, promote the learning of new information, and create great opportunity to recall previous knowledge in different ways (i.e. generalization). I encourage you to stop in and see what we are learning!

Sensory Table - There continues to be a strong interest in the flax seed, and the children are really enjoying their search for different objects! We added a texture sorting game that challenge the children to find an object and decide whether it was hard, soft, smooth, or bumpy; supporting classification skills. We will add new objects and continue to discuss different texture and classification words. We will also be discussing the importance of the sense of touch, and the concept of when you touch something, your skin sends a message to your brain and tells you what it is.

Art -
Sensory - At creativity night last week, a lot of children from our class showed a great interest in clay: creating many interesting sculptures with intentionality and focused attention. Because of the high interest we brought clay, cutting tools, and natural wood pieces to our sensory art table. We will see what the children create, as this material has endless possibilities. This activity is great for fine motor strength and skill building as well as creative expression.
Expressive - We brought pastel colors to our easels to reflect the colors the children are seeing in nature. Painting with these pastels on black paper added a nice contrast, and to continue this experience we will add more pastel colors to the mix. To facilitate even more creativity and artistic expression, we will be adding collage materials that the children may use in their easel paintings. We have seen the children making multimedia collages and feel this would be an intriguing extension to bring more visitors to the easel.

Science - We have moved into the sense of smell! The children have had fun with the smell "guessing and matching game." We also discussed how animals use their sense of smell to find food, and our cave transformed into a forest, where woodland animals (and your children!) have been sniffing around to find "food". Throughout the week, we will be introducing new scents into the smell matching game as well as continue our discussions about the sense of smell and how it helps us. This activity is a great tool to get the children thinking about their own bodies; learning about how they work and why we need our senses. We will also continue to use graphs and charts related to smell preferences, allowing thee children to compare/contrast their opinions with their peers while practice the math concept of recording/counting data.

Manipulatives - We will switch our focus to memory and matching games this week, as we add games that relate to the themes we've been seeing throughout the classroom: such as travel, animals, and familial relationships. We will have mother-child matching games, animal memory games and additional puzzles available as well. These games will facilitate part-to-whole relationships, shape recognition, symbolic representation, classification, matching, and visual discrimination.
- The Brio tracks and trains have been quite popular with a consistent group of children, and the train tracks they have created become more and more elaborate each day. We will add Duplos in hopes to help build sturdier structures to accompany the tracks, as well as be able to withstand the moving children within the small space! It is wonderful to see their imaginations at work as they build a track: showing intention and planning as they create. This type of play helps develop fine motor skills, facilitates thoughtful planning and active problem solving, as well as fostering social relationships and collaborative play skills.

Literature Center - A main theme we are seeing throughout the classroom is this idea of travel and transportation. Because many of the children take trips daily, we introduced the idea of writing loved ones postcards from the places they are visiting. There is now a mailbox in our literature center where the children can "mail their postcards" to friends and family. Another way will want to incorporate literacy into dramatic play is by encouraging the children to make nametags for their luggage so they don't get lost on their trips!

Dramatic Play- As mentioned before, one of the biggest themes we have seen in our room has been travel and taking trips. We have created a travel center complete with luggage, backpacks, brochures, maps, and tickets. The children have come up with some fun places to visit, and the play continues to become more elaborate. To expand on this play, we will incorporate literacy and creativity into the play themes by encouraging the creation of postcards and luggage tags as well as help facilitate new activities/adventures once the children reach their destination

Blocks - Transportation and rescue have been the focus of block play recently. We have seen rescue helicopters, police cars, airplanes and trains created. Giant structures that take up over half of the building space have been created to save people in need or to take people where they want to go. We will bring in first aid equipment so our rescuers are ready to help other people in need. The stories are creative and have given children great opportunities to build relationships, work on collaborative and cooperative play skills, and practice negotiation/compromise skills.

Gym/Outside - Our gym has taken on a car theme, with a road for cars to drive on, a gas station, and a repair shop. The children enjoy getting some energy out at the beginning of the day as well as driving their cars around, fixing them up, and working at the gas station. We have recently added a car wash to the gas station as well! These activities foster upper and lower body strength, coordination, depth perception, propulsion skills, collaborative play, and negotiation skills. Outside we have seen the children exploring the snow and digging up large chunks to create walls. The favorite activity, however, is sledding. The snow has become quite hard and icy, so to ensure safe sledding, we have switched the sleds out for small kiddy-pools in which we put 4 or 5 children in at a time. It doesn't go nearly as fast, but the children have a blast just the same!

Announcements and reminders - We have our parent discussion groups taking place this week. Be sure to check the website for dates and times. The topic for the discussions is "Guidance and Limit Setting."
- Enrollment forms for next school year are due by FEB 1. Be sure to fill out your sheet and hand it in to Eva, Ann Ruhl Carlson (in office 123), or me. Even if you child is moving to kindergarten, please share the information with friends and family. It is your recommendations and conversations with others that help keep bring many wonderful families to the Lab School!
- We will have a fire drill this week on Tuesday.

Snack -
Monday: Graham Crackers made by Class & Banana
Tuesday: Oat & Honey granola bar (Really!) & Kiwi
Wednesday: Open snack-Pretzels
Thursday: Open snack-Letter Cheeze-Its
Friday: Pretzels, Carrots & Dip

Weekly Lesson Plan
Week of: Jan 19-22, 2010
Lead teaching this week: Team teaching

Overview and goals
Week three will start off with some very exciting news pertaining to some new little "visitors" joining our classroom this week. Mama had her babies this weekend! Please read the announcement at the bottom to let your child know how we will be visiting Mama this week. With that, we anticipate our life science exploration will be taking off! We will bring in books and questions for the children to explore and answer as continue our science focus as well as support our goal of encouraging high-level thinking skills. We will also continue to foster these skills throughout the other areas of our classroom, challenging the children's thinking and reason as they explore new senses at the science center and create more elaborate dramatic play themes in the back of the room.

Art center
Expressive material
~ The easel painting has been a huge hit! To change it up we are going to add pastel colors that reflect more of the colors the children are seeing in nature. We began to see some collaborative painting going on last week. We will encourage these cooperative experiences by encouraging the children to invite another child to join them while they paint. These collaborative ventures allow the children to practice their comprise, negotiation, and social interaction skills while sharing ideas and talking about what the painting process will be. We are excited to see the creativity blossom!
~ With all the trips taking place in the back of the room, we will add additional collage materials (paper towel tubes, string, etc.) to encourage the children to make their own props needed for travel. Binoculars, maps, and signs are a few of the anticipated creations needed for the future adventures around the "world" (a.k.a. our classroom).
Sensory material
~ One focus in the art areas has been on painting and printmaking. The children loved using the dinosaur sponges and cookie cutter letters to make prints. When the trucks were brought in, they really enjoyed making tracks on their paper with the wheels in the paints. We will be bringing in new shades of color to mix as well as various sized cars to help foster comparison skills. We will also focus more on using the letter shapes, promoting the novel ways to incorporate literacy through art.
~ The children have really enjoyed exploring and playing with flax seed in the sensory table. They have been using measuring cups, scoops, paddle wheels, and many other materials to support their play. With the interest in the new material being so great, we will be adding many different objects for the children to dig for and find. This activity is linked to our science focus dealing with the sense of touch. We have been asking the question "How does it feel?" when a child finds an object, encouraging the children to use the new texture words we have been taking about during large group and free play. To utilize their new knowledge and vocabulary words, we will create a sorting game that challenges the children to sort objects by their texture. This activity will get them thinking about similarities and differences, address the concept of classification, and engage them by using their sense of touch and fine motor skills.

Science Center
~ Since we've been back, we have been investigating the sense of touch in our science area. Through matching and guessing games, the children have been using their sense of touch to explore textures in their environment. We have extended the use of touch to our sensory table, and have been hearing the children use various texture words to describe the items they are finding hidden in the flax seed. This week, we will move onto the sense of smell in the science area. Smelling jars with scents such as cinnamon, coffee, and cocoa will be available for the children to smell and describe through written or pictorial recordings, as well as identify through a matching game. We will also use the cave to display how different animals use their sense of smell to find food with pictures, books, and figures for the children to play with to utilize their new information. Through these activities, the children will be developing their higher-level thinking skills with prediction, inquiry, and reflection or discussion. They will also be developing social skills by comparing their thoughts and findings.

Math and manipulative Center
~ The manipulatives have become more popular with the children over the past two weeks. Currently, the area has puzzles and activities that center around patterns. The children have enjoyed following provided patterns with colorful pegs and pattern blocks, as well as creating their own patterns. In the coming days, we will introduce new patterning games to the area to continue the exploration of patterns, as well as support the social interactions that accompany the cooperative production of the games.
~ The trains have been a very popular material in the classroom! The children have been working very hard in creating tracks that snake in and out of both caves. The children have been demonstrating spatial awareness by winding their tracks around certain objects including chairs and tables. To help the children extend their play themes, we will place pictures of their creations in the caves to stimulate new ideas by helping them recall tracks/stories from the days previous.

Language and Literacy Center
~ The children have spent some time at the book center over the last two weeks. Some of the book themes that they have explored include the human body, as well as the winter season. To expand this literacy exploration, we would like to incorporate books that relate to the dramatic play that we see reoccurring throughout the classroom. Books about trains, airplanes, and cars will be available to help create opportunities for the children enhance their dramatic play themes with more detail and new ideas while supporting their pre-/early-literacy development. Last week the children had a great time creating airplanes so they could travel to different countries such as China, Puerto Rico, and even the Grand Canyon.
~Several children have also explored the writing center since we have been back. Children have been stopping by to create grocery lists, draw pictures, and send letters to friends and families. To build off this interest in writing as well as help foster a deeper understanding of print and letter recognition, we will be adding alphabet stamps, inkpads, post cards, and envelopes to the writing center. We feel these additions will help foster the pre-/early-literacy skills of the children currently using the center while inviting new visitors to use the space. To increase this awareness, we would like to encourage the children to write post cards to their peers as they "travel" around the world. Writing letters increases fine motor skills, literacy, as well as cognitive ability levels.

Block Center
~ There has been many new "transportation" vehicles being created in the back of the room. Planes, trains, and other automobiles have popped up to help many of the children reach their intended destinations (e.g. Florida, China, Disneyworld). We will add more steering wheels, cardboard, paper, and tape to help furnish the newly created vehicles as well as encourage the children to use/create maps to take with them. These additions will support the social community in the classroom as well as provide new dramatic plays that can incorporate many children simultaneously.

Dramatic Play
~ The general severed the children well, however as the children continued to travel, they were buying supplies to take with them on their trips. With these constant occurrences, we felt it only appropriate to change the general store into a travel store. We will add suitcases, maps, tickets, and travel accessories (e.g. clothes, sunglasses, etc.) to help support this growing interest in travel.

Large Motor
~ The cars, driving track, obstacle course, and climber will continue to be available this week. The children have had a blast drive around the track as well as stopping by the gas station: both to fill up as well as keep on the general maintenance of their automobiles. We will be playing new teacher games this week, lead by the student teachers. The gym's set up will be changed for a day on Wednesday morning, as the teachers will be getting ready for Creativity Night!
~ Sledding has been a huge success, as many children cannot wait to get outside after snack! For those not interested in sledding, there has been some interesting snow-fort building taking place. The sleds will continue to be available and parents are always welcome to come a bit early (we're out there around 10.50 or so) and join in the fun! We will also be dismissing from outside as much as possible.

Announcements/Reminders
~ Mama had her babies!!! We haven't been able to get an exact count, but there are probably around 10 baby rats with Mama in her nest! With that, she needs to have privacy and quiet for these first for days/week as her babies begin to grow. We have moved Mama and the little ones to the "nook" in the back of our classroom (next to the teacher sink). The teachers will take groups of 2-3 children in to visit, but stress that we need to be very quiet while looking at Mama and her babies. They may be tough to see in these early stages, but as the babies grow, they will venture out of the nest more and the children will have better opportunities to see them!
~ Creativity Night - Tuesday, Jan. 20 from 6-7.30p. Take a look at the flyer posted on the Lab School's main page for more details!

Snack
Monday: No School
Tuesday: Oat & honey granola bar & banana
Wednesday: Sunflower butter sandwiches
Thursday: Cheese & crackers
Friday: Popcorn (made in class)

*All snacks served with milk & water, unless otherwise specified*

Overview and Goals
Our main areas of emphasis this week will be birds and patterns. The children were enthusiastic about our visit to the Raptor Center and about the birds we have seen at our own feeder. Last week we saw sparrows, chickadees, male and female cardinals, and squirrels. There will be new opportunities to experience patterns through music, movement, books, manipulatives, and art. Small groups will be starting this week, which should be exciting for all of us.

Expressive Arts
Many of the children have been painting at the easel and making collages. Both of these activities will still be available this week, with some variation in the colors and materials.

Sensory Materials
~The children are becoming more confident to try new things with the clay. They are discovering that it takes a lot of arm strength to mold the clay.
~Last week, some of the children enjoyed using play kitchen items in the snow to pack and pour snow. This week, we hope to make a snowman or an animal shape with snow.

Dramatic, Symbolic Play and Blocks/Creative Building
~The children continue to enjoy dramatic play in the hibernation cave with the many animals and materials there. We have added five new raptor stuffed animals, straight from the raptor center.
~The hollow blocks and the castle blocks are being used to create increasingly more complex structures.
~Sometimes lego creations have been added to symbolic play in the block areas. Because of the great interest that many children have shown in creating lego vehicles with wheels, we have added many more wheels to the lego area this week.

Science Center
~Since many of the children enjoyed creating shadows using their bodies and a light source on Creativity night, we will encourage the children to experiment with that activity in class this week.
~The transparent lego duplo blocks were also a hit on Creativity night, and we have brought those into the classroom this week.
~The children like to check on the tadpoles every day, and we hope that the legs on the tadpoles will soon become visible. The children frequently visit the tables with the birds, nests, and feathers. They are asking many interesting questions, and they are making great observations about birds.

Language and Literacy
~The writing center this week will offer materials for creative writing as well as coloring patterns with paper grids.
~We will be reading two books in Large Group that demonstrate a repeated pattern of words that the children can recognize and recite. These books are Good-Night Owl! By Pat Hutchins and From Head to Toe by Eric Carle. We also plan to read Stranger in the Woods by Carl Sams and Jean Stoick, which includes beautiful photography of animals and birds in the snow.
~The children have shown enthusiasm in rhyming and we are starting to incorporate this throughout the curriculum.

Math, Manipulatives, and Games
~A great variety of manipulatives, puzzles, and hands-on learning activities will help the children to understand patterning concepts and develop their fine motor skills.
~Cooking continues to be a weekly option for the children and gives them experience with counting, measuring ingredients, and following a sequence of steps.

Large Motor
The children continue to be enthusiastic about playing outside in the snow and inside in the gym. There are many opportunities to practice balance and coordination, while having lots of fun, in both settings.

Music and Movement/Large Group
~Large groups will include books, songs, movement, discussions and hands-on activities. ~The children will be active participants as we encourage them to learn more about birds and patterns.
~Large group is also an excellent setting for experiences in turn-taking and having fun together as a group

I am enjoying the chance to get to know each one of your children and learn together with them each day. I appreciated the opportunity to talk to many of you during Creativity Night and the field trip.

Janet

Overview:

The children are continuing to show great interest in the light area, Legos, and feathers. Since our field trip to The Raptor Center, the children are infatuated with birds and curious about different types of birds. The teachers will continue to ask questions and have conversations with children about birds as well as provide meaningful activities that will lead to deeper understanding. The children continue to experiment with light and also with Legos by using the new materials added to each area. We set up the new materials in the room to make them aesthetically pleasing to the children, and we ask open ended questions about the children's work to help us understand their thinking. The writing center will receive some changes that we hope will enhance the children's experience of sending and receiving mail. The introduction of simple clay tools is sure to promote new experimentation and creativity as the children work with the clay.

Creative Arts:
Collage: In addition to gluing the collage materials to paper, the children have been enjoying cutting the materials in small pieces. We will be watching to see how they incorporate these pieces into their projects.

Easel: The new colors at the easel have given the children the opportunity to experience bright colors. Color mixing is still a favorite activity. We added feathers to this area so the children can experience new ways of applying paint to their paper. This will also enhance their learning about different types of feathers as some are stiff and others are more flexible.

Sensory:
Earth Clay: The addition of water has allowed the children to learn more about the properties of clay. They use the water to make smooth surfaces and soften the clay. This week basic clay tools will provide new options for poking, prodding, and shaping the clay.

Science:
-After learning about the difference between eagle and owl feathers at the Raptor Center, the children have become aware that different shaped feathers serve unique purposes. To enhance their exploration of the feathers we have added many new feathers, feather facts, and matching activities.
-There is a checklist that allows children to keep track of how many birds they see at the bird feeder. They can also draw their observations on nearby clipboards.
-The children continue to experiment with reflection, light, transparency, and shadows. They especially enjoy finding unique shapes to project onto the large chart paper. The addition of bird and animal shapes has led to the creation of larger than life animal outlines. The teachers will support the children as they add details such as eyes, beaks, talons, and tails to their drawings.
-To give the children a new way to experience light and translucence, we have added Duplo Legos under the loft.

Math and Manipulatives:
-The addition of large bases in the Lego area have inspired the children to create zoos, houses, transformer jets, and gardens. This activity contributes to the development of their geometry skills, as the children design two-and three-dimensional structures. The Legos are frequently incorporated into the children's sense of part-whole relationships, and their ability to construct new designs each day.
-To continue the theme of patterning in the manipulative area, we have added eggshell pegboards. This activity will foster one to one correspondence, color recognition, patterning, and creative expression.

Literacy:
-The top of the loft has boomed with creativity and interest in the transparencies. The children continue to use the materials in full throughout the day. Sign making has been a popular activity. This child-initiated activity shows us the children understand how words on signs are used to convey meaning in the real world.
-In addition to the nametags and envelopes, we have added a visual that uses pictures to clearly show the meaning of the written words "to" and "from" to the children. Having the visual will help the children incorporate these words into the mail that they send.

Dramatic Play:
-The children have been using the small stuffed woodland animals in our cave to show their growing knowledge of what happens in the real world. They have been using the owls to swoop down to eat the skunks. These interactions have helped the children with their social skills as well as in recalling what they learned at the Raptor Center.

Blocks:
-Recent activity in the block area has revolved around ramp and bridge making. The children make ramps for their Lego vehicles to roll down. The teachers will continue to support this activity that is rich with potential for spatial awareness and understanding physics concepts related to inclined planes.
-This has also been a great area for dramatic play and social interaction. The children are taking interest in turning the hollow blocks into many different things such as water, transformer jets, cars, and planes. We have provided the children with colorful fabrics to use throughout their different creations. This will help the children to develop creativity, as they can use the fabrics for all different settings.
-The unit blocks are being used to build roads, walls, homes, as well as building castles. The children use their creativity and imagination to develop these designs, and use their social skills to work together in their creations.

