May 2011 Archives

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Weekly Plan for Ross' Class
May 23-27, 2011
Lead Teaching This Week: Jessica

Overview: This week we hope to be spend even more time outside! We will open our classroom to the toddler playground, encouraging the children to venture outdoors during their activity time. The outdoor environment can inspire new art projects, encourage science exploration, and expand dramatic play opportunities. Last week, tadpoles were added to our classroom! We will continue to learn about their life cycle through our observations and discussions. Our small groups will begin to wrap up as the end of the school year is near. Each group will be doing their culminating activities and taking field trips to bring the groups to a close. The children will have the opportunity to share with their classmates what their small group has been learning throughout the past few weeks.

Expressive Art (paint, collage, clay)
• Materials: Art Table: pipe cleaners, popsicle sticks, beads, various natural materials for collage (wool, paper shreds, yarn, twigs, etc.). Art Cart: mask making materials
Clay Table: clay, thick wire, tools for carving/sculpting, "sculpting accessories" (i.e. wood beads, glass gems, popsicle sticks, bottle caps).
• Rationale: The children have used the art area to create a variety of items including kites, jewelry, pet leashes, and collages. The addition of new materials will inspire the children's creativity and encourage them to expand their creations. Last Friday the children enjoyed creating masks with Q's grandparents. The materials are available for children to continue expressing their creativity through mask making.
• Skills: Social interaction, fine motor skills, creative and artistic expression, symbolic representation.

Sensory (sand table)
• Materials: Sand, trucks, peg people
• Rationale: The soil table has been replaced with a sand table. Water will be added to the sand to bring it to a moldable consistency and inspire the children's interest in revisiting the familiar material. Peg people and utility trucks will also be added to the area to inspire the children's play and encourage social interaction.
• Skills: knowledge/understanding related to the physical properties of sand, hypothesis creating/testing, cooperative/collaborative social interactions, problem solving, symbolic representation, sensory experience.

Math and Manipulatives
• Materials: Montessori materials focusing on seriating, puzzles that highlight classroom topics (i.e. frog life cycle), games with rules (i.e. Snail's Pace), pre-/early literacy game Boggle Jr., interlocking blocks.
• Rationale: The children have demonstrated their growing competence in playing games independently and inviting other children to play with them. The Montessori materials continue to be an interest to the children. Last Friday, blackout glasses were added to the materials to create an additional challenge.
• Skills: shape and spatial awareness, 1-to-1 correspondence, turn-taking skills, seriating, problem solving, social skills

Science
• Materials: At the table: Aquarium, worm farm, magnifying glasses, markers, clipboards
In the cave: Light table, glass gems, and translucent worms.
• Last week Sheila collected pond water to for our classroom. The children have been exploring all the different life in our aquarium including tadpoles, dragonfly larvae, snails, minnows, as well as a plethora of other 'water bugs.' The class will continue to observe, investigate, and discover the life cycles of the animals. Markers and paper will be provided to encourage the children to document their observations with representational drawings.
• Skills: Observation, scientific thinking and reasoning, hypothesis creating and testing, scientific inquiry, investigation of natural world, symbolic representation.

The Nook
• Materials: Bilofix construction set
• Rationale: The children have continually shown interest in constructing items from blocks and other materials provided. The addition of this set will allow the children to create new designs using nuts and bolts, threaded dowels, and blocks.
• Skills: creative expression, fine motor development, symbolic representation, social skills, hand-eye coordination.

Language and Literacy
• Materials: writing supplies (lines/unlined paper, markers, pencils, pens), alphabet stamps, tape, stickers
• Rationale: The writing center has been an auxiliary writing space for the "classroom." The children have also been utilizing the area to create maps, cards, and letters as an extension of their dramatic play. The teachers will continue to provide support as the children practice their pre-/early-literacy and writing skills.
• Skills: awareness of writing and concepts of print, pre-/early literacy skills, fine motor strength and coordination, letter recognition and awareness

Dramatic Play
• Materials: Chalkboard, table with chairs, puzzles, books on CD, colored pencils, crayons, scissors, worksheets
• Rationale: The children continue to show excitement about the "classroom" in our dramatic play area. Their concepts of school have been expanding through exploring the different roles associated with a traditional school setting. Their play has allowed them to represent and express their thoughts about attending kindergarten or returning to the lab school as a "big kid."
• Skills: Social interactions, cooperative skills, creativity, discussion and problem solving, fine motor skills, awareness of writing and concepts of print, pre-/early literacy skills

Blocks
• Materials: Large hollow blocks, unit blocks, long/short planks
• Rationale: The children have continued to construct various structures to extend their dramatic play. The teachers will continue to support their building and encourage them to expand their creations through discussions on what they could "add" to their structures.
• Skills: large motor strength and coordination, fine motor skills, social skills, creative expression, concepts of balance and stability, representational building.

Large Motor
• Materials: In the gym: "Mat mountain," "rolling mountain," A-Frame jumping donut, basketball hoop, Hopscotch
On the playground: tricycles, buckets, shovels, sticks, climber, monkey bars, swings, blocks
• Rationale: On the playground last week the water was turned on, creating a stream for the children to explore. They created islands, built bridges, and dug paths for the water to follow. This week we will open our classroom to toddler playground during activity time. We will encourage the children to spend more time playing outdoors, encouraging their exploration of nature and expanding on their play opportunities.
• Skills: hand-eye coordination, upper and lower body strength, turn taking, physical risk taking, construction skills, spatial awareness, depth perception

Special Interest/Announcements
• Please return your "research packets" you received from Ross last Friday by May 25th. Also please return them in the envelope provided, as it's got your name on it and is easier for the research team to sort. Any questions, please let Ross know!
• Remember - NO SCHOOL Monday, May 30
• The end of the year "Picnic Playground Lunch Party" (it's a working title) is Thursday, June 2 and happening on our very own playground! Bring your own lunch (peanut free, of course) and join us on the playground around 11.15a. We'll eat together, sing a song or two, and then utilize the playground for some extra outside time! I hope you all can make it!
• For those families that are moving on to kindergarten next year, please let Ross know where your child is going if you haven't done so already. We want set up the "kindergarten network" before the school years ends so families have a chance to connect before the school year is over.

Snack
Monday - Sunbutter sandwiches
Tuesday - Animal crackers & oranges
Wednesday - Bananas & Graham crackers
Thursday - Rice cakes & apples
Friday- Pumpkin muffins

Overview

As the end of the year is rapidly approaching, our small groups are coming to a close. On Tuesday and Wednesday, our small groups will be finishing their projects and sharing with the class what they have done the past seven weeks. The children have enjoyed all of the interesting changes we made to the classroom this past week! Instead of changing the environment again, we will be incorporating a variety of new materials in order for the children to continue their active exploration. We are going to focus on making lines using different art media throughout the week. Wire, pipe cleaners, and paint are some of the materials that the children will be able to use to make lines. The children have been spending a lot of time on the playground. The water group began digging a "river" by the shed, and all of the children have enjoyed helping them by adding a system of rivers and lakes. This coming week we are going to take advantage of the nice weather by going for a "sensory walk" as a class. This will give the children an opportunity to focus on using all of their senses to experience the springtime changes.

Expressive Arts 

-Materials: Projector, overhead sheets, overhead markers, wire, pipe cleaners, collage materials, paint, thick and thin paint brushes, crayons, colored pencils, musical instruments (rhythm sticks, shaker eggs, tambourines, etc.) 

-Rationale: As we continue to talk about lines, we will provide different art materials in order for the children to express their ideas through different media. To provide more opportunities to use the projector, we will be providing blank overhead sheets for the children to express their ideas and see how their artwork changes when put it onto the projector. To support musical expression we will encourage the children to listen for rhythmic beats and create their own sounds. 

-Skills: Using a variety of materials, fine motor skills, and participation/creation in art and musical experiences, symbolic representation.

Sensory

-Materials: glurch, rocks, markers, straws
-Rationale: Many of the children have been drawn to the glurch, so we will enhance their experience by adding different materials throughout the week for further experimentation.
-Skills: Observation, prediction, ideas, sensory input, representation, physical properties

Science

-Materials: Insect terrarium, chick eggs, tadpoles, fish, mealworms, cockroaches,
-Rationale: The insect group put together an insect terrarium that will be on display in the science area. This will give the children an opportunity to observe the insects, as well as have a place to put future insects they find. The children will continue to add depth to their understanding of the life cycle through examination and care of the insects, tadpoles, and plants.
-Skills: Observation, prediction, comparisons, expressing ideas, using past experiences/knowledge of the natural world

Dramatic Play

-Materials: symbolic spider cave, cardboard tubes, tape, scissors, fabric for dressing up, stuffed animals, plastic animals
-Rationale: As the children continue to learn more about different kinds of bugs we decided to support their exploration by transforming the cave into a spider web. By providing other insects, yarn, chunks of wood, and sticks the children can make additions to the "web" during their dramatic play. The children have been using their previous knowledge and applying it to the symbolic spider cave. They have been tying up fake insects in the web, just like spiders. We will continue to provide materials for the children to use the cave in a creative way.
-Skills: creative expression, sharing ideas, social problem solving, communication, symbolic representation

Math and Manipulatives

-Materials: tacks, yarn, tack board, puzzles, graphs, charts, rulers, games with rules, musical instruments

-Rationale: The children have enjoyed using different materials to represent spider webs. In order to provide an opportunity to practice spatial sense and geometry skills, the children will make their own spider webs with tack board and yarn. We will also continue to observe the weather, and examine the changes we have seen over the past couple weeks. The children will also develop the ability to create and recognize patterns using musical instruments.
-Skills: Geometry, spatial sense, patterns, problem solving, working with peers, fine motor skills, synthesizing, connecting mathematical concepts with real life experiences

Language and Literacy
-Materials: Chalkboard, Boggle letters, envelopes, paper, pencils, chalk, writing worksheets, spider books, fiction and non-fiction books

-Rationale: As some of the children are transitioning to kindergarten next year, we decided to set up the writing center with a kindergarten feel. We will encourage combining letter sounds by using Boggle letters to form words. We will be providing "academic" worksheets for the children to use. We will also be providing questions on the chalkboard in order to give the children an opportunity to write more focused information on the board. All of the materials will give the children the ability to either symbolically represent school, or practice their academic skills.
-Skills: Letter recognition, engage in purposeful writing, creative expression, and communication through writing.

Blocks
-Materials: Wooden cars, unit blocks, hollow blocks, insects, stuffed animals, plastic toy animals
-Rationale: Adding cars to the unit block area will give the children an opportunity to explore different play themes, such as race tracks or streets. The stuffed animals and plastic animals are available to support and encourage the children's continuous interest in animal houses. As we provide different kinds of animals, we hope to support different kinds of house structures and play themes.
-Skills: Fine motor, large motor skills, creative expression, group problem solving, symbolic representation.

Large Motor 
Gym

-Materials: Rolling hill, slide, a frame ladder, donut hole, climbing ladders, hop-scotch, monkey bars

-Rationale: We encourage the children to think of new and creative ways to experiment with the equipment and challenge their physical abilities through play and other large motor games. 
-Skills: Upper body strength, balance and coordination, rolling, jumping and landing, throwing skills, target practice, and spatial and body awareness, and turn-taking 


Playground

-Materials: Boats, water, shovels, tricycles, water, blocks, buckets, kites, traffic signs

-Rationale: The children are enjoying digging and making the river on the playground. With the water group making boats to float, we are encouraging the other children to use materials in order to make their own boats to float down the river. This will give them an opportunity to express their ideas and problem solve if something happens to their boat (it gets stuck, it doesn't float, etc.) We also encourage the children to use different materials and props in order to support new and inventive forms of play or themes on the playground.
-Skills: Large motor skills, fine motor skills, communication, cooperation, coordination, endurance, problem solving skills.

Snack
Monday - Sunbutter sandwiches
Tuesday - Rice cakes & apples
Wednesday - Bananas & Graham crackers
Thursday - Animal crackers & oranges
Friday- Pumpkin muffins

Overview:
This week we will be continuing our ongoing themes as well as making a few changes in the classroom to allow for additional learning opportunities. In place of the current sensory table we will be having a larger sand table in the classroom. The table will be filled with wet sand to give the children a fine motor experience and allow them to mold and make creations in the sand. Additionally, to build experience with making patterns we are adding examples of patterns into the caves to encourage the children to continue and to make patterns of their own with the gems on the light table. This week is our last week of small groups. Culminating activities will take place in order too wrap up all the learning that has taken place over the last few weeks. Brittany's bug group and Hamdi's shape group will also be taking field trips this week.

Math and Manipulatives
•Materials: Boggle Jr., counting lotto, non-interlocking puzzles, interlocking puzzles, shape/fraction puzzles, sequencing/ordering activities, interlocker blocks, Bilofix construction set
•Rationale: To introduce children to games with rules that relate to print awareness, numeral recognition, matching, and knowledge of shape. To introduce children to simple ways to identify and describe shapes and to create new shapes from smaller shapes. To challenge students to predict and think critically about materials, sequencing and ordering activities are provided. Construction materials that work on fine motor skills and spatial concepts will be added to the "nook" area.
•Skills: print awareness, numeral recognition, part-whole relationships, shape recognition, shape combination, spatial awareness, one-to-one correspondence, turn-taking, social skills, perceptual motor skills, fine motor skills, problem solving, patterning, comparison, matching, ordering, sequencing, construction skills.

Expressive Arts (paint, collage, play dough)
•Materials: primary color paint and mixing cups at the easel, markers, crayons, colored pencils, scissors, glue, natural collage materials.
•Rationale: to explore new tools and media with hands and eyes, promote sensory awareness, increase fine motor skills, foster social relationships and communication skills as children work on collaborative and individual projects. Mixing cups are at the easel area so the children can explore how different colors are made.
•Skills: creativity, artistic expression, fine motor development (strength, coordination), sharing ideas and materials, symbolic representation, color recognition
•Materials: play dough, rolling pins (smooth and spiky), pizza cutters, spatulas, trays, paint, shape cutters, paint brushes, paint
•Rationale: To promote sensory awareness and provide both a creative and social opportunity for children as they increase their fine motor skills. To begin representing ideas and objects in a 3-D medium. The children can use the shape cutters to make shapes or make their own sculptors out of the play dough. After the children let their creations dry they can paint them to create a piece of artwork with the playdough that they can take home.
•Skills: sensory input, symbolic representation, observation, sharing materials, and fine motor development (strength, coordination), artistic expression, symbolic representation

Sensory
•Materials: sand, shovels, buckets, trucks
•Rationale: to allow and encourage experimentation with pouring, scooping, molding, and digging in sand. Trucks will be provided to encourage creative play and extend the recent investigation of construction in the community. •Skills: sensory input/developing an awareness of senses, observation of physical changes, creative thinking, fine motor, knowledge of physical properties/cause and effect, comparison, symbolic representation, sharing materials
Dramatic Play
•Materials: Chalkboard, table with chairs, colored pencils, pencils, scissors, bell, book-bags, notepads, books and corresponding books on tape, numeracy/literacy materials
•Rationale: The classroom set up will help children to expand on their concept of school, and allow them to play out their real live experiences about school. It will give the children the opportunity to think about the routines of school. The materials will provide print and numeracy awareness and pre-literacy skills.
• Skills: Social interactions, cooperative skills, role-play, creativity, problem solving, fine motor skills, awareness of writing and concepts of print, pre-/early literacy skills,

Language and Literacy
Writing Center
•Materials: paper, alphabet stamps, a variety of writing utensils, scissors
•Rationale: to promote print and letter awareness while incorporating dramatic play with paper, and writing utensils. With the addition of our "classroom," the writing center will assist to extend their play in the dramatic play center.
•Skills: awareness of print, connecting speech to print and print to speech, letter recognition, pre-writing, receptive language, fine motor, creative expression, social interaction, awareness of others, community building
Library
•Materials: Books about school, seeds, spring, and shapes. Familiar and favorite books.
•Rationale: to support pre-literacy skills, to familiarize children with new books, to allow for quiet time in the classroom, to use books as resources for non-fiction information, to give the children ideas about other materials we could include in our dramatic play classroom.
•Skills: receptive language, early literacy, awareness of print, listening, community building

