November 2011 Archives

Large Group

Cooking

Literacy/Science

Art

Large Motor (snips from all three days!)

Large Group

Symbolic Play

Art

Large Group

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Overview
With the end of the session upon us, our focus until winter break will be to provide closure to the topics that we have developed over the past ten weeks. We will finish our classroom tree project as well as share small group work with the whole class. We will continue making cozy places for the classroom animals to hibernate and rest while we are all at home over break. The children are very excited to have you all visit at the end of the week. They will be making a special snack to share with you at the party.

Expressive Arts
-Materials: Table top easels with paint. Cardboard, construction paper, tacky glue, scissors, markers, leaves, sticks, "expandos", small wood pieces, fabric pieces, string, paint, bark pieces
-Rationale: The children will be able to continue their collage work as well as try painting at the easels.
-Skills: Self-expression, fine motor strength and control, formulating and expressing ideas, imagination, planning

Sensory
-Materials: Sand table, shovels, pails, sifters, woodland animal figurines, sticks, wood pieces, small rocks
-Rationale: We will continue to provide the animals at the sand table as it has promoted small group interaction and opportunities for the children to express what they have learned about animals.
-Skills: Fine motor control, observation, familiarity with physical properties, familiarity with simple objects, formulating and expressing ideas, dramatic play

Math and Manipulatives
-Materials: Peg boards, puzzles that highlight animals and their habitats, patterning games, objects to create patterns (colored caps, small plastic disks, ribbon pieces, jewel stones, etc)
-Rationale: The children continue to notice patterns on clothing and experiment with making patterns of their own. We have begun to introduce more complex patterns for them to extend.
-Skills: Problem-solving, fine-motor control, planning, patterning, grouping, matching, prediction, experimentation

Science
-Materials: Animal furs and balancing scales
-Rationale: The children have been exploring the animal hides and guessing what animals they come from. The teachers have been using the furs to spark conversations and help children make connections to previous learning about camouflage and the things animals do to prepare for, or survive the winter months.
-Skills: Observation, generalizing, hypothesizing, analyzing

Language and Literacy
-Materials: Fiction and nonfiction books about forest-dwelling animals, paper, scissors, markers, tape, staplers at the writing table, labeled pictures of animals and trees
-Rationale: To expand on the children's interest in animals, we will introduce a variety of books about them to be read individually and during story time. We will add labeled pictures of animals and trees to encourage expression of their ideas about these topics.
-Skills: Enjoyment of/familiarity with books, accessing appropriate sources of information, interest in/awareness of print, phonological awareness, comprehension, self-expression, fine-motor control

Blocks
-Materials: Pictures of forest dwelling animals in their homes/habitats, small wood pieces, sticks, logs, bark pieces
-Rationale: The children are very interested in playing with the animals, so highlighting photographs of these animals in their natural environment may serve as inspiration to deepen their play. The incorporation of natural materials both by the unit blocks and the hollow blocks in the back of the room will provide opportunities for the children to express their learning about these animals both in their play with figurines and in their own dramatic play.
-Skills: Self-expression, observation, planning, fine-motor control and strength, large-motor control and strength

Dramatic Play
-Materials: Maple leaves the children have painted and cut, branches for the tree, and materials to use for attaching them. There are also stuffed woodland animals in the upper loft as well as below.
-Rationale: The classroom tree is nearly complete! The children will continue adding details over the course of the week. The stuffed animals provide an opportunity for dramatic play in the "forest."
-Skills: Self-expression, role-play, large-motor control and strength, communication, creativity, social skills, planning, problem-solving

Large Motor
-Materials: Pedalo, A frames with metal bridge in between/donut, steps with rolling slide, bean bag toss, monkey bars
-Rationale: To support the development of balance, upper and lower body strength, coordination, and healthy risk-taking. The materials on the playground provide "real-world" physical activity in the form of raking, digging, pulling/pushing wagons and wheelbarrows and help to connect the children to the natural world.
-Skills: coordination, propulsion, leg strength, turn taking, depth perception, balance, climbing, jumping into the donut, flexibility, grasping, throwing, hand-eye coordination

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Jamie Lead Teaching
Overview: The children continue to engage in increasingly complex interactions with their teachers and peers by asking questions and having conversations about abstract and familiar concepts. The children have developed preferred play areas and partners, which is continuously supported by intentional dismissal into free play. The firefighter and doctor themes are still prevalent in free play and the children continue to take care of each other and the babies. The children are experiencing several transitions and changes to the schedule because of Thanksgiving and winter break. They were recently informed the current student teachers are leaving and new student teachers are coming next semester. The children are learning to say goodbye by making presents for the current student teachers, which will be given during the class parties at snack. This affects our future planning as the current student teachers strive and create culminating experiences that reflect the unique interactions we had with the children. Weather continues to impact the children, and the first snowfall marked a change in clothing and classroom routines.
Expressive Arts

**Materials: Watercolors, thin Brushes, white Paper
Rationale: To introduce the concept of mixing water with paint to create a design. To give children the opportunity to use a smaller brush to paint more detailed pictures using a different medium. 


Skills: Fine motor skills, creative thinking and expression, symbolic representation, object manipulation, reflection, questioning, curiosity, and observation.

**Materials: Scissors, cutting sheets with lined patterns, stickers, markers, colored pencils, crayons, bingo markers.

Rationale: To continue to explore an expressed interest in cutting materials such as construction paper and string. To continue exploring how to manipulate and handle scissors, while enhancing their fine motor skills. The sheets will be intentionally lined in a different pattern than last week. This will help the children cut along differing dimensions and be mindful of using one-to-one correspondence to put stickers and stamps in each section. There will also be different size markers and colored pencils to encourage exploration of new materials.
Skills: Fine motor skills, 1-1 correspondence, turn taking, creative expression, evaluating, hand-eye coordination, and curiosity
Sensory 


**Materials: Sand table, scoops, shovels, buckets
Rationale: To explore a different sensory experience other than the water table. To initiate the awareness stage of the learning cycle by learning about sand's physical properties as well as the effects of manipulation from scooping, shoveling, and digging. To encourage independent exploration of objects and materials to determine how they work.
Skills: Turn taking, scientific thinking and higher level thinking, social skills, sensory exploration, observation, curiosity, symbolic representation.
**Materials: Colored play dough, play dough tools (letter-shaped cookie cutters, cheese cutters, muffin trays, garlic presses, rolling pins, pizza cutters, mixing bowls, and wooden spoons), pretend oven 

Rationale: To continue to explore the effects of physical manipulation on the play dough. To create patterns, designs, and objects with symbolic representation while using the tools on the play dough. To promote ideas of baking, cooking, and give the children an opportunity to create a wider variety of food items because of the unique color. To continue to emphasize literacy by identifying letters that are in the children's names. To increase the children's ability to sustain conversation while engaged in an activity. 

Skills: Symbolic representation, fine motor skills, sensory exploration, observation, creative expression and imagination, letter recognition, social skills
Science

**Materials: Magnet sticks, horseshoe magnets, magnet builder parts
Rationale: To continue to explore magnetic properties and why magnets repel or attract other magnets. To explore building an object by attaching magnets together in the shape of a car, building, or box. To encourage the children to use high level thinking and problem solving skills when questioning and investigating the magnets. To encourage children to use communication skills to hypothesize, predict, and share ideas about magnetic concepts. To extend their investigations of what they already know about magnets. 

Skills: Observation, scientific and higher level thinking, curiosity, reasoning, and problem solving
Dramatic Play


**Materials: "Light/dark cave", flashlights, mirrors, light table, translucent Lego blocks
Rationale: To extend an expressed interest in light switches and the concept of light and dark. To provide children with an opportunity to use self-regulation skills to take turns and share materials. To support questioning, problem solving, and reasoning skills when experiencing new materials. To give children an opportunity to experiment with cause and effect relationships.
Skills: Problem solving, questioning, investigating, social skills, curiosity, imagination, and invention.
**Materials: Baby dolls, bandages, doctor outfits, stethoscopes
Rationale: To merge the firefighter and doctor role-playing in the dramatic play area. To continue to encourage the children to act out scenarios based on previous experiences, knowledge, and incidental information. To extend the "care-taking" theme by taking on roles as doctors and patients. To support the children assuming different roles and engage in adult roles in fantasy play. To encourage more complex events and pretend objects are something other than what they are.
Skills: Communication, social skills, role-playing, symbolic representation, cooperative play, empathy, and turn taking
**Materials: Loft, Hollow blocks, ramps, fire trucks, radios, walkie-talkies, headsets, hose, fire hats, fire fighter outfits, steering wheels, spray bottles, and paper flames for the children to extinguish

Rationale: To continue to support and encourage pretend and symbolic play about firefighter scenarios. To extend their pretend play by adding a "fire house" that has radios, headphones, and walkie-talkies. To encourage communication about the unique scenarios emerging in their dramatic play. To foster social interaction and cooperative play among peers by sharing materials. 