Playground:
-The children have been enjoying sliding on the playground slides. The slides seem much speedier now that the children are in their snowpants! The sledding hill is also a big hit, especially when we brought out the wading pools to slide down in. The pools hold 4-5 children but we only have two pools. As you can imagine, this activity provides rich opportunities for practicing social skills such as, cooperation, negotiation, and turn-taking. The children are so helpful to one another and sometimes it seems that they get just as much joy watching others go down as they do going down themselves!

Gym:
-The obstacle course and race-track have been very inviting for the children and they enjoy going through it. To focus on specific motor skills such as, skipping, galloping, and hopping, the teachers led a game of follow the leader last week. We also set up an area for the children to practice catching, throwing, and kicking.

Snack:
Monday: Graham Crackers made by Ross & Banana
Tuesday: Oat & Honey granola bar & Oranges
Wednesday: Rice Chex & Kiwi
Thursday: Rice Crackers & Sunflower Butter
Friday: Pretzels, Carrots & Dip

Hello Parents!

The second half of the year has started out on a great note. The new student teachers, Michele, Davida, and Megan (me), are getting to know the children and forming strong relationships already. Amy and the children have invited us with open arms and it has been wonderful. We have been working hard to provide the children with opportunities for growth and engagement as they continue learning.

We had a very exciting trip to the Raptor Center this week! The children were very eager and came with many questions for example, "How many kinds of raptors are there? What do raptors eat?" And, "How can you tell boys and girls apart?" We learned many new things while we were there. The children shared these new facts with the children who weren't able to join us. During morning meeting the following day the children recalled that raptor means 'to grab', raptors have talons and sharp, hooked beaks, girls are bigger than boys, and there are at least five different kinds of raptors. The children were ecstatic to have the opportunity to see a live owl, hawk, and kestrel. We have already noticed the children representing what they learned in their dramatic play. They used the stuffed owls to swoop down and grab skunks then gobble them up (the horned owl doesn't have a sense of smell). The teachers have been teaching the children a new song about different types of raptors and the type of food they eat. The Raptor Center has brought out a new interest in learning about birds in general, and has given new life and potential to this subject.

With the increased interest in learning about birds, the science center has been especially busy. The addition of the stuffed pheasant has contributed to the children's exploration of feathers. Now that the children have learned about the variety of colors and shapes of feathers, we introduced a matching activity that will help them understand the functions of different feathers. Nests continue to intrigue the children, and they wonder, "How do birds keep their eggs safe and warm? How do they choose materials to build their nests?" We have added a DVD of birds making nests into our hibernation cave so the children can view real nests being made. To give them a new opportunity to try making nests we have added new materials to the collage area.

Legos continue to be very popular among the children. They are creating, and designing a wide variety of objects including cars, transformer jets, planes, boats, zoos, houses, and gardens! The children work to create designs that are strong so they stay together. The children talk and problem solve about what will work, and what they can change. This growing interest has prompted us to bring in more Lego materials for the children to use so they can expand their ideas.

We have recently brought in new materials for the children to use with the overhead projector. Slide photographs of animals, objects that are transparent, as well as those that are not. The children enjoy moving the overhead light up and down to see how the objects move from the floor, to the board, to the ceiling. The combination of the large size of the projected image and its movement has captivated them. Tracing the images they see from the projector has been a new, and exciting activity in our light area.

Sincerely,
Megan

After the success of the nest building project last session, the teachers felt it was important to provide new learning opportunities around the topic of birds. The bird feeder at the classroom window was the perfect way to provide a close-up view of birds, and also begin conversations about bird behavior and eating habits.

Mike notices that the birds hesitate coming to the feeder unless, "you are really quiet and still." He watches as a chickadee "eats the tiniest seeds."

Small groups of children take turns adding more seed to the feeder. Arthur says, "Hey, look at the tiny tracks in the snow!" David answers, "Those are from the birds" as he pours in the seed.

Inside the classroom, the teachers provided a mounted crow and pheasant for the children to examine more closely. They wonder about the sharp claws and beak. What really captures their attention are the colorful feathers.

Jacob-"I think this one goes with this bird."
Amy- "How can you tell?"
Jacob- "Well... maybe it goes with this one (the parrot) because it's yellow."

Ella and Clare added all of the feathers from the matching activity to the mounted pheasant to "make it more beautiful" and "warm it up."

At this point it became clear that the children might be ready to learn more about how feathers help birds, and to search for answers to their questions about sharp beaks and claws. The teachers planned a trip to The Raptor Center for an up-close experience with live raptors and an opportunity to talk with experts.

Some of the many facts the children learned were that "raptor" means "to grab," all raptors have hooked beaks to grasp their prey, and owl feathers are specially designed to help them fly silently.

The children were awestruck by the wingspan of the raptors...

...and the eagle's nest.

When we returned to school the children began representing their learning through drawing and dramatic play.Piper- "Those are the three cages and the little bird I saw peeking out at me. That is the person holding the birds on her arms."
Amy- "I bet I can guess which raptor this is (pointing to the larger bird)."
Piper- "That's a owl."
Amy- "I thought so, do you know how I knew?"
Piper- "Because it has big ears."

Arthur and Bennett incorporated some of their knowledge about birds into their dramatic play with Legos.

Bennett delivers eggs to Arthur in his Lego cart and says, "Put these eagle eggs into the nest to keep warm." Arthur puts a stuffed eagle over the Lego nest and calls out with excitement, "They hatched!"
Amy- "Do you think the babies are hungry?"
"How will they get food?"
Arthur- "The mommies bring it."
Amy- "What does she bring for them to eat?"
Arthur- "Worms"
Amy- "Oh, like a robin?" "So do eagles and robins eat the same thing?"
Arthur- "Yep"
Amy- "What else do the babies need?"
Arthur- "I don't know."
Amy- "Do you think they still need to stay warm even though they hatched?"
Arthur- "Yeah"
Amy- "What if mommy is away getting food?"
Arthur- "Then the daddy does it."

Jillian is also interested in eggs and demonstrates her understanding of where the eggs come from through her drawings. She seems to refine her thinking as she talks with me and begins a new drawing...

Jillian- "This is a pregnant person, it's actually part person part bird. The circles all around are feathers."
Amy- "It looks like the baby inside is a person."
Jillian- "Yeah because it has arms and legs."
Amy- "What else makes the person different from a bird?"
Jillian- "It doesn't have feathers."
Amy- "I wonder what baby birds look like when they are inside their mom?"
Jillian- "They are inside of the eggs."

Amy- "Tell me about your new drawing."
Jillian- "This is the mama with all her eggs inside."

New curriculum areas were developed by the student teachers and these areas were very popular features this week. Children were excited to come back to school and a lot of exploration occurred in these new novel areas.

Out on the playground, the children began creating their own story line of truck accidents last week by saying, "help my truck is stuck!" This play theme continued in the classroom. Using the tow trucks and tools, children began helping each other by bringing in the trucks to the mechanic/fix-it shop.

Ramps were a big hit in the cave - Sam said, "look at this! It's going fast!" Max, Ely, and Cashton tested different rolling tools to see which ones rolled the fastest.

On Wednesday, Alma, with the help of Cashton, pretended to look for her toy bunny in the snow, digging a deep hole with her hands. The children and I continued to dig a hole the following day, this time looking for "treasures." We dug all the way to the bottom and found sand! Some children found it funny and tested that it was a hole big enough to fit a child inside. To extend this activity, we are planning to hide color ice in the snow to create a scavenger hunt.

The children were most curious about what sharks eat at the habitat area. While some children fed the sharks smaller fish, other children thought they like to eat snow. Some of these ocean animals traveled into "frozen water" at the sensory table.

As the children explored, molded, and felt the snow and ice at the sensory table, some noticed it was melting. They said, "it's cold.", and "Look! Look at what I did!" The children also began using the snow as a prop for their dramatic play. Sofia ate "ice cream." Sharks and other ocean/arctic animals seemed to enjoy snow as their food and swim in the frozen water. Sooner or later, they started playing with trucks as well, making tracks in the snow. They said, "help help! My truck is stuck!"

*The conference sign up sheet will be posted on the door Monday morning. Please sign up for a time that will work for you. If you cannot sign-up in person, you may send me an email with your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choice of time. I'm looking forward to our meeting.

*We are interested in posting family recipes. If you have a favorite (especially one in which your child helps out with), please send it in for us to post in this area as inspiration for variety of food creations. Thank you!

*It's time to think about enrollment for the 2010-11 school year! Forms are sent via email this year. (Hard copies will also be available in the school office after that date.) Hard copies of the forms and the enrollment fee of $150.00 per family will be due by Monday, February 1st to retain your priority status. Payment must be included for enrollment to be complete.

*The next Lab School event to help you pass the winter blahs is GYM JAM. The date is Friday, February 5th. The children get to move, so do you (if you want to) and it's a lot of good old fashioned ball, jumping and running fun. If you thought creativity night was too crowded for your taste, don't worry! Bierman is so huge that you can barely hear the other people - lots of space to invite friends, neighbors and relatives - and you should, because it's all for a good cause - free will donations go towards buying new tricycles for the children in our classroom. We hope to see you there.

Lesson Plan
Lead Teacher: Darya, Edenia, and Jeannine
Week of January 25, 2010

Goals:
-The goal of this week is to urge the children's play and thinking deeper, moving beyond exploration of materials. We hope the children will compare their thinking with that of others and start to ask questions and investigate. They have shown interest in what the sharks eat so we will introduce elements of the food chain. The children have also been creating nests for the birds where they watch patiently to see if the eggs will hatch. To embrace this curiosity we are adding nests and animal tracks to our science area. The children will look closer at the different properties of snow and ice. They will work together to free frozen objects in the ice. We will also be building upon the play scenarios surrounding the repair shop. We will be singing songs and reading books to help the children learn the different names of some tools.

Art:
-Easel: The easel will contain new liquid watercolors. The children will be able to discover what happens when they mix the colors together.
- To further the children's exploration of animals, the science area will focus on animal tracks. Children will use a variety of stamps featuring the tracks of different animals. We will ask the children to examine the differences and similarities between the footprints. This will bring up concepts of shape and size. They will become aware that animals have unique footprints and through these markings you can identify the kind of animal.
-The art table will also have regular and adaptive scissors to allow the students to practice and strengthen their fine motor skills.

Manipulative/Math:
- There will be new puzzles incorporating the animals and vehicles in the classroom.
-The children continue to enjoy the Montessori seriation cylinders. The self correcting activity is promoting cognition and communication skills. The children are discussing what is too big, too small, next, in, and out with each other while they work on this activity. This activity also supports fine motor movements.
-The stacking pegs will be available with the peg boards. The children have been exploring how high they can make them before they bend over. They have also been using the pieces to roll down the ramps in the classroom. As the children stack the pegs they are using fine motor movements and eye hand coordination. The pegs are promoting turn taking as they stack together; it also is promoting problem solving skills as they figure out how high they can stack them before the pegs bend and fall.
-Our counting conversations are continuing at the snack tables along with which table has more children. The children are also continuing to follow the number sequence for getting ready to go outside. This activity promotes the order of the steps it takes to get their outdoor gear on.

Sensory:
-Although making cookies continues to be a favorite choice in the playdough area, other baking ideas are emerging as well. To further these interests, we will expand the playdough area to include pans, bowls, and measuring cups. In addition, we will offer children the opportunity to add mint to the playdough, using a shaker bottle. Creating with playdough allows children to develop small muscle control and use creativity and inventiveness. We are interested in posting family recipes. If you have a favorite (especially one in which your child helps out with), please send it in for us to post in this area as inspiration for variety of food creations. Thank you!
-The children have greatly enjoyed the novelty of exploring snow and ice in an indoor setting. In addition to exploring the snow and ice with cups, scoops, and molds and recognizing the physical differences between these two forms of frozen water, the children have been interested in bringing animals (including penguins and polar bears) and trucks (which have been getting "stuck" into the snow) into the sensory table. We will have smaller versions of these items available to allow more space for children's play. We will also offer children interesting objects to make imprints and tracks in the snow and provide building and molding tools to make snow sculptures/creations. These activities allow children the opportunity to observe and imitate other children's actions, use creative expression, and develop social skills, such as turn-taking. Children will also have the opportunity to practice persistence and self-regulation skills as they problem-solve how to dislodge natural materials such as leaves, branches, and pinecones from the ice using tools and droppers, sprayers, or cups with warm water.

Science:
-The children have embraced the new animal habitat areas, generating many play themes. The nesting area has been of particular interest. The children have been involved with showing compassion for the birds and their nests and have been excited about "hatching eggs." In addition, the children have enjoyed the water habitat area, acting out the food chain with sharks eating some of the smaller animals. To support the children's interests, we will provide materials such as raffia for children to construct their own nests and smaller ocean animals to provide further opportunities to demonstrate ocean food chains. We will also include maps with visuals of rivers, oceans, and mountains to further expand children's understanding of habitats.
-To foster the children's interest in animals and creating imprints and tracks in the snow, the science table will include authentic molds of animal tracks. In order to support the children's interests in nesting birds and hatching eggs, bird nests will be available for children to look at and touch.

Dramatic Play:
-The children have enjoyed using the materials in the "Repair Shop." Some children have taken on the role of the mechanic, asking the other children how they can fix their vehicle. Many children enjoy using the tow trucks to help bring the broken vehicles to the shop. We are adding shirts with name tags allowing the children to dress up like a mechanic. This will hopefully inspire them to go deeper as they see themselves as a mechanic. Throughout this play scenario the children are fostering social skills such as cooperation, sharing, and problem solving.
-The children are still fascinated with the trains. They are creating bridges and tunnels for the trains to drive through.
-The movement of the kitchen and home area to the loft was a success. Many children enjoy the coziness of this area, transforming it into their house. They have been pretending they are adults; taking care of babies and making important phone calls to their work. Some children have also been taking on the role of a pet owner, while other children have pretended to be a cat or a dog. To further the interest in this area we are going to bring in various food containers. In the future we may choose to turn the kitchen area into a pet shop, but for now it will remain as it is. This area promotes social skills such as cooperation and play negotiation in a familiar setting.

Language and Literacy:
-Favorite family recipes will be posted in the playdough area as a reference for children to use when recreating experiences of cooking, eating, and serving.
-Feeling words such as mad, happy, tired, and sad will be posted along with photographs of children displaying different emotions to allow children to begin recognizing and labeling their emotions.
-Documentations of children acting out stories and exploring different play themes will be posted throughout the classroom for children to use as a reference to their play.

Construction:
-The large hollow blocks and unit blocks are still available for the children to use in the repair area. The children started using the ramps to roll wheels from the repair shop in the cave. They are investigating the speed and distance the wheels, pegs, and rods can travel. This activity is enabling the children to take turns with the materials that can roll. The large area for construction continues to encourage cooperation and group projects.

Large Motor:
-The gym will continue to support children's use of balance, coordination, strength, and endurance. Children's balance will be fostered through the uneven surface created by the mats, children's coordination will be supported through stepping or crawling under of cones, and children's strength will be promoted through use of the climbing rope. In addition, the gym perimeter offers a "track" for children to drive scooter cars around, complete with "stop" and "slow down" signs. The children will also have opportunities to participate in large group directed activities with balls to promote their use of listening skills, direction following, and gross motor skills. This will also include the use of throwing and catching balls, which promotes the use of trapping and propulsion skills.
-Outdoors, colored and "glittery" ice molds will be buried in the snow for the children to find by digging with their hands or with various tools. Shovels, scoops, and pails will continue to be available outdoors to support the use of upper body strength. In addition, children will have the opportunity to push trucks and wheelbarrows and pull sleds through the snow to foster endurance.

Large Groups:
There will be further discussion about emotions, what they look like and the correlating ASL (American Sign Language) signs. This will allow the children to see what an emotion looks like and how to express how they feel. Large group is also providing the children with story lines to draw from during their experience at school. There have been some movement experiences during large group that involve the entire body and coordination. These activities are promoting following directions, large motor development, and spatial awareness.

Small Group
-Student teachers will begin their small group meetings this week. We will be taking groups out into the hallway to have an introductory meeting. Please remember that not every child at this age is ready to participate in such a group. Some children may choose to participate on certain days and not others. Though we encourage children to join us, it is their choice to participate on any given day.

Snacks
Monday: Graham Crackers made by Ross' Class & Banana
Wednesday: Rice Cakes & Kiwi
Thursday: Multigrain Cheerios & Apple

The chance to explore snow and ice up close in the comfort of the classroom was intriguing to the children. Their own personal styles shone through as they approached work at the snow table. Some children wanted to taste the snow, some chose mittens while others used bare fingers or tools to explore.

Lucia chose not to wear mittens and spent time spooning snow into a cup.

"I found ice," Jade said when she ran into an ice block.

Henry De brought wheels over from another part of the classroom and explored what happens when you imprint something into snow - it leaves a mark or a track.

Quinn was drawn to the aqua colored cups and used them to fill and dump, to dig and scoop.

Jack used the plastic utensils, announcing at one point, "I'm cutting snow."

Abbie used the smaller, clear plastic cups to scoop and dig.

At one point Jade left and went to the back, returning with a nest containing a bird and an egg.
When Andreas expressed some interest in it, she left and returned with another for him.

Andreas put the nest in the ice, then said, "the egg got cold, she's protecting it," referring to the bird.

The gym set up this week has givien the children a chance to try climbing using their full body. The mats have been folded into a "mat wall" which requires effort to climb onto.

The children are justifiably proud when the reach the top.

There is also a chance to use arm strength to scale the triangle bolster.

Another successful climb.

Once on the "wall" the children can jump down into the donut.

There are also little tykes cars to drive, fix and get gasoline for.

In the classroom, the Montessori seriation cylinders give children a chance to reflect on size, "too big, too small" and to notice increasing incremental changes in size.

The brown playdough (with cinnamon mixed in,) was used for a variety of baking experiences. On Friday, we used white playdough again with a shaker of dried mint - this gave the children a chance to mix a new ingredient into their creations.

One of the current favorite books is one featuring different animal habitats with lovely illustrations of the animals. It is in French, but no matter, at this stage we are mostly pointing and naming the different animals.

Many children are fascinated with the habitats in the back: river, ocean and forest. Through play and modeling with stuffed animals, plastic animals and their own bodies, they are absorbing a good deal of basic information about animal life. Troy put down the skunk to have a drink in the "river" (the dark blue fabric.)

Henry Da curls up in the "bear cave" for a long winter nap. And (unpictured) many children are learning the basics of the food chain by having the sharks eat the little fish.

When we offered glue in the fall, the children were more likely to simply spread, touch and explore the glue as a material. Now, many are moving on to using it as a tool to glue things in an early collage form.