Science
Table and Windowsills
•Materials: Magnifying glasses, paper, pencils, measuring tools (rulers), plants, water squirt bottles, books about planting, worm farm, small aquarium with living things
•Rationale: Magnifying glasses enable the children to examine the plants growing in our classroom that they planted and notice changes in the plants as they grow. This will give the children a chance to see a plant that is in the process of growing. The children will be able to practice watering the plants and discussing what plants need to grow. The children will also be able to explore and observe living creatures in the worm farm and pond life (snails, tadpoles, insects, dragonfly larvae, minnows) in the aquarium with the magnifying glasses.
•Skills: Exploration, observation, fine motor, drawing, measuring, language, plant and animal life cycles
Caves
•Materials: light table, glass gems, light tiles with worms on them, pattern guides
•Rationale: In the caves the children will be able to explore using glass gems on the light table. To relate to the discussion about worms and their habitats the in soil, we will encourage the children to use the glass gems to create worms, and worm tunnels. To continue exploration with pattern making examples using the gems will be made for the children to continue.
•Skills: Fine motor, pattern constructing, memory expansion, color recognition, cooperation, planning skills, language, comparing

Blocks
•Materials: large hollow blocks, unit blocks, multi-colored shape blocks, small wooden cube blocks, small wooden rods, steering wheels, paper and pencils, easel, truck books, assorted fabrics
•Rationale: To foster current dramatic play themes, to encourage planful and purposeful approaches to building including drawing or writing plans and blueprints, to combine different materials in order to create new structures, to allow for individual building and collaborative work. To allow children to extend personal experiences through imaginative play.
•Skills: large motor development, dramatic play, creating imaginary scenarios, symbolic representation, cooperative play, problem solving, mathematical and geometrical thinking

Large Motor
Gym
•Materials: bolsters, green mats, assembled to create "mat mountain." A-frame climbing structure, blue foam donut, blue stairs, foam roller slide, painted hopscotch track, monkey bars, basketball hoop, foam balls.
•Skills: Upper and lower body strength, climbing skills, tumbling, body control, risk taking, turn taking, hand-eye coordination, jumping and landing, coordination, core strength, stamina, one-to-one correspondence, balance, number sense.
Playground
•Materials: shovels, buckets, wagons, swings, dishes for dramatic play, rakes, tricycles, and wagons
•Rationale: Digging in sand, riding trikes around the playground, and swinging on the swings create opportunities for social interaction, cooperation, role play, and many large motor experiences.
•Skills: upper and lower body strength, physical fitness, perceptual motor skills (spatial, temporal, directional, and body awareness), building community through social interactions.

Snack
Monday - Rice cakes and oranges
Wednesday - Bananas and graham crackers
Thursday - Apples and pretzels
*** All snacks are served with milk and water unless otherwise specified
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Julianna Lead Teaching

Overview
The end of the year is coming up fast, but things are busy as ever in the classroom. Children are as anxious as we are to enjoy the beautiful weather. We have found many opportunities to take small groups outside during the day (feeding the birds, collecting bugs, etc.) and will continue to seek those opportunities to foster relationships among the students. With a focus on the end of the year and eventual transition to the "big kids' classroom" we will begin to utilize some of their daily routines. We also hope to take small groups to their classrooms, so children can see what to expect. In the classroom, a dramatic play stage will be set up in the loft to encourage the natural performers in our classroom, and help others out of their shells. We will also have a body-comparison station at the science table for children to compare hand and feet size, height and weight. Remember, the All School Pizza Party is on Tuesday, May 24th. We hope you can come--it's sure to be a rollicking good time!

Large Group

Large groups this week will focus on music and movement through the use of instruments (drums or shakers) and scarves or streamers. This will encourage the performance area of our classroom to be used. All children will begin to practice sitting on a carpet square, a routine in the big kids' classroom. This will be a big change for the children, but we think they are ready for it. We will also use songs, story telling and book reading to enhance focus on other areas in the classroom.

Expressive Arts

Art Table
Materials: Window pane and plexiglass for painting on
Rationale: To give children an opportunity to paint somewhere besides the easel and to foster a community effort on a large group work. To experiment with light that shines through the plexiglass and window pane.
Skills: Turn taking, creative expression, fine motor practice, cause and effect, prediction, and color mixing

Easel
Materials: Daubers and other non-paint markers
Rationale: Give children the opportunity to use new media and experiment with something new.
Skills: Fine motor practice, creative expression, turn-taking, and cause and effect

Sensory
Earth Clay:
Materials: Earth clay and tools to manipulate it: pounders, rolling pins and scooping tools.
Rationale: To encourage children to practice motor skills through manipulating the (sometimes tough) clay. To encourage problem-solving and scientific thinking skills through the use of a novel material.
Skills: Fine motor, comparison, hypothesis, communication, problem solving, symbolic representation, and trial and error.

Sand Table:
Materials: Sand, small animal models, insect models, and items for creating their habitats: faux foliage and wood.
Rationale: To help children make connections between the creatures we have learned about in books to a simulation in real life. To renew interest in sand as a material, since it's been a long time since having had it.
Skills: Cooperative skills, collaboration, turn-taking, role-playing, communication, fine motor, creative expression and dramatic play.

Science
Materials: Measuring tape, clipboards, hand sizes, feet sizes, paper on wall to record height, scale and face-paint/mirrors.
Rationale: To give children the opportunity to learn about their bodies through sensory exploration and comparison. Children will check height, weight and hand and foot size through measurement. We will also continue having face-paint available for spatial and bodily awareness practice.
Skills: Comparison, hypothesis, experimentation, problem solving, turn-taking, cause and effect, creativity, observation and prediction

Outside
Materials: Balls, basketball hoop or soccer goals, trucks, shovels, rakes, buckets, trucks, tricycles, scooter cars, sandbox filled with water and flotation toys such as boats.
Rationale: To allow children to explore varied levels of fine and gross motor skills, depending on their preference. Allow children to explore properties of water and float/sink comparisons.
Skill: Fine and gross motor skills, turn taking, problem solving, collaboration, experimentation, balance, coordination, scientific thinking skills.

Materials: Gardening shovels, rakes, gloves, fence building materials (i.e., sticks and string), bulbs, seeds, and watering cans.
Rationale: To provide the children with the option of exploring the gardening process using real gardening tools along with preparing the garden and planting. To allow the children to continue to practice care taking of plants outside of our classroom. To encourage responsibility and observation skills
Skills: Fine motor skills, exploration, turn taking, problem solving, collaboration, and experimentation.

Math and Manipulatives

Materials: Puzzles of a boat, the alphabet and different colored circles. Rationale: To encourage part-whole thinking, visual discrimination, adaptive fine motor control and connections to other areas in the classroom.

Materials: A winding ramp and cars that roll down on their own once released. Rationale: To promote cause and effect relationships, a fine motor grasp and predictions as well as counting.

Materials: Wooden 'donuts' on a spool of increasing size. Rationale: To promote seriation and sorting by size, to encourage part-whole relationships and step-wise processes.

Materials: "Snap shapes" (wooden blocks with snaps attached for assembly in an open ended way) Rationale: To promote fine motor development, part-whole relationships, and creativity through an interesting medium

Language and Literacy

Materials: Books about curriculum areas (springtime, insects, animals, cities etc) as well as an alphabet puzzle.
Rationale: To allow children to make connections between what they're reading and the classroom or home. To explore books as media for researching topics of interest. To support the development of book and print concepts such as page-turning and holding it correctly. To suport familiarity with first letters of names in the classroom.
Skills: Concepts of books and print, using pictures in books to gain information, using books as inspiration for play or visual representation

Blocks

Materials: Wooden unit blocks, "city" blocks, wooden trees, blue fabric (for water), small wooden cars, small wooden rectangle blocks, plastic tools and toolboxes
Rationale: To allow children to elaborate their pervasive interest of building cities and driving cars, and repairing other areas of the classroom as needed.
Skills: Role playing, collaboration, team work, imaginative play, hand-eye coordination, part-whole relationships, symbolic representation, balance, story telling

Large Motor

Materials: Bolsters, green mats, assembled to create "mat mountain." Skills: Upper and lower body strength, climbing skills, tumbling, body control, risk taking, turn taking
Materials: A-frame climbing structure, blue foam donut. Skills: Risk taking, hand-eye coordination, jumping and landing, upper body strength, turn taking.

Materials: Blue stairs, foam roller slide. Skills: Stair climbing, coordination, risk taking, core strength.

Materials: Climbing wall. Skills: Hand-eye coordination, upper and lower body strength, stamina, risk taking, jumping and landing.

Materials: Monkey bars, basketball hoop, foam balls. Skills: Throwing and catching, turn taking, accuracy, hand-eye coordination.

Materials: Painted hopscotch track. Skills: Number sense, counting, one-to-one correspondence, coordination, balance, jumping.
Rationale for all: To create opportunities for age-appropriate risk taking with the support of teachers as well as to promote large motor skills and body awareness.

Dramatic Play
Materials: Scarves, full length mirrors, instruments (see below), curtains, playbills (created by students), and the loft as a stage.
Rationale: To foster children's natural interest in performance in music and theater, to create a safe opportunity for children to perform in front of others and practice taking leadership roles
Skills: Speaking in front of others, creative thinking, turn-taking, social skills, creative expression and social skills

Music/Movement
Materials: Piano, drums, xylophone, jingle bells, rainsticks, sandpaper blocks, bells, small scarves
Rationale: To promote pitch and rhythm development. To engage in social musical activities. Explore the cause and effect of noises from a musical instrument. Engage in physical movement in time to music, using the scarf as a prop. Engage in performance themed activities to practice social behaviors.
Skill: Fine motor, hand-eye coordination, pitch and rhythm, awareness of others, cause and effect, imitation

Julianna Lead Teaching

Overview
The end of the year is coming up fast, but things are busy as ever in the classroom. Children are as anxious as we are to enjoy the beautiful weather. We have found many opportunities to take small groups outside during the day (feeding the birds, collecting bugs, etc.) and will continue to seek those opportunities to foster relationships among the students. With a focus on the end of the year and eventual transition to the "big kids' classroom" we will begin to utilize some of their daily routines. We also hope to take small groups to their classrooms, so children can see what to expect. In the classroom, a dramatic play stage will be set up in the loft to encourage the natural performers in our classroom, and help others out of their shells. We will also have a body-comparison station at the science table for children to compare hand and feet size, height and weight. This is also our last week of small groups and we hope to make them memorable for the children. Remember, the All School Pizza Party is on Tuesday, May 24th. We hope you can come--it's sure to be a rollicking good time!

Large Group

Large groups this week will focus on music and movement through the use of instruments (drums or shakers) and scarves or streamers. This will encourage the performance area of our classroom to be used. All children will begin to practice sitting on a carpet square, a routine in the big kids' classroom. This will be a big change for the children, but we think they are ready for it. We will also use songs, story telling and book reading to enhance focus on other areas in the classroom.

Expressive Arts

Art Table
Materials: Window pane and plexiglass for painting on
Rationale: To give children an opportunity to paint somewhere besides the easel and to foster a community effort on a large group work. To experiment with light that shines through the plexiglass and window pane.
Skills: Turn taking, creative expression, fine motor practice, cause and effect, prediction, and color mixing

Easel
Materials: Daubers and other non-paint markers
Rationale: Give children the opportunity to use new media and experiment with something new.
Skills: Fine motor practice, creative expression, turn-taking, and cause and effect

Sensory
Earth Clay:
Materials: Earth clay and tools to manipulate it: pounders, rolling pins and scooping tools.
Rationale: To encourage children to practice motor skills through manipulating the (sometimes tough) clay. To encourage problem-solving and scientific thinking skills through the use of a novel material.
Skills: Fine motor, comparison, hypothesis, communication, problem solving, symbolic representation, and trial and error.

Sand Table:
Materials: Sand, small animal models, insect models, and items for creating their habitats: faux foliage and wood.
Rationale: To help children make connections between the creatures we have learned about in books to a simulation in real life. To renew interest in sand as a material, since it's been a long time since having had it.
Skills: Cooperative skills, collaboration, turn-taking, role-playing, communication, fine motor, creative expression and dramatic play.

Science
Materials: Measuring tape, clipboards, hand sizes, feet sizes, paper on wall to record height, scale and face-paint/mirrors.
Rationale: To give children the opportunity to learn about their bodies through sensory exploration and comparison. Children will check height, weight and hand and foot size through measurement. We will also continue having face-paint available for spatial and bodily awareness practice.
Skills: Comparison, hypothesis, experimentation, problem solving, turn-taking, cause and effect, creativity, observation and prediction

Outside
Materials: Balls, basketball hoop or soccer goals, trucks, shovels, rakes, buckets, trucks, tricycles, scooter cars, sandbox filled with water and flotation toys such as boats.
Rationale: To allow children to explore varied levels of fine and gross motor skills, depending on their preference. Allow children to explore properties of water and float/sink comparisons.
Skill: Fine and gross motor skills, turn taking, problem solving, collaboration, experimentation, balance, coordination, scientific thinking skills.

Materials: Gardening shovels, rakes, gloves, fence building materials (i.e., sticks and string), bulbs, seeds, and watering cans.
Rationale: To provide the children with the option of exploring the gardening process using real gardening tools along with preparing the garden and planting. To allow the children to continue to practice care taking of plants outside of our classroom. To encourage responsibility and observation skills
Skills: Fine motor skills, exploration, turn taking, problem solving, collaboration, and experimentation.

Math and Manipulatives

Materials: Puzzles of a boat, the alphabet and different colored circles. Rationale: To encourage part-whole thinking, visual discrimination, adaptive fine motor control and connections to other areas in the classroom.

Materials: A winding ramp and cars that roll down on their own once released. Rationale: To promote cause and effect relationships, a fine motor grasp and predictions as well as counting.

Materials: Wooden 'donuts' on a spool of increasing size. Rationale: To promote seriation and sorting by size, to encourage part-whole relationships and step-wise processes.

Materials: "Snap shapes" (wooden blocks with snaps attached for assembly in an open ended way) Rationale: To promote fine motor development, part-whole relationships, and creativity through an interesting medium

Language and Literacy

Materials: Books about curriculum areas (springtime, insects, animals, cities etc) as well as an alphabet puzzle.
Rationale: To allow children to make connections between what they're reading and the classroom or home. To explore books as media for researching topics of interest. To support the development of book and print concepts such as page-turning and holding it correctly. To suport familiarity with first letters of names in the classroom.
Skills: Concepts of books and print, using pictures in books to gain information, using books as inspiration for play or visual representation

Blocks

Materials: Wooden unit blocks, "city" blocks, wooden trees, blue fabric (for water), small wooden cars, small wooden rectangle blocks, plastic tools and toolboxes
Rationale: To allow children to elaborate their pervasive interest of building cities and driving cars, and repairing other areas of the classroom as needed.
Skills: Role playing, collaboration, team work, imaginative play, hand-eye coordination, part-whole relationships, symbolic representation, balance, story telling

Large Motor

Materials: Bolsters, green mats, assembled to create "mat mountain." Skills: Upper and lower body strength, climbing skills, tumbling, body control, risk taking, turn taking
Materials: A-frame climbing structure, blue foam donut. Skills: Risk taking, hand-eye coordination, jumping and landing, upper body strength, turn taking.

Materials: Blue stairs, foam roller slide. Skills: Stair climbing, coordination, risk taking, core strength.

Materials: Climbing wall. Skills: Hand-eye coordination, upper and lower body strength, stamina, risk taking, jumping and landing.

Materials: Monkey bars, basketball hoop, foam balls. Skills: Throwing and catching, turn taking, accuracy, hand-eye coordination.

Materials: Painted hopscotch track. Skills: Number sense, counting, one-to-one correspondence, coordination, balance, jumping.
Rationale for all: To create opportunities for age-appropriate risk taking with the support of teachers as well as to promote large motor skills and body awareness.