Skills: Communication, cooperation, turn taking, role-playing, symbolic representation, and social skills.
Math and Manipulatives


**Materials: Fine motor manipulatives such as seriated colored peg boards, matching and sorting bears (large and small), letter boards, and various shape and counting puzzles

Rationale: To continue to encourage awareness for matching and sorting based on multiple dimensions. To continue to emphasize number concepts and letter awareness. To continue to promote fine motor development, awareness of shape and color, and hand-eye coordination for spatial awareness. To promote an emerging awareness for patterns, relationships, and geometry. To encourage visual perception for blocks and puzzles. To encourage children to put together puzzles with multiple interconnected pieces.
Skills: Hand-eye coordination, turn taking, fine motor control and skills, language and literacy, classification, seriation, shape, color and number identification
Language and Literacy

** Materials: A variety of books relating to emerging and current play themes including doctors, firefighters, winter, animals, and school; letter-shaped cookie cutters at the play dough table, paper, markers and tape around classroom

Rationale: To continue to support the children's interest in reading through language and literacy development. To continue to support emergent reading, writing, and speaking development by providing opportunities for communication and story telling. Give opportunities for grammatical structure, vocal imitation, new vocabulary, and conversational skills. To promote letter and phonemic awareness by listening. To develop listening skills by making predictions and personal connections with the stories. To encourage literacy by making signs around the class through the creative use of paper and markers.

Skills: Listening, receptive abilities, speaking, phonological awareness, recognition, language and early literacy development (emergent writing and reading), fine motor skills, creative expressions
Blocks


**Materials: foam blocks, hollow and cardboard blocks, wooden blocks and planks, pink blue and purple stacker blocks
Rationale: To continue to support mathematical and logical thinking skills. To foster social interaction and collaborative building projects using visual references placed next to the block area. To foster functional use of objects in play and enhance grasp and manipulation skills. To introduce new colored blocks to promote interest and awareness of the block area to a wider group of children in the classroom.
Skills: Communication, collaboration, large motor, expressive creativity, mathematical and scientific concepts, fine motor.

Large Motor


**Materials: Indoors - Two A-Frame ladders with balance beam, horizontal ladder, slide with rollers, monkey bars,
Outside- Teeter-totter, balls, basketball hoop, scooters, wagons, stop signs, and tools for digging and building with sand. 


Rationale: To support gross motor skills such as walking, climbing, balance, and coordination. To support upper and lower body development through posture, balance, and locomotion skills. To promote skills such as throwing, catching, bouncing and kicking. To continue to support social skills such as turn taking, cooperation, and collaboration.


Skills: Perceptual Motor Skills (spatial, temporal, directional, and body awareness) and physical fitness (cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength and endurance, propulsion skills, flexibility, and agility).
Large group


**Materials: New and familiar songs, books, story-telling, fingerplay, and rhyming games. 


Rationale: To continue to build a classroom routine, familiarize the children with each other's names, and promote a sense of group, community, and collaborative learning. To introduce new songs and body movements that targets rhyming, vocal skills, counting, and clapping to a pattern. 


Skills: Fine motor development and skills, attention span, hand-eye coordination, listening, receptive skills, speaking, patience, taking turns, communication, and social skills.
Music - Music will be evident throughout the day to support transitions and encourage participation in all large and small group activities.
Rationale: To promote the exploration of sound, volume, rhythm. To continue to support the children's interest in music and dance. Provide the children with opportunities to move their bodies during large and small group meetings. 

Skills: Turn-taking, fine motor development, gross motor movement and coordination, collaboration, noticing patterns, sounds, and beats, familiarity with songs
snack
Monday: Animal crackers and milk
Wednesday: graham crackers and milk
Thursday: Pizza (cooking project)
Monday: Granola bars and milk

Jamie Lead Teaching
Overview: The children continue to engage in increasingly complex interactions with their teachers and peers by asking questions and having conversations about abstract and familiar concepts. The children have developed preferred play areas and partners, which is continuously supported by intentional dismissal into free play. Intentional dismissal dismisses the children to a specific area of the classroom, with a specific teacher, at the beginning of free play. It is intended to support friendships, foster collaboration, and extend their play in areas of preferred play. The firefighter and doctor themes are still prevalent in free play and the children continue to take care of each other and the babies. The children are experiencing several transitions and changes to the schedule because of Thanksgiving and winter break. They were recently informed the current student teachers are leaving and new student teachers are coming next semester. The children are learning to say goodbye by making presents for the current student teachers, which will be given during the class parties at snack. This affects our future planning as the current student teachers strive and create culminating experiences that reflect the unique interactions we had with the children. Weather continues to impact the children, and the first snowfall marked a change in clothing and classroom routines.
Expressive Arts

**Materials: Watercolors, thin Brushes, white Paper
Rationale: To introduce the concept of mixing water with paint to create a design. To give children the opportunity to use a smaller brush to paint more detailed pictures using a different medium. 


Skills: Fine motor skills, creative thinking and expression, symbolic representation, object manipulation, reflection, questioning, curiosity, and observation.

**Materials: Scissors, cutting sheets with lined patterns, stickers, markers, colored pencils, crayons, bingo markers.

Rationale: To continue to explore an expressed interest in cutting materials such as construction paper and string. To continue exploring how to manipulate and handle scissors, while enhancing their fine motor skills. The sheets will be intentionally lined in a different pattern than last week. This will help the children cut along differing dimensions and be mindful of using one-to-one correspondence to put stickers and stamps in each section. There will also be different size markers and colored pencils to encourage exploration of new materials.
Skills: Fine motor skills, 1-1 correspondence, turn taking, creative expression, evaluating, hand-eye coordination, and curiosity
Sensory 


**Materials: Sand table, scoops, shovels, buckets
Rationale: To explore a different sensory experience other than the water table. To initiate the awareness stage of the learning cycle by learning about sand's physical properties as well as the effects of manipulation from scooping, shoveling, and digging. To encourage independent exploration of objects and materials to determine how they work.
Skills: Turn taking, scientific thinking and higher level thinking, social skills, sensory exploration, observation, curiosity, symbolic representation.
**Materials: Colored play dough, play dough tools (letter-shaped cookie cutters, cheese cutters, muffin trays, garlic presses, rolling pins, pizza cutters, mixing bowls, and wooden spoons), pretend oven 

Rationale: To continue to explore the effects of physical manipulation on the play dough. To create patterns, designs, and objects with symbolic representation while using the tools on the play dough. To promote ideas of baking, cooking, and give the children an opportunity to create a wider variety of food items because of the unique color. To continue to emphasize literacy by identifying letters that are in the children's names. To increase the children's ability to sustain conversation while engaged in an activity. 

Skills: Symbolic representation, fine motor skills, sensory exploration, observation, creative expression and imagination, letter recognition, social skills
Science

**Materials: Magnet sticks, horseshoe magnets, magnet builder parts
Rationale: To continue to explore magnetic properties and why magnets repel or attract other magnets. To explore building an object by attaching magnets together in the shape of a car, building, or box. To encourage the children to use high level thinking and problem solving skills when questioning and investigating the magnets. To encourage children to use communication skills to hypothesize, predict, and share ideas about magnetic concepts. To extend their investigations of what they already know about magnets. 

Skills: Observation, scientific and higher level thinking, curiosity, reasoning, and problem solving
Dramatic Play


**Materials: "Light/dark cave", flashlights, mirrors, light table, translucent Lego blocks
Rationale: To extend an expressed interest in light switches and the concept of light and dark. To provide children with an opportunity to use self-regulation skills to take turns and share materials. To support questioning, problem solving, and reasoning skills when experiencing new materials. To give children an opportunity to experiment with cause and effect relationships.
Skills: Problem solving, questioning, investigating, social skills, curiosity, imagination, and invention.
**Materials: Baby dolls, bandages, doctor outfits, stethoscopes
Rationale: To merge the firefighter and doctor role-playing in the dramatic play area. To continue to encourage the children to act out scenarios based on previous experiences, knowledge, and incidental information. To extend the "care-taking" theme by taking on roles as doctors and patients. To support the children assuming different roles and engage in adult roles in fantasy play. To encourage more complex events and pretend objects are something other than what they are.
Skills: Communication, social skills, role-playing, symbolic representation, cooperative play, empathy, and turn taking
**Materials: Loft, Hollow blocks, ramps, fire trucks, radios, walkie-talkies, headsets, hose, fire hats, fire fighter outfits, steering wheels, spray bottles, and paper flames for the children to extinguish

Rationale: To continue to support and encourage pretend and symbolic play about firefighter scenarios. To extend their pretend play by adding a "fire house" that has radios, headphones, and walkie-talkies. To encourage communication about the unique scenarios emerging in their dramatic play. To foster social interaction and cooperative play among peers by sharing materials. 