Lead Teacher: Darya, Edenia, and Jeannine

Goals:
-The goal of this week is to urge the children's play and thinking
deeper, moving beyond exploration of materials. We hope the children will
compare their thinking with that of others and start to ask questions and
investigate. They have shown interest in what the sharks eat so we will
introduce elements of the food chain. The children have also been creating
nests for the birds where they watch patiently to see if the eggs will
hatch. To embrace this curiosity we are adding nests and animal tracks to
our science area. The children will look closer at the different properties
of snow and ice. They will work together to free frozen objects in the ice.
We will also be building upon the play scenarios surrounding the repair
shop. We will be singing songs and reading books to help the children learn
the different names of some tools.

Art:
-Easel: The easel will contain new liquid watercolors. The children will be
able to discover what happens when they mix the colors together.
- To further the children's exploration of animals, the science area will
focus on animal tracks. Children will use a variety of stamps featuring the
tracks of different animals. We will ask the children to examine the
differences and similarities between the footprints. This will bring up
concepts of shape and size. They will become aware that animals have unique
footprints and through these markings you can identify the kind of animal.
-The art table will also have regular and adaptive scissors to allow the
students to practice and strengthen their fine motor skills.

Manipulative/Math:
- There will be new puzzles incorporating the animals and vehicles in the
classroom.
-The children continue to enjoy the Montessori seriation cylinders. The
self correcting activity is promoting cognition and communication skills.
The children are discussing what is too big, too small, next, in, and out
with each other while they work on this activity. This activity also
supports fine motor movements.
-The stacking pegs will be available with the peg boards. The children have
been exploring how high they can make them before they bend over. They have
also been using the pieces to roll down the ramps in the classroom. As the
children stack the pegs they are using fine motor movements and eye hand
coordination. The pegs are promoting turn taking as they stack together; it
also is promoting problem solving skills as they figure out how high they
can stack them before the pegs bend and fall.
-Our counting conversations are continuing at the snack tables along with
which table has more children. The children are also continuing to follow
the number sequence for getting ready to go outside. This activity promotes
the order of the steps it takes to get their outdoor gear on.

Sensory:
-Although making cookies continues to be a favorite choice in the playdough
area, other baking ideas are emerging as well. To further these interests,
we will expand the playdough area to include pans, bowls, and measuring
cups. In addition, we will offer children the opportunity to add mint to
the playdough, using a shaker bottle. Creating with playdough allows
children to develop small muscle control and use creativity and
inventiveness. We are interested in posting family recipes. If you have a
favorite (especially one in which your child helps out with), please send
it in for us to post in this area as inspiration for variety of food
creations. Thank you!
-The children have greatly enjoyed the novelty of exploring snow and ice in
an indoor setting. In addition to exploring the snow and ice with cups,
scoops, and molds and recognizing the physical differences between these
two forms of frozen water, the children have been interested in bringing
animals (including penguins and polar bears) and trucks (which have been
getting "stuck" into the snow) into the sensory table. We will have
smaller versions of these items available to allow more space for
children's play. We will also offer children interesting objects to make
imprints and tracks in the snow and provide building and molding tools to
make snow sculptures/creations. These activities allow children the
opportunity to observe and imitate other children's actions, use creative
expression, and develop social skills, such as turn-taking. Children will
also have the opportunity to practice persistence and self-regulation
skills as they problem-solve how to dislodge natural materials such as
leaves, branches, and pinecones from the ice using tools and droppers,
sprayers, or cups with warm water.

Science:
-The children have embraced the new animal habitat areas, generating many
play themes. The nesting area has been of particular interest. The children
have been involved with showing compassion for the birds and their nests
and have been excited about "hatching eggs." In addition, the children
have enjoyed the water habitat area, acting out the food chain with sharks
eating some of the smaller animals. To support the children's interests,
we will provide materials such as raffia for children to construct their
own nests and smaller ocean animals to provide further opportunities to
demonstrate ocean food chains. We will also include maps with visuals of
rivers, oceans, and mountains to further expand children's understanding
of habitats.
-To foster the children's interest in animals and creating imprints and
tracks in the snow, the science table will include authentic molds of
animal tracks. In order to support the children's interests in nesting
birds and hatching eggs, bird nests will be available for children to look
at and touch.

Dramatic Play:
-The children have enjoyed using the materials in the "Repair Shop."
Some children have taken on the role of the mechanic, asking the other
children how they can fix their vehicle. Many children enjoy using the tow
trucks to help bring the broken vehicles to the shop. We are adding shirts
with name tags allowing the children to dress up like a mechanic. This will
hopefully inspire them to go deeper as they see themselves as a mechanic.
Throughout this play scenario the children are fostering social skills such
as cooperation, sharing, and problem solving.
-The children are still fascinated with the trains. They are creating
bridges and tunnels for the trains to drive through.
-The movement of the kitchen and home area to the loft was a success. Many
children enjoy the coziness of this area, transforming it into their house.
They have been pretending they are adults; taking care of babies and making
important phone calls to their work. Some children have also been taking on
the role of a pet owner, while other children have pretended to be a cat or
a dog. To further the interest in this area we are going to bring in varies
food containers. In the future we may choose to turn the kitchen area into
a pet shop, but for now it will remain as it is. This area promotes social
skills such as cooperation and play negotiation in a familiar setting.

Language and Literacy:
-Favorite family recipes will be posted in the playdough area as a
reference for children to use when recreating experiences of cooking,
eating, and serving.
-Feeling words such as mad, happy, tired, and sad will be posted along with
photographs of children displaying different emotions to allow children to
begin recognizing and labeling their emotions.
-Documentations of children acting out stories and exploring different play
themes will be posted throughout the classroom for children to use as a
reference to their play.

Construction:
-The large hollow blocks and unit blocks are still available for the
children to use in the repair area. The children started using the ramps to
roll wheels from the repair shop in the cave. They are investigating the
speed and distance the wheels, pegs, and rods can travel. This activity is
enabling the children to take turns with the materials that can roll. The
large area for construction continues to encourage cooperation and group
projects.

Large Motor:
-The gym will continue to support children's use of balance,
coordination, strength, and endurance. Children's balance will be
fostered through the uneven surface created by the mats, children's
coordination will be supported through stepping or crawling under of cones,
and children's strength will be promoted through use of the climbing
rope. In addition, the gym perimeter offers a "track" for children to
drive scooter cars around, complete with "stop" and "slow down"
signs. The children will also have opportunities to participate in large
group directed activities with balls to promote their use of listening
skills, direction following, and gross motor skills. This will also include
the use of throwing and catching balls, which promotes the use of trapping
and propulsion skills.
-Outdoors, colored and "glittery" ice molds will be buried in the snow
for children to find by digging with their hands or with various tools.
Shovels, scoops, and pails will continue to be available outdoors to
support the use of upper body strength. In addition, children will have the
opportunity to push trucks and wheelbarrows and pull sleds through the snow
to foster endurance.

Large Groups:
There will be further discussion about emotions, what they look like and
the correlating ASL (American Sign Language) signs. This will allow the
children to see what an emotion looks like and how to express how they
feel. Large group is also providing the children with story lines to draw
from during their experience at school. There have been some movement
experiences during large group that involve the entire body and
coordination. These activities are promoting following directions, large
motor development, and spatial awareness.

Snack: Tuesday: Granola Bars and Bananas
Friday: Kiwis and Goldfish

Announcements:

Please sign up for conferences if you haven't done so yet. The following times are available: Thursday 2/11 10:00am Thurs 2/18 9:00am Mon 2/22 10:00am Thurs 2/25 9:00am and 11:00am

The next Lab School event to help you pass the winter blahs is GYM JAM. The date is Friday, February 6th. This is one of my favorite events of the year, even though I am usually beat because it is a Friday - there is something about seeing all the children running in Bierman's huge open space on the green astro turf that is exhilarating. The children get to move, so do you (if you want to) and it's a lot of good old fashioned ball, jumping and running fun. If you thought creativity night was too crowded for your taste, don't worry! Bierman is so huge that you can barely hear the other people - lots of space to invite friends, neighbors and relatives - and you should, because it's all for a good cause - free will donations go towards buying new tricycles for the children in our classroom. We hope to see you there.

Here are just a few... and I mean it, just a few pics from Creativity Night... Thank you for coming!!

Weekly Plan for Jenn's 3PM Class
January 20th & January 21st, 2010

Overview and goals
Week three will start off with some very exciting news pertaining to some new little "visitors" joining our classroom this week. Mama had her babies this weekend! Please read the announcement at the bottom to let your child know how we will be visiting Mama this week. With that, we anticipate our life science exploration will be taking off! We will bring in books and questions for the children to explore and answer as continue our science focus as well as support our goal of encouraging high-level thinking skills. We will also continue to foster these skills throughout the other areas of our classroom, challenging the children's thinking and reason as they explore new senses at the science center and create more elaborate dramatic play themes in the back of the room.

Art center
Expressive material
~ The easel painting has been a huge hit! To change it up we are going to add pastel colors that reflect more of the colors the children are seeing in nature. We began to see some collaborative painting going on last week. We will encourage these cooperative experiences by encouraging the children to invite another child to join them while they paint. These collaborative ventures allow the children to practice their comprise, negotiation, and social interaction skills while sharing ideas and talking about what the painting process will be. We are excited to see the creativity blossom!
~ With all the trips taking place in the back of the room, we will add additional collage materials (paper towel tubes, string, etc.) to encourage the children to make their own props needed for travel. Binoculars, maps, and signs are a few of the anticipated creations needed for the future adventures around the "world" (a.k.a. our classroom).
Sensory material
~ One focus in the art areas has been on painting and printmaking. The children loved using the dinosaur sponges and cookie cutter letters to make prints. When the trucks were brought in, they really enjoyed making tracks on their paper with the wheels in the paints. We will be bringing in new shades of color to mix as well as various sized cars to help foster comparison skills. We will also focus more on using the letter shapes, promoting the novel ways to incorporate literacy through art.
~ The children have really enjoyed exploring and playing with flax seed in the sensory table. They have been using measuring cups, scoops, paddle wheels, and many other materials to support their play. With the interest in the new material being so great, we will be adding many different objects for the children to dig for and find. This activity is linked to our science focus dealing with the sense of touch. We have been asking the question "How does it feel?" when a child finds an object, encouraging the children to use the new texture words we have been taking about during large group and free play. To utilize their new knowledge and vocabulary words, we will create a sorting game that challenges the children to sort objects by their texture. This activity will get them thinking about similarities and differences, address the concept of classification, and engage them by using their sense of touch and fine motor skills.

Science Center
~ Since we've been back, we have been investigating the sense of touch in our science area. Through matching and guessing games, the children have been using their sense of touch to explore textures in their environment. We have extended the use of touch to our sensory table, and have been hearing the children use various texture words to describe the items they are finding hidden in the flax seed. This week, we will move onto the sense of smell in the science area. Smelling jars with scents such as cinnamon, coffee, and cocoa will be available for the children to smell and describe through written or pictorial recordings, as well as identify through a matching game. We will also use the cave to display how different animals use their sense of smell to find food with pictures, books, and figures for the children to play with to utilize their new information. Through these activities, the children will be developing their higher-level thinking skills with prediction, inquiry, and reflection or discussion. They will also be developing social skills by comparing their thoughts and findings.

Math and manipulative Center
~ The manipulatives have become more popular with the children over the past two weeks. Currently, the area has puzzles and activities that center around patterns. The children have enjoyed following provided patterns with colorful pegs and pattern blocks, as well as creating their own patterns. In the coming days, we will introduce new patterning games to the area to continue the exploration of patterns, as well as support the social interactions that accompany the cooperative production of the games.
~ The trains have been a very popular material in the classroom! The children have been working very hard in creating tracks that snake in and out of both caves. The children have been demonstrating spatial awareness by winding their tracks around certain objects including chairs and tables. To help the children extend their play themes, we will place pictures of their creations in the caves to stimulate new ideas by helping them recall tracks/stories from the days previous.

Language and Literacy Center
~ The children have spent some time at the book center over the last two weeks. Some of the book themes that they have explored include the human body, as well as the winter season. To expand this literacy exploration, we would like to incorporate books that relate to the dramatic play that we see reoccurring throughout the classroom. Books about trains, airplanes, and cars will be available to help create opportunities for the children enhance their dramatic play themes with more detail and new ideas while supporting their pre-/early-literacy development. Last week the children had a great time creating airplanes so they could travel to different countries such as China, Puerto Rico, and even the Grand Canyon.
~Several children have also explored the writing center since we have been back. Children have been stopping by to create grocery lists, draw pictures, and send letters to friends and families. To build off this interest in writing as well as help foster a deeper understanding of print and letter recognition, we will be adding alphabet stamps, inkpads, post cards, and envelopes to the writing center. We feel these additions will help foster the pre-/early-literacy skills of the children currently using the center while inviting new visitors to use the space. To increase this awareness, we would like to encourage the children to write post cards to their peers as they "travel" around the world. Writing letters increases fine motor skills, literacy, as well as cognitive ability levels.

Block Center
~ There has been many new "transportation" vehicles being created in the back of the room. Planes, trains, and other automobiles have popped up to help many of the children reach their intended destinations (e.g. Florida, China, Disneyworld). We will add more steering wheels, cardboard, paper, and tape to help furnish the newly created vehicles as well as encourage the children to use/create maps to take with them. These additions will support the social community in the classroom as well as provide new dramatic plays that can incorporate many children simultaneously.

Dramatic Play
~ The general store served the children well, however as the children continued to travel, they were buying supplies to take with them on their trips. With these constant occurrences, we felt it only appropriate to change the general store into a travel store. We will add suitcases, maps, tickets, and travel accessories (e.g. clothes, sunglasses, etc.) to help support this growing interest in travel.

Large Motor
~ The cars, driving track, obstacle course, and climber will continue to be available this week. The children have had a blast drive around the track as well as stopping by the gas station: both to fill up as well as keep on the general maintenance of their automobiles. We will be playing new teacher games this week, lead by the student teachers. The gym's set up will be changed for a day on Wednesday morning, as the teachers will be getting ready for Creativity Night!
~ Sledding has been a huge success, as many children cannot wait to get outside after snack! For those not interested in sledding, there has been some interesting snow-fort building taking place. The sleds will continue to be available and parents are always welcome to come a bit early (we're out there around 10.50 or so) and join in the fun! We will also be dismissing from outside as much as possible.

Announcements/Reminders
~ Mama had her babies!!! We haven't been able to get an exact count, but there are probably around 10 baby rats with Mama in her nest! With that, she needs to have privacy and quiet for these first for days/week as her babies begin to grow. We have moved Mama and the little ones to the "nook" in the back of our classroom (next to the teacher sink). The teachers will take groups of 2-3 children in to visit, but stress that we need to be very quiet while looking at Mama and her babies. They may be tough to see in these early stages, but as the babies grow, they will venture out of the nest more and the children will have better opportunities to see them!
~ Creativity Night - Tuesday, Jan. 20 from 6-7.30p. Take a look at the flyer posted on the Lab School's main page for more details!

Snack
Monday: No School
Wednesday: Letter Cheeze-Its & Oranges
Thursday: Cooking with Eva

*All snacks served with milk & water, unless otherwise specified*

After a short re-make of the Stone Soup story while outdoors... we head to our warm classroom and make our very own Stone Soup. Children brought their favorite veggies from home and they cut these and put them in the big pot. We had the soup for snack the next day.

Lead Teacher: Frances

Goals:
The children have embraced the bear cave habitat and appear ready for exposure to dif-ferent animal explorations. So we will expand the repertoire of animal play/information experiences offered. The snow and ice in our daily life is also a potential rich material to bring into the classroom for further exposure and understanding. We also plan to build upon some play theme children have developed with their cars around being "stuck" in the snow by re-introducing tools and a "fix-it" shop in the classroom. We also will continue to focus on mastering the basic steps of getting dressed for outside.

Art
-Easel: The easel will contain liquid watercolors. The brilliance of these colors fascinated the children on the small easels, now they will be able to make larger paintings.
-The children are becoming more adept at using glue to stick items to paper, though this is a process with many steps. We will continue collage at the art table to offer further exposure.

Manipulatives/Math
- New puzzles focusing on increasing sized circles and triangles give children exposure to the concept of seriation. Another puzzle focuses on opposites.
-A sorting manipulative (building spools) allows children to work with sorting, one to one correspondence and pattern making.
-A new Montessori seriation cylinder will be presented, this should challenge children who are ready for working to sort by a different attribute (length of peg, as opposed to diameter of peg. This self correcting activity promotes attention to individual size differences and gradations from small to large.
-We have begun a practice of counting the number of children at each snack table daily to work on counting, one to one correspondence and estimation of size (one table is smaller and typically has the fewest number of children.)

Sensory
- The cinnamon playdough has inspired a great deal of baking. We will incorpo-rate a new stove in the playdough area as well as new cooking tools. Building with clay will support fine motor strength and precision, as well as creative ex-pression.
- The children have enjoyed playing outside in the snow and experiencing their natural winter environment. To further these interests, we will provide snow and ice in the sen-sory table for the children to explore with scoops, pails, chisels, and molds. In addition, we will have interesting objects available, including shells, pinecones, and spools, to make imprints in the snow. Children will have the opportunity to learn about the melting process of snow and ice and will discover differences between these two forms of fro-zen water. In addition, children's social skills, such as cooperation and turn-taking will be fostered as they negotiate the use of materials and space.

Science
-We plan to daily put out bird food this week to attract more birds to our window and begin to reflect that the snow covers the birds typical sources of food. This beginning dialogue supports understanding of seasonal cycles and awareness of animal adaptation to the seasons.
- concepts of melting and freezing will be explored in the sensory table via work with the ice and snow.
- The animal habitat and sorting areas have come alive with different animals and new habitats. The children have been moving the animals from the sorting areas to "fit" with water, straw, etc. In order to expand these connections, we will continue with the bear cave but have added a "water"area with water animals and finally a nesting area with birds. One real nest and real crow from the science closet is featured but we also hope the children make their own habitats/nest for the animals in the dramatic play area. We will encourage children to continue moving the animals to the habitats they think they belong in.

Dramatic Play
-The children have continued to use the trains with gusto. We will involve them in ex-panding the track on the floor to allow more space to play. The airplane play has shifted to stories of traveling, which children packing suitcases and wearing pilot uniforms.
-The kitchen and home area will move to the lost for a more cozy experience. This area promotes social skills such as cooperation and play negotiation in a familiar setting.
-Outside some of the children have been pretending their cars are stuck in the snow and there have been some playful collision with the trains in the classroom. To further the children's interest, we have created a Repair shop. The children can wear hard hats and use tools to fix the cars and trains that have crashed. This will allow the children to act out different scenarios and take on different roles within the play. They could be the owner of a car that needs to be repaired or they could become the mechanic and run the shop. This will allow the children to foster social skills such as cooperation, sharing, and problem solving.

Language and Literacy
-Stories related to our curriculum themes will be read at large group.
-Story concepts are embedded in the fix - it area, where a five page story provides the base for pretend play.
-When dressing the children, we are using a series of numbered wall charts to plan the order of dressing, which promotes sanity in dressing as well as exposure to left to right reading sequence and the concept that print/pictures carry meaning.