Dramatic Play
Materials: Scarves, full length mirrors, instruments (see below), curtains, playbills (created by students), and the loft as a stage.
Rationale: To foster children's natural interest in performance in music and theater, to create a safe opportunity for children to perform in front of others and practice taking leadership roles
Skills: Speaking in front of others, creative thinking, turn-taking, social skills, creative expression and social skills

Music/Movement
Materials: Piano, drums, xylophone, jingle bells, rainsticks, sandpaper blocks, bells, small scarves
Rationale: To promote pitch and rhythm development. To engage in social musical activities. Explore the cause and effect of noises from a musical instrument. Engage in physical movement in time to music, using the scarf as a prop. Engage in performance themed activities to practice social behaviors.
Skill: Fine motor, hand-eye coordination, pitch and rhythm, awareness of others, cause and effect, imitation

Overview
As the school year is sadly coming to a close, topics and concepts are starting to wrap up. As the classroom underwent big changes last week, there will minor additions throughout the classroom for this week. Children are busy finishing up small groups and enjoying time outside as well as in the classroom. We will look at the marigolds one last time this week and then send them home to continue to observe and care for them. Last week, we released the butterflies that hatched inside the classroom and we are still anxiously awaiting the arrival of our baby chicks.

Expressive Arts
- Materials: projector, transparencies with designs, blank transparencies, thick and thin markers, colored pencils, crayons, tape, glue, staplers, paper punchers, construction paper, paint, thin brushes, standing easel, tissue paper, pipe cleaners.
- Rationale: We will be keeping the easel and projector to build on children's understanding of lines, symmetry, and shapes while exploring insects and flowers to expand on their opportunities to freely represent what they see and think of.
- Skills: exploration of lines and shapes, exploration of materials, observation, fine motor strength and control, self-expression.

Sensory
-Materials: Glurch
-Rationale: We are keeping the glurch! We've made much more so the children can freely explore this materials. We will add small materials to encourage symbolic play and conversations.
-Skills: Sensory input, imagination, fine motor.

Science
- Materials: Incubator with chick eggs, butterflies, beetles, crickets, cockroach, mealworms, tadpole, fish, photo of the chick life cycle, Marigold plants, clipboards, pencils, rulers, magnifying glasses, books, insect aquarium.
- Rationale: We will continue to connect life cycles with our spring curriculum topics. Provide opportunities to enrich social interactions and knowledge as we observe and examine the life cycles of insects and chicks. We will also be focusing on what insects we see outside and which ones we see inside the school.
- Skills: scientific inquiry, observation, comparison, reasoning, investigation, explorations, social skills, sorting, descriptive language, self-expression

Language and Literacy
- Materials: books about: spring, weather, insects, plants, flowers and chicks. Spring Bingo, journals, foam letters, glue, pens, pencils, markers, staplers, tape, paper, envelops, stencils, chalkboard, workbooks and worksheets.
- Rationale: Encourage children to make their last entries on their journals before we send their Marigold plants home. We will also encourage them to entry their observations of insects, the chicken eggs and spring in general. The children will be encouraged to use information resources to explore the topics of spring, senses, insects, and plants present in the classroom. The "Welcome to Kindergarten" area will offer opportunities for plenty of print and writing, comparing, and number recognition, and opportunities to work together to master different phonemic awareness skills.
- Skills: awareness of print, self-expression, writing, drawing, awareness of the purpose of print and letter recognition, phonemic awareness, connecting speech to print and print to speech, fine motor, vocabulary, social skills, observation, recording.

Math and Manipulatives
- Materials: Puzzles of: spring insects, plants, flowers, and seeds (fruit). Rulers, journals, spring and insect Bingo, unifix cubes, and weather bar graph.
- Rationale: We will continue to provide opportunities for children to explore symmetry though puzzles, images, and projector transparencies. Measure and graph plant growth of our Marigold plants. Children will continue tracking and measuring spring weather using a bar graph and calendar.
- Skills: geometry, symmetry, measuring, number recognition, patterns, reasoning, observation, classification, comparison, matching, logical thinking.

Dramatic Play
- Materials: Back of the Classroom: kitchen furniture, utensils, dishes, pots and pans, pretend food, small table, flowers, baskets and vases, animal costumes, blankets. Symbolic Play Cave: insects, spider web (use ropes and nets to create the feel of being in a web).
- Rationale: Foster socio-dramatic play by offering opportunities for peer interactions; provoke children's thinking of insect life.
- Skills: role-play, peer interactions, cooperation, symbolic representation, social problem solving.

Blocks
- Materials: hollow wood blocks, until blocks, thin boards, wood shapes, and stuffed plastic animals.
- Rationale: Provide opportunities for creative play, creative building, and symbolic play.
- Skills: balance, spatial awareness, cooperative play, creative building, gross motor, social skills, symbolic representation.

Large Motor

Gym
- Materials: bolsters, green mats, assembled to create "mat mountain." 

- Skills: Upper and lower body strength, climbing skills, tumbling, body control, risk taking, turn taking.

- Materials: A-frame climbing structure, blue foam donut. 

- Skills: Risk taking, hand-eye coordination, jumping and landing, upper body strength, turn taking.

- Materials: Blue stairs, foam roller slide. 

- Skills: Stair climbing, coordination, risk taking, core strength.

- Materials: Climbing wall. 

- Skills: Hand-eye coordination, upper and lower body strength, stamina, risk taking, jumping and landing.

- Materials: Monkey bars, basketball hoop, foam balls. 

- Skills: Throwing and catching, turn taking, accuracy, hand-eye coordination.
- Materials: Painted hopscotch track.
- Skills: Number sense, counting, one-to-one correspondence, coordination, balance, jumping.
Playground
- Materials: shovels, buckets, bikes, wagons, swings, traffic signs, chalk. 

- Rationale: reconnect with the outdoors! The children have been enjoying digging and transporting the sand with the wagons, pulling the wagons around with their friends and riding the bikes while following the traffic signs placed around the playground. They will swing, dig, run, ride, pull, and climb while engaging in socio-dramatic play.
- Skills: cardio vascular, social skills, endurance, upper and lower body strength, balance and coordination.

Special Interest

Large Group and Parent Involvement

During large group we will continue to track spring weather. We will discuss what new insects are finally emerging now that spring weather is finally here to stay. On Monday, we will be going on a walk to explore insects and where they live. Also, we will focus on different homes and how different insects can protect themselves. On Monday, we will enjoy the treats Isaac's mom helped us bake for his birthday. Wednesday, we will enjoy listening to stories read by Otto's mom, Anjula. Thank you for spending time with us this week.

I hope you all have a great week!
Heather

Releasing the butterflies

Overview
During the last week the children had an opportunity to get to know the chicken life cycle. They are waiting with eager eyes for the 29th of May as this is when the chicks will start to hatch! Now that the butterflies have emerged, the children have been carefully observing their flying patterns. Our next step will be to release them to their new homes outside. Since Frances' visit last Monday the children have been learning more about self-expression through musical instruments. We will continue developing musical expression using different kinds of instruments, music, and dancing activities. We will continue to encourage painting activities by moving away from the easels and back to the table to continue with symmetry, shapes, and color. Another exciting addition to our classroom is the glurch! This substance consists of glue and liquid starch that slimes through the children's fingers allowing them to bend, shape, and stretch the glurch in any way they can imagine.

Expressive Arts
-Materials: paint, thick and thin paint brushes, crayons, colored pencils, musical instruments (rhythm sticks, shaker eggs, tambourines, etc.)
-Rationale: As the children continue using lines we will provide different objects for inspiration that incorporate a variety colors and shapes. To support musical expression we will encourage the children to listen for rhythmic beats and create their own sounds.
-Skills: Using a variety of materials, fine motor skills, and participation/creation in art and musical experiences, symbolic representation.

Sensory
-Materials: glurch
-Rationale: The children have had previous experiences with molding materials like clay, and play-dough. This new substance will provide the children with an opportunity to experiment with a new consistency.
-Skills: Observation, prediction, ideas, sensory input, representation, physical properties

Science
-Materials: chick eggs, butterflies, tadpoles, fish, mealworms, cockroaches, crickets
-Rationale: The children will continue to add depth to their understanding of the life cycle through examination and care of the insects, tadpoles, and plants. As the children make observations they begin to compare and predict future changes in new additions such as, our new chick eggs. We will emphasize care and respect and encourage the children to think about the needs of the living things in our classroom.
-Skills: Observation, prediction, comparisons, expressing ideas, using past experiences/knowledge of the natural world

Dramatic Play
-Materials: symbolic spider cave, camping materials, cardboard tubes, tape, scissors, fabric for dressing up, stuffed animals, plastic animals
-Rationale: As the children learn more about different kinds of bugs we decided to support their exploration by transforming the cave into a spider web. By providing other insects, yarn, chunks of wood, and sticks the children can make additions to the "web" during their dramatic play.
-Skills: creative expression, sharing ideas, social problem solving, communication, symbolic representation

Math and Manipulatives
-Materials: puzzles, graphing, charting, measurements, games with rules, musical instruments
-Rationale: As the weather continues to get warmer the children will have a chance to notice trends in the temperature using the weather calendar. The children will also develop the ability to create and recognize patterns using musical instruments.
-Skills: Patterns, problem solving, working with peers, fine motor skills, synthesizing, connecting mathematical concepts with real life experiences

Language and Literacy
-Materials: Boggle letters, envelopes, paper, pencils, chalkboard, chalk, writing worksheets, spider books, fiction and non-fiction books
-Rationale: As some of the children are transitioning to kindergarten next year, we decided to set up the writing center with a kindergarten feel. We will encourage combining letter sounds by using Boggle letters to form words.
-Skills: Letter recognition, engage in purposeful writing, creative expression, and communication through writing.

Blocks
-Materials: Unit blocks, hollow blocks, insects, stuffed animals, plastic toy animals,
-Rationale: The stuffed animals and plastic animals are available to support and encourage the children's continuous interest in animal houses. As we provide different kinds of animals we hope to support different kinds of house structures and play themes.
-Skills: Fine motor, large motor skills, creative expression, group problem solving, symbolic representation.

Large Motor
Gym
-Materials: Rolling hill, slide, a frame ladder, donut hole, climbing ladders, hop-scotch, monkey bars
-Rationale: We encourage the children to think of new and creative ways to experiment with the equipment and challenge their physical abilities through play and other large motor games.
-Skills: Upper body strength, balance and coordination, rolling, jumping and landing, throwing skills, target practice, and spatial and body awareness, and turn-taking
Playground
-Materials: tricycles, shovels, water, blocks, buckets, kites, traffic signs
-Rationale: We encourage the children to use different materials and props in order to support new and inventive forms of play or themes on the playground.
-Skills: Large motor skills, fine motor skills, communication, cooperation, coordination, endurance, problem solving skills.

Snack
Monday -Edamame & crackers
Tuesday - Graham crackers & milk
Wednesday - Pretzels & celery
Thursday - Oranges & rice cakes
Friday- Cereal & milk

Overview: This week will bring new and exciting learning opportunities for the children as we enter the last few weeks of small groups and the addition of a new dramatic center in our classroom. With the help of a discussion with the children, we have decided to change our restaurant into a classroom. This is a relevant part of their lives and it will offer them opportunities to explore and expand on their concept of school. We will also be continuing with our existing themes of planting and shapes. This week Elizabeth A's small group will be going on a flied trip to the Como Zoo Conservatory to explore and learn about the plants there, and on Monday Pearl and Emmett's mother will be coming to make pizza with the children in celebration of Peal and Emmett's birthday.

Math and Manipulatives
•Materials: Boggle Jr., crayons and notepad for Boggle word writing, interlocking puzzles, construction floor puzzling, interlocking food puzzles, shape/fraction puzzles, interlockers

•Rationale: To introduce children to games with rules that relate to print awareness, numeral recognition, and knowledge of shape. To introduce children to simple ways to identify and describe shapes and to create new shapes from smaller shapes. To stimulate ideas for our restaurant in the dramatic play area we have food puzzles for the children to work with. We have added interlockers for the children to gain experience making, comparing, and measuring pattern creations, while working on problem solving and perceptual motor skills. 

•Skills: print awareness, part-whole relationships, shape recognition and matching, shape combination, spatial awareness, one-to-one correspondence, turn-taking, social skills, perceptual motor skills, problem solving, patterning, measurement, comparison.

Expressive Arts (paint, collage, play dough)
•Materials: primary color paint and mixing cups at the easel, markers, crayons, colored pencils, scissors, glue, natural collage materials.

•Rationale: to explore new tools and media with hands and eyes, promote sensory awareness, increase fine motor skills, foster social relationships and communication skills as children work on collaborative and individual projects. We added mixing cups to the easel area so the children can explore how different colors are made. 

•Skills: creativity, artistic expression, fine motor development (strength, coordination), sharing ideas and materials, symbolic representation, color recognition

•Materials: play dough, rolling pins (smooth and spiky), pizza cutters, spatulas, pizza pans and trays, paint, shape cutters, paint brushes
•Rationale: To promote sensory awareness and provide both a creative and social opportunity for children as they increase their fine motor skills. To begin representing ideas and objects in a 3-D medium. Additionally, the children can continue using the shape cutters on the play dough to cut out their own shapes and after the children let their creations dry they can paint them to create a final product.
•Skills: sensory input, symbolic representation, observation, sharing materials, and fine motor development (strength, coordination)

Sensory
•Materials: dirt, sand, bugs, shovels, trees, water, frogs

•Rationale: to allow and encourage experimentation with dirt, sand, and the natural objects one might find in dirt. We have been doing a lot of reading and discussing about planting and bugs. The sensory table will give children the opportunity to see what else we can do with dirt. We are adding toy frogs to the sensory table to help the children to think about food-chains: what bugs eat and what might eat bugs. Water will be added to the table to help emphasize the molding of the dirt and sand and to serve as ponds for the frogs.
•Skills: sensory input/developing an awareness of senses, thinking about insect habitats, observation of physical changes, creative thinking, fine motor, knowledge of physical properties/cause and effect, comparison, symbolic representation, sharing materials

Dramatic Play

•Materials: Chalkboard, table with chairs, colored pencils, pencils scissors, bell, book-bags, notepads
•Rationale: The discussion of transforming our restaurant into a classroom has been received by the children with excitement and they have had many great ideas about what to put in our classroom. This week we will bring these ideas to life with the help of the children. The classroom set up will help children to expand on their concept of school, and we anticipate their real live experiences about school will be played out. It will also give the children the opportunity to think about the routines of school.
• Skills: Social interactions, cooperative skills, creativity, discussion and problem solving, fine motor skills, awareness of writing and concepts of print, pre-/early literacy skills,

Language and Literacy
Writing Center 

•Materials: paper, alphabet stamps, a variety of writing utensils, scissors

•Rationale: to promote print and letter awareness while incorporating dramatic play with paper, and writing utensils. With the addition of our "classroom," the writing center will assist to extend their play in the dramatic play center. 

•Skills: awareness of print, connecting speech to print and print to speech, letter recognition, pre-writing, receptive language, fine motor, creative expression, social interaction, awareness of others, community building

Library

•Materials: Books about seeds, spring, and shapes. Books about school.
•Rationale: to support pre-literacy skills, to familiarize children with new books, to allow for quiet time in the classroom, to use books as resources for non-fiction information, to give the children ideas about other objects we could include in our dramatic play area and in our sensory table
•Skills: receptive language, early literacy, awareness of print, listening, community building

Science
Table

•Materials: Magnifying glasses, flowers, paper, pencils, markers, measuring tools (rulers and tape measurers), dirt, pots, seeds, water, books about planting, worm farm
•Rationale: Magnifying glasses enable the children to examine the flowers growing in our classroom and notice changes in the flowers as they grow. We have been doing a lot of talking about seeds and plants growing. This activity will give the students a chance to see a plant that is in the process of growing. Also, planting new seeds allows children to connect the previously explored seeds to the plants they grow into. The children will be able to practice watering the plants and discussing what plants need to grow.
The children will also be able to explore the worm farm with the magnifying glasses. They will be able to see the worms tunnel through the dirt and make castings out of their food.
•Skills: Exploration, fine motor, drawing, measuring, language

Caves
•Materials: light table, brown glass gems, light tiles with worms on them

•Rationale: In the caves the children will be able to explore using glass gems on the light table. To relate to the discussion about worms and their habitats the in soil, we will encourage the children to use the glass gems to create worms, and worm tunnels. To introduce pattern making with another material.
•Skills: Fine motor, pattern constructing, memory expansion, color recognition, cooperation, planning skills, language, comparing

Blocks
•Materials: large hollow blocks, unit blocks, multi-colored shape blocks, small wooden cube blocks, small wooden rods, steering wheels, paper and pencils, easel, truck books 

•Rationale: To foster current dramatic play themes, to encourage planful and purposeful approaches to building including drawing or writing plans and blueprints, to combine different materials in order to create new structures, to allow for individual building and collaborative work. We will highlight the use of unit blocks this week to emphasize shapes and part-whole comparisons made by putting different blocks together.