Skills: Communication, cooperation, turn taking, role-playing, symbolic representation, and social skills.
Math and Manipulatives


**Materials: Fine motor manipulatives such as seriated colored peg boards, matching and sorting bears (large and small), letter boards, and various shape and counting puzzles

Rationale: To continue to encourage awareness for matching and sorting based on multiple dimensions. To continue to emphasize number concepts and letter awareness. To continue to promote fine motor development, awareness of shape and color, and hand-eye coordination for spatial awareness. To promote an emerging awareness for patterns, relationships, and geometry. To encourage visual perception for blocks and puzzles. To encourage children to put together puzzles with multiple interconnected pieces.
Skills: Hand-eye coordination, turn taking, fine motor control and skills, language and literacy, classification, seriation, shape, color and number identification
Language and Literacy

** Materials: A variety of books relating to emerging and current play themes including doctors, firefighters, winter, animals, and school; letter-shaped cookie cutters at the play dough table, paper, markers and tape around classroom

Rationale: To continue to support the children's interest in reading through language and literacy development. To continue to support emergent reading, writing, and speaking development by providing opportunities for communication and story telling. Give opportunities for grammatical structure, vocal imitation, new vocabulary, and conversational skills. To promote letter and phonemic awareness by listening. To develop listening skills by making predictions and personal connections with the stories. To encourage literacy by making signs around the class through the creative use of paper and markers.

Skills: Listening, receptive abilities, speaking, phonological awareness, recognition, language and early literacy development (emergent writing and reading), fine motor skills, creative expressions
Blocks


**Materials: foam blocks, hollow and cardboard blocks, wooden blocks and planks, pink blue and purple stacker blocks
Rationale: To continue to support mathematical and logical thinking skills. To foster social interaction and collaborative building projects using visual references placed next to the block area. To foster functional use of objects in play and enhance grasp and manipulation skills. To introduce new colored blocks to promote interest and awareness of the block area to a wider group of children in the classroom.
Skills: Communication, collaboration, large motor, expressive creativity, mathematical and scientific concepts, fine motor.

Large Motor


**Materials: Indoors - Two A-Frame ladders with balance beam, horizontal ladder, slide with rollers, monkey bars,
Outside- Teeter-totter, balls, basketball hoop, scooters, wagons, stop signs, and tools for digging and building with sand. 


Rationale: To support gross motor skills such as walking, climbing, balance, and coordination. To support upper and lower body development through posture, balance, and locomotion skills. To promote skills such as throwing, catching, bouncing and kicking. To continue to support social skills such as turn taking, cooperation, and collaboration.


Skills: Perceptual Motor Skills (spatial, temporal, directional, and body awareness) and physical fitness (cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength and endurance, propulsion skills, flexibility, and agility).
Large group


**Materials: New and familiar songs, books, story-telling, fingerplay, and rhyming games. 


Rationale: To continue to build a classroom routine, familiarize the children with each other's names, and promote a sense of group, community, and collaborative learning. To introduce new songs and body movements that targets rhyming, vocal skills, counting, and clapping to a pattern. 


Skills: Fine motor development and skills, attention span, hand-eye coordination, listening, receptive skills, speaking, patience, taking turns, communication, and social skills.
Music - Music will be evident throughout the day to support transitions and encourage participation in all large and small group activities.
Rationale: To promote the exploration of sound, volume, rhythm. To continue to support the children's interest in music and dance. Provide the children with opportunities to move their bodies during large and small group meetings. 

Skills: Turn-taking, fine motor development, gross motor movement and coordination, collaboration, noticing patterns, sounds, and beats, familiarity with songs
snack
Tuesday: Animal crackers and milk
Friday: Granola bars and milk
Tuesday: Graham crackers and raisins

Large Group

Playing Together

Symbolic Play

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Weekly Lesson Plan For Ross' Class
Week of: Nov. 21-23, 2011
Lead teaching this week: Team teaching

Overview: There have been many exciting things happening in the classroom. The airplane and travel theme continues to be the focal point in the block and dramatic play area. Many children are building more elaborate planes as the week goes on, adding fabric and more blocks. To support our focus on building community/fostering social relationships and make the block building more collaborative, we will bring in two large pieces of cardboard that they can use as airplane walls. The children will have the opportunity to paint and decorate the walls to their liking. We also added large sheets of paper to the easel, inviting the children to paint collaboratively...as well as use up all the extra paint we've collected. With the fall session coming to a close, our major focus will be to solidify for friendships and relationships made this fall through continued group games and activities. We want each child to know their classmates and really feel like they belong to the classroom community before winter break starts. It's never to early to start thinking about possible play-dates for over break, so be sure to ask your child who they're playing with to get ideas of who to connect with while we're away.

Expressive Arts (paint, collage, clay)
• Materials: various natural and "beautiful" materials that have been collected around the school and the children's homes for collage, various bead and wire for necklace and bracelet making, glue bottles filled with red, yellow, white and black at the easel, egg cartons for paint mixing, markers, crayons, clay (with supportive tools: mallets and wood knives; and supportive materials: wire, clothes pins, etc.)
• Rationale: Art continues to be a popular spot for the children. This past week we introduced large, multi-person painting at the easel to help us use up extra mixed paint and to encourage children to collaborate on making beautiful things for our room. Clay has once again become a hot spot with children using wire to expand on their sculptures with stages, skyscrapers and spiders being built. We will continue to explore collage making this week with natural materials and some new, intriguing objects aimed at sparking the children's creative interests.
• Skills: creativity, fine-motor strength/coordination, artistic expression, symbolic representation, social skills, persistence, imagination and invention, spatial skills, planning abilities

Sensory (water table)
• Materials: Water, pitchers, cups, various sized containers
• Rationale: The water table has proven to be a very well-liked area. The previous week, the children explored the physical properties of water as well as experimented with pouring water into pitchers and cups ranging from small to large, which supports hand-eye coordination. We will keep the area the same for this week, and begin incorporating more math and hypothesis creating/testing opportunities this week ("How many pitchers will it take to fill that big container?")
• Skills: large-/fine moor strength, eye-to-hand coordination, seriation (by staking the cups and funnels from biggest to smallest), scientific investigation, observational skills, critical thinking/planning skills (i.e. hypothesis creating/testing)

Science
• Materials: Tree notebook, various critters (tiger salamander, hissing cockroaches, mealworms), magnifying glass, clipboards, feeding charts, seed growth box, pumpkin seeds
• Rationale: Previously, we cut open a pumpkin to see what was inside. After examining and using the seeds in a counting activity, we placed the pumpkin inside an aquarium. We will watch how it changes over the coming weeks. Each day a child will take a picture of the pumpkin to post on the computer. The picture slide show allows them to remember what the pumpkin looked like as it was decaying.
• Skills: imaginative/creative play, symbolic representation, fostering social relationships, care-taking skills, scientific inquiry skills, data recording/documenting

Math and Manipulatives
• Materials: Abacus, Montessori stacking pegs and color gradation blocks, puzzles, stringing buttons, memory/matching games (color and painting), new puzzles
• Rationale: Children have been exploring the various manipulatives in the area. This week we want to focus on playing Memory - a game that not only builds children's working and short-term memory, but also their spatial skills. Furthermore, we hope to help the children develop an attention to detail as we will be using similar but distinct memory images. In addition to memory we will be introducing some new puzzles to reignite the area and encourage cooperative problem solving.
• Skills: color recognition, seriation (i.e. stacking highest to lowest), patterning, counting, one-to-one correspondence, sorting/classification, matching, opportunities for collaborative problem solving.