Construction
-Large hollow blocks and simple unit blocks are located nearby the train area and airport to encourage building along with these activities. Construction gives children the opportunity to use creative expression as well as learn the basic principles needed for building, such as creating sturdy bases and symmetry. The large area for construction also encourages cooperation and group projects.

Large Group/Music
-During large group this week we will sing some familiar songs and work with rhythm instruments on some instrumental tunes. The song "We are the dinosaurs" by Laurie Berkner has been particularly popular. Look it up on You-tube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLdDKNxrL68 it's not a familiar one to most parents, but is very catchy and easy to learn.

Large Motor
- The gym is set up to support balance and coordination to enhance children's experiences outdoors, walking on the snow, slippery ice etc. The triangular bolster has a rope to support arm strength by hand over hand climbing.
There is an uneven surface created with mats for the children to practice balance, lifting their legs up... then walking through a walkway made out of the green mats, arriving to a jumping station and jumping into the donut. The scooter cars are available for driving all around the gym perimeter. There is a gas station and a fix it shop. There are signs that tell the children to slow down and stop...Two hurdles in the middle of the mats allow for jumping, stepping over (lifting legs up) or crawling under (also possible to go over with their hands and feet like a "cat.")
-Outdoors the large motor challenge is walking in the snow, some children are light enough to stay on the crusty top layer, but most sink through which is a challenge. We also have sleds for riding and trucks for filling with snow.

Announcements
-Thank you very much to our laundry helpers. - Please sign up to bring home laundry on Friday if you are able.
-Thanks so much to parents for taking seriously our pleas of labeling clothing and having everything "at the ready." Our first day of going outside was MUCH more calm than usual. Hopefully we will get more practice this week and become more proficient in dressing. So, just to remind: If you are coming in the classroom to drop your child off, please help us out by putting hats and mittens in the jacket sleeve when you hang up the jacket and having boots and snowpants ready to go (either hanging or in a backpack.) If you forget boots or snowpants on a given day, please let us know and find a pair from Eva so they are all ready to go at dressing time.
-Please join us for creativity night, this Wednesday evening from 6:00pm to 7:30pm. Children will be able to explore a different activity in each of the three classrooms (sen-sory exploration in our classroom, clay in Ross' class and light in Amy's. In addition, a dance teacher from the U will be run three group sessions in the gym. We hope you can make it! To get an idea of numbers, we will be asking for a tentative RSVP on Tuesday at drop off/pick up time.
-Please sign up for a winter conference in February. Conference times are posted on the door.

Snack
Tuesday: Oat and Honey Granola Bar and Bananas
Friday: Cheese and Crackers and Apples

Overview
The children are so glad to be back at school! They are enjoying each other, getting to know the new teachers and new student, Zachary. They are looking forward to the upcoming field trip to the Raptor Center, and have been helping make a list of questions to ask when we get there. The science center continues to have materials that support conversation and inquiry about birds. We will also introduce a new recording system for children to use as they are observing the birds that visit the classroom feeder. Other goals for the week are to support continued building with the legos and encourage further exploration using the light projector.

Creative Arts
-Collage: Feathers continue to intrigue the children. Last session they used them in the science center to add to the nest, now they are incorporating them into their collages. To help the children see the connection between these two activities, we have added materials to the collage table that will serve as a provocation for nest building. There are circle shaped pieces of paper, cotton, straw, popsicle sticks, feathers, wood shavings, pieces of yarn, twine and raffia.

-Easel: Teal blue, yellow, and white paints will be offered at the easel. These shades will mix to form new hues. Important discoveries will be made as children continue to engage in their favorite activity- blending and layering colors to fill the entire paper. We are also extending painting by providing tape that can be painted over. It will be interesting to hear the children's response when they see what happens when the tape is removed to expose the underlying paper.

Sensory
-Earth Clay: Over the past couple of weeks the children have begun to express interest in the earth clay. To encourage the children to extend their use of the earth clay, we are going to add water and demonstrate how to make coils.

Science
- We have added a pheasant to our display of birds, nests, and feathers. Several of the children have discovered that they can add feathers onto the pheasant to "warm it up" as well as decorate it. They have drawn pictures of their revised pheasants and we have had a few interesting conversations about their thought processes behind this. As an extension, we will be investigating different types of feathers and the purposes they serve. In addition, we are trying to attract a wider variety of birds to our classroom feeder. The children have added millet, a sunflower, and dry corn on the cob into the bird feeder. We have quite a few budding bird watchers in our class! Their observations can be recorded on the data collection sheets adjacent to the feeder.
- The children continue to observe the tadpoles and anxiously await the growth of their legs. They still refer to the books we have about the life cycle of a tadpole and make comparisons between the book and the observations we are seeing in the classroom.
- We have planted an amaryllis bulb this week and the children continue to care for and observe the changes in the baby oak tree.
- Animal track investigations continue to occur with the plaster molds of animal tracks and some of the children have created their own sets of tracks by tracing their hands on paper.
-The children have begun to explore the concepts of reflection, light, transparency, and shadows through the use of the projection and light tables. The children are especially interested in the creation of shadows. To help further stimulate the children's thinking about shadows, we have placed markers, paper, and a variety of objects by the projection system. The wall in front of the projector system has been covered with paper, which will provide the children with the chance to trace the different shadows they are creating.

Math and Manipulatives
- Many of the children have been incorporating their original Lego creations into their dramatic play. We added more wheels to support their great interest in forming moving vehicles. We also will be storing their vehicles/structures at the end of each day so they can enhance their construction skills by adding more detail on subsequent days. The addition of large bases will encourage collaborative building of larger structures and allow them to extend their dramatic play.
- After experiencing patterns as sound and creating color and shape patterns with the button mosaics and pattern blocks, the children have begun noticing patterns all around them. To provide new hands-on opportunities to try patterning, we added grid paper for drawing patterns.

Literacy
-To connect the children's interest in transparency and light to writing, we have added clear transparencies and markers to the top of the loft. There are also other materials available to support letter writing and literacy development such as: sign making materials, tape, staplers, and paper.
- The children continue to show great interest in writing letters to each other. To help children learn to address their mail, we have added a model of an addressed envelope. Nametags for envelopes are also provided so children can match the names to the mailboxes.
- In addition to the literacy related software that is usually available, the computers will be showing slideshows of the children engaged in various activities around the room. This will help stimulate conversation between students and may inspire children to revisit familiar play themes.

Dramatic Play
- To provide new opportunities for dramatic play and small group interaction, we have added small stuffed woodland animals to the outdoor winter landscape in one of the caves. Furthermore, since the children have demonstrated an ongoing interest in birds and their nests, we have placed a DVD player in the entrance of the cave. It features birds making nests in their natural environments.
-Baking muffins has been a big hit in the kitchen area. Along with the baking trays, muffins, and cookies, we have provided the children with hot pads, aprons, and mixing bowls to support role-play.

Blocks
-The hollow blocks and large pieces of fabric continue to provide multiple opportunities for large constructive play and dramatic play.
-The wooden unit blocks, carpet squares, small pieces of fabric, castle blocks, and animal and people figures provide additional materials for building, dramatic play, and creative expression.

Playground
- Sledding season is in full force! In addition to building social skills as they share sleds, the children also get quite a cardiovascular workout hiking their sleds up the hill. The children are learning to steer their sleds by using their arms and core strength to help guide it.
- Much of the snow on the playground is frozen into large pieces. The children have taken this opportunity to attempt building an igloo. To support further building, we will provide tools and demonstrate easy ways to remove large snow chunks from the ground. The children themselves work together to problem solve and decide how to make the igloo strong and sturdy.

Large Motor
-The structure of the gym will remain but teachers will pose a new challenge with the addition of romper stompers. Romper stompers are large blocks with ropes attached. The children coordinate their arms with their legs as they stand on the blocks and hold the ropes taut by pulling up as they walk around the gym. We will also be encouraging the children to use the hurdles with their whole body by modeling stepping over, crawling over, and even slithering under the hurdles. This will encourage the development of their core, upper body, and lower body. It will also help the children to become more aware of their body in space.

Snack
Monday: No School
Tuesday: Oat & Honey granola bar & Banana
Wednesday: Sunflower Butter Sandwiches
Thursday: Pumpkin Muffins made by class
Friday: Cheese & Crackers

Enjoy just a few pics of some winter fun in the playground... practicing pulling the sleds, making snow angels, large group outdoors, sledding and large group again!

Our first large group outdoors... noticing birds' nests and talking about different kinds of birds... we all spread bird seed to feed our playground birds...

We talk about making a cozy place for birds to eat bird seed... first we gather twigs and leaves...

Then we spread bird seed...

Overview and Goals
The first two weeks back at school have been a period of adjustment for the children. They have settled back into our routines and are getting reacquainted with their friends. They are also getting to know the new student teachers: Beth, Janet, and Lisa. The children have really enjoyed spending the first part of the day out on the playground sledding and playing in the snow. They have also spent a great deal of time in our science center exploring the life cycle as it relates to birds, our tadpoles, trees and nature all around us. The concepts fostered in the science center are carried throughout the classroom and will be the focus of the field trip to the Raptor Center on Thursday. We will continue to promote cooperation, communication, and self-expression throughout the learning centers.

Expressive Arts
-The easel will continue to be available to the children with blue, purple, and white paint. Along with the paint brushes, we will add feathers to the easel to encourage the use of new tools for painting. This will encourage children to think creatively about feathers, birds, and other tracks which are being explored in the science center.
-The children have been using the construction paper and natural collage materials during the last two weeks. We will add circle shaped paper and feathers in addition to the flower petals, flat wood shapes, markers, scissors and tape that are always available for creative expression.

Sensory Materials
-The children have spent the last two weeks exploring earth clay. We have encouraged the children to think about how they can change the clay while not rushing them to make something. At the end of last week we added water and sponges to the clay. This week during large group we will begin to talk about making shapes out of the clay such as balls and snakes. We will ask questions to spark their thinking about how those shapes can be used to make other things with the clay.
-We will continue to take advantage of the snow on the playground for building and modeling. During our large group outside this past week we brought the children's attention to the tracks left in the snow by animals. We also made tracks of our own by walking, jumping, and pulling sleds. Some children have been interested and engaged in conversations about the properties of snow and we will continue to develop these ideas in the coming week.

Dramatic, Symbolic Play and Blocks/Creative Building
~In the hibernation cave we have kept the natural materials and snowy sheets to keep the wintery feel in the area. We have added several woodland stuffed animals to help build on the role-playing taking place in this area. The children are beginning to explore animal roles and relationships including predator/prey and families.
~The capes and big pieces of fabric have been used as many "party" accessories for the children including table clothes, dresses, and picnic sacks. We will continue to have them available in the dramatic play and by the hollow blocks to help support their dramatic play scenarios.
~The kitchen set has been included in the children's "party" dramatic scenes. They have made treats, brewed tea, and made picnic lunches. They are also extending these ideas into the loft area where they have used fabric pieces to pack the treats to bring to the party. We will continue to foster their ideas and encourage the children to write invitations to their parties in the writing area of the loft.
~The hollow blocks continue to be available to inspire children's dramatic play scenarios and to support mathematical concepts.
~The castle blocks and unit blocks have been a success in their new location. The children have been very interested in using the fabric squares that are included in this area to explore patterns.
~The children have been creating in the Lego area. Some of their creations include race-cars, fire trucks, homes, and garages. The legos will continue to give the children an opportunity to enhance fine motor skills and give them opportunities for creative expression through building.

Science Center
~We have been noticing different birds and squirrels eating off of our bird feeder in the classroom and have decided to start keeping track of what we see. We will have a chart for the children to mark down when they see an animal at the feeder. We can track what kinds of animals we see, as well as what animals the morning class sees. This will allow us to notice patterns in when the animals come and what animals come more often. We will discuss our findings in large group and take the opportunity to predict what animals they believe we will see.
~The children have come back from break and noticed that the tadpoles did not grow legs yet. We will continue to discuss the life cycle of the frog as we anxiously await their legs to arrive. The children will continue to observe and record what they see.
~The children have been very interested in our weaving board and we will be combining this skill with our exploration of nests. There will be natural weaving materials and baskets for the children to weave their own nests. This will help enhance the children's fine motor skills as well as experience how nest are made.
~Feathers, tracks, birds, and nests will still be available for the children to explore. We have added colored pencils, clipboards, and paper to the area in order for the children to draw their own birds. There are also several bird pictures and books added to the area in order for the children to see more examples. We will continue to encourage the children to look at the many different characteristics of birds. We will be able to see many different birds up close and personal on our field trip to the Raptor Center. We will discuss what we see there at large group.
~Our light area will continue to draw the attention of the children. They have investigated how the projector works and have experimented with putting objects onto the projector. We will add large sheets of paper for the children to make shadows of objects or themselves. The mirror and pattern materials will continue to be available for the children to look at reflection. The teacher's will encourage the children to explore simple patterning and how the mirror affects the patterns.

Language and Literacy
-Out two writing areas continue to be used daily. Some of the children began writing invitations to peers to join a pretend party that was part of a dramatic play experience. We will encourage them to expand their use of invitations and other written materials that will tie in with dramatic play. They continue to use the mailboxes to write notes to each other, and we will support them in those efforts as well.
-Books about winter and animals in winter and snow will still be available to the children. Books about birds and I Spy books were quite popular last week and children begin to show interest, awareness and enthusiasm for words that rhyme and words games.

Math, Manipulatives and Games
-We continue to discuss and demonstrate the concept of patterning with the children during large group time. Last week we introduced the concept of rhythmic patterns in music. This week we will begin using simple grid squares and inviting children to color their own patterns on the grids. The grids will be used in a variety of ways in the coming weeks. The children continue to have many opportunities to make patterns with the button mosaics, lacing beads, unifix cubes, and patterning blocks.
-The theme puzzles have been used a lot during these first two weeks, and they will still be available this week. In addition to strengthening fine motor skills and supporting their understanding of whole/part relationships, the animal pictures in the puzzles have prompted conversations about various animals. ~The sequencing puzzle with pieces showing the life cycle of the frog has been a favorite puzzle choice for the children. In addition to ongoing discussions about the sequence of the frog's life cycle, we will continue to discuss the sequence of the tree's seasonal changes. We will be displaying the pictures you have sent of a tree near your house in winter, and we will be comparing those pictures with the ones taken in the fall. The photos of trees from our playground and our pick up area are still available for the children to place in order and to observe the life cycle changes in various seasons.

Large Motor
-Due to the Monday holiday, we might visit the gym on Wednesday this week. The children have responded to the new gym set up with enthusiasm. They have especially enjoyed riding on the cars, pumping gas at the gas station, and jumping into the donut hole. We also have areas for climbing with a rope, walking on a bumpy surface, climbing over and under hurdles, and walking on a balance walkway that is long and wide. Some of the large motor skills that are emphasized in the new gym set up are balance, coordination, and spatial awareness.
-The children are getting many opportunities to use large muscle skills during our times outdoors. Walking in the deep snow helps the children to develop balance and endurance. Climbing up the big hill is rewarded by the excitement of sledding down the hill. They have also enjoyed pulling friends on sleds in the level areas, digging in the snow with shovels, and throwing chunks of snow at trees. These last three activities have been great for increasing arm strength and coordination. The children continue to utilize the swings, slides, and climbing areas. This week we plan to try playing a game of hide and seek on the snowy playground. This will be a fun way to promote both social and large motor skills.

Music and Movement/Large Group
-Some of our large group meetings were outside last week. The children were enthusiastic about exploring the area to look for tracks, gathering branches and leaves to make a bird's nest, and scattering bird seed to help feed the birds. This week our large groups will be inside, due to the field trip and other schedule requirements. Our Wednesday large group will include a discussion to prepare the children for what they will see at the Raptor Center. Our Thursday large group will help the children focus and revisit our field trip to the Raptor Center. We will continue to include songs, movement activities, and conversations about things we have seen and experienced.

We are very excited to be sharing in the wonder of learning and exploring with your children!

Beth, Lisa, and Janet

• Please remember that school will be closed on Monday, January 18th.
• Creativity Night is this Wednesday 6-7:30.
• Our Field trip to the Raptor Center is this Thursday. We will leave the school at 12:35. We hope you can join us!!

If you are not driving your child, make sure you provide us with a car seat!!
thank you.

The goals for this week were to expand and support the children's symbolic play skills while continuing the themes in the dramatic play area. Children were busy collaborating and adding new scenarios to their pretend play. We also observed a lot of scientific thinking skills developing as the children explored the sensory, science, and art tables in the classroom.

Katie and Cashton making tea for the animals in their cave. Katie especially wanted to feed the wolf so it would be full before it went to bed.

Train on the railroad tracks. Sam collected the wooden people and placed them on his train - he said, "all aboard!" Children were curious to see how the train cars connected. After modeling the connection with one child, that child helped many other children connect the trains together.

The sorting game at the science table took a life of its own as the children started to sort all the water animals and place them in the "blue" water at the water table.

The children were interested in the concept of the cause and effect of mixing colors, using basters, and pouring water from one container to another.

Classroom Newsletter
1/15/10

Dear Families,

What a wonderful two weeks it has been. Now that the children have experienced the "getting to know each other" phase in the first term, the second term seems to reflect their growing relationships and friendships. A lot of these interactions are evident by the way the children collaborate and cooperate in the dramatic play area. We also have had many opportunities to extend the children's play, adding new elements to each theme.

The airport has been a big hit. Many children have been in and out of this area flying airplanes or riding in one. A world map has been an intriguing visual that allowed the children to experience the concept of destination. They are able to physically see the abstract concept that living in "Minneapolis," or going to "Mexico" leads to a place where we can point and label on a map.

The children took the concept of "traveling" and "transportation" to another level by going somewhere on a school bus, which has also been interchanged with a city bus. They seem fascinated by the idea of pretending to ride the bus to go to school. After the day of riding the bus with Ebisaa, other children started to gather, stating that they want to go to school as well. Sofia claimed that she was on the bus to go swimming. She even brought "snacks" to eat on the bus.

Traveling on the bus has been a sub-theme since it is their mode of transportation to go from one curriculum area (cave) to another (water table).

The story of a bear cave and hibernation has led us to discuss topics such as real vs. not real, adding a new word, "pretend," to the children's vocabulary. Even though our experience of "going on a bear hunt," became a little too realistic for some children, I was pleased to see the aftermath of that incident. During snack time, the children were empathetic; concerned about the few children who seemed scared to see the "real bear." They suggested that we go on a hunt for horses instead. The following day, we acted out a story about going on a horse hunt and they all enjoyed taking a picture of the "horses" and feeding them carrots. Below are the lyrics I have made up. You can sing it to the tune of "going on a bear hunt" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzIcu6tbEko with slight adaptation.

I am excited to see children taking a lot more interest in each other. They are learning how to collaborate, discuss, and work together towards a common goal. I believe we are off to a great start to the new term.