•Skills: large motor development, dramatic play, creating imaginary scenarios, symbolic representation, cooperative play, problem solving, mathematical and geometrical thinking

Large Motor
Gym
•Materials: bolsters, green mats, assembled to create "mat mountain." A-frame climbing structure, blue foam donut, blue stairs, foam roller slide, painted hopscotch track, monkey bars, basketball hoop, foam balls.
•Skills: Upper and lower body strength, climbing skills, tumbling, body control, risk taking, turn taking, hand-eye coordination, jumping and landing, coordination, core strength, stamina, one-to-one correspondence, balance, number sense.
Playground

•Materials: shovels, buckets, wagons, swings, dishes for dramatic play, rakes, tricycles, and wagons
•Rationale: Digging in sand, riding trikes around the playground, and swinging on the swings create opportunities for social interaction, cooperation, role play, and many large motor experiences.
•Skills: upper and lower body strength, physical fitness, perceptual motor skills (spatial, temporal, directional, and body awareness), building community through social interactions.

Snack
Monday - Making pizza with Emmett and Pearl's mom
Wednesday - Eric's birthday treat
Thursday - Cantaloupe & graham crackers
*** All snacks are served with milk and water unless otherwise specified

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kayla Lead Teaching

Overview

The warm weather is finally here! We will be taking full advantage of this and going outside as much as possible, furthering our curriculum areas. Small groups of children will be going out on bug hunts to bring back bugs to our "Bug Sanctuary" in the classroom where we will be able to make observations. We will be taking a step further with the planting of our two class gardens by planting our vegetable seeds and planting bulbs in the flower garden! The Veterinary Clinic in the dramatic play area will allow children to continue to take care of the sick puppies and kittens, and perhaps zoo animals as well. This week's focus is to expand on the different areas of the classroom, giving the children new and exciting experiences surrounding the curriculum themes already embedded in our environment. Small groups will continue this week--be sure to check out the new documentations and pictures on the website! Don't forget about the all school pizza party on Tuesday, May 24th. Hope you all can make it!

Large Group


This week our large groups will continue to place a focus on the caretaking of animals and tie that in with our new dramatic play area with the veterinary clinic in our loft and zoo area. We will also introduce the concept of bugs, where they live, and what they eat. Felt board stories, movement, dramatic play, poetry, songs, and books will all be used during large group this week. 



Expressive Arts

**Materials: face paint, mirror, brushes. Rationale: To introduce the children to a new sensory experience, while practicing fine motor skills. To allow the children to creatively express themselves through an art experience. To engage in a social art experience. Skills: creative expression, fine motor, hand-eye coordination, social interaction

Sensory

**Materials: Play dough, spices to add, animal cookie cutters, rolling pins, and letter cookie cutters Rationale: To allow the children to explore a new sensory experience with play dough. To encourage children to manipulate the play dough to work on fine motor skills. To continue to facilitate letter recognition. Skills: Fine motor, comparison, communication, problem solving, creative expression, social interaction, symbolic representation.



**Materials: water table, large containers with colored water (red, blue, yellow), basters, small ice cube trays, cups for pouring and mixing the colored water, sink and float materials. Rationale: To allow children to experiment with colors by making their own colors with the colored water. To introduce the children to the sink and float concept and encourage them to think about why some materials float in water and why some sink in water. Skills: cooperative skills, collaboration, experimentation, turn-taking, communication and fine motor skills.



Science

**Materials: Aquarium with butterflies, bugs from our playground, replica toy bugs, magnifying glasses, observation log, pictures of bugs found around lab school, books about bugs. Rationale: To give children the opportunity to explore and observe our butterflies and other bugs around the lab school. Skills: Observation, social interaction, creative expression, comparison, hypothesis, experimentation, problem solving, and turn-taking.

**Materials: Our pet turtles (Tuck and Rainbow), their tank, water changing materials, turtle food, and a cardboard box. Rationale: To build the children's caretaking awareness, we will clean the tank as a class and take the turtles out of their habitat. The children will be able to explore the turtles (with caution) and observe them moving around the cardboard box. Children will be able to get a hands-on experience of changing the water and cleaning the tank. Children will also be able to help with the feeding of the turtles on a weekly basis. Skills: hypothesis, predictions, recording, observation, exploration, communication. Awareness of the process of caretaking of pets and animals.

Dramatic Play

**Materials: Doctor dress-up clothes, small doctor carrying bags, various tools for examining the animals, animal feeding dishes, small animal carriers, dog and cat stuffed animals, x-ray pictures of animals, stethoscopes, prescription pill bottles, and ace bandages. Rationale: To build off our curriculum theme of animal caretaking. Encourage the children to engage in social interaction while engaging in a dramatic play story. Skills: collaboration, turn taking, social skills, creative expression, communication, role play, and problem solving.

**Materials: various plastic zoo animals (buffalo, moose, zebra, giraffes, monkeys, polar bears, penguins, lions, and tigers), animal dress up clothes, small and large building blocks to make habitats for the animals, cash registers, zoo entrance tickets, small bottle caps to act as feeding dishes for the animals, hay for food, fake foliage for habitats and rocks. Rationale: To bring our experiences at the zoo to life by allowing the children to create a zoo-like environment using blocks and various zoo animals and habitat materials. To give the children experiences with animals they may have not seen or been exposed to before. Skills: interpretation skills, social skills, creative expression, communication, role play, turn-taking, and fine motor skills
.

Outside

**Materials: gardening shovels, rakes, gloves, fence building materials (i.e., sticks and string), bulbs, seeds, and watering cans. Rationale: To provide the children with the option of exploring the gardening process using real gardening tools along with preparing the garden and planting. To allow the children to continue to practice care taking of plants outside of our classroom. To encourage responsibility and observation skills. Skills: Fine motor skills, exploration, turn taking, problem solving, collaboration, and experimentation.

**Materials: Balls, basketball hoop or soccer goals, trucks, shovels, rakes, buckets, trucks, tricycles or scooter cars. Rationale: To continue to allow children to explore varied levels of fine motor skills, gross motor skills, and ballistic skills. Skills: fine and gross motor skills, ballistic skills, turn taking, problem solving, collaboration, balance, and coordination. 


Math and Manipulatives

**Materials: Puzzles featuring bugs, animals, vehicles. Rationale: To encourage part-whole thinking, visual discrimination, and fine motor control while relating to classroom themes of bugs and cars.

**Materials: shape seriation puzzle. Rationale: To promote one-to-one correspondence, matching shapes with corresponding whole, counting, seriation, problem solving.

**Materials: "Snap shapes" Rationale: To promote fine motor development, part-whole relationships, and creativity through an interesting medium.

**Materials: Foot and hand diagrams (descending from smallest to largest), measuring tapes, and paper. Rationale: To encourage the children to compare and contrast size while recognizing different parts of the body. Skills: Comparison, collaboration, turn-taking, and problem solving.

Language and Literacy


**Materials: books about bugs, butterflies, animal caretaking occupations, zoo animals, transportation, babies, and other curriculum-inspired topics Rationale: To help children to make connections between what they're reading and the classroom or home. To explore various curriculum topics in a way which prompts the children to ask questions and express their interest surrounding the curriculum areas. Skills: Concepts of books and print, using pictures in books to gain information, using books as inspiration for play or visual representation, fine motor, social interaction, making predictions



**Materials: Question of the day, white board, dry erase markers Rationale: To encourage children to begin practicing writing and letter recognition. Skills: pre-writing, translating thoughts into recorded form, organizing thoughts into symbols, recognition of symbols.

Blocks


**Materials: small wooden cars, medium wooden cars, boats, cardboard boxes, nuts and bolts to "fix" the cars, cardboard wheels, steering wheels, pictures of different types of cars and boats, bridge pictures, and large plank blocks to build roads. Rationale: To expand on the children's growing interest of building cars. To give the children the experience of building cars as well as fixing cars. The children can pretend to drive to any destination they would like while in their car. To promote building and interpretation of things they see in the real world and bringing it into classroom. Skills: gross and fine motor skills, social interaction, role playing, collaboration, team work, imaginative play, hand-eye coordination, part-whole relationships, symbolic representation, and balance.

Music:
**Materials: drums, shakers, xylophone, scarves, and CD player. Rationale: To promote pitch and rhythm development. To engage in social musical activities. To explore the cause and effect of musical instruments. Skills: fine motor, hand-eye coordination, pitch and rhythm, awareness of each other.

Large Motor (gym)

**Materials: bolsters, green mats, assembled to create "mat mountain." Skills: Upper and lower body strength, climbing skills, tumbling, body control, risk taking, turn taking.


Materials: A-frame climbing structure, blue foam donut. Skills: Risk taking, hand-eye coordination, jumping and landing, upper body strength, turn taking.


Materials: Blue stairs, foam roller slide. Skills: Stair climbing, coordination, risk taking, core strength.


Materials: Climbing wall. Skills: Hand-eye coordination, upper and lower body strength, stamina, risk taking, jumping and landing.


Materials: Monkey bars, basketball hoop, foam balls. Skills: Throwing and catching, turn taking, accuracy, hand-eye coordination.


Materials: Painted hopscotch track. Skills: Number sense, counting, one-to-one correspondence, coordination, balance, jumping.

Snack
Tuesday: Oranges & Graham Crackers
Friday: Alphabet Soup & Oyster Crackers

May 16th-20th, 2011
Kayla Lead Teaching

Overview

The warm weather is finally here! We will be taking full advantage of this and going outside as much as possible, furthering our curriculum areas. Small groups of children will be going out on bug hunts to bring back bugs to our "Bug Sanctuary" in the classroom where we will be able to make observations. We will be taking a step further with the planting of our two class gardens by planting our vegetable seeds and planting bulbs in the flower garden! Our exciting field trip will be brought back into the classroom with the zoo area, where the children will be able to recreate their zoo experience. The Veterinary Clinic in the dramatic play area will allow children to continue to take care of the sick puppies and kittens, and perhaps zoo animals as well. This week's focus is to expand on the different areas of the classroom, giving the children new and exciting experiences surrounding the curriculum themes already embedded in our environment. Small groups will continue this week--be sure to check out the new documentations and pictures on the website! Don't forget about the all school pizza party on Tuesday, May 24th. Hope you all can make it!

Large Group


This week our large groups will focus on reflecting on our field trip to the zoo and making it come alive in the classroom. We will also continue to place a focus on the caretaking of animals and tie that in with our new dramatic play area with the veterinary clinic in our loft and zoo area. Felt board stories, movement, dramatic play, poetry, songs, and books will all be used during large group this week. 



Expressive Arts

**Materials: face paint, mirror, brushes. Rationale: To introduce the children to a new sensory experience, while practicing fine motor skills. To allow the children to creatively express themselves through an art experience. To engage in a social art experience. Skills: creative expression, fine motor, hand-eye coordination, social interaction

Sensory

**Materials: Play dough, spices to add, animal cookie cutters, rolling pins, and letter cookie cutters Rationale: To allow the children to explore a new sensory experience with play dough. To encourage children to manipulate the play dough to work on fine motor skills. To continue to facilitate letter recognition. Skills: Fine motor, comparison, communication, problem solving, creative expression, social interaction, symbolic representation.



**Materials: water table, large containers with colored water (red, blue, yellow), basters, small ice cube trays, cups for pouring and mixing the colored water, sink and float materials. Rationale: To allow children to experiment with colors by making their own colors with the colored water. To introduce the children to the sink and float concept and encourage them to think about why some materials float in water and why some sink in water. Skills: cooperative skills, collaboration, experimentation, turn-taking, communication and fine motor skills.



Science

**Materials: Aquarium with butterflies, bugs from our playground, replica toy bugs, magnifying glasses, observation log, pictures of bugs found around lab school, books about bugs. Rationale: To give children the opportunity to explore and observe our butterflies and other bugs around the lab school. Skills: Observation, social interaction, creative expression, comparison, hypothesis, experimentation, problem solving, and turn-taking.

**Materials: Our pet turtles (Tuck and Rainbow), their tank, water changing materials, turtle food, and a cardboard box. Rationale: To build the children's caretaking awareness, we will clean the tank as a class and take the turtles out of their habitat. The children will be able to explore the turtles (with caution) and observe them moving around the cardboard box. Children will be able to get a hands-on experience of changing the water and cleaning the tank. Children will also be able to help with the feeding of the turtles on a weekly basis. Skills: hypothesis, predictions, recording, observation, exploration, communication. Awareness of the process of caretaking of pets and animals.

Dramatic Play

**Materials: Doctor dress-up clothes, small doctor carrying bags, various tools for examining the animals, animal feeding dishes, small animal carriers, dog and cat stuffed animals, x-ray pictures of animals, stethoscopes, prescription pill bottles, and ace bandages. Rationale: To build off our curriculum theme of animal caretaking. Encourage the children to engage in social interaction while engaging in a dramatic play story. Skills: collaboration, turn taking, social skills, creative expression, communication, role play, and problem solving.

**Materials: various plastic zoo animals (buffalo, moose, zebra, giraffes, monkeys, polar bears, penguins, lions, and tigers), animal dress up clothes, small and large building blocks to make habitats for the animals, cash registers, zoo entrance tickets, small bottle caps to act as feeding dishes for the animals, hay for food, fake foliage for habitats and rocks. Rationale: To bring our field trip to the zoo to life by allowing the children to create a zoo-like environment using blocks and various zoo animals and habitat materials. To give the children experiences with animals they may have not seen or been exposed to before. Skills: interpretation skills, social skills, creative expression, communication, role play, turn-taking, and fine motor skills
.

Outside

**Materials: gardening shovels, rakes, gloves, fence building materials (i.e., sticks and string), bulbs, seeds, and watering cans. Rationale: To provide the children with the option of exploring the gardening process using real gardening tools along with preparing the garden and planting. To allow the children to continue to practice care taking of plants outside of our classroom. To encourage responsibility and observation skills. Skills: Fine motor skills, exploration, turn taking, problem solving, collaboration, and experimentation.

**Materials: Balls, basketball hoop or soccer goals, trucks, shovels, rakes, buckets, trucks, tricycles or scooter cars. Rationale: To continue to allow children to explore varied levels of fine motor skills, gross motor skills, and ballistic skills. Skills: fine and gross motor skills, ballistic skills, turn taking, problem solving, collaboration, balance, and coordination. 


Math and Manipulatives

**Materials: Puzzles featuring bugs, animals, vehicles. Rationale: To encourage part-whole thinking, visual discrimination, and fine motor control while relating to classroom themes of bugs and cars.

**Materials: shape seriation puzzle. Rationale: To promote one-to-one correspondence, matching shapes with corresponding whole, counting, seriation, problem solving.

**Materials: "Snap shapes" Rationale: To promote fine motor development, part-whole relationships, and creativity through an interesting medium.

**Materials: Foot and hand diagrams (descending from smallest to largest), measuring tapes, and paper. Rationale: To encourage the children to compare and contrast size while recognizing different parts of the body. Skills: Comparison, collaboration, turn-taking, and problem solving.