Language and Literacy
• Materials: pencils, markers, paper, envelopes, staplers, tape, picture labels of all the children, books, "Our Alphabet' and "Words We Know" books
• Rationale: The writing center is frequently used by the children, with many of them showing an interest in writing their name as well as drawing/writing notes and delivering them to other children. The children also continue practice writing each letter of the alphabet in the alphabet book. To keep the focus on pre-/early-literacy as well as continue the their interest in writing their names/notes to friends, we will add a "Words We Know" book.
• Skills: pre-/early -literacy skills, letter recognition, fine-motor coordination/endurance (as children's hand muscles grow strong with holding writing utensils)

Dramatic Play
• Materials: Pilot/passenger props (suitcases, pilot coats, boarding passes, small trays, etc), cardboard for airplane walls, house furniture (e.g. stove, fridge, sink, and cupboard), plates, pretend food, shoes, fabric, stuffed animals, and care supplies
• Rationale: Airplanes and travel continues to be the focal point in the dramatic play area with many flights taking place everyday to destinations around the world! The addition of the two large pieces of cardboard will support the collaboration as well as allow for more children to fly on one plane.
• Skills: imaginative/creative play, symbolic representation, reflection/interpretation, social systems understanding (understanding the world), fostering social relationships

Blocks
• Materials: large hollow blocks, small multi-shaped unit blocks, peg people, wood houses, photos of different block structures, airplane themed props
• Rationale: Airplane building has been extremely popular over the last few weeks. The inclusion of luggage and pilot props last week encouraged children to begin building group planes rather than individual planes. As children continue to build their planes we hope to introduce a level of pre-planning to their work. The teachers will encourage children to plan out their planes by drawing their ideas before building. We hope this will lead to more intentional building while also introducing a literacy component to the area.
• Skills: large-/fine-motor skills, symbolic representation, concepts of balance, counting, comparing/contrasting skills, social relationships, opportunities for endless dramatic play

Large Motor
• In the gym: Due to the Book Sale late last week the gym will be getting a new look Tuesday. Monday we will head to the gym for some parachute games, and then we will have a new gym set-up created by the afternoon classes for Tuesday. Stay posted for additional details.
• On the playground: Despite the cold weather the children continue to be enthusiastic about going outside each day. The swings are a popular area, with trikes and wagons being used almost daily. Our leaf pile, while dwindling in size, is as popular as ever. Children from both classes seem to enjoy interacting in the large open areas and we are looking forward to continuing to build the school wide community through outdoor play. We'll see what the weekend snowfall does to the playground...be sure to send your winter gear on Monday!
• Skills: Large motor skills, static and dynamic balance, hopping (lower leg strength/coordination), jumping/landing skills, emerging skills related to propelling self (pumping) on a swing, social competence, and relationships

Announcements/Special Interest
• No school on Thursday and Friday of this week...have a safe, restful, and enjoyable holiday weekend.
• Small groups will be wrapping up soon: each group will culminate its experience this week or the following.
• Just a reminder: the "Good-bye" party for Kari and Rachel will be on Thursday, Dec. 1 at 10.30a. We hope you can all join us!
• The last day of the fall session is Tuesday, Dec. 6. Stay tuned for the Lab School winter break calendar with events/happenings taking place over break!

Snack
Monday - Frozen peas & crackers
Tuesday - Pretzels
Wednesday - Pumpkin Yogurt Smoothies (made with Sheila)
Thursday - NO SCHOOL
Friday- NO SCHOOL

Overview: We continue building upon the interests of the children. Last week, measuring and pouring at the water table was a favorite activity. We will continue the exploration of water this week. Also this week, we are expanding on train building and bringing them into the nook and letting the children create their own types of trains out of small boxes. We are also adding yellow, the last primary color, to the easel and giving the children the opportunity to mix all the colors together and see the result. Legos have also made a home in our classroom and are very popular with all the children. Riley's mom will be coming in this week to help with a cooking project. Finally, we will introduce a new gym set-up on Wednesday

Dramatic Play
•Materials: housekeeping materials (furniture, dishes, food), dress-up fabric and shoes; the caves are set as bedrooms with "beds," baby dolls, and baby-care items such as diapers and baby powder.
•Rationale: to allow for the expression of family life and to encourage social interaction while playing with familiar props. To support the extended, cooperative play as children work together to sustain a pretend play session.
•Skills: creative role-play, peer interaction, social problem solving, and symbolic representation

Blocks

•Materials: large hollow blocks, small multi-shaped unit blocks, wooden doll houses, furniture, peg people, wooden cars, and different colored fabrics. Books about trains and engineer's caps are added to extend train building play.
•Rationale: to support children's creativity and problem solving skills, to develop mathematical skills/awareness of geometry, and to allow for opportunities for social interaction as children collaborate and build together. To continue the already rich social and creative play surrounding building with hollow blocks, by allowing children to reflect and build upon previous block experiences. To bring interests the children express in other areas of the classroom (i.e. creating trains in the art area) and encourage new ways of thinking about a concept. Legos were added into one of the caves in order to provide a new building experience on a smaller scale.
•Skills: large motor development, expressive creation, symbolic representation, cooperative play, creative problem solving, social problem solving, mathematical thinking, and counting (one-to-one correspondence), fine motor development

Sensory
•Materials: water, various size containers and scoops, and buckets.
•Rationale: to cooperatively work together while exploring a familiar sensory experience, to emphasize concepts of volume and conservation. Different containers and scoops will encourage comparisons between the amounts of water each container can hold.
•Skills: large and fine motor development, hand-eye coordination, knowledge of conservation, scientific exploration, cooperative play, social relationships building, sharing materials, math concepts related to volume.

Math and Manipulatives
•Materials: puzzles, sorting animals, matching color games, beads and laces, large floor puzzle, and memory game, largest to smallest pegs and nesting cups
•Rationale: to encourage children to work with open-ended materials where they can develop more complex skills and collaborate to support each other's learning, to encourage beginning mathematical concepts, such as counting, sorting, and patterning. More complex puzzles are added to this area to challenge students' problem solving skills as well as to encourage social interaction with the other children. As a continuation to the concept of color, children will have the opportunity to sort color based on a spectrum (lightest to darkest). Different memory games continue to be available to encourage turn-taking as well as spatial reasoning and memory skills. Nesting cups and Montessori seriation pegs are added to the area in order to encourage comparison skills and recognition of size relationships.
•Skills: color recognition, shape recognition, number recognition, seriating (i.e. stacking highest to lowest), matching, one-to-one correspondence, counting, fine motor development, seriation and patterning skills.

Expressive Art
•Materials: primary colors (red, blue, and yellow) mixing at the easel and at the table, natural materials for collage, clay, markers, crayons, colored pencils, scissors, beads laces, bottle caps, glue, and tape.
•Rationale: to explore with hands and tools to promote sensory awareness, increase fine motor skills, foster social relationships as children observe and work together with their peers, and engage in an in-depth investigation of a basic element of art. In addition, beads and laces will also be provided for children to string beads as a take-home product. Yellow will be added to the easel for the children to explore with all the primary colors at once. Boxes, bottle caps, and other collage materials are made available in the nook area to facilitate further exploration of train-building and construction.
•Skills: fine motor development (strength, coordination), creativity, symbolic representation, sensory input, color recognition, and comparison between shades.

Science
•Materials: cockroaches, beetles, mealworms, salamander, feeding chart, bean seeds, a pumpkin.
•Rationale: to support children's curiosity of the natural world around us and to encourage the investigation of nature. Exploration activities in science area are also created to promote early understanding on the needs of other living things. The children are also encouraged to begin using different tools to observe, investigate and record. The children will also engage in an investigating of the inside of a pumpkin at the science table. The children will have the opportunity to observe and record the decay of a pumpkin that was cut last week.
•Skills: observation, scientific investigation and inquiry, outdoor/indoor connection, recording change over time.

Language and Literacy
•Materials: the writing center has a variety of writing utensils, paper, envelopes, staplers, tape, and pictures of children in our classroom.
•Rationale: to involve children in writing and the social activity of note and letter writing. To give children the opportunity to create their own stories and writings. Parent volunteers will be available to facilitate writing at the writing center, extending the children's interests in writing letters to friends and their loved ones.
•Skills: fine motor, pre-writing, and letter recognition.
•Materials: the library has books that are reflective of our continuing curricula such as trees, colors, and the growth and development of our bodies.
•Rationale: to encourage reading time with friends and teachers, encourage exploration of fiction and nonfiction texts. In addition, the children are also encouraged to regard books as a source of information.
•Skills: receptive language, early literacy, listening, and community building.

Large Motor/Gym
A new gym setup will be introduced on Wednesday.
*Playground: shovels, rakes, tricycles, wagons, soccer balls, nets
*Rationale: to support fine and gross motor skills as the children play independently and in groups. To encourage cooperative play, as well as the introduction of games with rules. Provide opportunities for exploration of the natural world.
*Skills: Propulsion and reception skills, turn-taking, endurance, hand-eye coordination, calculated "risk-taking," balance, depth perception.

Special Announcements:
Cooking project: Riley's mom will be coming in to make chex mix with the children.
Kylie will be lead teaching for the second time this week.
No School Thursday, November 24th.
End of the session party, December 5th 2:00-3:15.
Class photos available: $7 (cash or check)

Snacks:
Monday: Edamame and Crackers
Wednesday: Chex Mix and Milk
Thursday: No School

Overview


This week we will continue to focus on hibernation and migration. The children have been exploring animal skins, and offering ideas about how animals keep warm during the winter during our large group discussions. They will have the opportunity to investigate these topics further in the symbolic play and science areas in the classroom. Children will continue to create patterns with materials and sounds and the teachers will continue to draw their attention to patterns in everyday aspects of their lives. The Trees and Music small groups have wrapped up, and the Art group will be ending on Monday as they decorate their paper Mache eggs.