Going on a Horse Hunt
We're going on a horse hunt
We're gonna take a camera.
I'm not afraid.
We're coming to a tall mountain.
Can't go under it.
Can't go through it.
Gotta climb up it!
Do you see anything?
Wait, I see horses down there.
Quick, follow me.
We're going through the tall grass.
Can't go under it.
Can't go over it.
Gotta go through it.
Swish swish swish swish....
Stop! I see them (whisper). Let's tip toe...
Lets take a picture - click.
Lets give the horses some carrots.
Do you think they like their snacks?
I bet we can have our snacks....Are you hungry?
(Go back to the classroom)

Announcements
- NO SCHOOL on Monday January 18 in recognition of Martin Luther King Day.

-The Parent Discussion Groups will be meeting again, talking about guidance and limit setting. The meetings will be Thursday January 28 from 1.15-2.30pm, Friday January 29 from 9-10.15a, and Tuesday February 2 from 6.45-8p.

~ Barb has set up another round of "Coffee with the Director" and is inviting you all to have a chance to sit down and chat with her! The meetings will be on Tuesday, February 2 from 8.45-9.45a and Wednesday, February 3 from 8.45-9.45a AND 12.45-1.45p. Hope you can make it to one of the coffee hours.

-Thank you very much to our laundry helpers. - Please sign up to bring home laundry on Wednesday if you can.

-Thanks so much to parents for taking seriously our pleas of labeling clothing and having everything "at the ready." So, just to remind: If you are coming in the classroom to drop your child off, please help us out by putting hats and mittens in the jacket sleeve when you hang up the jacket and having boots and snowpants ready to go (either hanging or in a backpack.) If you forget boots or snowpants on a given day, please let us know and find a pair from Eva so they are all ready to go at dressing time.

-Please join us for creativity night, this Wednesday evening from 6:00pm to 7:30pm. Children will be able to explore a different activity in each of the three classrooms (sen-sory exploration in our classroom, clay in Ross' and Jenn' classroom and light in Amy and Dalia's classroom. In addition, a dance teacher from the U will run three group ses-sions in the gym. We hope you can make it!

Lesson Plan
Lead Teacher: Ayuko
Week of January 19, 2010

Goals:
The children have embraced the bear cave habitat and appear ready for more exposure to different animals. So we will expand the repertoire of animal play/information experi-ences offered. The snow and ice in our daily life is also a potential rich material to bring into the classroom for further exposure and understanding. We also plan to build upon some play themes children have developed with their cars around being "stuck" in the snow by re-introducing tools and a "fix-it" shop in the classroom. Continuing to master the basic steps of getting dressed for going outside is also a theme we are working on.

Art
-Easel: The easel will contain liquid watercolors. The children will be able to compare the difference between round cake and liquid watercolors. The vibrant colors will be very inviting for the children to explore.
-The children are becoming more adept at using glue to stick items to paper, though this is a process with many steps. We will continue to make collages at the art table to offer further exposure.

Manipulatives/Math
- New puzzles around the themes of trains and other vehicles will be available.
-A sorting game with photos of different types of vehicles will provide an early math and vocabulary experience.
-Stacking pegs will be available with the peg boards. This activity promotes mathematical skills such as one to one correspondence, counting, and pattern making.
-The Montessori seriation cylinders will be out - this self correcting activity pro-motes attention to individual size differences and gradations from small to large.
-We have begun a daily practice of counting the number of children at each snack table to work on counting, one to one correspondence, and estimation of size (one table is smaller and typically has the fewest number of children.)

Sensory
- The cinnamon playdough has inspired a great deal of baking. We will incorpo-rate a new stove in the playdough area as well as new cooking tools. Building with clay will support fine motor strength and precision, as well as creative ex-pression.
- The children have enjoyed playing outside in the snow and experiencing their natural winter environment. To further these interests, we will provide snow and ice in the sen-sory table for the children to explore with scoops, pails, chisels, and molds. In addition, we will have interesting objects available, including shells, pinecones, and spools, to make imprints in the snow. Children will have the opportunity to learn about the melting process of snow and ice and will discover differences between these two forms of frozen water. In addition, children's social skills, such as cooperation and turn-taking will be fostered as they negotiate the use of materials and space.

Science
- Because the snow covers the birds' typical sources of food, we plan to daily put out bird food this week to attract more birds to our window. The beginning dialogue of this proc-ess supports understanding of seasonal cycles and awareness of animal adaptation to the seasons.
- Concepts of melting and freezing will be explored in the sensory table via work with the ice and snow.
- The animal habitat and sorting areas have come alive with different animals and new habitats. The children have been moving the animals from the sorting areas to areas they consider as habitats, such as water, straw, etc. In order to expand these connections, we will continue with the bear cave but have added a "water" area with water animals and finally a nesting area with birds. One real nest from the science closet is featured but we would also like to see the children make their own habitats/nests for the animals in the dramatic play area. We will encourage children to continue moving the animals to the habitats they think they belong in.

Dramatic Play
-The children have continued to use the trains with gusto. We will involve them in ex-panding the track on the floor to allow more space to play. The airplane play has shifted to stories of traveling with children packing suitcases and wearing pilot uniforms.
-The kitchen and home area will move to the loft for a more cozy experience. Use of this area promotes social skills such as cooperation and play negotiation in a familiar set-ting.
-Outside some of the children have been pretending their cars are stuck in the snow and there have been some playful collision with the trains in the classroom. To further the children's interest, we have created a "Repair Shop." The children can wear hard hats and use tools to fix the cars and trains that have crashed. This will allow the children to act out different scenarios and take on different roles within the play. They could be the owner of a car that needs to be repaired or they could become the mechanic and run the shop. This will allow the children to foster social skills such as cooperation, sharing, and problem solving.

Language and Literacy
-Stories related to our curriculum themes will be read at large group.
-Story concepts are embedded in the fix - it area, where a five page story provides the base for pretend play.
-When dressing the children, we are using a series of numbered wall charts to plan the order of dressing, which promotes sanity in dressing as well as exposure to left to right reading sequence and the concept that print/pictures carry meaning.

Construction
-Large hollow blocks and simple unit blocks are located nearby the train area and airport to encourage building along with these activities. Construction gives children the oppor-tunity to use creative expression as well as learn the basic principles needed for building, such as creating sturdy bases and symmetry. The large area for construction also encour-ages cooperation and group projects.

Large Group/Music
-During large group this week we will sing some familiar songs and work with rhythm instruments on some instrumental tunes. The song "We are the dinosaurs" by Laurie Berkner has been particularly popular. Look it up on You-tube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLdDKNxrL68 it's not a familiar one to most parents, but is very catchy and easy to learn.

Large Motor
- The gym is set up to support balance and coordination to enhance children's experiences outdoors, walking on the snow, slippery ice etc. The triangular bolster has a rope to sup-port arm strength by hand over hand climbing. There is an uneven surface created with mats for the children to practice balance and lifting their legs up. They are able to walk through a walkway made out of the green mats, arriving to a jumping station and jumping into the donut. The scooter cars are available for driving all around the gym perimeter. There is a gas station and a fix it shop. There are signs that tell the children to slow down and stop...Two hurdles in the middle of the mats allow for jumping, stepping over (lifting legs up) or crawling under (also possible to go over with their hands and feet like a "cat.")
-Outdoors, the large motor challenge is walking in the snow. Some children are light enough to stay on the crusty top layer, but most sink through, which is a challenge. We also have sleds for riding and trucks for filling with snow.

Snack
Monday: No School
Wednesday: Pretzels & Banana
Thursday: Cheese & Crackers

Overview and Goals:
We will continue to focus on building and strengthening relationships with the children throughout the upcoming weeks. We feel it is very important for the children to feel secure and comfortable with their new teachers at school. We will spend the next several weeks exploring and discussing the five senses, beginning with the sense of touch. The teachers have added some additional games and interactive materials for the children to use in the science center this week to enhance their experiences with different textures. Aside from these few additions, the learning environment will remain unchanged so the children will be able to return to the classroom and continue to build upon their experiences from last week.

Expressive Arts
• Large paint brushes and primary and secondary paint colors are available at the easel. The children will be able to create their own secondary hues, tints, and shades of color.
• Collage materials of various sizes, shapes, and textures are available for the children to explore and use as a means of creative expression.
• A variety of cookie cutter shapes and paint will be available for printing, stamping, and finger painting (if desired). The materials allow for a tactile experience as children manipulate and discuss familiar shapes and designs.

Sensory Materials
• The sensory table is filled with flax seed. An assortment of scooping tools and containers are available for the children to use as they examine the various physical properties of the seed.

Math & Manipulatives
• Finding, matching, and creating patterns will be our focus in the manipulative center over the next several weeks.
• Mini Pegs w/ pattern cards allow children opportunities to match/follow a pattern while also strengthening perceptual motor skills such as eye-hand coordination and manual dexterity.
• Colored inch cubes and thick parquetry blocks are also available for pattern making.
• Problem solving, the concept of part-to-whole and eye-hand coordination are supported by the variety of puzzles available on the manipulative shelf.
• The computers are available for the children to play games focusing on problem solving and/or literacy skills.

Language & Literacy
• Various types of paper and writing tools are available for the children to use at the writing center.
• The book shelves hold a variety of books for children to browse independently or participate in shared reading experiences.

Science Center
• Tactile games can be found at the science table. Children can use their sense of touch to differentiate between soft and hard as they sort the objects.
• The new science cave is an extension of our science center. It is filled with an array of materials (fabrics, furs, shells, etc.) for the children to manipulate and further explore textural differences.

Dramatic & Symbolic Play
• The kitchen/home area remains a strong feature in the classroom. This is an important area for the children to make connections to the real world through play. Large pieces of fabric are available for the children to use creatively during their play.
• The remaining two caves continue to house the brio trains and track set. A large variety of wooden blocks and people pegs have been added to this area to help extend symbolic play in a more open-ended and creative manner. The children will have opportunities to build and construct their own buildings, props and additions to the train set.
• A general store, with various props, is located in the back of the classroom. This dramatic play area allows children opportunities to reenact the familiar routines involved with purchasing goods from the store.

Block Area
• The hollow blocks will continue to be a choice in the back of the classroom. The children learn the benefit of working together as they construct large structures and often create dramatic play themes to reflect these structures.
• The unit blocks are in the same location and remain available for the children to utilize. Often these blocks are used to enhance larger structures created with the hollow blocks. Wheels (that can be attached to the unit blocks) have also been added to the area.

Large Motor
• We are excited to see how our outdoor curriculum will unfold in the weeks to come! This week, we will have sledding available on the sledding hill in addition to other fun outdoor activities.
• The gym is arranged as follows: Big foam block w/ rope is available for hand-over-hand climbing. A three-step circuit is set up with uneven walking surfaces for practice with balance, a walkway between mats, and a station for jumping into the donut. Hurdles are available for jumping, stepping over or crawling under. Scooter cars are available for driving around the gym perimeter. The blue climber remains available for children to climb up and down the stairs.

Snack
Monday: Rice Cakes & Banana
Wednesday: Fruit & Oat Bars made by class & Apples
Thursday: Oat & Honey Granola Bars & Oranges

Special Announcements:
• Please continue to check for temperature and weather updates at www.weather.com (zip code 55455). If the "real feel" of the temperature is 0 or above, we will start the day outdoors; therefore, plan to have the children arrive appropriately dressed for outside play. If the temperature or wind chill is below 0, we will start our day in the gym.

Since working with earth clay is a new experience for many of the children in the class, we simply asked, "How can you change this clay?"

Augie: "I'm going to change mine into a plate."

Clare: "I'm going to make my hands really dirty."

Ella: "My finger can go deep, deep inside."

During the last week of school, the children used the water color cakes, painting on paper......

...and on their hands.

Children explored the physics of the ramp.......

......and used the Montessori cubes to build

......as well as smaller wooden blocks to build in the cozy cave on the light table.

At one point in the sandbox, children began to bury animals........

......and this idea was copied by others.

The clinic/vet area in the loft was used by children to check their animal's ears.......

....or to check at teacher's ears. It is clear that children are familiar with the otoscope from their use of it.

Teacher Becky was our lead teacher, and she led her final large group.......

Then we went to the gym. The tumbling hill was used in a variety of ways......

.....with Teacher Frances and Quinn doing "the lizard."

A few children used the "running" lane to carry filled milk bottles.

Thanks to all who came to our "goodbye" snack.....

The teachers opened the presents they received from the children.

Here are some photos of our new gym set-up!

Hand over hand climbing, balance and coordination

Uneven walking surface to practice balance and coordination and enhance children's outdoor experiences when walking on snow and icy patches

Scooter cars to support coordination, challenge endurance and promote leg strength as well as offer opportunities for turn taking and social play

Balancing walkway and hurdles to encourage balance while walking and when lifting one leg at a time off the ground. The hurdles also offer opportunities for crawling under. The donut is our landing spot after completing the balancing circuit.

*We would appreciate donations of unique collage materials (such as tinsel, shiny items, odd wall paper, tissue paper, and colorful translucent materials) that would look attractive in the light. Some of these materials may be used with the glue as well.
*Thursday, January 14: PAC meeting, 7:00pm - 8:30pm. Every parent is welcome.
* School will be closed on Monday, January 18 for Martin Luther King Day.
* Wednesday, January 20th: Family Creativity Night, 6:00pm - 7:30pm
* Please mark your calendars for Friday, February 5: Gym Jam at Bierman Indoor Football Field, 6:30pm - 8:00pm - More information to follow.

Lesson Plan
Lead Teacher: Ayuko
Week of January 11, 2010

Goals:
As the children settle into the school routine again, we have found that their interest in each curriculum area has also deepened. The themes of the dramatic play area (hibernating, air-planes/airport, and trains) will continue with the goal of extending their role-playing and symbolic play skills. We will incorporate more story lines created by children and books about these themes to support their pretend play skills. Spaces will be arranged to expand some areas so children have opportunities to include more peers into their play.

Art
-water color experiments will be featured with table top easels, marker drawing, and water spraying. As the extension of last week's invented art-water experience, the children will also be able to experiment with cause and effect relationships as they ob-serve how water reacts to marker drawings on different surfaces, such as paper and coffee filters.
-glue will be provided with collage and sensory materials. Children will be able to compare this sticky substance to the contact paper that will be featured at the light table - both serving the purpose of sticking materials together.

Manipulatives/Math
- Woodland animal and vehicle puzzles will be available to support fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and visual discrimination.
- Children will be encouraged to match and sort various animals according to their features. This activity supports the skill of classifying and grouping like objects.
-The Montessori seriation cylinders will continue to be available as the children have in-creased their interest in this activity. This self correcting activity promotes attention to indi-vidual size differences and gradations from small to large.

Sensory
- Cinnamon play dough and various forms of cookie cutters will be available this week at the play dough table. Children have been baking cupcakes and cookies while utilizing the molds and pretend oven. Building with dough will support fine motor strength and precision, as well as creative expression.
- There will be two separate bins with red and blue water at the water table. Children will have the opportunity to pour, measure, and mix the water using scoops, basters, and cups. This is also a wonderful area for developing social skills such as turn-taking.

Science
- Children will explore and sort various materials at the light table while also placing the ma-terials onto contact paper. Children will be able to have a sensory experience to compare con-tact paper with the glue to find differences and similarities. We would appreciate donations of unique collage materials (such as tinsel, shiny items, odd wall paper, tissue paper, and colorful translucent materials) that would look attractive in the light. Some of these ma-terials may be used with the glue as well.
-A sorting game will be available for children to match the animal according to its method of travel. Simple pictures, such as sky, land, and water will be arranged with plastic toy animals that match accordingly. Questions will be asked: How do these animals travel? Where do they belong? Which ones have legs? Which ones have wings?

Dramatic Play
-Airport and Train areas will be expanded for physical traveling. Train tracks will be pro-vided on the rug along with additional suitcases. A world map has been used by children to pinpoint "where they want to go." This has allowed children to act out scenarios to fly and ride to their destination.
- The pretend kitchen and home will be areas where children have the opportunity to recreate experiences of cooking, eating, and serving. This will also promote social skills such as co-operation and play negotiation.
-The loft has been divided with sheets to create additional caves. Documentations of children acting out stories of hibernation will be posted so children can use them as reference to their story. Observing other children's documentation also aids children to learn, expand, or create new stories of their own.

Language and Literacy
-We will be acting out stories related to the various themes in the classroom (hibernation, air-ports, trains)
- We will be focusing on the comprehension of stories this week. Teachers will read books during large group and free play and ask questions that are related to the story throughout the day. We are curious to find what parts of the stories they remember.
-We also have a variety of pictures of different objects, which the children are asked to de-scribe the use of (eg. Shovel - to dig)

Construction
-Large hollow blocks and simple unit blocks are located nearby the "airport" to encourage building along with these activities. As we have seen some children "riding" on wooden air-planes, children will be encouraged to create bigger airplanes with hollow blocks to allow more children the chance to ride along. Construction gives children the opportunity to use creative expression as well as learn the basic principles needed for building, such as creating sturdy bases and symmetry. The large area for construction also encourages cooperation and group projects.

Large Group/Music
-We will be featuring stories, songs, and finger play about hibernation and woodland animals. We will incorporate movement activities that focus on animals, such as a bear, rabbit, and an owl (Wide-eyed owl story below).

Large Motor
-A new gym set-up will be featured this week. The gym will be arranged to support the basic skills of large motor development, such as running, jumping, balancing, and upper and lower body strength. More information to follow.
-Sleds, buckets, and shovels will be available in the playground. We will also be exploring snow by making tracks and molding and building snowmen, as featured in Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats

Snack
Monday: Birthday snack & Banana
Wednesday: Rice Chex & Oranges
Thursday: Wheat Muffins by Class

Wide-eyed owl
There is a wide-eyed owl
With a pointy nose,
Two pointy ears,
And claws for his toes.
When he is high up in a tree,
He flaps his wings and says,
Whoo whoo whoo.

Lesson Plan
Lead Teacher: Ayuko
Week of January 11, 2010

Goals:
As the children settle into the school routine again, we have found that their interest in each curriculum area has also deepened. The themes of the dramatic play area (hibernating, air-planes/airport, and trains) will continue with the goal of extending their role-playing and symbolic play skills. We will incorporate more story lines created by children and books about these themes to support their pretend play skills. Spaces will be arranged to expand some areas so children have opportunities to include more peers into their play.

Art
-water color experiments will be featured with table top easels, marker drawing, and water spraying. As the extension of last week's invented art-water experience, the children will also be able to experiment with cause and effect relationships as they ob-serve how water reacts to marker drawings on different surfaces, such as paper and coffee filters.
-glue will be provided with collage and sensory materials. Children will be able to compare this sticky substance to the contact paper that will be featured at the light table - both serving the purpose of sticking materials together.

Manipulatives/Math
- Woodland animal and vehicle puzzles will be available to support fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and visual discrimination.
- Children will be encouraged to match and sort various animals according to their features. This activity supports the skill of classifying and grouping like objects.
-The Montessori seriation cylinders will continue to be available as the children have in-creased their interest in this activity. This self correcting activity promotes attention to indi-vidual size differences and gradations from small to large.