Language and Literacy


**Materials: books about bugs, butterflies, animal caretaking occupations, zoo animals, transportation, babies, and other curriculum-inspired topics Rationale: To help children to make connections between what they're reading and the classroom or home. To explore various curriculum topics in a way which prompts the children to ask questions and express their interest surrounding the curriculum areas. Skills: Concepts of books and print, using pictures in books to gain information, using books as inspiration for play or visual representation, fine motor, social interaction, making predictions



**Materials: Question of the day, white board, dry erase markers Rationale: To encourage children to begin practicing writing and letter recognition. Skills: pre-writing, translating thoughts into recorded form, organizing thoughts into symbols, recognition of symbols.

Blocks


**Materials: small wooden cars, medium wooden cars, boats, cardboard boxes, nuts and bolts to "fix" the cars, cardboard wheels, steering wheels, pictures of different types of cars and boats, bridge pictures, and large plank blocks to build roads. Rationale: To expand on the children's growing interest of building cars. To give the children the experience of building cars as well as fixing cars. The children can pretend to drive to any destination they would like while in their car. To promote building and interpretation of things they see in the real world and bringing it into classroom. Skills: gross and fine motor skills, social interaction, role playing, collaboration, team work, imaginative play, hand-eye coordination, part-whole relationships, symbolic representation, and balance.

Music:
**Materials: drums, shakers, xylophone, scarves, and CD player. Rationale: To promote pitch and rhythm development. To engage in social musical activities. To explore the cause and effect of musical instruments. Skills: fine motor, hand-eye coordination, pitch and rhythm, awareness of each other.

Large Motor (gym)

**Materials: bolsters, green mats, assembled to create "mat mountain." Skills: Upper and lower body strength, climbing skills, tumbling, body control, risk taking, turn taking.


Materials: A-frame climbing structure, blue foam donut. Skills: Risk taking, hand-eye coordination, jumping and landing, upper body strength, turn taking.


Materials: Blue stairs, foam roller slide. Skills: Stair climbing, coordination, risk taking, core strength.


Materials: Climbing wall. Skills: Hand-eye coordination, upper and lower body strength, stamina, risk taking, jumping and landing.


Materials: Monkey bars, basketball hoop, foam balls. Skills: Throwing and catching, turn taking, accuracy, hand-eye coordination.


Materials: Painted hopscotch track. Skills: Number sense, counting, one-to-one correspondence, coordination, balance, jumping.

Snack
Monday: Oranges & Graham Crackers
Wednesday: Cereal & Milk
Thursday: Alphabet Soup & Oyster Crackers

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WK6 (May 24-26, 2011)

WK5 (May 17-19, 2011)

WK4 (May 10-12, 2011)

WK 3 (May 3-5, 2011)

WK 1-2 (April 21/April 26-28, 2011)

Weekly Lesson Plan for Ross' Class
May 16th - 20th, 2011
Lead Teaching This Week: Cara

Overview: Spring has arrived, and the children are raring to go outside! As the weather continues to warm we will spend more time on the playground. The outdoors will become a place for art projects, science, sensory, and dramatic play exploration. We are still talking about taking responsibility of our sprouts in the classroom and we hope to finally plant them in our garden, which will help us, and the children take that responsibility to another level. Open classrooms continue to be an exciting and novel experience for the children. It is also a helpful tool as it continues to foster the children's friendships. These opportunities for making "new" friends will be great practice for all the big transitions happening for the children.

Expressive Art (paint, collage, clay)
• Materials: Art Table - yarn, confetti, pipe cleaners, popsicle sticks, thin sticks, various collage materials
Clay Table - clay, thick wire, tools for carving/sculpting, sculpting "accessories" (i.e. wood beads, glass gems, popsicle sticks, bottle caps).
• Rationale: Last week the children started to create instrument shakers and kites at the art table. We decided that this week we would facilitate the children's intrinsic motivation to express themselves creatively at the art table by restocking the shelves with new/interesting materials. Doing this, the children will be given the freedom to let their growing imaginations flourish, and I know we will see some amazing things coming from the art area next week! If the interest in kites continues, we will move toward the class making a kite together at the end of the week.
• Skills: Social interaction, fine motor skills, creative and artistic expression, symbolic representation.

Sensory (Soil/Sand Table)
• Materials: Planting soil, sand, shovels, hand rakes, rocks, twigs, and insects, frogs
• Rationale: Some of the children have been actively engaging in play at the soil table but we would like to facilitate more purpose and learning in this play by adding toy frogs this week. We anticipate that the play will expand into more exploration of life cycles, food chains, and encourage the children to "act out" what they know about various life-science topics.
• Skills: social skills, generalizing, scientific thinking and reasoning, knowledge about the world around them, and symbolic representation.

Math and Manipulative
• Materials: color/thickness/height seriating with Montessori materials, puzzles that highlight classroom topics (i.e. plant, insects, birds - anything spring!), games with rules (i.e. Snail's Pace), pre-/early literacy game Boggle Jr., shape and spatial awareness puzzles, interlocking blocks.
• Rationale: The children continue inviting one another to play the various games at the math table - showing a growing competence with playing these games independently. We also are bringing the newer Montessori materials out into the classroom to challenge the children to think differently and help them work through any challenges in detail orienting, focusing on an activity for an extended period of time, and prediction.
• Skills: shape awareness, 1-to-1 correspondence, turn-taking skills, spatial awareness, seriating, problem solving, social skills

Science
• Materials: At the table - planted pots, notebooks, magnifying glasses, pencils, rulers, crayons
In the cave - light table, glass beads, translucent "worms."
• Rationale: The class is continuing to expand the exploration of worms and learning about them; learning that their physical characteristics and their invaluable work are partially responsible for creating healthy soil. We will build on the children's understanding of this in the cave using glass beads as they create a pictures of the inner workings of soil, and showing us "what they know" about worms from our discussions over the past couple weeks. At the end of last week, Lisa's class finished making their "worm farm" and will be sharing it with our classroom so that the children can learn even more about these creatures. The children will also continue to care for their sprouting seeds/beans, observing and recording the changes in their journals and some time in the middle of this week we will transplant them to our outside garden. The bug group will also be releasing the butterflies into the wild this week.
• Skills: Observation, scientific thinking and reasoning, hypothesis creating and testing, scientific inquiry, investigation of natural world, symbolic representation.

Language and Literacy (editing, from last week)
• Materials: writing supplies (lines/unlined paper, markers, pencils, pens), alphabet stamps, tape, stickers
• Rationale: With the addition of the "classroom" to the dramatic play, the writing table will become an auxiliary writing space/supply station for all the "new students." It was a place of interest last week and will continue to be as the "classroom" continues to be a place of interest for the children
• Skills: awareness of writing and concepts of print, pre-/early literacy skills, fine motor strength and coordination, letter recognition

Dramatic Play
• Materials: Chalkboard, table with chairs, puzzles, books on CD, colored pencils, scissors, worksheets
• Rationale: The children are excited about having the "classroom" within our classroom. They have been able to represent and express through their play their thoughts about kindergarten or returning to the lab school as a "big kid". Children are exploring different roles associated with a traditional school setting. This will provide the opportunity for children to expand their concept of school and helping alleviate some of the uncertainties they may have with the upcoming transitions.
• Skills: Social interactions, cooperative skills, creativity, discussion and problem solving, fine motor skills, awareness of writing and concepts of print, pre-/early literacy skills

Blocks
• Materials: Large hollow blocks, unit blocks, long/short planks, wood cubes
• Rationale: The children have continued their constructing of homes and structures for their play, including roadways and paths around the structures. We have had interesting discussions with the children about building off of their work and what could "add" to their structures and will continue to encourage the children to expand.
• Skills: large motor strength and coordination, fine motor skills, social skills, creativity, symbolic representation, concepts of balance and stability, representational building.

Large Motor
•Materials: In the gym - "Mat mountain," "rolling mountain," A-Frame jumping donut, basketball hoop, Hopscotch
On the playground - tricycles, buckets, shovels, sticks, pinecones, climber, monkey bars, swings, blocks
• Rationale: This week the gym equipment has a new arrangement. This provides an opportunity for the children to challenge their physical abilities and try new skills while enjoying the activities. We hope that the beautiful weather will continue so we can spend more time outside each day enjoying nature and moving our bodies!
• Skills: hand-eye coordination, upper and lower body strength, turn taking, physical risk taking, construction skills, spatial awareness, depth perception

Special Interests/Announcements
• Please remember to put sunscreen on the children before they come to school. With the weather starting to warm up we will be spending much more time outside on the playground and want to keep your child protected from the sun!
• The Pizza Party it coming up! It's on May 24th from 6:00-730. RSVP soon! Also, look for emails form Kelley for additional information/answers to questions you may have.
• Our "end of the year" party is on Thursday, June 2. We are looking into having a picnic on our playground after school that day. More details will follow later this week.

Snack
Monday - Edamame & crackers
Tuesday - Graham crackers
Wednesday - Oranges & rice cakes
Thursday - Pretzels & cantaloupe
Friday- Strawberry-blueberry popsicles (made fresh at the Lab School!)

Overview
As we are exploring all of the marvelous changes that spring brings. We will continue to observe insects and plants in our classroom and follow the development of our chicken eggs. an exciting change in our classroom is the introduction of a "Welcome to Kindergarten" area in the back of the classroom. We have 12 children going onto kindergarten next year and this connection seems natural and meaningful in our classroom life.

Expressive Arts
- Materials: Insects, flowers, projector, transparencies with designs, black transparencies, thick and thin markers, colored pencils, crayons, tape, glue, staplers, paper punchers, construction paper, paint, thin brushes, standing easel, tissue paper, pipe cleaners.
- Rationale: To build on children's understanding of lines, symmetry, and shapes while exploring insects and flowers to expand their knowledge and offer opportunities for creative endeavors.
- Skills: exploration of lines and shapes, exploration of materials, observation, fine motor strength and control, self-expression.

Sensory
-Materials: Glurch
-Rationale: To offer an exciting and novel material to explore.
-Skills: Sensory input, imagination, fine motor.

Science
- Materials: Incubator with chick eggs, butterflies, beetles, crickets, cockroach, mealworms, tadpole, fish, photo of the chick life cycle, Marigold plants, clipboards, pencils, rulers, magnifying glasses, books.
- Rationale: To connect life cycles with our spring curriculum topics. Provide opportunities to enrich social interactions and knowledge as we observe and examine the different life cycles of insects and chicks. Use of five senses as we continue to explore spring.
- Skills: scientific inquiry, observation, comparison, reasoning, investigation, explorations, social skills, sorting, descriptive language, self-expression

Language and Literacy
- Materials: books about: spring, weather, insects, plants and flowers. Spring Bingo, journals, foam letters, glue, pens, pencils, markers, staplers, tape, paper, envelops, stencils, chalkboard, workbooks and worksheets.
- Rationale: Our journals will be used to keep track of our Marigold seed growth along with children's comments and drawings about insects, chicks, and spring. The children will be encouraged to use information resources to explore the topics of spring, senses, insects, and plants present in the classroom. The "Welcome to Kindergarten" area will offer opportunities for plenty of print and writing, comparing, and number recognition.
- Skills: awareness of print, self-expression, writing, drawing, awareness of the purpose of print and letter recognition, phonemic awareness, connecting speech to print and print to speech, fine motor, vocabulary, social skills, observation, recording.

Math and Manipulatives
- Materials: Puzzles of: spring insects, plants, flowers, and seeds (fruit). Rulers, journals, spring and insect Bingo, unifix cubes, and weather bar graph.
- Rationale: To continue to provide opportunities for children to explore symmetry though puzzles, images, and projector transparencies. Measure and graph plant growth of our Marigold plants. Track and measure spring weather using a bar graph and calendar.
- Skills: geometry, symmetry, patterns, reasoning, observation, classification, comparison, matching, logical thinking.

Dramatic Play
- Materials: Back of the Classroom: kitchen furniture, utensils, dishes, pots and pans, pretend food, small table, flowers, baskets and vases, animal costumes, blankets. Symbolic Play Cave: insects, spider web (use ropes and nets to create the feel of being in a web).
- Rationale: Foster socio-dramatic play by offering opportunities for peer interactions; provoke children's thinking of insect life.
- Skills: role-play, peer interactions, cooperation, symbolic representation, social problem solving.

Blocks
- Materials: hollow wood blocks, until blocks, thin boards, wood shapes, and stuffed plastic animals.
- Rationale: Provide opportunities for creative play, creative building, and symbolic play.
- Skills: balance, spatial awareness, cooperative play, creative building, gross motor, social skills, symbolic representation.

Large Motor

Gym
- Materials: bolsters, green mats, assembled to create "mat mountain." 

- Skills: Upper and lower body strength, climbing skills, tumbling, body control, risk taking, turn taking.

- Materials: A-frame climbing structure, blue foam donut. 

- Skills: Risk taking, hand-eye coordination, jumping and landing, upper body strength, turn taking.

- Materials: Blue stairs, foam roller slide. 

- Skills: Stair climbing, coordination, risk taking, core strength.

- Materials: Climbing wall. 

- Skills: Hand-eye coordination, upper and lower body strength, stamina, risk taking, jumping and landing.

- Materials: Monkey bars, basketball hoop, foam balls. 

- Skills: Throwing and catching, turn taking, accuracy, hand-eye coordination.
- Materials: Painted hopscotch track.
- Skills: Number sense, counting, one-to-one correspondence, coordination, balance, jumping.
Playground
- Materials: shovels, buckets, bikes, wagons, swings, traffic signs, chalk. 

- Rationale: The children have been enjoying digging and transporting the sand with the wagons, pulling the wagons around with their friends and riding the bikes while following the traffic signs placed around the playground. They will swing, dig, run, ride, pull, and climb while engaging in socio-dramatic play.
- Skills: cardio vascular, social skills, endurance, upper and lower body strength, balance and coordination.

Special Interest

Large Group and Parent Involvement

During large group we will continue to track spring weather. We will discuss our five senses and how we use them in our everyday life. On Monday, we will use them to explore outside; looking, listening, touching, and smelling items found during spring. Jen, Inga's mom will be visiting our class on Monday to share a story with the children.
Allison, Isaac's mom will visit us next Thursday and facilitate a treat making activity for Isaac's birthday the following Monday. Thank you for joining us!

I hope you all have a great week!

Amanda

Hello Families!

Well, our camp out is a go! The weather has held off so far, so I'm
remaining hopeful that it won't rain within the next couple of hours. If it
does we'll continue at Dodge, but just amened our plans.

Throughout the flurry of e-mails, I'm not sure if I ever mentioned that
Sheila, our Lab School naturalist and Dodge Nature Center connection :)
will be leading the nature walks tonight (a big "thank you" to her in
advance!).

See you and your families soon!

Lisa

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Overview:
This week we added chick eggs as another way for the children to observe life cycles. The children are growing more familiar with the term "life-cycle" as they have had a wide variety of experiences observing the cycles of seasons, insects, water, and plants. As the children observe, and care for the new eggs and baby chicks, they will be encouraged to apply their past knowledge of life cycles to predict future changes. Another recent addition that has captivated the children is the butterfly larvae. Last week the children had the opportunity to observe the caterpillars form chrysalises and begin their transformation into butterflies- stay tuned! The children have been very motivated to paint so we will continue our work using lines to represent ideas. Additionally we will provide clay as an alternative artistic medium for representation.

Expressive Art Area:
Materials: Table easels, floor easel, paint, thin and thick paint brushes markers, crayons, colored pencils, stencils, construction paper, scissors, and glue sticks.
Rationale: As the children gain confidence in making lines and filling them with color, we will add materials such as flowers and plants for inspiration.
Skills: Creative expression, representational abilities, fine motor skills

Sensory Area:
Materials: Clay
Rationale: The children have had previous experience using clay for creative expression and we will be using it again to foster the development of their knowledge about insects. As the children practice sculpting the clay to look like insects they know about, we will encourage them to pay attention to the parts and details of the insects.
Skills: Creative expression, self-expression, sensory exploration, discovery of physical properties, symbolic play

Science Area:
Materials: Incubator with chicken eggs, mealworms, mounted insects, caterpillars, magnifying glasses, insect puzzles
Rationale: The children are continually learning about different life cycles of plants, insects, and now chickens. As we engage in conversation with the children about the chicks we will encourage them to use their past experiences with animal life cycles in order to make predictions about the transformations to come. In addition, the class will benefit from having another animal in the classroom to learn to care for.
Skills: Observation, problem solving, critical thinking, comparisons, making predictions, knowledge of the natural world, expressing ideas, symmetry, and matching

Language and Literacy
Materials: Letter stickers, pencils, envelops, mailboxes, books on tape, alphabet, plant and insect parts with names.
Rationale: Adding the letter stickers to the writing center will allow the children to enhance letter recognition as well as begin combining letters and letter sounds to create words.
Skills: Letter recognition, engage in writing using letter stickers and alphabet stencils, creative expression, and communication through writing/ using stickers/ and dictation.