Expressive Arts


-Materials: Clay and clay shaping tools. Colored construction paper, colored pencils, crayons, markers, scissors, glue sticks, tape, staplers, and hole punchers.
-Rationale: Provide opportunities for creative expression with a modeling material. To provide materials to inspire children's creative expression and explore with a variety of media. 

-Skills: Self-expression, creative risk-taking, fine motor strength and development.

Science

-Materials: Pictures of migrating bird flocks, hibernating animals, animal skins, and a globe for tracking migration. Bird watching station with pictures of birds that usually approach our window. A variety of fall gourds for examination and comparison to apples. Magnifying glasses and baskets/containers for independent sorting. A balance scale for children to weigh items and compare (i.e. how many crabapples to an apple or a gourd). An analog scale to quantify weights. Clipboards and pencils.
-Rationale: To spark children's ideas and discussions regarding hibernation and migration. To encourage children to notice our surroundings and support their intrinsic curiosity about the world around them. To foster children's observation of changes in nature, comparison. To encourage literacy and recording abilities.
-Skills: Observation, inquiry, symbolic representation, identification, comparison, fine-motor, hypothesizing, reasoning about events, measuring, prediction.

Math and Manipulatives

-Materials: Pegs and peg boards, inset puzzles emphasizing people and animals, interlocking puzzles reflecting fruits, vegetables and gardens. Beautiful gems and ribbons. 

-Rationale: This week we will continue our exploration of patterning to include not only materials, but sounds as well. Children will be encouraged to use pegs to create patterns on pegboards. Gems and ribbons of different colors on the light table are also available to create patterns. They will continue to have opportunities for measuring and ordering skills as they compare weights of different apples, gourds, and other fall items. 
-Skills: Patterning, measuring (weighing), sorting, one-to-one correspondence and whole/part relationships, ordering, fine motor development, creative expression, measurement, prediction.

Language and Literacy


-Materials: A variety of writing materials, paper, and envelopes continue to be available. Special signs showing children how to start letters are posted in this area. Mailboxes with children's photos. Our library has a wide variety of books about animals, fall, and families. The loft holds a variety of books related to trees, leaves, seeds, apples, and pumpkins. These books will gradually be traded out with books relating to hibernation and migration

-Rationale: To provide children with many opportunities to enjoy the spoken and written world. Integrate our topics of trees, apples and community into literacy activities and encourage symbolic representation. Foster symbolic representation as children pretend to write letters, stamp them, and mail them.
-Skills: Letter recognition, listening and receptive abilities, fine motor control.

Blocks


-Materials: Logs, sticks, cross-sections tree trunk discs, and small wooden pieces. Hollow blocks and unit blocks, small wooden cars, wooden trains.
-Rationale: To support children's creative and problem solving abilities, develop awareness of geometry and allow for opportunities for sharing, turn taking, and social interactions. To support our exploration of trees inside the classroom, and encourage children to incorporate tree elements into their dramatic play.
-Skills: Construction skills, dramatic play, symbolic representation, problem solving, cooperation.

Dramatic Play


-Materials: Kitchen cabinet with dishes and dining table with chairs. The loft now has a tree created by The Tree Investigators' small group. Soft pillows and stuffed forest animals are located in the upper and lower loft. Animal costumes; bears and birds to enhance the forest and hibernation topics. Real wooden pieces, discs, and sticks are available in the dramatic play area in order for the children to be able to act out and build animal homes. The animal cave/hibernation cave houses sticks, logs, natural fabrics and woodland plastic animals for the children to create habitats for different kinds of animals.
-Rationale: To encourage social interactions. To continue to foster an interest in trees, forests, animals, their homes and hibernation. To support children's understanding of the changes taking place outdoors. The cave provides a cozy close place that promotes small group interaction, and discussions about forest animals, habitats and hibernation. To continue to encourage children's expression of family life by taking/playing on familiar roles.

-Skills: Role-play, peer interaction, social problem solving, creating imaginary scenarios, and taking on various roles.

Large Motor 

Gym


The gym set-up will be changed to an obstacle course on Monday after school. There will be opportunities for climbing, balancing, crawling, jumping, hand-eye coordination. There will also be a Pedalo for children to foster coordination. Since the gym will be empty on Monday, we will have gym on Wednesday this week.
-Skills: spatial relationship, core strength, balance, turn-taking, climbing, visual-depth perception, jumping, sliding, motor coordination.
Playground

-Materials: Leaf rakes, shovels, buckets, bikes, and wagons; climbing structure, monkey bars, slide, swings, logs.
-Rationale: Offer plenty of opportunities for the children to use their large muscles. Encourage cooperation and social connections through dramatic play. Offer opportunities to enjoy the outdoors, and to notice and investigate the changes taking place. Opportunities for group games to continue to develop our sense of community and connect with Elizabeth's classroom.
-Skills: Running, biking, pedaling, hauling, digging, balancing, jumping, upper body strength, coordination, strength and endurance.

Special Interest 


Large Group

Large groups this week will focus on further developing the themes of hibernation and migration, as well as patterning through sound. 

Cooking

No cooking project this week due to the Thanksgiving holiday. Enjoy the long weekend!
Kay, Benny's mom, will be facilitating our baking activity to get ready for our end of the session party on Thursday, December 1st.

Thank you,

Kristi and Dalia

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Large Group

Cooking

Science

Art

Large Group

Science

Large Group

Rasamee Lead Teaching

Overview: The children have developed friendships and are actively interacting with their peers and teachers. We will continue intentional dismissal to support friendships and the children's play interest. Through their interest in taking care of babies and "going to the hospital," the children started to become aware of their bodies and body parts. We will support their learning of body parts by singing songs, using manipulatives, participating in gym activities, and creating a growth chart. Literacy has also become an interest in our class. Many children are fascinated in finding their names on our daily clipboards and in their cubbies. The children are often looking at books and asking teachers to read aloud. They are also "writing" their names on their art work and noticing the first letter of their names. We will continue to support these pre literacy skills by providing opportunities to write, draw, read, and spell with a variety of materials in various curriculum areas.
Expressive Arts
**Materials: Purple, blue and white paint, black or blue paper, and foam rollers with different patterns. 

Rationale: To continue to introduce cool colors in contrast to the warm fall colors the children have been exploring. To experiment with the rollers and to observe and create patterns. 

Skills: Fine motor skills, creative thinking and expression, symbolic representation, object manipulation, and observation.
**Materials: Scissors, Cutting Sheets with lined patterns, Stickers, Markers, Crayons, bingo markers.
Rationale: To respond to an expressed interest in cutting objects such as construction paper. To continue exploring how to manipulate and handle scissors, and to enhance their fine motor skills. The sheets will be intentionally divided into sections to encourage the children to be mindful of where they are cutting and to correlate to one to one correspondence with the use of stickers and the dotted stampers.
Skills: Fine motor skills, one to one correspondence, turn taking, collaboration, hand-eye coordination, and creative expression

Sensory 

**Materials: Water, small bottles of soap, sponges, towels, baby dolls
Rationale: To continue exploration with soap and extending the various use of the soap. To experiment with bathing babies as it relates to both care taking and sensory. To continue the children's interest in babies and bubbles. To provide an opportunity for symbolic play
Skills: Turn taking, Social skills, sensory exploration, observation, curiosity, symbolic representation.

**Materials: Colored play dough, play dough tools (letter-shaped cookie cutters, muffin trays, garlic presses, rolling pins, pizza cutters, mixing bowls, and wooden spoons), pretend oven
Rationale: To continue to explore different colored play dough and how it mixes together. To create patterns, designs, using the different colors of dough. To promote ideas of baking, cooking, and eating a larger variety of foods with the different colors. To further incorporate literacy into children's play by introducing letter-shaped cookie cutters.
Skills: Symbolic representation, fine motor skills, sensory exploration, observation, creative expression and imagination, letter recognition, social skills (i.e. turn taking and collaboration)
Science
**Materials: Magnet sticks, letter boards, horseshoe magnets, materials that repel or attract to the magnets (feathers, washers, rollers).
Rationale: To continue to explore magnetic properties and why magnets repel or attract other magnets and why magnets do not attract certain materials. To encourage logical thinking through the exploration of magnets and the reflection and interpretation of experiences. To encourage children to use communication skills to hypothesize and share ideas about magnetic concepts. To extend their investigations of what they already know about magnets.
Skills: Observation, scientific and higher level thinking, curiosity, reasoning, and problem solving

Dramatic Play

**Materials: "bear cave," with stuffed animal bears and materials the children collected from nature, various animal fur, posted images of bears, questions about bears, books focusing on bears and hibernation, and bear foot prints leading into the cave
Rationale: To continue to create an opportunity to learn about bears, emphasizing a bear's need to adapt its lifestyle according to the season changes. To support literacy and language development, and to promote emergent reading skills such as acting out a story from pictures. To provide an opportunity for the children to explore and differentiate between day and night (What do bears do at night? What do they do during the day?) To continue to build off the children's emerging interest in bears' habitats, feeding habits, and physical characteristics.