Sensory
- Cinnamon play dough and various forms of cookie cutters will be available this week at the play dough table. Children have been baking cupcakes and cookies while utilizing the molds and pretend oven. Building with dough will support fine motor strength and precision, as well as creative expression.
- There will be two separate bins with red and blue water at the water table. Children will have the opportunity to pour, measure, and mix the water using scoops, basters, and cups. This is also a wonderful area for developing social skills such as turn-taking.

Science
- Children will explore and sort various materials at the light table while also placing the ma-terials onto contact paper. Children will be able to have a sensory experience to compare con-tact paper with the glue to find differences and similarities. We would appreciate donations of unique collage materials (such as tinsel, shiny items, odd wall paper, tissue paper, and colorful translucent materials) that would look attractive in the light. Some of these ma-terials may be used with the glue as well.
-A sorting game will be available for children to match the animal according to its method of travel. Simple pictures, such as sky, land, and water will be arranged with plastic toy animals that match accordingly. Questions will be asked: How do these animals travel? Where do they belong? Which ones have legs? Which ones have wings?

Dramatic Play
-Airport and Train areas will be expanded for physical traveling. Train tracks will be pro-vided on the rug along with additional suitcases. A world map has been used by children to pinpoint "where they want to go." This has allowed children to act out scenarios to fly and ride to their destination.
- The pretend kitchen and home will be areas where children have the opportunity to recreate experiences of cooking, eating, and serving. This will also promote social skills such as co-operation and play negotiation.
-The loft has been divided with sheets to create additional caves. Documentations of children acting out stories of hibernation will be posted so children can use them as reference to their story. Observing other children's documentation also aids children to learn, expand, or create new stories of their own.

Language and Literacy
-We will be acting out stories related to the various themes in the classroom (hibernation, air-ports, trains)
- We will be focusing on the comprehension of stories this week. Teachers will read books during large group and free play and ask questions that are related to the story throughout the day. We are curious to find what parts of the stories they remember.
-We also have a variety of pictures of different objects, which the children are asked to de-scribe the use of (eg. Shovel - to dig)

Construction
-Large hollow blocks and simple unit blocks are located nearby the "airport" to encourage building along with these activities. As we have seen some children "riding" on wooden air-planes, children will be encouraged to create bigger airplanes with hollow blocks to allow more children the chance to ride along. Construction gives children the opportunity to use creative expression as well as learn the basic principles needed for building, such as creating sturdy bases and symmetry. The large area for construction also encourages cooperation and group projects.

Large Group/Music
-We will be featuring stories, songs, and finger play about hibernation and woodland animals. We will incorporate movement activities that focus on animals, such as a bear, rabbit, and an owl (Wide-eyed owl story below).

Large Motor
-A new gym set-up will be featured this week. The gym will be arranged to assess the basic skills of large motor development, such as running, jumping, balancing, and upper and lower body strength. More information to follow.
-Sleds, buckets, and shovels will be available in the playground. We will also be exploring snow by making tracks and molding and building snowmen, as featured in Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats

Snack
Monday: Birthday snack & Banana
Wednesday: Rice Chex & Oranges
Thursday: Wheat Muffins by Class

Wide-eyed owl
There is a wide-eyed owl
With a pointy nose,
Two pointy ears,
And claws for his toes.
When he is high up in a tree,
He flaps his wings and says,
Whoo whoo whoo.

Welcome back! Though we had a long winter break, the children dove back into the classroom routine right away. It almost seems like we never left! As you will see below, we had our first run of dressing all 16 children in snow pants. However, I must note that it was a quickest dressing that I have ever done - kudos to the team! The children loved the snow and used it in many different ways. Getting back into the routine myself, I didn't have a chance to take a lot of pictures, but please take a look at the snippets that we experienced within these two days.

Children exploring in the snow: Abby said, "I'm scooping the snow away from the slide!" She spent at least 10 minutes shoveling on her own. By the end, a couple of children went down the big slide, helping her remove the snow. Elliot right away grabbed a shovel and decided to flatten the snow on the benches. I asked if he's removing the snow, and he said, "no, I'm doing this" and continued to level the snow on the bench.

This invented water/marker/art activity was a hit! At first, it seemed the children were most interested in spraying water at the table. However, once the children noticed the markers beading and erasing with water, they were enamored by the way the colors mixed and beaded. A lot of sharing and negotiation took place since there were only three water bottles and there were as many as five children gathering in this area.

The bear caves and the pilot areas were a hit! This is just a glimpse of how the children utilized them. Katie was a pilot riding the large wooden airplane to "Greenland." Beatrix and Maia were animals living in a cave at first, but the caves turned into a house for cats, which also became the "party house" that the neighbors were going to come and dance in.

This is a story created by Eba.

At the back of the classroom, Eba grabbed a backpack and said to me, "I'm going to school!" So I said, "how are you going there?" He said, "On a bus." He hopped on the edge of the loft and Cashton joined with the backpack because he wanted to go to school too. We sang "the wheels on the bus" while we were driving and Eba said, "It's time to get off now!"

The cave underneath the booth was the school and Eba said that he was going to do "Homework" in there. Elli joined the group and read with him. As soon as the book finished, he said, "It's time to go home" and he rode the bus with Abby and Cashton.
As the children were singing "the wheels on the bus," Eba said, "Ok, I'm home." He walked to the cubby where he started and sat down.

How can you change this clay?

Delilah: "Make a hole..."

Georgia: "Stick pieces together..."

Rosie: "Squish it..."

"Tell me about what you have here..."
Leo: "This is the grass..."

Leo: "Antonio, I found a nice pattern for you..."

Alper: "This one goes here... with this..."
"Why is that, why do they go together?"
Alper: "Because they are the same."
"You mean they have the same pattern..."
Alper: "Yest, like this..."
"So why do you have dragonflies' patterns here and also here?
Alper: "Because these are bad dragonflies, these two are good..."
"I understand... so they have to be separate?
Alper: "Yes, because these are good and these are bad...."

Our first baking project was quite popular... Eva facilitated apple sauce muffins giving the children opportunities to cooperate and practice following a recipe. She incorporated math and literacy while reading the recipe and adding the ingredients...

Allowing for moments of wonder and delight...

What are you weaving?
Antonio: "It's Japanese..."
How can you tell?
Antonio: "Because it looks like Japanese letters."
Antonio: "We're making Japanese."

One of our tadpoles died...
"How many tadpoles can you see?"
James: "Lots..."
Can you count how many?
Georgia: "There's two..."
How many did we have before winter break?
Isaac: "We had three."
All of them: "Where is the other one?"
"It died..."
James: "Where is it?"
"We buried it."
James: "What happened to it?"
"It got very sick and died."
James: "Why its not here?"
"What would happen if we would live the dead tadpole in the tank?"
Georgia: "The others would eat it and die."

We changed their water, put little rocks in the aquarium and observed so that we could draw...

Check the children having fun in the playground...

Some pretended to be hibernating frogs...

Others practiced shoveling... handy at this time of the year :-)

While others looked for interesting treasures...

"This matches this one..."
"This is the dog..." "This is the cat..."

"What is that man doing?"
Aoife: "He is going to check on his girl..."
"What is his girl doing?"
Aoife: "She is getting some air... he is getting some air too... getting some air from the tree...
"What is that (there is a fence)?"
Aoife: "So they don't run around..."
"Like a fence?"
Aoife: "Yes, so they don't run around in the parking lot..."

Leo organizes four bear, two facing one way and the other two facing the other way.
Leo: "Look how I put them..."
Why did you decide to put them that way?
Leo: "Because these (two bears) can see here (meaning in front of them) and they can see this way (meaning the opposite side).

"How is it that we can see what we put this here (projector) and we can see it there (on the wall)?

Isaac: "The light gets here (on the projector) and reflects on the mirror.... And gets on the wall..."

"How does it get on the wall?"

Isaac: "It shines on the wall..."

The children are looking at the map of the world with little pictures of birds... we talked about birds' migration South during our winter season...
Charlie Elliot: "Look what I did... I put all the birds down...
"Why?"
Charlie E: "That's where South America is... the birds migrate there..."

Isaac: "Where are we?
"Let's see... it says Minneapolis here..."
Isaac: "Then, I must be here... ST. Paul (he lives in St. Paul) (puts a little bird right next to Minneapolis..."
"I guess there still are birds around here during the winter..."
Isaac: "Yes... here in St. Paul..."
Alper: "Where is Minneapolis (Alper lives in Minneapolis)?"
Isaac: "Here, next to St. Paul..."
Alper: "I'm going to put my bird in Minneapolis."

Charlie E: "I landed all my birds in the South..."

Lead Teacher: Frances
Week of January 11, 2010

Goals:
As the children settle into the school routine again, we have found that their interest in each curriculum area has also deepened. The themes of the dramatic play area (hibernating, air-planes/airport, and trains) will continue with the goal of extending their role-playing and symbolic play skills. We will incorporate more story lines created by children and books about these themes to support their pretend play skills. Spaces will be arranged to expand some areas so children have opportunities to include more peers into their play.

Art
-water color experiments will be featured with table top easels, marker drawing, and liquid water color paints. As the extension of last week's invented art-water experi-ence, the children will also be able to experiment with cause and effect relationships as they observe how water reacts to marker drawings on different surfaces, such as paper and coffee filters.
-glue will be provided with collage and sensory materials. Children will be able to compare this sticky substance to the contact paper that will be featured at the light table - both serving the purpose of sticking materials together.

Manipulatives/Math
- Woodland animal and vehicle puzzles will be available to support fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and visual discrimination.
- Children will be encouraged to match and sort various animals according to their habitats. This activity supports the skill of classifying and grouping like objects.
-The Montessori seriation cylinders will continue to be available as the children have in-creased their interest in this activity. This self correcting activity promotes attention to indi-vidual size differences and gradations from small to large.

Sensory
- Cinnamon play dough and various forms of cookie cutters will be available this week at the play dough table. Children have been baking cupcakes and cookies while utilizing the molds and pretend oven. Building with dough will support fine motor strength and precision, as well as creative expression.
- We will fill a variety of small bottles with different primary colors in the water table. There will be two separate bins to mix in. Children will have the opportunity to pour, measure, and mix the water using scoops, basters, and cups. This is also a wonderful area for experiencing the magic of color changing and sharing it with others.

Science
- Children will explore and sort various materials at the light table while also placing the ma-terials onto contact paper. Children will be able to have a sensory experience to compare con-tact paper with the glue to find differences and similarities. WIf you have any "beautiful bits" we would appreciate donations of unique collage materials (such as tinsel, shiny items, odd wall paper, tissue paper, and colorful translucent materials) that would look attractive in the light. Some of these materials may be used with the glue as well.
-A sorting game will be available for children to match the animal according to its method of travel. Simple pictures, such as sky, land, and water will be arranged with plastic toy animals that match accordingly. Questions will be asked: How do these animals travel? Where do they belong? Which ones have legs? Which ones have wings?

Dramatic Play
-Airport and Train areas will be expanded for physical traveling. Train tracks will be pro-vided on the rug along with additional suitcases. A world map has been used by children to pinpoint "where they want to go." This has allowed children to act out scenarios to fly and ride to their destination.
- The pretend kitchen and home will be areas where children have the opportunity to recreate experiences of cooking, eating, and serving. This will also promote social skills such as co-operation and play negotiation.
-The loft has been divided with sheets to create additional caves. Documentations of children acting out stories of hibernation will be posted so children can use them as reference to their story. Observing other children's documentation also aids children to learn, expand, or create new stories of their own.

Language and Literacy
-We will be acting out stories related to the various themes in the classroom (hibernation, air-ports, trains)
- We will be focusing on the comprehension of stories this week. Teachers will read books during large group and free play and ask questions that are related to the story throughout the day. We are curious to find what parts of the stories they remember.
-We also have a variety of pictures of different objects, which the children are asked to de-scribe the use of (eg. Shovel - to dig)

Construction
-Large hollow blocks and simple unit blocks are located nearby the "airport" to encourage building along with these activities. As we have seen some children "riding" on wooden air-planes, children will be encouraged to create bigger airplanes with hollow blocks to allow more children the chance to ride along. Construction gives children the opportunity to use creative expression as well as learn the basic principles needed for building, such as creating sturdy bases and symmetry. The large area for construction also encourages cooperation and group projects.

Large Group/Music
-We will be featuring stories, songs, and finger play about hibernation and woodland animals. We will incorporate movement activities that focus on animals, such as a bears, and owls. (See song below)

Large Motor
A new gym set-up will be featured this week focusing on spatial awareness (cars and roads and tunnels) jumping and balance on bumpy surfaces.
Sleds, buckets, and shovels will be available in the playground. We will also be exploring snow physically by making tracks and molding and building snowmen, as featured in Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats

Snack
Tuesday: Rice Cakes and Banana
Friday: Wheat Muffins (made by Ayuko's class) and Oranges

Bear hibernation song

(to the tune of Frere Jacques - or Are your sleeping)

Are you sleeping, Are you sleeping?
Little Bear? Little Bear?
You will sleep all winter, You will sleep all winter
In your lair, In your lair.

Are you sleeping, Are you sleeping?
Little Bear? Little Bear?
You will wake in springtime, You will wake in springtime
Little Bear, Little Bear.

We have a great new team this term and I'm looking forward to working with them. The teachers dove right into interacting with the children -- it almost seems like they were always here. Below are their self introductory paragraphs so you can get to know them a little better. Enjoy!

My name is Jeannine and I am very excited to begin student teaching in your child's classroom! I am in my second year of classes in the M.Ed. Initial Licensure program in Early Childhood Education and Special Education. My husband, Tim, and I live in Woodbury with our children, Madison, age12, and Max, age 9. We also have a pet guinea pig named Chestnut. I have worked as an elementary school social worker and currently work in an early childhood special education classroom. In my free time, I love to read, garden, and go on bike rides and hikes with my family.

Hello, my name is Edenia. I am a new student teacher at the Lab School. I will be turning 42 next week. I live in NE Minneapolis with my husband and two children. My daughter, Paxton, is 9 and my son, Wyatt, is 6. We have a family dog named Henry (100 pound golden lab). I do not have a lot of free time while I am in school but I try to give back to the community as much as I can. I am a Junior Brownie Girl Scout Leader for a 4th grade troop in St. Anthony. I have walked the 3 Day for Breast Cancer twice. I volunteer as an Art Adventures picture person for the school my children attend, as well as, any other classroom needs there may be. I work for the Oceanaire Seafood Room and have been a part of the company for the past 15 years. My ethnic background is German and Cuban but I was born and raised here in Minnesota and lived with my Mother and sister in Eden Prairie. I love to garden in the summer, play at the pool, travel and spend as much time as possible with my family.

Hi, my name is Darya. At the end of the spring semester I will hopefully be receiving an undergraduate degree in the Elementary Education program with a specialty in Pre-primary. Once I graduate I will continue my studies and go on to the Initial Licensure program. I am very excited to have the opportunity to student teach at the lab school. I am the youngest of my family being born just minutes after my twin sister. I was born and raised in Minneapolis but it's still hard to get used to this cold weather. I enjoy camping, kayaking, and hiking. I recently took a trip to Georgia where I hiked part of the Appalachian Trail and canoed next to alligators.

Weekly Lesson Plan

Week of: Jan 5 - 8, 2010!

Lead teaching this week: Ross

Overview and goals 

Happy 2010 everyone! It is the start of a new year, a new decade, and (most importantly) a new session at the Lab School! The new student teachers and I are excited to jump right in, and I imagine your children are, too! Whereas the children needed time to acclimate to a new classroom, new faces, as well as learn new routines, I anticipate they will be eager to see each other, and will pick up right where they left off! We have rearranged the environment a bit, and hopefully you have had time to look at the pictures with your child. The new space was arranged to help create more involved, elaborate play themes, as well as for inquisitive investigation of materials to unfold. We wanted to create centers that promote rich opportunities for critical thinking as well as areas that allow for deep, imaginative play themes to come alive! These ideas came about from our staff development in November and we are excited to see what comes about from the new environment! We are excited for the new session and are glad to have you all back!

Art Center

Expressive materials

~ The paints and large brushes will be at floor easel, as it was one of the favorite materials for many of the children in the fall. It not only supports large-/fine-motor skills with long brush strokes and small, detailed brush strokes, it also supports creativity, artistic expression, as well as fosters development with symbolic representation as the children begin creating recognizable figures. We saw many visitors in the fall and I anticipate similar traffic during the winter, especially as we add more pastel colors to match the colors the children see outside. 

~ Also to support creativity, artistic expression, and symbolic representation, new and interesting collage materials will be available at the art table. We will invite children to create props for dramatic play, as well as make props to help tell stories. The teachers will use these creations as well as model the process during large group.

Sensory materials
~ Stamping/printmaking will be available at the sensory table. Alphabet and number blocks, cookie-cutters, and dinosaur sponges will be available, helping promote pre-/early-literacy skills, numeral recognition, as well as creative/artistic expression.

~ Flax seed will be introduced in the second sensory table. This new material offers great opportunities for new and unique sensory exploration as the children pour, scoop, sift, and hold the seed. We anticipate many visitors to the flax seed table, and will begin asking questions about how the seed feels and about its texture: supporting our science focus on the sense of touch.


Science Center

~ We have expanded the "walls" of our science center...and moved it across the room to include the use of one of the caves! We hope the added space will allow for additional supporting materials while creating ample opportunities for enriched scientific exploration. To start the winter session, we will be exploring our five senses: the first being touch. The sense of touch is the most concrete and allows for all children to create as well as answer their own scientific hypotheses. The human body is fascinating topic, especially for children, as their body continual changes and grows in ability, strength, and coordination nearly every day! We will ask questions using specific sensory words to promote scientific thinking and inquiry, as well as help the children begin thinking critically about how their sense of touch works.

Math and Manipulative Center

~ Puzzles, multicolored inch cubes (with pattern cards), parquetry blocks (with pattern cards), and a seriated Montessori peg board will be available: supporting part-to-whole relationships, one-to-one correspondence, seriation, patterning, counting, shape recognition, symbolic representation, as well as basic math concepts of addition and subtraction. 

~ In the second/third cave, we have set up the Brio trains, tracks, and multi-shaped building blocks to encourage the children to build and create with a popular/familiar toy. We anticipate this area will create many opportunities for children to reconnect with one another as well as promote the practice of many social skills: such as negotiation, comprise, and collaboration as they develop new and involved play themes.

Language and Literacy Center

~ A plethora of new books (as well as a few classroom favorites) have made their way to the book shelf, supporting the various topics around the room. Books related to the human body, trains, and winter are amongst the many titles available, as well as Where the Wild Things Are, Just Another Oridinary Day, and NO DAVID! We also hope to have the children starting creating/illustrating their own books during the session. 