Math and Manipulatives
Materials: Puzzles, light bight, mosaic buttons, graphing, charting, measurement, games with rules
Rationale: The light bright provides an opportunity for the children to create patterns and symmetrical images as they arrange the pegs. The children are learning to use a bar graph as a way to record the weather. At the end of the week they count the number of days that were sunny, cloudy, rainy, or windy before adding them to the graph.
Skills: One-to-one correspondence, patterns, problem solving, working with peers, fine motor skills reasoning, and logical thinking, connect mathematical concepts with real life relationships, analyzing and synthesizing, searching and scanning

Block Area:
Materials: Insects, bugs, life-like vines
Rationale: The children are still fascinated by insects and continue to incorporate them into their dramatic play with the unit blocks. Since the children have been learning so much about insects, they are able to incorporate that knowledge into their play and extend the details of their storyline.
Skills: Creative expression, group problem solving, expressing ideas, sharing, construction skills, role play, large motor, collaboration, symbolic representation

Dramatic Play:
Materials: Supplies for camping, flowers, fabric for dressing up, hollow blocks
Rationale: The children have been provided with tubes, tape, scissors and other materials in order to create the materials they need to support their dramatic play. The goal of providing ambiguous materials is to encourage creative thinking and to develop their level/theme of play by changing their props. As we observed the children in the last week develop play around cocoons, camping, and battleships our props can be used in ways that work in all areas of interest for the children. The teachers will be available to support/guide the children to work together, generate ideas, and facilitate play themes if needed.
Skills: Creative expression, sharing ideas, social problem solving, self-expression, social skills, communication, role play, symbolic representation

Large Motor:
Materials: Obstacle course that includes various surfaces to walk across, bumpy slide, cushioned incline, hurdles, stairs, balls to throw at a target of into a basket, painted hopscotch track, monkey bars, climbing wall
Rationale: The obstacle course is set up to support all large muscle groups and to improve their endurance and agility. During gym time the children also participate in large motor games facilitated by a teacher to support a desired skill and following directions.
Skills: Upper body strength, balance and coordination, rolling, jumping and landing, throwing skills, target practice, spatial and body awareness, hand-eye coordination, and turn taking

Playground:
Materials: Trikes, hollow blocks, buckets, shovels, chalk, road signs
Rationale: We encourage the children to work together to express their creative ideas as we try to provide as many materials for them to explore and interact together. Children are able to explore and think of creative ways to build with the hollow blocks using shovels and buckets. They are making roads with the chalk and road signs to help direct the flow of the trike traffic.
Skills: Large motor skills, fine motor skills, coordination and endurance, creative expression, exploring the natural world

Snack:
Monday - Graham crackers & orange slices
Tuesday - Pretzels & apples
Wednesday - Popcorn
Thursday - Rice cakes
Friday- Celery & pretzels

click bellow to watch a short video from large group today
this is the way we do it-Medium.m4v

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Weekly Lesson Plan for Ross' Class
May 9-13, 2011
Lead Teaching This Week: Team Teaching

Overview: Spring has officially arrived, and the children are raring to go outside! As the weather continues to warm we will spend more time on the playground. The outdoors becomes a blank canvas with endless possibilities for art projects, dramatic play, and science explorations. The dramatic play area has been rearranged to create a "classroom" within our room. There have been several discussions about next fall as some children prepare for a new school and others prepare to return to the Lab School as one of the "big kids." The "classroom" will help children explore and expand on their concept of school to help with the upcoming transition. Open classrooms continue to be an exciting and novel experience for the children. It is also a helpful tool as it continues to foster the children's friendships. These opportunities for making "new" friends will be great practice for all the big transitions happening for the children.

Expressive Art (paint, collage, clay)
• Materials: Art Table - an assortment of small boxes, cardboard, bottle caps, wine corks, popsicle sticks, and much more.
Clay Table - clay, thick wire, tools for carving/sculpting, sculpting "accessories" (i.e. wood beads, glass gems, popsicle sticks, bottle caps).
• Rationale: The children have been creating a variety of 3-dimensional sculptures with the collage materials. This week the children will have the opportunity to create a class sculpture of a "neighborhood." A large piece of cardboard will be provided for the children to add their own structures to as they choose. This activity will extend the children's construction interest from the block area into the art area. Sharing materials and a common goal will reinforce cooperative interactions for the children to accomplish a meaningful structure. At the clay table the children have explored making "worms." This coil technique will be expanded on in order to show children how to use the coils in a variety of ways to create items such as bowls.
• Skills: Social interaction, fine motor skills, creative and artistic expression, symbolic representation, planning, prediction

Sensory (Soil/Sand Table)
• Materials: Planting soil, sand, shovels, hand rakes, rocks, twigs, and insects
• Rationale: The children have been actively exploring the soil at the sensory table. Some of the children have been making little homes for the plastic bugs using the soil, sticks, rocks provided. This week, we will be adding water to the soil and sand mixture. This will explore an area of the table that hasn't been addressed yet. The children have been extremely interested in learning more about building with different materials. We hope this will become another extension of that exploration.
• Skills: social skills, generalizing, scientific thinking and reasoning, knowledge about the world around them, and symbolic representation.

Math and Manipulative
• Materials: puzzles that highlight classroom topics (i.e. plant, insects, birds - anything spring!), games with rules (i.e. Snail's Pace), pre-/early literacy game Boggle Jr., shape and spatial awareness puzzles. To complement the interest on creating three-dimensional structures (block area and collage area) we will continue to work with interlocking blocks.
• Rationale: The children continue inviting one another to play the various games at the math table - showing a growing competence with playing these games independently. The have even started invented some of their own rules with the games. To highlight the literacy components of Boggle, Jr., we will bring that game to large group and play some spelling games as a class.
• Skills: shape awareness, 1-to-1 correspondence, turn-taking skills, spatial awareness, problem solving, social skills

Science
• Materials: At the Table - planted pots, notebook, magnifying glasses, pencils, rulers, crayons
In the cave - light table, glass beads, translucent "worms."
• Rationale: The class has is just now starting to expand of their exploration of worms and learning about them; learning that their physical characteristics and their invaluable work are partially responsible for creating healthy soil. We will build on the children's understanding of this in the cave using glass beads as they create a pictures of the inner workings of soil, as well as create "tunnels" with the glass beads - showing us "what they know" about worms from our many discussions over the past couple weeks. In addition to that, we hope to construct a "worm farm" towards the end of the week so that the children can learn even more about these creatures. The children will also continue to care for their sprouting seeds/beans, observing and recording the changes in their journals. Weather permitting, this week we will transplant them to our outside garden. The bug group's caterpillars are expected to come out of their chrysalis early this week and the entire class is waiting their arrival with anticipation.
• Skills: Observation, scientific thinking and reasoning, hypothesis creating and testing, scientific inquiry, investigation of natural world, symbolic representation.

The "Nook"
• Materials: Large piece of cardboard, collage materials
• Rationale: Last week, the children created "tiny houses" - dioramas of neighborhoods, ships, gardens, dog houses, lamps and more. This week, we would like to create a collaborative project, possibly creating a "tiny city" in the nook.
• Skills: Symbolic representation, problem finding and solving, social skills,

Language and Literacy (editing, from last week)
• Materials: writing supplies (lines/unlined paper, markers, pencils, pens), props for making tickets and money, alphabet stamps, tape, stickers
• Rationale: With the addition of the "classroom" to the dramatic play, the writing table will become an auxiliary writing space/supply station for all the "new students."
• Skills: awareness of writing and concepts of print, pre-/early literacy skills, fine motor strength and coordination, letter recognition

Dramatic Play
• Materials: Chalkboard, table with chairs, puzzles, books on CD, colored pencils, scissors, worksheets
• Rationale: The topic of kindergarten has been an interest to many children in the classroom. Some children will be returning as "big kids" to the Lab School next fall and others will be attending new schools. The dramatic play area has been rearranged from the theatre to a "classroom." Children will be able to explore the different roles associated with a traditional school setting. This will provide the opportunity for children to expand their concept of school and alleviate some uncertainties they may have with the upcoming transitions.
• Skills: Social interactions, cooperative skills, creativity, discussion and problem solving, fine motor skills, awareness of writing and concepts of print, pre-/early literacy skills

Blocks
• Materials: Large hollow blocks, unit blocks, long/short planks, wood cubes
• Rationale: The children have continued their constructing of homes for the stuffed animals in the classroom. We have had interesting discussions with the children about building off of their work and what could "add" to their "house" or "castle".
• Skills: large motor strength and coordination, fine motor skills, social skills, creativity, symbolic representation, concepts of balance and stability, representational building.

Large Motor
•Materials: In the gym - Mat mountain, A-Frame with donut, rolling mountain, basketball hoop, Hopscotch
On the playground - tricycles, buckets, shovels, sticks, pinecones, climber, monkey bars, swings, blocks
• Rationale: This week the gym equipment has a new arrangement. This provides an opportunity for the children to challenge their physical abilities and try new skills while enjoying the activities. We hope that the beautiful weather will continue so we can spend more time outside each day enjoying nature and moving our bodies!
• Skills: hand-eye coordination, upper and lower body strength, turn taking, physical risk taking, construction skills, spatial awareness, depth perception

Special Interest/Announcements
• With the creation of the "box city" in the Nook, we could use some more "interesting" loose parts. Smaller boxes are okay; however if you have any intriguing loose parts (e.g. empty spools, plastic caps, or other knick-knacky stuff possible found in an old "junk drawer"), please send them in with your child. These interesting pieces lead to some amazing building!
• Just a reminder - NO SCHOOL on Monday, May 30. Also, the end of the year is quickly approaching. To celebrate a wonderful and amazing school year, we will have an end of the year party. The details will be coming, however it will be on Thursday, June 2. We hope you all can make it!

Snack
Monday - Graham crackers & oranges
Tuesday - Animal crackers & apples
Wednesday - Popcorn
Thursday - Coconut trail mix
Friday- Celery & hummus

Andrea Lead Teaching

Overview
Spring has sprung throughout our classroom and the children have had the experience of planting seeds indoors as well as exploring plants, seeds, and roots. This week we will be taking that a step further and will be planting two class gardens outside! The caretaking of animals has been a reoccurring theme and interest of the children, so to expand on that we have added an Animal Hospital to the dramatic play area where the children can care for their sick animals. Also, the children have expressed interest in zoo animals so to bring this to life we will take a large group trip to the zoo this week! This week's focus is to expand on the different areas of the classroom giving the children new and exciting experiences surrounding the curriculum themes already imbedded in our environment. Small groups will continue this week, so be sure to check the small group documentations to see how they are growing and developing!

Large Group

This week our large groups will focus on our upcoming field trip to the zoo and preparing for that. We will also continue to place a focus on the caretaking of animals and tie that in with our new dramatic play area; The Animal Hospital. Felt board stories, movement, dramatic play, poetry, songs, and books will all be used during large group this week.

Expressive Arts
**Materials: small cardboard pieces, wood blocks, bottle caps, fabric squares, and other various materials the children can use to "build up" and create a 3D sculpture. Rationale: To help children use creative expression and fine motor skills while creating a 3D art project. To engage in a social art experience over a period of time. Skills: creative expression, fine motor, hand-eye coordination, social interaction, symbolic representation

Sensory
**Materials: Glurch, hammers with textured ends, textured roller pins, cookie cutter letters, and other tools that leave impressions. Rationale: To allow the children to explore a different sensory experience than they might be used to. To encourage children who don't often use play dough to come to this area and explore the different experience of using glurch verses playdoh. Skills: Fine motor, comparison, communication, problem solving, creative expression, social interaction, symbolic representation.

**Materials: water table, plastic baby dolls, empty shampoo and conditioner bottles, loofahs, baby bath, and cups for pouring over the babies' heads, rubber duckies, larger cups for pouring. Rationale: To encourage children to practice an authentic skill of washing babies by allowing them to experience it at the water table. Many children have younger siblings at home, so this allows for connections between home and school. Skills: cooperative skills, collaboration, turn-taking, role-playing, communication and fine motor.

Science
**Materials: flashlights, mirrors, other interesting and shiny surfaces, cellophane, and rubber bands Rationale: To give children the opportunity to explore light and shadow in the darkness of the cave. To provide the children with the experience of seeing how light reflects off different colored objects. Skills: social interaction, creative expression, comparison, hypothesis, experimentation, problem solving, turn-taking, cause and effect, and observing

**Materials: both faux and real bird's nests, eggs, tree stumps, model birds, books about birds, feathers, and magnifying glasses. Rationale: To build on the children's interest in birds and their habitat. To provide the children with the experience of seeing a bird's habitat so they are able to connect that to their experience of making bird feeders. Skills: creativity, hypothesis, communication, comparison

Dramatic Play
**Materials: Doctor dress up clothes, small doctor carrying bags, various tools for examining the animals, animal feeding dishes, small animal carriers, small stuffed animals, x-ray pictures of animals, stethoscopes, prescription pill bottles. Rationale: To build off our curriculum theme of animal caretaking. Encourage the children to engage in social interaction while engaging in a dramatic play story. Skills: collaboration, turn taking, social skills, creative expression, communication, role play, problem solving

**Materials: various plastic zoo animals, animal dress up clothes, building blocks to make habitats for the animals, cash registers, zoo entrance tickets, small bottle caps to act as feeding dishes for the animals. Rationale: To allow the children to explore a zoo-like environment as well as various zoo animals before taking our field trip. To give the children experiences with animals they may have not seen or been exposed to before. Skills: social skills, creative expression, communication, role play, turn-taking, fine motor skills

Outside
**Materials: gardening tools, fence building materials (i.e. sticks and string), balls, basketball hoop or soccer goals, trucks, shovels, rakes, buckets, trucks, tricycles or scooter cars. Rationale: Allow children to explore varied levels of fine and gross motor skills, depending on their preference. To provide the children with the option of exploring the gardening process using real gardening tools along with preparing the garden and planting. Skill: fine and gross motor skills, turn taking, problem solving, collaboration, experimentation, balance, coordination

Math and Manipulatives
**Materials: Puzzles of zoo animals, momma-baby animals and butterflies Rationale: To encourage part-whole thinking, visual discrimination, and fine motor control while relating to classroom themes of animals and babies.

**Materials: shape sorter. Rationale: To promote one-to-one correspondence, matching flat shapes with a 3D object, counting, problem solving.