Skills: Role play, creative expression and thinking, cooperation, turn taking, communication, symbolic representation, early literacy, and social skills (i.e. listening, speaking, phonological awareness, vocabulary)
**Materials: Baby dolls, bandages, doctor outfits, syringes, reflex hammers, medicine bottles, x-rays, stethoscopes and wooden blocks
Rationale: To build a hospital and necessities in order to continue promoting their interest in care-taking skills when babies or children are sick or hurt. To provide an opportunity for children to act out scenarios and take on realistic dramatic play roles. To support pretend play and encourage children to use their imaginations and invention skills to create abstract scenarios and situations.
Skills: Communication, social skills, role-playing, symbolic representation, cooperative play, empathy, and turn taking
**Materials: Loft, Hollow blocks, ramps, fire trucks, hose, fire hats, fire fighter outfits, truck wheels, steering wheels, spray bottles, and paper flames for the children to extinguish
Rationale: To continue to support and encourage pretend and symbolic play about firefighter scenarios. To foster social interaction and cooperative play among peers by sharing the materials. To support the children's interests in fire fighters and fire trucks that has continued to develop. To extend their pretend play by adding a "fire house" in the loft and new materials
Skills: Communication, cooperation, turn taking, role-playing, symbolic representation, and social skills.

Math and Manipulatives

**Materials: Fine motor manipulatives such as seriated peg boards, matching and sorting bears, stacking peg boards, seriated hand prints and various puzzles
Rationale: Continue to promote fine motor development, awareness of shape and color, and hand-eye coordination for spatial awareness. To promote an emerging awareness for patterns, relationships, and geometry. To encourage awareness for matching and sorting, and numbers and counting.
Skills: Hand-eye coordination, turn taking, fine motor control and skills, language and literacy, classification, seriation, shape, color and number identification

Language and Literacy
** Materials: A variety of books relating to emerging and current play themes including doctors, firefighters, winter, animals, and school; letter-shaped cookie cutters at the play dough table; Felt story boards during large group meeting, and paper, markers and tape around classroom
Rationale: To continue to support the children's interest in reading. To develop listening skills and to make predictions and personal connections with the stories. To provide a quiet and relaxing learning alternative during free play that simultaneously supports literacy development, language, creativity, and imaginative thinking. To promote awareness of letters. To encourage literacy by making signs around the class through the creative use of paper and markers.
Skills: Listening, receptive abilities, speaking, phonological awareness, recognition, language and early literacy development (emergent writing and reading), fine motor skills, creative expressions

Blocks

**Materials: foam blocks, hollow and cardboard blocks, wooden blocks and planks
Rationale: To continue to support mathematical skills, social interaction, and collaborative building projects. To be incorporated into building houses for the firefighters, garages for the fire trucks, beds for the babies and patients, roads, cars and trucks.
Skills: Communication, collaboration, large motor, expressive creativity, mathematical and scientific concepts, fine motor.
Large Motor

**Materials: Indoors - A-Frame with balance beam, running and jumping zone, slide, monkey bars with swings, donut hole for climbing, balance mat. Outside- Teeter-totters, balls, basketball hoop, bull dozers, trikes, and tools for digging and molding sand. 

Rationale: To support gross motor skills such as walking, climbing, balance, coordination, and upper and lower body development. To promote skills such as throwing, catching, bouncing and kicking. To continue to support social skills such as turn taking, cooperation, and collaboration.

Skills: Perceptual Motor Skills (spatial, temporal, directional, and body awareness) and physical fitness (cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength and endurance, propulsion skills, flexibility, and agility).

Large group

**Materials: Name songs, themed songs and demonstrations, books, story-telling, felt boards, fingerplay. 

Rationale: To continue to build a classroom routine, familiarize the children with each other's names, and promote a sense of group, community, and collaborative learning. 

Skills: Fine motor development and skills, attention span, hand-eye coordination, listening, receptive skills, speaking, patience, taking turns, communication, and social skills.

Music - Music will be evident throughout the day to support transitions and encourage participation in all large and small group activities. 

**Materials: CD player with CD's (Please feel free to lend us any of your child's favorite CDs to use in the classroom), computer program to play music, drums, tambourines, bells, and shakers.
Rationale: To promote the exploration of sound, volume, rhythm. To encourage collaborative play to create music. To provide opportunities for children to independently choose from three or four familiar songs using a computer program. To continue their interest in dance and music.
Skills: Turn-taking, fine motor development, gross motor movement and coordination, collaboration, noticing patterns, sounds, and beats, familiarity with songs

Snack
Animal Crackers and Milk
Toast and Pumpkin Butter
Oranges and Cereal

Rasamee Lead Teaching

Overview: There are many early stages of friendships budding in the classroom. We will continue to support these relationships by encouraging and inviting children to play together in areas where they have similar interests. Through their interest in taking care of babies and "going to the hospital," the children started to become aware of their bodies and body parts. We will support their learning of body parts by singing songs, using manipulatives, participating in gym activities, and creating a growth chart. Literacy has also become an interest in our class. Many children are fascinated in finding their names on our daily clipboards and in their cubbies. The children are often looking at books and asking teachers to read aloud. They are also "writing" their names on their art work and noticing the first letter of their names. We will continue to support these pre literacy skills by providing opportunities to write, draw, read, and spell with a variety of materials in various curriculum areas.
Expressive Arts
**Materials: Purple, blue and white paint, black or blue paper, and foam rollers with different patterns. 

Rationale: To continue to introduce cool colors in contrast to the warm fall colors the children have been exploring. To experiment with the rollers and to observe and create patterns. 

Skills: Fine motor skills, creative thinking and expression, symbolic representation, object manipulation, and observation.
**Materials: Scissors, Cutting Sheets with lined patterns, Stickers, Markers, Crayons, bingo markers.
Rationale: To respond to an expressed interest in cutting objects such as construction paper. To continue exploring how to manipulate and handle scissors, and to enhance their fine motor skills. The sheets will be intentionally divided into sections to encourage the children to be mindful of where they are cutting and to correlate to one to one correspondence with the use of stickers and the dotted stampers.
Skills: Fine motor skills, one to one correspondence, turn taking, collaboration, hand-eye coordination, and creative expression

Sensory 

**Materials: Water, small bottles of soap, hand mixers, containers, funnels, scoops, basters
Rationale: To continue to explore how water changes when you add an element such as soap. To experiment with the amount of soap they need to create a basin full of bubbles. To discover how they can create bubbles with soap. To begin asking questions about what we can do with soapy water - what do we use soap for?
Skills: Observation, fine and large motor skills, muscular endurance, scientific thinking, and problem solving

**Materials: Colored play dough, play dough tools (letter-shaped cookie cutters, muffin trays, garlic presses, rolling pins, pizza cutters, mixing bowls, and wooden spoons), pretend oven
Rationale: To continue to explore different colored play dough and how it mixes together. To create patterns, designs, using the different colors of dough. To promote ideas of baking, cooking, and eating a larger variety of foods with the different colors. To further incorporate literacy into children's play by introducing letter-shaped cookie cutters.
Skills: Symbolic representation, fine motor skills, sensory exploration, observation, creative expression and imagination, letter recognition, social skills (i.e. turn taking and collaboration)
Science
**Materials: Magnet sticks, letter boards, horseshoe magnets, materials that repel or attract to the magnets (feathers, washers, rollers).
Rationale: To continue to explore magnetic properties and why magnets repel or attract other magnets and why magnets do not attract certain materials. To encourage logical thinking through the exploration of magnets and the reflection and interpretation of experiences. To encourage children to use communication skills to hypothesize and share ideas about magnetic concepts. To extend their investigations of what they already know about magnets.
Skills: Observation, scientific and higher level thinking, curiosity, reasoning, and problem solving

Dramatic Play

**Materials: "bear cave," with stuffed animal bears and materials the children collected from nature, various animal fur, posted images of bears, questions about bears, books focusing on bears and hibernation, and bear foot prints leading into the cave
Rationale: To continue to create an opportunity to learn about bears, emphasizing a bear's need to adapt its lifestyle according to the season changes. To support literacy and language development, and to promote emergent reading skills such as acting out a story from pictures. To provide an opportunity for the children to explore and differentiate between day and night (What do bears do at night? What do they do during the day?) To continue to build off the children's emerging interest in bears' habitats, feeding habits, and physical characteristics.