~ With the goal of having the children dictate and illustrate their own books, we decided we needed more space at the writing center. We have added a second table, new markers, paper, and stickers to encourage the children to visit the area and practice their pre-/early-literacy skills, support their fine-motor strength and coordination as they practice writing, as well as foster new/existing social relationships as the children create/share their stories with others.

Block Center

~ The "door" has been reinforced and is ready for many more block-building adventures! With the block area being the favored spot for many children, we have made sure to reserve plenty of room for building and will be quick to add supporting materials as the children come back and begin the building conquests once again! We will continue to support the large-/fine-motor development that accompanies the use of hollow and unit blocks, however we also want to support our goal of richer, more elaborate/involved dramatic play. We will record and revisit play themes and story lines from previous days by documenting the "stories" created by the children and sharing them with the children to help foster these ever-growing dramatic play themes. As the teachers document these stories, we will also post them on the website to share with all of you!

Dramatic Play 

~ Along with the dramatic play that will stem from the blocks, we have also set up a retail store in the back of the room to help create opportunities for social interactions. Many of the themes in the blocks revolved around house play last fall, and we felt the store would be a great addition to help expand the interest in building homes. The children have opportunities to be cashiers, customers, as well as help create price tags and labels for the items (promoting pre-/early-literacy skills and number recognition while foster the social skills of turn taking, negotiating, and compromising). We anticipate bigger story lines to emerge with the addition of the retail store!
~ The dramatic play kitchen will also be available with new foods that can be "cut" into pieces, allowing for discussions about the math concepts of addition, subtraction, and fractions while supporting social interactions and dramatic play.

Large Motor

~ To start the winter session, the first week in the gym will revert back to a more basic set-up with the monkey bars, step-climber and slide, A-frame, jumping donut, wall climber, and trampoline. These pieces of equipment support: eye-hand/eye-foot coordination, upper-/lower-body strength and coordination, depth perception, cardiovascular endurance, spatial awareness, and balance. This set up also allows ample space for teacher-facilitated activities: supporting playing games with rules and following directions. Some of the games we will play will be Parachute, Popcorn, "Tickle Fish," and Double Bubble.

~ There is no doubt about it...snow has COVERED the playground (well...so has the ice!). Shovels, buckets, plates, cups, and silverware will all be available to support the dramatic play on the playground. And as you guessed it, we WILL be sledding! Anticipating that this will be a popular area, the teachers will be bring their boots and snowpants every day to ensure fun and safe sledding opportunities for all! Parents: you are MORE THAN WELCOME to come and join us on the sledding hill - however I do suggest dressing appropriately!

Announcements/Reminders 

~ Jennie, Nadine, and Stephanie are excited to get started and meet all of you. Try to stop down and introduce yourself to them!
~ There will be a PAC meeting on Thursday, Jan. 14. If you can, please try to make it, as your ideas and insight are appreciated and necessary to keep this school all that it is!
~ Although these two events aren't for a few weeks, I still want to remind you to put them on your calendar so you can make it. The first: Creativity Night - Tuesday, Jan. 20 from 6-7.30p. It's a great opportunity to come to school with your children and explore various creative options with all the teachers! The second: Gym-Jam - Friday Feb. 5 from 6.30-8p. This is a Lab School favorite! The Bierman Facility opens its doors and allows the families (and friends) of the Lab School to run around on the indoor practice field and interact with various U of M student athletes. It's a high-energy night that has quickly become a favorite event for many families. Mark your calendars and stay tuned, as more specific information will be sent out about each event!

Snack

Monday: NO SCHOOL

Tuesday: Cheddar bunnies

Wednesday: Letter crackers

Thursday: Pretzels

Friday: Graham crackers

*All snacks served with milk & water, unless otherwise specified*

Lesson Plan
Lead Teacher: Ayuko
Week of January 4, 2010

Goals:
As we welcome the children and families back from the long winter break, we plan to keep things simple so as to allow easy interactions with our new student teacher team. We are assuming that some children may have had travel experiences during break so we will have trains, planes, cars and maps available to capitalize on the memories. The snow will be featured with play in the cave about woodland animals hibernating for the winter. Learning the basic steps of dressing for the winter outdoors (snowpants and boots and the rest) will be a big focus of our early days together.

Art
-Easel: The easel will feature white chalk on dark paper to evoke the snow of the past few weeks. Students can experience 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.
-Table top easels will feature water colors - a continuation of the exploration we began just before break. The children are slowly mastering the skill of dabbing the wet brush onto the cake to absorb color.
-At the art table, a new experience will be introduced - an invented art-water ex-perience where children can use dry erase markers on the plastic table cloth and then spray/wipe what they drawn. As the water causes the drawing to bead up, we are curious to see how the children respond to this transformation of states. This experience has elements of art, science and fine motor work.

Manipulatives/Math
- New puzzles around the themes of train and other vehicles will be available.
-A sorting game with photos of different types of vehicles will provide an early math and vocabulary experience.
-The Montessori seriation cylinders will be out - this self correcting activity pro-motes attention to individual size differences and gradations from small to large.

Sensory
- Dough colored play dough will be available this week at the play dough table. We will assume that some children may bring associations of holiday baking to the work, so we will have ovens and rolling pins available. Building with dough will support fine motor strength and precision, as well as creative expression.
- Large containers, scoops, and cups will be available at the water table for pouring, dumping, and measuring water. Water promotes sensory awareness as children feel the water and see the volumes change when it is transferred to a different container. Questions will be asked: which container has more water? How did this happen? This is also a wonderful area for developing social skills such as turn-taking.

Science
-The large light table will be presented in the cave area this week. Children will explore and sort different materials which look attractive in the light (shells, feathers and tissue paper.)
-A variety of foods will be available for smelling and tasting (lemon, pineapple, rye bread, green pepper and celery) to help children explore the sense of taste. Words like sour, sweet, bitter, crunchy, and soft are likely to be used in the context of tasting these items.

Dramatic Play
-Two types of trains will be available, along with airports and wooden airplanes. A world map will allow children to experience the concept of long and short distance. We expect there may be stories of going on the plane, of coming to the airport and of taking tickets. We would appreciate any information about destinations you have traveled to as a way to open conversations with your child.
- The kitchen and home area will be another focus in the dramatic play area. Children will have the opportunity to recreate experiences from the recent holidays and cook and serve. This will also promote social skills such as cooperation and play negotiation.
-The question "where do the animals go in the winter?" will be posed and explored in the cave via stories (The Bear Snores On) and plastic animals. A simple three part story will be posted (1)the animals are cold, winter is coming, 2) they find a cave so they can sleep, 3) winter is over, it is warm now, the animals wake up) to promote an initial awareness of the seasonal cycle of hibernation. White fabric is ready to reenact snow storms. Little caves for the toy animals as well as a child sized cave are set up for enacting the story. This process helps children learn about different woodland animals (racoons, squirrels, bears and foxes) and begin to incorporate simple pretend stories into their dramatic play.

Language and Literacy
-The art table will promote the use of dry erase pens for drawing and writing.
-Story concepts are embedded in the woodland cave. The map area has pens and post it notes to affix to places of interest on the map

Construction
-Large hollow blocks and simple unit blocks are located nearby the train area and airport to encourage building along with these activities. Construction gives children the oppor-tunity to use creative expression as well as learn the basic principles needed for building, such as creating sturdy bases and symmetry. The large area for construction also encour-ages cooperation and group projects.

Large Group/Music
-During large group this week we will sing some familiar songs and work with rhythm instruments on some instrumental tunes. Stories about Winter will be featured.

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.

Snack
Monday: No School
Wednesday: Cheddar Bunnies
Thursday: Graham Crackers

*Please let us know a highlight or two of your child's winter break - so that we may have something to comment to them. Children feel special when we can connect about something meaningful to them (a visit from Grandma - an airplane ride, a first time sledding) so this will help our new student teachers to connect with your child.

*We are also interested to have an update about toilet training - this sometimes changes over the break (and our memories benefit from a recap of where your child is at.)

*We will post a new "laundry helpers list" for this ten weeks - Please sign up on Wednesdays to bring home laundry. Thank you.

*Please take the time to label mittens, hats, boots, snowpants and jackets. The first few days of dressing are always WILD! Children often don't have a sense of ownership of their things, yet they help us by taking clothing out of their cubbies. If they are not labeled, it is very hard to know who's clothes are whose. If you are coming in the classroom to drop your child off, please help us out by putting hats and mittens in the jacket sleeve when you hang up the jacket and having boots and snowpants ready to go (either hanging or in a backpack.) If you forget boots or snowpants on a given day, please let us know and find a pair from Eva so they are all ready to go at dressing time.

Michele
Hello! My name is Michele Gansen-Hedegaard. I am the mother of three young boys who are the ages of five, seven, and nine-years-old. I presently live in Eagan, but I am originally from a small town in Iowa. I lived in the Bay Area (California) for thirteen years and moved back to the Midwest in 2004. I have worked with children with autism and language delays for over twelve years and continue to do so presently when it fits in around my class schedule. In addition, my youngest son has some disabilities due to a traumatic brain injury. I love being out in nature, going for bike rides, and doing sudoku and crossword puzzles. I look forward to getting to know your child and you in the days and weeks ahead!

Megan
My name is Megan Boys and I am a 24 year old senior in the Early Childhood Education program. I am so excited to start my student teaching! I am currently living in, and am from Minnetonka, Minnesota. I have worked with children ages four and five for the previous two summers and have been working with kindergartners since the beginning of the school year. I am so excited to be able to work in a multi-aged classroom and meet all of the children. I love to play volleyball, watch CSI, read, and my new favorite thing to do is spend as much time with my three week old nephew. I look forward to meeting everyone in the upcoming weeks and cannot wait for all of the relationships to start forming.

Davida
Hi! My name is Davida Fidelman and I grew up in Minneapolis. I am 21 years old, and I will be graduating this spring with an Elementary Education major and a Child Psychology minor. I have worked with children in the classroom for most of my life. My mother is a preschool teacher and my grandmother was an elementary school teacher. I currently work at Pratt school as a teacher's assistant for the after school program. I also work at the Bell Museum of Natural History where some of my duties are to lead tours and teach classroom programs to children of all ages. I enjoy camping, kayaking, and spending time with my family and friends.

Overview
Welcome back to school! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season. This first week back will be a period of readjustment. It won't take too long however, for all of us to settle back into our routines. The children may express some concern about having new student teachers, Michelle, Megan and Davida. If your child is having reservations about the changes please let me know and I will provide extra support. Our focus for the week will be on establishing relationships with the new teachers and getting reacquainted with friends. I have written more specific information and detail about the curriculum plan and goals in this week's newsletter. Please check it out!

Creative Arts
-Collage: A variety of colorful natural items along with white glue and construction paper are available for creative expression.
-Easel: White, blue and brown paint have been chosen to reflect the colors of the outdoors.

Sensory
-Earth clay: As an introduction to working with clay, we will encourage the children to explore its properties by using their hands, rather than tools, to change its shape.

Science
-We will continue our studies of trees and life cycles by tracking the growth of our baby oak tree and observing and recording changes in the tadpoles.
-Feathers from various birds are available for investigation and matching to the corresponding photographs of the birds they belong to.
-An investigation of animal tracks includes plaster molds of animal tracks with magnifiers for close-up examination of the texture and shape. There is also an animal track matching game that features the front and rear paws of an opossum, deer, rabbit, and squirrel. Photographs of the animals are provided so the children can match the tracks to the animals. The children will be able to use this knowledge when they search for, and identify, the animal tracks in the snow on the playground.
- We have added an overhead projector, light table and several mirrors to the back of the classroom to allow for active engagement and discovery of the concepts of reflection, light, transparency and shadow.

Math and Manipulatives
-In one of the caves we have provided specific materials that can be used for patterning, an important pre-mathematical skill. These materials include colored lacing beads and unifix cubes. Under the loft are additional patterning materials such as button mosaics and mosaic tiles. In addition, there is an appealing array of textured fabrics and colored carpet squares throughout the classroom that can be sorted, classified, and arranged into patterns. Teaching and learning about patterns will take place not only in small group interactions with teachers, but will also be incorporated into large group activities and discussions.
-Legos have been added to support the children's interest in building with small manipulatives and to support the development of their construction skills and knowledge of part-whole relationships.

Literacy
-The main writing center is now located closer to the front of the room near the art table and collage materials. This will give the children easier access to the collage materials, cutting, and gluing tools so they can add more detail to the messages they lovingly write to friends and family.
-The loft also has a writing center to support sign making, drawing and writing in the back of the room.
-The library has books about animals, winter, and snow. It is placed near the couch for cozy reading time with new friends and teachers.

Dramatic Play
-Capes in various sizes, textures and colors are waiting for the children to give them life.
-The kitchen is supplied with fruits, veggies, and also baking trays, muffins and cookies.
-The woodland animal cave has been transformed with the addition of white fabric, tree cuttings, and rocks so the children can create a winter wonderland for the animals they frequently use in dramatic play scenarios.

Blocks
-Large pieces of fabric that can be attached to the hollow blocks with clips will support the children's continued interest in creating child size spaces with roofs.
-Castle blocks, small carpets and fabric scraps are provided as a provocation near the unit block shelves.

Playground
-In addition to tracking animals, there is plenty of snow shoveling to do! This is a great activity for building upper body strength and fostering teamwork.
-Soon we will open the hill for sledding. The hike to the top contributes to the development of lower body strength and endurance.

Large Motor
-The gym has been updated to focus on balance and coordination. We have created a circuit that includes a bumpy walk, balance beam, jumping station, and hurdles. These activities will promote the physical skills of balance, high stepping, body awareness, and core strength that the children need to walk through deep snow, and on uneven or slippery surfaces. Since the playground trikes have been stored for the winter, we have provided opportunities for propulsive skill development with the addition of a racetrack around the perimeter of the gym. This activity is always a favorite and certainly contributes to the children's cardiovascular and muscular endurance, directional awareness, pushing with feet, and coordination as they zoom around the track on their cars. A foam wedge has been attached to the side of the blue climber for to climbing up. This promotes upper body strength and grasping as the children use a rope hand-over-hand to aid their ascent.

Snack
Monday: Rice Cakes & Banana
Tuesday: Bird Seed Energy Bars by Class
Wednesday: Fruit & Oat Bars made by Ross' Class & Apple
Thursday: Wheat Muffins by Ayuko's Class
Friday: Oat & Honey granola bar & Oranges

• 12:30-1:10 (weather permitting) playground (12:30-12:45 sledding/free play. 12:45 Structured activities... large motor/nature component, discussions/large group)
12:30-1:00 On Thursdays

• 1:00/1:10-1:40/1:50 inside... clothes off, explore time
1:00-1:40 on Thursdays-cooking time offered

• 1:40-1:55/2:00 large group (if we didn't have one outdoors)
1:40-1:55/2:00 on Thursdays-large group

• 2:00-2:20 gym (if we were for a short time outside... if we were outdoors for longer, then I'll have gym only on Mondays... as I've had until now)

• 2:15-3:00 free play

• 3:00-3:15 snack

• 3:15-3:30 dismissal

Overview and Goals
Welcome back to school everyone! I hope you are all excited to be back at school! The first couple of weeks back at school are usually a period of readjustment. I am hoping that it won't take long for all of us to settle back into our routines. I will be supporting children' readjustment and re-acquaintance with each other, as well a meeting our new student teachers: Beth, Janet and Lisa. If you happen to be in the classroom, please make sure you introduce yourselves and welcome them into our classroom community! Our classroom reveals changes that state the teachers' intentions for this session. Lots of opportunities for cooperation and peer inspiration; a variety of ways for self-expression and chances for communication through different media, and using multiple "languages." We are hoping that the new furniture arrangements, materials and activities will invite children's full engagement: hands, minds and hearts. Science exploration of life cycles, will continue to be a major component in our curriculum finding its way across the classroom and through the different areas offered to the children.

Expressive Arts
~The easel is back! The children will be able to enjoy painting on our large easels with blue, purple and white.
~Construction paper, natural collage materials such as flower petals, feathers, flat wood shapes, glue, scissors, tape, and markers are always available for the children to express themselves creatively.

Sensory Materials
~We are starting this session offering earth clay to the children. We want to make sure that we don't rush the children into making "something." We will start our exploration of clay by first familiarizing ourselves with its texture, smell and feeling. We will allow the children plenty of time to explore clay properties and unique characteristics.
~We will take advantage of the large amounts of snow in our playground and encourage the children to express themselves by building and modeling with it.

Dramatic, Symbolic Play and Blocks/Creative Building
~Our hibernation cave continues to host woodland animals, only it has a more "wintery" look to it in order to give the children a feeling of what is happening naturally outdoors. Natural materials such as tree cuttings, logs and rocks are part of the setting to create a more realistic feel.
~ Capes and big pieces of fabric are available for the children in the dramatic play area and by the hollow blocks to support their dramatic play scenarios.
~The hollow blocks can be used on their own for building roads, homes, castles or anything that the children's creative spirits might dictate. The teachers will encourage the children to use the big fabric pieces to build child sized enclosures. The hollow blocks offer wonderful opportunities for the children to experience general math/geometry concepts in a very informal and non structured way.
~The unit blocks have moved and are available in the front of the classroom across from the caves. We are hoping to inspire the children to incorporate these into symbolic play scenarios that might take place in the caves. We are also featuring castle blocks to inspire children's structures as well as small square fabric pieces to add to their creations.
~Our full kitchen set is available along with cooking accessories and a variety of fabric made food.
~Legos area available for the children by the second cave; legos give amazing creative building options and enhance fine motor strength and dexterity.

Science Center
~Our tadpoles will continue to offer us plenty of discussion opportunities as well as chances to share what we know about tadpoles' life cycle. We will continue to foster children's observation skills and attention to detail.
~Caring for our Baby Oak tree; we will continue to talk about plants and nature in general and our own growing oak tree in particular.
By caring for our tadpoles and oak tree we want to strengthen children's connections with nature and encourage their commitment to respect and protect it.
~We will continue our tracks exploration started last session. We will deepen our exploration by focusing children's attention to the tracks left by a variety of animals in our playground and trying to identify to what these belong to. We will also have opportunities to create our tracks inside and outdoors using different materials.
~Birds, feathers and nests are available for the children to explore. As we continue our research on animal life in general and how animals survive in winter specifically, we will encourage children to take a closer look at birds and their unique characteristics. Last session we talked about migration and how many birds need to leave the cold winter. We will focus on how birds that don't migrate survive in cold weather. Our bird feeder will offer opportunities to investigate birds' behavior first-hand; we will also continue to draw children's attention to the variety of birds that visit our playground and we are already planning a field trip to the Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota- St. Paul Campus. More details to come.
~Light, shadows and reflection are a new topic in our classroom and we have set-up a wonderful and attractive area in the back of the classroom. This area includes the light table, a variety of mirrors and a projector. We are hoping to spark children's interest and questioning about how light shines though or on different materials (transparent and non-transparent ones). We will also invite the children to explore how light creates shadows and encourage them to explore their changing forms and nature depending on the objects and the distance these are projected. The mirrors will offer children opportunities to explore reflection, reproduction of images, symmetry, and patterns (reproduction and repetition of images may lead to unique theories and understandings of patterns).