**Materials: peg puzzle with colored pieces that stack 1-5 on their own peg. Rationale: counting with meaning, recognition of number groupings, color sorting

**Materials: Small wooden cubes Rationale: To provide an open-ended block building activity with a fine motor focus.

**Materials: Adult-baby matching puzzle. Rationale: To practice matching and explore the concept of animal babies

Language and Literacy

**Materials: books about springtime, butterflies, animal caretaking occupations, zoo animals, cars, babies, birds, shadows and other curriculum-inspired topics Rationale: To help children to make connections between what they're reading and the classroom or home. To explore various curriculum topics in a way which prompts the children to ask questions and express their interest surrounding the curriculum areas. Skills: Concepts of books and print, using pictures in books to gain information, using books as inspiration for play or visual representation, fine motor, social interaction, making predictions

Blocks

**Materials: small wooden cars, medium wood cars, cardboard boxes, nuts and bolts to "fix" the cars, cardboard wheels, "seatbelts", steering wheels, "horns", pictures of different types of cars, large plank blocks to build roads. Rationale: To expand on the children's growing interest of building cars. To provide the children with the opportunity to ride in a "real" car. To give the children the experience of building cars as well as fixing cars. The children can pretend to drive to any destination they would like while in their car. Skills: gross and fine motor skills, social interaction, role playing, collaboration, team work, imaginative play, hand-eye coordination, part-whole relationships, symbolic representation, balance, story telling

Large Motor (gym)
**Materials: bolsters, green mats, assembled to create "mat mountain." Skills: Upper and lower body strength, climbing skills, tumbling, body control, risk taking, turn taking.
Materials: A-frame climbing structure, blue foam donut. Skills: Risk taking, hand-eye coordination, jumping and landing, upper body strength, turn taking.
Materials: Blue stairs, foam roller slide. Skills: Stair climbing, coordination, risk taking, core strength.
Materials: Climbing wall. Skills: Hand-eye coordination, upper and lower body strength, stamina, risk taking, jumping and landing.
Materials: Monkey bars, basketball hoop, foam balls. Skills: Throwing and catching, turn taking, accuracy, hand-eye coordination.
Materials: Painted hopscotch track. Skills: Number sense, counting, one-to-one correspondence, coordination, balance, jumping.

Snacks:
Monday - Rice Cakes and Apples
Wednesday - Cucumbers and Hummus
Thursday - Pretzels

Overview: This week in our classroom we will be continuing our themes of planting, shapes, and restaurants. We will also be making a few changes to our classroom. We are getting a worm farm for the bug small group and it will be out at the science table for all of the children to explore. We are also adding some new puzzles to the manipulative area to get the children more involved with shapes and games with rules. This week we will add moisture to the sensory table so the children can begin to do some molding. During large group we are going to assign jobs to take care of the guinea pigs because we want the children to be able to take part in taking care of them. This week Hamdi will be making popsicles with the children.

Math and Manipulatives

•Materials: Boggle Jr., crayons and notepad for Boggle word writing, interlocking puzzles, construction floor puzzling, interlocking food puzzles, shape/fraction puzzles, interlockers

•Rationale: To introduce children to games with rules that relate to print awareness, numeral recognition, and knowledge of shape. To introduce children to simple ways to identify and describe shapes and to create new shapes from smaller shapes. To stimulate ideas for our restaurant in the dramatic play area we have food puzzles for the children to work with. We have added interlockers for the children to gain experience making, comparing, and measuring pattern creations, while working on problem solving and perceptual motor skills. 

•Skills: print awareness, part-whole relationships, shape recognition and matching, shape combination, spatial awareness, one-to-one correspondence, turn-taking, social skills, perceptual motor skills, problem solving, patterning, measurement, comparison.

Expressive Arts (paint, play dough)

•Materials: primary color paint and mixing cups at the easel, markers, crayons, colored pencils, scissors, glue, natural collage materials.

•Rationale: to explore new tools and media with hands and eyes, promote sensory awareness, increase fine motor skills, foster social relationships and communication skills as children work on collaborative and individual projects. We added mixing cups to the easel area so the children can explore how different colors are made. 

•Skills: creativity, artistic expression, fine motor development (strength, coordination), sharing ideas and materials, symbolic representation, color recognition

•Materials: play dough, rolling pins (smooth and spiky), pizza cutters, spatulas, pizza pans and trays, paint, paint brushes
•Rationale: To promote sensory awareness and provide both a creative and social opportunity for children as they increase their fine motor skills. To begin representing ideas and objects in a 3-D medium. Additionally, the students can begin to create pizzas with the play dough to expand on our restaurant dramatic play theme. We will demonstrate at large group that the new dough for this week can be left over night to harden. After the children let their creations dry they can paint them to create a final product.

•Skills: sensory input, symbolic representation, observation, sharing materials, and fine motor development (strength, coordination)

Sensory

•Materials: dirt, sand, bugs, sticks, trees, water

•Rationale: to allow and encourage experimentation with dirt, sand, and the natural objects one might find in dirt. We have been doing a lot of reading and discussing about planting and have planted some seeds in dirt. The sensory table will give children the opportunity to see what else we can do with dirt. We are adding sand to the table so the children can experiment with what happens when dirt and sand are combined. Water will be added to the table to help emphasize the molding of the dirt and sand.
•Skills: sensory input/developing an awareness of senses, thinking about insect habitats, observation of physical changes, creative thinking, fine motor, knowledge of physical properties/cause and effect, comparison, symbolic representation, sharing materials

Dramatic Play

•Materials: Restaurant center props (aprons, chef hats, cardboard pizza boxes, felt food, dishes), housekeeping and caretaking materials (furniture, dishes, food, babies, baby clothing), writing supplies (menus, paper, pencils, markers) dress-up fabric, shoes, accessories such as keys, cell phones, necklaces, and purses 

•Rationale: Our dramatic play center continues to be the pizza restaurant this week. It continues to be a relevant for them after our field trip to Duffy's pizza and our recent pizza cooking project. The children were very intrigued by all of the different toppings their classmates brought in, so we will encourage them to make those toppings in the pizza restaurant. To facilitate and strengthen dramatic play related to working at and visiting a restaurant. To follow the children's continued interest with making, ordering and delivering pizzas, pizza pans, oven, phone and notepad and pencils will be included. To encourage cooperative play and highlight another job, pizza deliver/waiter in our community and what it takes to perform that job. 

•Skills: creative role-play, making connections to real-life experiences, peer interaction, turn taking, social problem solving, symbolic representation, literacy

Language and Literacy

Writing Center 

•Materials: menus, food order forms, paper, alphabet stamps, a variety of writing utensils, scissors

•Rationale: to promote print and letter awareness while incorporating dramatic play with the menus and food order forms. We are going to spend more time encouraging children to use the menus to show the waiters and waitresses what they actually would like to order at the restaurant. 

•Skills: awareness of print, connecting speech to print and print to speech, letter recognition, pre-writing, receptive language, fine motor, creative expression, social interaction, awareness of others, community building

Library

•Materials: Books about seeds, spring, and shapes. Books about restaurants, pizza, and other types of food.
•Rationale: to support pre-literacy skills, to familiarize children with new books, and to allow for quiet time in the classroom, to use books as resources for non-fiction information, to give the children ideas about other objects we could include in our dramatic play area and in our sensory table.
•Skills: receptive language, early literacy, awareness of print, listening, community building

Science

Table

Materials: Magnifying glasses, flowers, paper, pencils, markers, measuring tools (rulers and tape measurers), dirt, pots, seeds, water, books about planting, worm farm
Rationale: Magnifying glasses enable the children to examine the flower growing in our classroom and notice changes in the flower as it grows. We have been doing a lot of talking about seeds and plants growing. This activity will give the students a chance to see a plant that is in the process of growing. Also, planting new seeds allows children to connect the previously explored seeds to the plants they grow into. The children will be able to practice watering the plants and discussing what plants need to grow.
The children will also be able to explore the worm farm with the magnifying glasses. They will be able to see the worms tunnel through the dirt and make castings out of their food.
Skills: Exploration, fine motor, drawing, measuring, language

Caves

Materials: light table, glass gems, light tiles with worms on them

Rationale: In the caves the children will be able to explore using glass gems on the light table. To relate to our theme and discussion about planting we will be encouraging the children to create flowers, trees, and gardens using the glass gems. To introduce pattern making with another material. 
Skills: Fine motor, pattern constructing, memory expansion, color recognition, cooperation, planning skills, language, comparing
Blocks

•Materials: large hollow blocks, unit blocks, multi-colored shape blocks, small wooden cube blocks, small wooden rods, steering wheels, paper and pencils, easel, truck books 

•Rationale: To foster current dramatic play themes, to encourage planful and purposeful approaches to building including drawing or writing plans and blueprints, to combine different materials in order to create new structures, to allow for individual building and collaborative work. We will highlight the use of unit blocks this week to emphasize shapes and part-whole comparisons made by putting different blocks together.

•Skills: large motor development, dramatic play, creating imaginary scenarios, symbolic representation, cooperative play, problem solving, mathematical and geometrical thinking
Large Motor

Gym


To Be Announced 


Playground

•Materials: shovels, buckets, wagons, swings, dishes for dramatic play, rakes, tricycles, and wagons
•Rationale: Digging in sand, riding trikes around the playground, and swinging on the swings create opportunities for social interaction, cooperation, role play, and many large motor experiences. 
•Skills: upper and lower body strength, physical fitness, perceptual motor skills (spatial, temporal, directional, and body awareness), building community through social interactions.
Special Interest
• In addition to Hamdi's popsicle cooking project this week, we will also spend time exploring care-taking roles related to our guinea pigs.

Snack
Monday - Animal crackers & oranges
Wednesday - Popsicles & apples
Thursday - Celery & hummus

Andrea Lead Teaching

Overview

This week's focus is to expand on the different areas of the classroom giving the children new and exciting experiences surrounding the curriculum themes already imbedded in our environment. Spring has sprung throughout our classroom and the children have had the experience of planting seeds indoors as well as exploring plants, seeds, and roots. This week we will be taking that a step further and will be planting two class gardens outside! The caretaking of animals has been a reoccurring theme and interest of the children, so to expand on that we have added an Animal Hospital to the dramatic play area where the children can care for their sick animals. This connects nicely with the Zoo area as well. We will continue to try to take small groups outside to do further exploration of our natural environment as well as fostering budding relationships or strengthening existing ones. We expect our caterpillars to emerge as butterflies sometime this week as well.

Large Group

This week our large groups will focus on the visit of Julianna's dog. We will also continue to focus on the caretaking of animals and tie that in with our new dramatic play area; The Animal Hospital. Felt board stories, movement, dramatic play, poetry, songs, and book reading will all be used during large group this week.

Expressive Arts

Materials: small cardboard pieces, wood blocks, bottle caps, fabric squares, and other various materials the children can use to "build up" and create a 3D sculpture. Rationale: To help children use creative expression and fine motor skills while creating a 3D art project. To engage in a social art experience over a period of time. Skills: creative expression, fine motor, hand-eye coordination, social interaction, symbolic representation

Sensory
Materials: Glurch and tools to manipulate it: hammers with textured ends, textured roller pins, cookie cutter letters, and other various playdoh tools. Rationale: To allow the children to explore a different sensory experience than they might be used to. To encourage children who don't often use play dough to come to this area and explore the different experience of using glurch verses playdoh. Skills: Fine motor, comparison, communication, problem solving, creative expression, social interaction, symbolic representation.

Water Table:
Materials: plastic baby dolls, empty shampoo and conditioner bottles, loofahs, baby bath, and cups for pouring over the babies' heads, rubber duckies, larger cups for pouring. Rationale: To encourage children to practice an authentic skill of washing babies by allowing them to experience it at the water table. Many children have (new) younger siblings at home, so this allows for connections between home and school. Skills: cooperative skills, collaboration, turn-taking, role-playing, communication and fine motor.

Science
Materials: flashlights, mirrors, other interesting and shiny surfaces, cellophane, and rubber bands Rationale: To give children the opportunity to explore light and shadow in the darkness of the cave. To provide the children with the experience of seeing how light reflects off different colored objects. Skills: social interaction, creative expression, comparison, hypothesis, experimentation, problem solving, turn-taking, cause and effect, and observing

Materials: both faux and real bird's nests, eggs, tree stumps, model birds, books about birds, feathers, and magnifying glasses. Rationale: To build on the children's interest in birds and their habitat. To provide the children with the experience of seeing a bird's habitat so they are able to connect that to their experience of making bird feeders. Skills: creativity, hypothesis, communication, comparison

Dramatic Play
Materials: Doctor dress up clothes, small doctor carrying bags, various tools for examining the animals, animal feeding dishes, small animal carriers, small stuffed animals, x-ray pictures of animals, stethoscopes, prescription pill bottles. Rationale: To build off our curriculum theme of animal caretaking. Encourage the children to engage in social interaction while engaging in a dramatic play story. Skills: collaboration, turn taking, social skills, creative expression, communication, role play, problem solving

Materials: various plastic zoo animals, animal dress up clothes, building blocks to make habitats for the animals, cash registers, zoo entrance tickets, small bottle caps to act as feeding dishes for the animals. Rationale: To allow the children to explore a zoo-like environment as well as various zoo animals before taking our field trip. To give the children experiences with animals they may have not seen or been exposed to before. Skills: social skills, creative expression, communication, role play, turn-taking, fine motor skills

Outside
Materials: gardening tools, fence building materials (i.e. sticks and string), balls, basketball hoop or soccer goals, trucks, shovels, rakes, buckets, trucks, tricycles or scooter cars. Rationale: Allow children to explore varied levels of fine and gross motor skills, depending on their preference. To provide the children with the option of exploring the gardening process using real gardening tools along with preparing the garden and planting. Skill: fine and gross motor skills, turn taking, problem solving, collaboration, experimentation, balance, coordination

Math and Manipulatives
Materials: Puzzles of zoo animals, momma-baby animals and other varied creatures Rationale: To encourage part-whole thinking, visual discrimination, and fine motor control while relating to classroom themes of animals and babies.

Materials: wooden box with different shaped holes in it and corresponding pieces that fit through. Rationale: To promote one-to-one correspondence, matching flat shapes with a 3D object, counting, problem solving.

Materials: peg puzzle with colored pieces that stack 1-5 on their own peg. Rationale: counting with meaning, recognition of number groupings, color sorting

Materials: Small wooden cubes Rationale: To provide an open-ended block building activity with a fine motor focus.

Materials: Adult-baby matching puzzle. Rationale: To practice matching and explore the concept of animal babies

Language and Literacy

Materials: books about springtime, butterflies, animal caretaking occupations, zoo animals, cars, babies, birds, shadows and other curriculum-inspired topics Rationale: To allow children to make connections between what they're reading and the classroom or home. To explore various curriculum topics in a way which prompts the children to ask questions and express their interest surrounding the curriculum areas. Skills: Concepts of books and print, using pictures in books to gain information, using books as inspiration for play or visual representation, fine motor, social interaction, making predictions

Blocks

Materials: small wooden cars, medium wood cars, cardboard boxes, nuts and bolts to "fix" the cars, cardboard wheels, "seatbelts", steering wheels, "horns", pictures of different types of cars, large plank blocks to build roads. Rationale: To expand on the children's growing interest of building cars. To provide the children with the opportunity to ride in a "real" car. To give the children the experience of building cars as well as fixing cars. The children can pretend to drive to any destination they would like while in their car. Skills: gross and fine motor skills, social interaction, role playing, collaboration, team work, imaginative play, hand-eye coordination, part-whole relationships, symbolic representation, balance, story telling

Large Motor (gym)
Materials: A-frame jump into donut , tumbling hill, bumpy slide, basketball, hopscotch, Skills: static balance (twisting, bending, stretching), coordination, core strength, imaginative play, hopping, rolling and tumbling, running down an incline

Gym challenges: Coming through the "spider web"

Climbing up and over the big donut - using the rope to challenge upper body strength.

Building with the notch blocks:

Overview
The classroom has slowly transformed into a spring oasis. The classroom will be home to baby chicks over the course of the next few weeks. We will have an incubator with chick eggs and the children will have the opportunity to watch them hatch! The children will also continue to observe and measure their Marigolds. We have recently transferred the caterpillars, now in cocoons, into the butterfly net! We will patiently wait for the moment they turn into butterflies!

Expressive Arts
- Materials: Insects, flowers, projector, transparencies with designs, blank transparencies, crayons, thin and thick markers, colored pencils, tape, staplers, glue, paper punchers, construction paper, paint, standing easel thin and thick brushes.
- Rationale: To allow children to connect and express their knowledge of insects and flowers while providing opportunities for them to continue working with the concept of lines and symmetry.
- Skills: Exploration of lines and symmetry, exploration of new materials, fine motor strength and control, self-expression.

Science
- Materials: Cocoons, beetles, crickets, cockroach, fish, tadpole, mealworms, photos of insects, bee hive, symmetric insect cutouts, insect sorting baskets, photos of butterfly life cycle, clipboards, pencils, rulers, magnifying glasses, incubator with chick eggs.
- Rationale: To encourage children to explore insects and gain knowledge of the certain characteristics specific to insects. To deepen the children's understanding of the life cycles by observing the life science in our classroom.
- Skills: Scientific inquiry, observation, comparison, reasoning, investigation of the natural world, peer interactions, sorting, descriptive language.