Skills: Role play, creative expression and thinking, cooperation, turn taking, communication, symbolic representation, early literacy, and social skills (i.e. listening, speaking, phonological awareness, vocabulary)
**Materials: Baby dolls, bandages, doctor outfits, syringes, reflex hammers, medicine bottles, x-rays, stethoscopes and wooden blocks
Rationale: To build a hospital and necessities in order to continue promoting their interest in care-taking skills when babies or children are sick or hurt. To provide an opportunity for children to act out scenarios and take on realistic dramatic play roles. To support pretend play and encourage children to use their imaginations and invention skills to create abstract scenarios and situations.
Skills: Communication, social skills, role-playing, symbolic representation, cooperative play, empathy, and turn taking
**Materials: Loft, Hollow blocks, ramps, fire trucks, hose, fire hats, fire fighter outfits, truck wheels, steering wheels, spray bottles, and paper flames for the children to extinguish
Rationale: To continue to support and encourage pretend and symbolic play about firefighter scenarios. To foster social interaction and cooperative play among peers by sharing the materials. To support the children's interests in fire fighters and fire trucks that has continued to develop. To extend their pretend play by adding a "fire house" in the loft and new materials
Skills: Communication, cooperation, turn taking, role-playing, symbolic representation, and social skills.

Math and Manipulatives

**Materials: Fine motor manipulatives such as seriated peg boards, matching and sorting bears, stacking peg boards, seriated hand prints and various puzzles
Rationale: Continue to promote fine motor development, awareness of shape and color, and hand-eye coordination for spatial awareness. To promote an emerging awareness for patterns, relationships, and geometry. To encourage awareness for matching and sorting, and numbers and counting.
Skills: Hand-eye coordination, turn taking, fine motor control and skills, language and literacy, classification, seriation, shape, color and number identification

Language and Literacy
** Materials: A variety of books relating to emerging and current play themes including doctors, firefighters, winter, animals, and school; letter-shaped cookie cutters at the play dough table; Felt story boards during large group meeting, and paper, markers and tape around classroom
Rationale: To continue to support the children's interest in reading. To develop listening skills and to make predictions and personal connections with the stories. To provide a quiet and relaxing learning alternative during free play that simultaneously supports literacy development, language, creativity, and imaginative thinking. To promote awareness of letters. To encourage literacy by making signs around the class through the creative use of paper and markers.
Skills: Listening, receptive abilities, speaking, phonological awareness, recognition, language and early literacy development (emergent writing and reading), fine motor skills, creative expressions

Blocks

**Materials: foam blocks, hollow and cardboard blocks, wooden blocks and planks
Rationale: To continue to support mathematical skills, social interaction, and collaborative building projects. To be incorporated into building houses for the firefighters, garages for the fire trucks, beds for the babies and patients, roads, cars and trucks.
Skills: Communication, collaboration, large motor, expressive creativity, mathematical and scientific concepts, fine motor.
Large Motor

**Materials: Indoors - A-Frame with balance beam, running and jumping zone, slide, monkey bars with swings, donut hole for climbing, balance mat. Outside- Teeter-totters, balls, basketball hoop, bull dozers, trikes, and tools for digging and molding sand. 

Rationale: To support gross motor skills such as walking, climbing, balance, coordination, and upper and lower body development. To promote skills such as throwing, catching, bouncing and kicking. To continue to support social skills such as turn taking, cooperation, and collaboration.

Skills: Perceptual Motor Skills (spatial, temporal, directional, and body awareness) and physical fitness (cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength and endurance, propulsion skills, flexibility, and agility).

Large group

**Materials: Name songs, themed songs and demonstrations, books, story-telling, felt boards, fingerplay. 

Rationale: To continue to build a classroom routine, familiarize the children with each other's names, and promote a sense of group, community, and collaborative learning. 

Skills: Fine motor development and skills, attention span, hand-eye coordination, listening, receptive skills, speaking, patience, taking turns, communication, and social skills.

Music - Music will be evident throughout the day to support transitions and encourage participation in all large and small group activities. 

**Materials: CD player with CD's (Please feel free to lend us any of your child's favorite CDs to use in the classroom), computer program to play music, drums, tambourines, bells, and shakers.
Rationale: To promote the exploration of sound, volume, rhythm. To encourage collaborative play to create music. To provide opportunities for children to independently choose from three or four familiar songs using a computer program. To continue their interest in dance and music.
Skills: Turn-taking, fine motor development, gross motor movement and coordination, collaboration, noticing patterns, sounds, and beats, familiarity with songs

Snacks
Tuesday:Granola Bars and Milk
Friday: Oranges and Cereal

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Weekly Lesson Plan for Ross' Class
Week of: Nov. 14, 2011
Lead teaching this week: Kari

Overview: There have been many exciting things happening in the classroom. The children have moved their airplane building into the large block area, with many of the children choosing familiar travel destinations to fly their plane to. To help support the airplane/travel theme in the dramatic play and large block area we will be adding a variety of pilot and passenger props. During arrival time the children cut open a pumpkin to discover what was inside. The children enjoyed exploring the seeds, which will be used for math activities including, counting, adding, and subtracting. In the last few weeks of the fall session, we will continue our focus on building community and social relationships by encouraging the children to initiate interactions with others more independently, as well as speaking directly to their peer(s) when negotiating/resolving conflict. The teachers will continue to facilitate these interactions as needed, however we feel the children are ready to start learning/practicing these rules of social engagement, as they have grown quite comfortable with each other.

Expressive Arts (paint, collage, clay)
• Materials: various natural and "beautiful" materials that have been collected around the school and the children's homes for collage, various bead and wire for necklace and bracelet making, glue bottles filled with red, yellow, white and black at the easel, egg cartons for paint mixing, markers, crayons, clay (with supportive tools: mallets and wood knives; and supportive materials: wire, clothes pins, etc.)
• Rationale: Recently, the art area has been extremely busy with various projects including collaborative painting, airplane construction, and much more. The children have shown an interest in necklace and bracelet making; wanting to share what they have made with their parents. To help support this interest, we will bring in various sized beads, wire, and string so that they are able to take what they have made home with them as well as to continue to foster fine motor skills and intentionality.
The easel is extremely well liked by all of the children - seeing many visitors each day. With all these artists comes a lot of paint. To help use up all of the "left-over" paint we will add textured rollers, balls, bottle caps, and other objects that will allow them to explore printmaking and large collaborative painting.
During the week airplane construction has transformed into airplane dramatic play, because of this we are going to bring the focus back to the natural and "beautiful" materials in the collage are. The children will help contribute to the collage area by collecting leaves, tall grass, and other items they find on the playground as well as any items they find around their home. Collecting their own materials allows the children to choose what types of materials they want to use for their collages.
At the clay table we will add supportive materials including wire, clothespins, and models of animals to encourage the children to begin building upwards and outwards with their clay.
• Skills: creativity, fine-motor strength/coordination, artistic expression, symbolic representation, social skills, persistence, imagination and invention, spatial skills, planning abilities

Sensory (water table)
• Materials: Water, pitchers, cups, various sized containers
• Rationale: This week we will be switching out the sand table for a water table. We will add pitchers, cups, and various sized containers to encourage children to explore the physical properties of water as well as allow children to explore and experiment with pouring and prediction.
• Skills: large-/fine moor strength, eye-to-hand coordination, scientific investigation, observational skills, planning skills, creativity, imagination and invention

Science
• Materials: Tree notebook, various critters (tiger salamander, hissing cockroaches, mealworms), magnifying glass, clipboards, feeding charts, seed growth box, pumpkin seeds
• Rationale: Previously, we had changed the tree chart into a tree notebook that will be placed in the science center. As the children continue to watch their changing trees and bring in their pictures we will be adding them to our tree notebook. This will allow the children to independently add their pictures and look at other children's tree pictures when they feel like it. We will also begin another on-going science experiment this week: "what will happen to a pumpkin if it stays in the classroom for a long time?"
• Skills: imaginative/creative play, symbolic representation, fostering social relationships, care-taking skills, scientific inquiry skills

Math and Manipulatives
• Materials: Pumpkin seeds, abacus, Montessori stacking pegs and color gradation blocks, puzzles, multi-colored pegs (with pegboard), sorting/counting animals, sorting trays, stringing buttons, color matching game
• Rationale: At the end of last week we cut open the pumpkin in our class. The children enjoyed scooping out all of its seeds. To help connect this experience to numeracy we will place the pumpkin seeds at the math table. The children can use the seeds to count, add, and subtract. The children have also shown an interest in playing memory games, to help support this interest we will be adding a memory game to help foster memory and language. As usual, puzzles continue to be popular and some children have begun to utilize their knowledge of color by sorting the Montessori color gradation blocks from lightest-to-darkest.
• Skills: color recognition, seriation (i.e. stacking highest to lowest), patterning, counting, one-to-one correspondence, sorting/classification, matching, numeracy/awareness of numerals, opportunities for collaborative problem solving.