Language and Literacy
~Two writing areas are available for the children. The first one is located in the front of the classroom, close by the art area giving children opportunities to incorporate any art materials necessary to express themselves. The second writing area is located in the top part of the loft. Both areas are equipped with paper, envelopes, markers, scissors, glue sticks, staplers and tape.
~Books about winter, animals in winter and snow; our library is close to the cozy couch and literacy areas for cozy reading and inspiration.
~Mailboxes continue to be available for the children. A compilation of children's first letters is available on top of the mailboxes. The children have enjoyed communicating with each other through mailboxes and we will continue to encourage them to do so.

Math, Manipulative and Games
We will start this session by emphasizing the concept of patterning. This is an important pre-academic concept; during the previous session, we exposed the children to concepts such as sorting, matching, categorizing, sequencing, and ordering in preparation to approaching this new and more complicated one. Patterns are all around us. Life cycles, days of the week, and schedules, are patterns. These "simple" things at first sight are going to prepare the children for later mathematical, algebraic and more complicated concepts. By offering open-ended materials (where children can create their own patterns freely) and structured activities (during large group or when playing structured games) we will strengthen children's understanding of what patterning means in everyday life and we will be giving them a solid foundation for years to come.
~Patterning: Lacing beads, button mosaic, patterning blocks, unifix cubes.
~Theme puzzles feature winter and animals in both inset and interlocking versions. These puzzles build concept knowledge and support the understanding of one-to-one correspondence and whole/part relationships.
~Sequencing will continue to be part of our landscape as we continue to focus on trees and frogs through photos and puzzles. The real playground and pick up area photos of our tress at various stages are available for sorting and ordering. Pictures of tadpoles and frogs are also available for the children to order and observe the cycle of life.

Large Motor
~The gym set up has our basic equipment. The climbing wall supporting coordination, jumping, depth perception and turn taking. The monkey bars offering opportunities for upper and lower body strength and coordination as well as depth perception when crossed on the top. We have a large open space for structure activities such as the parachute, follow the leader and other organized games.
~Snow has covered our playground and we are ready for SLEDDING!! As soon as all the teachers are in the playground (12:45 when drop off ends), we will offer sledding to the children. Parent volunteers are always welcomed to join us during sledding fun time!!
~Our time in the playground will be dedicated to unstructured and structured large motor activities as well as deepen children's interest on science related explorations.

Music and Movement/Large Group
~Getting reacquainted and meeting our new student teachers; a variety of names songs' will help us get reacquainted.
~Talk about winter break and the changes around us.
~Discuss our new schedule; starting in the playground.

Looking forward to a wonderful session!

Dalia

We are planning a field trip to the Raptor Center at the University of Minnesota in the St. Paul Campus.
The cost is $5 per child and $7.50 per adult. We would love to have as many parents volunteers as possible. If you need financial assistance please let me know as soon as possible. I am communicating with the Raptor Center and will let you know the date for our field trip as soon as I clear it with them (it will be a Wednesday or Thursday).

Dear Families,

Welcome back to school! The first couple of weeks back might be a bit tricky for some children. We have anticipated this and will take things easy and focus on supporting children getting reacquainted with each other and meeting the new student teachers. Please let me know if you have any concerns or if there are any new "happenings" in your child's life that you think I should be aware of. Sometimes little things are important, so please don't hesitate to share any changes that might have taken place over break with me.

I've had a wonderful and busy time with my family and have missed you all. I've had lots of time to think about each and everyone of you and reflect on what we've done last session. I have also had time to reflect and discuss with my morning colleague, Amy, and have exchanged and enriched each other's ideas.

We are committed to continue to create an aesthetically pleasing and inviting environment in our classroom and continue to nurture our children's innate curiosity and sense of wonder. We are always looking for ways, set-ups, and additions to have an environment that reflects our intentions for and images of the children as powerful, with infinite potential and able to construct their own knowledge through relations and interactions with others. We strive to have a classroom environment where the children feel safe; a classroom that is warm and inviting and where the children feel emotionally connected right away, supporting and encouraging their full involvement. We look for ways to engage children fully, hands, minds and hearts by providing opportunities for exploration, wonder, challenges and success; opportunities to ask questions, to share ideas and feelings and to marvel at the world around them finding the joy for learning every single day.

This session we are offering novel materials and set-ups that will invite and challenge the children. By offering a variety of ways or "languages" for the children to express themselves we will support and encourage them to experience and express their thoughts and feelings. We will provide an environment rich with "languages" and ways for self-expression; through painting, drawing, modeling, discussing, movement, writing, singing, building, and more, we will make sure that we expose the children to a curriculum rich with safe options. We will warmly encourage children to try different media, engage in different areas and feel comfortable in all of these, realizing at the same time the limitless opportunities available to them!

One way we attempt to achieve children's exposure to different ways to express themselves and understand the options available to them is by supporting major topics in the classroom with activities and materials in different areas. For example our latest science topic is supported, enriched and enhanced in many areas of the classroom; teachers encourage children to draw what they understand or how they see things; we stress verbal discussions and sharing of what children know during formal and informal conversations. We offer symbolic play materials related to our science topics, and provide dramatic play set-ups and props linked to our major themes and explorations. Our math materials support children's understanding of concept that allow them to deepen their understanding of scientific concepts, such as cycles and patterns. Our literacy areas provide an additional openings for children to share, show and discuss their theories, thoughts and feelings about what goes on in the classroom specifically and their lives in general. Not only are we interested in children's individual development, but we also strive to facilitate rich and meaningful connections between the children themselves and the adults in the classroom. We hope these connections will inspire and deepen children's joy for learning while enjoying social interactions.

We as teachers are committed to continue our careful observations and documentation of children's interactions, ways they approach the different materials and activities, and the ways they learn best, in order to inform ourselves, reflect, discuss, and intentionally continue to plan a curriculum that is relevant to this specific group of children and each one as an individual. We will devote a big part of our efforts to documenting the children's joy and curiosity when exploring the world around them, making their learning visible to them as well as to others in the classroom, and giving them the appreciation and respect they deserve.

I'm looking forward to seeing you all soon. We have a couple of family events coming up: "Creativity Night" and "Gym Jam" will take place in January/February.
Winter conferences will take place starting February 8th and lasting for 2-3 weeks. I will soon post a sign up sheet. These comprehensive conferences are a bit longer than the fall ones and work with you to form a picture of your child's strengths and goals for the remainder of the year. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Warmly,

Dalia

Meet our Student Teachers...

Hi, my name is Beth Fawcett and I will be student teaching in your child's classroom for the next 10 weeks. In my free time I enjoy reading, cooking, spending time outside, and visiting my friends and family. In addition to student teaching I work at Fraser Child & Family Center as a Mental Health Practitioner in the autism program. During my time at Fraser I have been an individual skills trainer, worked with elementary school age children in social skills classes, led a day treatment classroom of preschoolers, and supervised Fraser's in-home program. I am looking forward to teaching at the lab school and getting to know you and your child.
~Beth

Janet Isley moved to Rochester, Minnesota from the Kansas City area six years ago. She has been teaching preschool in Rochester part-time, and she has been commuting to the University of Minnesota as a graduate student in early childhood education and special education. She has an undergraduate degree in music education from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Her hobbies include reading, playing the guitar, singing with a Sweet Adeline's chorus, and caring for two kittens.

My name is Lisa Rodenkirchen and I live in Saint Paul I grew up in Eden Prairie, and have lived in Minnesota my whole life. I have my BA degree in Music from Gustavus Adolphus College and hold a K-12 Instrumental Music Education Licensure. I have taught various places including K-5 general music, 5th grade band, High school marching band, and preschool. I am still very highly involved in the marching arts activity. I perform in the color guard of Minnesota Brass Inc, and teach color guard at Irondale High School. I have been teaching in the early childhood setting since 1994. I am currently a lead teacher in the pre-Kindergarten classroom at St. John's in South Minneapolis, where I have been working for 4 years. I am looking forward to meeting all the families here at the lab school and am excited about working with the children.

Announcements

Coffee Hour with Barb, our director.
All parents are welcomed. The available dates are: Tuesday, February 2nd, 8:45-9:45 am and Wednesday, February 3rd, 8:45-9:45 and 12:45-1:45.

Family Creativity night
The family creativity night will take place on Wednesday, January 20th from 6:00 - 7:30p.m. The whole family is invited to be part of this interactive evening of dancing, sensory explorations, experiences with light, and sculpture, and improvisation!

Family Gym Jam
The PAC has planned an athletic event to raise money for new gym equipment. This family event will take place at Bierman Field on Friday, February 6th from 6:30 - 8:00p.m. The focus will be on physical fitness and Gopher athletes will be available to engage the children in various activities. This is guaranteed to be a fun, active way to raise money for our gym.

Reminders

Outdoor Clothing
Please send your child to school with the proper clothing for outdoor play to begin our afternoon. The children are more engaged outside when they are warm and comfortable. We will do our best to make sure everything gets sent home each day although hats and mittens have a tendency to wander away. Please label all of your child's outdoor clothing so we can prevent loss and confusion.

School Closings
The school will be closed in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day Monday, January 18th.

In the event of a snowstorm, we will place an announcement on WCCO to notify of school closure. There will also be notification via the Lab School office out going message 612-624-9543. We will close when either Minneapolis or St. Paul public schools, or the U of M, close.

Hello Parents,
I'd like to start by thanking those of you who came to the party at the end of last session. The gifts were very generous. Katie, Vanessa, Claire, and I are thankful for your support and gratitude. The banana muffins were delicious and I had many requests for the recipe, which is included it at the end of this newsletter.

In an attempt to make the classroom as aesthetically pleasing as possible, the afternoon teacher, Dalia, and I have been hard at work making small changes to the furniture arrangement and carefully choosing and setting up materials. It is our intention to provide materials that are intriguing, open-ended, beautiful, and useful. Through the use of these materials we hope the children will see new possibilities and share their discoveries with their teachers and friends. I will be encouraging the new student teachers to show appreciation for the children's thoughts and ideas so they feel valued as thinkers, communicators, and artists. All of the teachers will be observing and documenting the children's work and ideas so we can make informed curriculum decisions. Our attention to each child as a unique and active learner helps us decide what questions to ask, what kind of support they need, and when to provide it. Throughout this process of engaging in hands-on experiences and relating to others, the children feel a personal connection to their learning.

One of the new materials now available is earth clay as a sensory and sculpting medium. The appeal of this material is that it comes from the earth and is wonderfully malleable. This may be a first time experience for many of the children so at first we will encourage open exploration. As they become familiar with its properties we will be documenting their work by writing down their emerging ideas and photographing their creations.

The children have had, and will continue to have, many opportunities to practice pre-mathematical skills by sorting and categorizing various objects. In doing so, the children are focusing on attributes of objects that are included or excluded from sets. It is clear that many are ready to move on a new mathematical concept, patterning. Concepts such as these lay the foundation for future understanding of mathematical operations. Patterning is an introduction to algebraic thinking as it can be used with a variety of different materials or symbols. Patterns are all around us and we will be inviting children to search for and extend the patterns that they discover in the environment. Through play with open-ended materials, the children will be able to sort and organize objects before experimenting with making patterns of their own.

Throughout the first session birds have been an enduring topic of interest to the children. From our discussions of migration the children learned that many birds fly miles and miles away to find food and warmer temperatures. Many nests were spotted on the playground and the children experimented with making nests of their own. In the gym and on the playground many children experimented with trying to fly as they jumped from high places while flapping their arms. The classroom bird feeder is frequented by a variety of hungry birds and we will continue observing their behavior and comparing their different characteristics. In the science area there will be a variety of feathers, and a mounted crow for close examination. The teachers will be inquiring about how birds can fly and encouraging children to share their ideas and theories. In the dramatic play area we have provided a variety of capes that can be spread like wings so the children can use their imaginations to take flight. What does it feel like? Where will they go? What will they see?

As I mentioned in the lesson plan, we will be examining animal tracks and learning to identify the animals by the tracks they leave. On the playground there are many tracks to be discovered, followed, and wondered about. If you get the chance, look for tracks in your own back yards with your children. There are often other clues around the tracks, such as shredded pinecones or droppings, that indicate what the animal was doing. Collecting clues will support the children's observation skills, information gathering, and skills of deduction. Knowing these children, there will also be some imagination involved! We would love for you to share photos of the tracks, and the "stories" behind the animals that left them. We will be doing the same at school, as there are many rabbit trails crossing the grounds on and around the playground.

Whole Wheat Banana Muffins
Wet ingredients:
½ cup canola oil or 1 stick softened butter
1 cup sugar (or less to taste)
3 mashed ripe bananas
1 teaspoon vanilla

Dry ingredients:
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose white flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda

1/3 c. warm water with ½ teaspoon vinegar added

Optional ingredients:
Any combination of blueberries, chocolate chips, or walnuts to equal one cup.

Directions:
Mix the wet ingredients (except water and vinegar) until well blended. In a separate bowl, mix flours, salt, and baking soda. Add dry ingredients alternately with the warm water and vinegar to the banana mixture. Stir until just combined. Fold in optional ingredients. Spoon into regular size muffin tins and bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes. If using mini-muffin tins, decrease time to 10-12 minutes.

As always, please feel free to contact me with questions or concerns about your child. My home phone number is 651-645-0074 and can be reached in the late afternoon. Earlier, I am floating around at the Lab School so call the office and Eva will give me the message. A third option, and probably the best one, is to email me and I'll call you or set up a convenient time for both of us to talk.

Thanks,
Amy

Outdoor Clothing
Please send your child to school with the proper clothing for outdoor play. They are more engaged outside when they are warm and comfortable. We will do our best to make sure everything gets sent home each day although hats and mittens have a tendency to wander away. Please label all of your child's outdoor clothing so we can prevent loss and confusion.

School Closings
The school will be closed in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day Monday, January 18th.

In the event of a snow storm, we will place an announcement on WCCO to notify of school closure. There will also be notification via the Lab School office out going message 612-624-9543. We will close when either Minneapolis or St. Paul public schools, or the U of M, close.

Lead Teacher: Frances

Goals:
As we welcome the children and families back from the long winter break, we plan to keep things simple so as to allow easy interactions with our new student teacher team. We are assuming that some children may have had travel experiences during break so we will have trains, planes, cars and maps available to capitalize on the memories. The snow will be featured with play in the cave about woodland animals hibernating for the winter. Learning the basic steps of dressing for the winter outdoors (snowpants and boots and the rest) will be a big focus of our early days together.

Art
-Easel: The easel will feature white chalk on dark paper to evoke the snow of the past few weeks. Students can experience 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.
-Table top easels will feature water colors - a continuation of the exploration we began just before break. The children are slowly mastering the skill of dabbing the wet brush onto the cake to absorb color.
-At the art table, a new experience will be introduced - an invented art-water ex-perience where children can use dry erase markers on the plastic table cloth and then spray/wipe what they drawn. As the water causes the drawing to bead up, we are curious to see how the children respond to this transformation of states. This experience has elements of art, science and fine motor work

Manipulatives/Math
- New puzzles around the themes of train and other vehicles will be available.
-A sorting game with photos of different types of vehicles will provide an early math and vocabulary experience.
-The Montessori seriation cylinders will be out - this self correcting activity promotes attention to individual size differences and gradations from small to large.

Sensory
- Dough colored playdough will be available this week at the play doh table. We will assume that some children may bring associations of holiday baking to the work, so we will have ovens and rolling pins available. Building with clay will support fine motor strength and precision, as well as creative expression.
- Damp sand will allow the children to make roads with cars in the sand box. Molds and buckets will be also be available for the children to make sand castles and other structures. The sand table promotes sensory awareness as children feel and manipulate the sand; it is also a wonderful area for developing social skills such as turn-taking.

Science
-The large light table will be presented in the cave area this week. Children will explore and sort different materials which look attractive in the light (shells, feathers and tissue paper.)
-A variety of foods will be available for smelling and tasting (lemon, pineapple, rye bread, green pepper and celery) to help children explore the sense of taste. Words like sour, sweet, crunchy, soft are likely to be used in the context of tasting these items.

Dramatic Play
-Two types of trains will be available, along with airports and wooden airplanes. A world map will allow children to experience the concept of long and short distance. We expect there may be stories of going on the plane, of coming to the airport and of taking tickets. We would appreciate any information about destinations you have traveled to as a way to open conversations with your child.
- The kitchen and home area will be another focus in the dramatic play area. Children will have the opportunity to recreate experiences from the recent holidays and cook and serve. This will also promote social skills such as cooperation and play negotiation.
-The question "where do the animals go in the winter?" will be posed and explored in the cave via stories (The Bear Snores On) and plastic animals. A simple three part story will be posted (1)the animals are cold, winter is coming, 2) they find a cave so they can sleep, 3) winter is over, it is warm now, the animals wake up) - to promote an initial awareness of the seasonal cycle of hibernation. White fabric is ready to reenact snow storms. Little caves for the toy animals as well as a child sized cave are set up for enacting the story. This process helps children learn about different woodland animals (raccoons, squirrels, bears and foxes) and begin to incorporate simple pretend stories into their dramatic play.

Language and Literacy
-The art table will promote the use of dry erase pens for drawing and writing.
-Story concepts are embedded in the woodland cave. The map area has pens and post it notes to affix to places of interest on the map

Construction
-Large hollow blocks and simple unit blocks are located nearby the train area and airport to encourage building along with these activities. Construction gives children the opportunity to use creative expression as well as learn the basic principles needed for building, such as creating sturdy bases and symmetry. The large area for construction also encourages cooperation and group projects.

Large Group/Music
-During large group this week we will sing some familiar songs and work with rhythm instruments on some instrumental tunes. Stories about Winter will be featured.

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.

Announcements
-Please let us know a highlight or two of your child's winter break - so that we may have something to comment to them. Children feel special when we can connect about something meaningful to them (a visit from Grandma - an airplane ride, a first time sledding) so this will help our new student teachers to connect with your child.
-We are also interested to have an update about toilet training - this sometimes changes over the break (and our memories benefit from a recap of where your child is at.)
-We will post a new "laundry helpers list" for this ten weeks - Please sign up to bring home laundry on Friday if you are able.
-Please take the time to label mittens, hats, boots, snowpants and jackets. The first few days of dressing are always WILD! Children often don't have a sense of ownership of their things, yet they help us by taking clothing out of their cubbies. If they are not la-beled, it is very hard to know whose clothes are whose. If you are coming in the class-room to drop your child off, please help us out by putting hats and mittens in the jacket sleeve when you hang up the jacket and having boots and snowpants ready to go (either hanging or in a backpack.) If you forget boots or snowpants on a given day, please let us know and find a pair from Eva so they are all ready to go at dressing time.

Snack
Tuesday: Goldfish and bananas
Friday: Crackers and apples