Language and Literacy
- Materials: Books about spring, plants and insects. Pens, pencils, colored pencils, markers, staplers, tape, paper, envelopes. Magnetic boards, magnetic letters and pictures, stencils, journals, letter stamps.
- Rationale: The journals will be used to allow children to continue to track the growth of their Marigold plants and express their ideas of what insects look like.
- Skills: Awareness of print, self-expression through talking, writing and drawing, awareness of the purpose of print and letter recognition, phonemic awareness, connecting speech to print and print to speech, fine motor, vocabulary, and social interactions.

Math and Manipulatives
- Materials: Interlocking puzzles, rulers, journals, button mosaics, insect and spring bingo, unifix cubes, weather graph, large chick puzzle.
- Rationale: To provide children the opportunity to continue to explore symmetry with the button mosaics, puzzles and images. Measure and record the growth of children's Marigold plants. Continue to track and graph the spring weather.
- Skills: Geometry, symmetry, patterns, reasoning, observations, classification, measuring, graphing, comparison, logical thinking.

Dramatic Play
- Materials: Back of the classroom: kitchen furniture, dishes, utensils, pots and pans, pretend food, small table, flowers, baskets and vases, animal costumes. Symbolic play caves: stuffed squirrels and owls, plastic woodland creatures, small and large wood pieces, turtles, cloth pieces, books, animal costumes.
- Rationale: Continue to explore spring and offer opportunities for social interactions and socio-dramatic play.
- Skills: Role-play, social interactions, large and fine motor skills, cooperation, problem solving skills, symbolic representation.

Blocks
- Materials: hollow wood blocks, unit blocks, thin boards, wood shapes, and plastic insects.
- Rationale: We continue to offer opportunities to experiment with symmetry. Children have been interested in creating habitats for insects and greenhouses for the plants. To provide children opportunities for creative play, creative building and symbolic play.
- Skills: balance, spatial awareness, cooperative play, creative building, large motor skills, social skills, symbolic representation.

Large Motor
Gym
Materials: bolsters, green mats, assembled to create "mat mountain."
Skills: Upper and lower body strength, climbing skills, tumbling, body control, risk taking, turn taking.
Materials: A-frame climbing structure, blue foam donut.
Skills: Risk taking, hand-eye coordination, jumping and landing, upper body strength, turn taking.
Materials: Blue stairs, foam roller slide.
Skills: Stair climbing, coordination, risk taking, core strength.
Materials: Climbing wall.
Skills: Hand-eye coordination, upper and lower body strength, stamina, risk taking, jumping and landing.
Materials: Monkey bars, basketball hoop, foam balls.
Skills: Throwing and catching, turn taking, accuracy, hand-eye coordination.
Materials: Painted hopscotch track.
Skills: Number sense, counting, one-to-one correspondence, coordination, balance, jumping.
Playground
- Materials: Shovels, buckets, bikes, wagons.
- Rationale: Children are still very interested in using the bikes and wagons! They enjoy digging, running, and engaging in socio-dramatic play.
- Skills: cardio vascular, endurance, upper and lower body strength, social skills, balance, movement through space, body awareness.
We have been incorporating many classroom games to offer opportunities to the children to practice specific skills, continue to strengthen our sense of community and have fun together!

Special Interest
Large Group
During large group, we will continue our discussion and tracking of spring weather. Maia's mom will be coming into the classroom on Monday to share a story with the children. We are excited to have her in the classroom! We will also take a look at the Marigold seeds that we planted in the polluted soil. We will talk about how they have grown or why they have not.

Have a great week!
Courtney

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please see documentation on Flower Explorers from May 2nd to get a glimpse at how play in the block area-with the flowers- started!

Spring Lesson Plan
May 2, 2011-May 5, 2011
Julianna Lead Teaching

Overview
Spring is continuous both inside and outside of our classroom. To elaborate on an initial interest in birds and turtles and their needs from previous weeks, we are introducing zoo materials in the loft dramatic play space. This will allow children to continue to explore what animals eat, where they live, and other lifestyle patterns. We will also be using a bird feeder outside of our classroom window to continue observations of birds eating. The water table has also seen a revamp based on children's interest and has been turned into a baby-washing station. This allows children to role play as they learn how to care for babies during bath time using soap, loofahs, and a baby sized-bath. To continue the always-popular theme of construction, we are moving toward a focus of riding in cars by creating opportunities for children to "build" cars with blocks, wear seatbelts, and drive with a steering wheel. They can even take a trip to the zoo! Provided the weather cooperates, we will continue taking small-group-style walks out of the classroom to look for worms, signs of spring, animals, and other interests of the children. This gives children a smaller setting in which to bond with other children and take on a leadership position in a more comfortable setting.

Large Group

This week our large groups will focus on babies and caregiving. We will reflect on Ayuko's visit by reading stories about babies. We will write letters to reflect on a past theme of the post office and to give children opportunities to practice fine motor skills in a group setting. Movement, poetry, songs, book reading, and fingerplays will all be used during large group this week.

Expressive Arts

Materials: different colored paint and brushes to paint the already-produced collage with natural materials from last week. Rationale: To help children use color as expression and practice painting a 3-D object. To work on a project over a few days, so that the children will be able to see their creation as a process, and then to display the final product to beautify our classroom. To engage in a social art experience over a period of time. Skills: fine motor, hand-eye coordination, creative expression, awareness of self and others.

Sensory
Materials: Glurch and tools to manipulate it: cookie cutters and rotary cutters early in the week, adding and switching out tools later in the week.
Rationale: To encourage children to compare and contrast this with the play dough, to invite scientific inquiry and exploration of the mysterious properties of glurch. Switching play dough for glurch also may encourage children who don't often use play dough to come to this area.
Skills: Fine motor, comparison, hypothesis, communication, problem solving, symbolic representation, and trial and error.

Water Table:
Materials: plastic baby dolls, empty shampoo and conditioner bottles, loofahs, baby bath, and cups for pouring over the babies' heads.
Rationale: To encourage children to practice an authentic skill of washing babies by allowing them to experience it at the water table. Many children have (new) younger siblings at home, so this allows for connections between home and school.
Skills: cooperative skills, collaboration, turn-taking, role-playing, communication and fine motor.

Science
Materials: flashlights, mirrors, other interesting and shiny surfaces, cellophane, and rubber bands
Rationale: To give children the opportunity to explore light and shadow in the darkness of the cave. To allow for the continued interest in colored cellophane from last week's cave theme to carry over here as they project colored light from their flashlights.
Skills: comparison, hypothesis, experimentation, problem solving, turn-taking, cause and effect, and observing

Materials: both faux and real bird's nests, eggs, tree stumps, model birds, books about birds, feathers, and magnifying glasses
Rationale: To give children an authentic chance to experience bird's habitats and connect to our birdfeeder activity from last week as well as a renewed interest in the birds outside.
Skills: creativity, hypothesis, communication, comparison

Outside
Materials: balls, basketball hoop or soccer goals, trucks, shovels, rakes, buckets, trucks, tricycles or scooter cars.
Rationale: Allow children to explore varied levels of fine and gross motor skills, depending on their preference.
Skill: fine and gross motor skills, turn taking, problem solving, collaboration, experimentation, balance, coordination

Math and Manipulatives

Materials: Puzzles of zoo animals, momma-baby animals and other varied creatures Rationale: To encourage part-whole thinking, visual discrimination, and fine motor control while relating to classroom themes of animals and babies.

Materials: wooden box with different shaped holes in it and corresponding pieces that fit through. Rationale: To promote one-to-one correspondence, matching flat shapes with a 3D object, counting, problem solving.

Materials: peg puzzle with colored pieces that stack 1-5 on their own peg. Rationale: counting with meaning, recognition of number groupings, color sorting

Materials: Small wooden cubes Rationale: To provide an open-ended block building activity with a fine motor focus.

Materials: Adult-baby matching puzzle. Rationale: To practice matching and explore the concept of animal babies

Language and Literacy

Materials: books about springtime, zoo animals, cars, babies, birds, shadows and other curriculum-inspired topics
Rationale: To allow children to make connections between what they're reading and the classroom or home. To explore books as media for researching topics of interest. To support the development of book and print concepts such as page-turning and holding it correctly.
Skills: Concepts of books and print, using pictures in books to gain information, using books as inspiration for play or visual representation

Blocks

Materials: model trucks, "seatbelts", steering wheels, "horns", pictures of different types of cars
Rationale: To allow children to elaborate on their interest in riding in a car. They can go to pretend destinations while driving and even build their own car.
Skills: role playing, collaboration, team work, imaginative play, hand-eye coordination, part-whole relationships, symbolic representation, balance, story telling

Large Motor

(gym)
Materials: A-frame, "rope maze." Skills: static balance (twisting, bending, stretching), coordination, core strength, imaginative play

Materials: stairs, foam triangle and blue donut, platform, foam roller slide. Skills: upper and lower body strength, coordination, stability and balance, risk taking, turn taking

Materials: stairs, bolsters, inverted monkey bars with swinging bridge. Skills: balance, coordination, stability, risk taking, core strength, turn taking

Music/Movement
Materials: piano, drums, xylophone, finger cymbals, sandpaper blocks, bells, small scarves
Rationale: To promote pitch and rhythm development. To engage in social musical activities. To explore the cause and effect of noises from a musical instrument.To engage in physical movement in time to music, using a scarf as a prop
Skill: fine motor, hand-eye coordination, pitch and rhythm, awareness of others, cause and effect, imitation

Snacks:
Monday - Pretzels & Carrots
Wednesday - Trail Mix
Thursday - Cooking Project: Carrot Muffins

WK5 (May 17-19, 2011)

WK4 (May 10-12, 2011)

WK 3 (May 3-5, 2011)

WK 1-2 (April 21/April 26-28, 2011)

Overview:

Over the past two weeks each child has been caring for his/her own seedling and many plants are growing and thriving. The children enjoy tracking growth and change in their plant as well as comparing theirs to the plants of others. The children are also bringing in insect specimens to investigate with magnifiers. They are amazed by the details they can see after enlarging the tiny bugs. Paint has been added to the easel to allow the children to continue their work with lines using a new artistic medium. The light projector in the cave will provide an opportunity for them to transfer some of their previous line drawings onto easel size paper before filling them in with paint. To foster school community and build stronger relationships with the children in Ross' class, we will begin having open classrooms each Friday. In addition to social benefits, the children can continue their engagement with materials related to plants and insects as Ross' class is exploring similar topics.

Expressive Art Area

Materials: colored and black paint with thin brushes at the easels, markers, crayons, colored pencils, stencils, tape, glue, and paper

Rationale: By adding in the easels and paint the children will be able to expand their current knowledge and practice with lines. Gradually (by mid-week) the children will be introduced to filling in the spaces between lines with color.
Skills: creative expression, fine motor skills, showing emotions or expressions through creative drawings or work, and responding to others or their own art work.

Sensory Area

Materials: planted seeds, water pipettes, dirt, journals

Rationale: The children are encouraged to assess the moisture level of the dirt before adding new water. By engaging their senses they become more keen observers of the needs of their plants. The children will also have an opportunity to compare and assess growing plants in order to make decisions about what each plant needs to ensure optimal growth.
Skills: sensory input, discovery, express wonder about the natural world, developing topical awareness and knowledge, seeking out information when needed, measurement, observation and recording skills.

Science Area
Materials: mounted insects, light table, crickets, mealworms, caterpillars, and magnifying glasses

Rationale: The children have expressed further interest in the abundance of new insects on the playground, in our classroom, and in their homes. Bringing the insects into the classroom for further investigation and observation is a great opportunity for the children to get a much closer look at the insects. As the children learn the different parts of insects and the importance of insects in our world, this part of our classroom will encourage children to learn and explore more about the insects and their life cycles.
Skills: scientific inquiry process, knowledge of the natural world, using tools for observation, collecting and recording data, comparison, classification, prediction
Math and Manipulatives

Materials: rulers, weather bar graph, Koi fish puzzles, mosaic buttons, spring bingo, bug matching game, insect sorting, and thermometers.
Rationale: We will encourage children to find symmetry in the natural world as it can be found in insects and plants. Measurement will be encouraged as a part of the data collection related to weather changes with thermometers, as well as using rulers to collect related to plant growth. The children will continue to expand their knowledge of graphing by recording and documenting the daily weather on the calendar, and then on the weather bar graph. Sorting, and matching skills will be facilitated through games and puzzles. 

Skills: ruler measurement, temperature measurement, observational recording, sorting, symmetry, matching, reasoning, logical thinking, comparisons, and making predictions.

Language & Literacy Area

Materials: new insects with names, names of insect body parts, and new plants with names. Light bright, colorful pegs, white board, and tracing materials for letter of the week (this week=W). Magnet letter board with pictures, alphabet in writing center, and drawing area. New insect, plant, and wildlife books, storybooks with tape player, 'question of the day'. 

Rationale: The signs and materials we have provided use both words and visual prompts support to early literacy in our classroom. The letter of the week will give the children an opportunity to use different materials to practice writing, and listening for the sound the letter W makes. The question of the day at morning arrival gives all children exposure to the idea that all letters in a combination represent meaning. Prompted conversation during snack time allows children to communicate emotions, ideas, and hold conversations with others. 

Skills: Begin to recognize and names letters and associate sounds with letters, use language for a variety of purposes, and engage in writing using letter-like symbols to make letters or words.

Block Area

Materials: Insects, bugs, plant life-vines. 

Rationale: The children have been showing increased interest in the role of insects in their block creations. As the children continue to build homes and incorporate the insects in their play the children will also have the opportunity to add plant life to their buildings. In this way the children can make their insect homes more realistic to the world around them. As children continue to expand their understanding of insects, they will have opportunities to add depth to their play. 

Skills: small muscle control, geometric sense, spatial and construction skills
Dramatic Play

Materials: camping props, flowers, kitchen set with food, woodland animals and habitat materials, sunglasses, frog and bird costumes, and music.

Rationale: The children are showing continued interest in "home building," of both human and animal habitats. As the children build these homes and incorporate their spring-themed learning, they will have an opportunity to incorporate more spring materials, such as camping materials. The children have been learning a lot about the animals as they emerge and become more active during the springtime. As we continue to learn about animals, the children can use the materials in the dramatic play area to represent their understanding and engage one another in pretend play. 

Skills: Creative expression, social problem solving, self-expression, group cooperation. To sustain interaction by cooperation, helping, sharing, and expressing interest, using constructive words and strategies to resolve conflict.

Large Motor Gym

Materials: obstacle course including uneven walking surfaces, cushioned incline, rolling mountain, hurdles, stairs, bumpy walk, and wobbly bridge. Building materials are available as well as balls with a target.

Rationale: The obstacle course encourages cardio-vascular endurance as the children participate in a series of physical challenges.

Skills: dynamic balance, upper-body strength, balance/stability, jumping and landing, crawling, stepping up, core-strength, body awareness, spatial awareness, target practice, creative and cooperative building.
Playground

Materials: bug catchers, shovels, rakes, buckets, mini shovels, chalk, tricycles, kites, and side walk chalk

Rationale: The children have found lots of wonderful things outside that relate our classroom activities. The children have been interested in looking and catching bugs for the classroom. The teachers encourage children to work together, digging, swinging, and exploring creative ideas. Our goal is to provide materials that inspire investigation, motor engagement and dramatic play. 

Skills: Cardiovascular endurance, fine and large motor skills, creative expression, observation and reasoning, eye-hand coordination, exploring the environment around them with the equipment and tools available.

Snack
Monday - Pizza
Tuesday - Trail mix
Wednesday - Popcorn
Thursday - Crackers & carrots
Friday- Frozen blueberries & yogurt

WK 5 (May 17-19, 2011)

WK 4 (May 10-12, 2011)

WK 3 (May 3-5, 2011)

WK 1-2 (April 21/April 26-28, 2011)