Language and Literacy
• Materials: pencils, markers, paper, envelopes, staplers, tape, picture labels of all the children, books, alphabet book
• Rationale: Previously, we added the alphabet book to the writing area. Many children have eagerly made contributions to the book and were excited to show others what their letters look like. When the children were first introduced to the book they enjoyed thinking of words that started with each letter, including their classmate's names. To help expand on their alphabet interest we will make a "Words We Know" book.
• Skills: pre-/early -literacy skills, letter recognition, introduction to storytelling, fine-motor coordination/endurance (as children's hand muscles grow strong with holding writing utensils)

Dramatic Play
• Materials: Pilot/passenger props (suitcases, pilot coats, boarding passes, small trays, etc), house furniture (e.g. stove, fridge, sink, and cupboard), plates, pretend food, shoes, fabric, stuffed animals, and care supplies
• Rationale: Due to the popularity of airplane construction in the block area we will add pilot and passenger props. This will allow the children to become pilots, flight attendants, and passengers as well as play out vacations that they have been on as well as pretend to travel to new destinations.
• Skills: imaginative/creative play, symbolic representation, reflection/interpretation, social systems understanding (understanding the world), fostering social relationships

Blocks
• Materials: large hollow blocks, small multi-shaped unit blocks, peg people, wood houses, photos of different block structures, airplane themed props
• Rationale: With the continued popularity of airplane building, we will keep the books and cockpit themed props for the children to keep using. The children built elaborate planes, using the hollow blocks for the wings and body. To help the children become more thoughtful with their designs we will have airplanes books that display different types of airplanes, clipboards and pencils in this area so that the children are able to draw what type of plane they want to build before they start building. This gives the children who have been on an airplane a reminder what it looks like and helps the children who have not been on an airplane conceptualize what an airplane looks like.
• Skills: large-/fine-motor skills, symbolic representation, concepts of balance, counting, comparing/contrasting skills, social relationships, opportunities for endless dramatic play

Large Motor
• In the gym: We will maintain the gym set-up, because the children are very active and enjoy using each piece of equipment. The children continue to think up new ways to get across the river (such as, hoping, galloping, and running), and have learned to adjust the pace over these movements to a drumbeat. The donut slide and rope swings continue to be well-liked. Turn taking/negotiation skills are continuing to develop with some children beginning to implement a timeshare system in which they count to a number and then switch
• On the playground: The children continue to be excited about outdoor time. They enjoy participating in chasing and running games, with some children thinking of "race rules." The swings, red wagons, and trikes continue to be a popular item. The children enjoy pulling each other in the wagon and doing laps around the playground on the trikes.
• Skills: Large motor skills, static and dynamic balance, hopping (lower leg strength/coordination), jumping/landing skills, emerging skills related to propelling self (pumping) on a swing, social competence, and relationships

Announcements/Special Interest
• The dancers will return on Monday for one last visit to are large group. We look forward to their new, fun movement games!
• Rachel's small group will be taking a field trip to the Bell museum on Tuesday. Ross will join the group, and Sheila will be with Ross' group.
• Otto's 5th birthday is on Thursday, however mom will join us on Friday for a cooking project...sounds delicious!
• If you haven't cut down your gardens yet, please invite your child collect some "beautiful things" to add to our natural materials at the art area. Dead-head flowers, tall grasses, and daily-lily flower stems are just a few ideas!

Snack
Monday - Toast & fresh butter (made by the children)
Tuesday - Rice cakes & carrots
Wednesday - Animal crackers
Thursday - Sweet potato crisps & oranges
Friday - Granola and yogurt parfaits (made with Otto's mom, Anjula)
* All snacks served with milk and water, unless otherwise noted *

Overview

This week we are shifting our focus to hibernation. The children had a chance to explore the subject on their own, last week, and now we will focus on the study of this topic all-together. Children will continue to make patterns with beautiful materials and notice patterns in nature. Small groups are starting to wrap up as each group is planning for a culminating event.

Expressive Arts

-Materials: Clay and clay shaping tools. Colored construction paper, colored pencils, crayons, markers, scissors, glue sticks, tape, staplers, and hole punchers. Flat crayons for leaf and bark rubbing.
-Rationale: Provide opportunities for creative expression with a modeling material. To engage in an in-depth investigation of different basic elements of art: texture and color. To provide materials to inspire children's creative expression and explore with a variety of media.
-Skills: Self-expression, creative risk-taking, fine motor strength and development.

Science
-Materials: Leaves, seeds, sticks, bark and other fall items collected in the playground and during our walks, a variety of fall gourds for examination and comparison to apples. Magnifying glasses and baskets/containers for independent sorting. Poster representations of local tree, their leaves, and seeds for comparison. Bird watching station. A balance scale for children to weigh items and compare (i.e. how many crabapples to an apple or how many pinecones for a gourd). An analog scale will be added this week as well, to quantify weights. Clipboards and pencils.
-Rationale: To support children's intrinsic curiosity about the world around them. To support and encourage children's observation of changes in nature, comparison. To encourage literacy and recording abilities.
-Skills: Observation, inquiry, sorting, symbolic representation, identification, comparison, fine-motor, hypothesizing, reasoning about events, measuring, prediction.

Math and Manipulatives
-Materials: pegs and peg boards, inset puzzles emphasizing people and animals, interlocking puzzles reflecting fruits, vegetables and gardens. A variety of seeds with corresponding patterning and counting cards on the light table. Beautiful gems and ribbons.
-Rationale: Our focus this week is on patterning. Children will be encouraged to use pegs to create patterns on pegboards. Gems and ribbons of different colors on the light table are also available to create patterns. They will continue to have opportunities for measuring and ordering skills as they compare weights of different apples, gourds, and other fall items.
-Skills: Patterning, measuring (weighing), sorting, one-to-one correspondence and whole/part relationships, ordering, fine motor development, creative expression, measurement, prediction.

Language and Literacy

-Materials: A variety of writing materials, paper, and envelopes continue to be available. Special signs showing children how to start letters are posted in this area. Mailboxes with children's photos. Our library has a wide variety of books about animals, fall, and families. The loft holds a variety of books related to trees, leaves, seeds, apples, and pumpkins. 

-Rationale: To provide children with many opportunities to enjoy the spoken and written world. Integrate our topics of trees, apples and community into literacy activities and encourage symbolic representation. Foster symbolic representation as children pretend to write letters, stamp them, and mail them.
-Skills: Letter recognition, listening and receptive abilities, fine motor control.

Blocks

-Materials: Logs, sticks, cross-sections tree trunk discs, and small wooden pieces. Hollow blocks and unit blocks, small wooden cars, wooden trains.
-Rationale: To support children's creative and problem solving abilities, develop awareness of geometry and allow for opportunities for sharing, turn taking, and social interactions. To support our exploration of trees inside the classroom, and encourage children to incorporate tree elements into their dramatic play.
-Skills: Construction skills, dramatic play, symbolic representation, problem solving, cooperation.

Dramatic Play

-Materials: Kitchen with dishes and dinning table with chairs. The loft now has a tree created by The Tree Investigators' small group. Soft pillows and stuffed forest animals are located in the upper and lower loft. Animal costumes; bears and birds to enhance the forest and hibernation topics. Real wooden pieces, discs, and sticks are available in the dramatic play area in order for the children to be able to act out and build animal homes. The animal cave/hibernation cave houses sticks, logs, natural fabrics and woodland plastic animals for the children to create habitats for different kinds of animals.
-Rationale: To encourage social interactions. To continue to foster an interest in trees, forests, animals, their homes and hibernation. To support children's understanding of the changes taking place outdoors. The cave provides a cozy close place that promotes small group interaction, and discussions about forest animals, habitats and hibernation. To continue to encourage children's expression of family life by taking/playing on familiar roles.
-Skills: Role-play, peer interaction, social problem solving, creating imaginary scenarios, and taking on various roles.

Large Motor
Gym

The gym continues to offer opportunities for swinging, jumping, and greater balancing challenges.
-Skills: Running and jumping zone: jumping from one space to another, spatial relationship
Monkey bar with swings: core strength, balance, turn-taking
Slide with donut: climbing, visual-depth perception, jumping, sliding, balancing, motor coordination
A frame with balance beam: climbing, balance, motor coordination
Playground
-Materials: Leaf rakes, shovels, buckets, bikes, and wagons; climbing structure, monkey bars, slide, swings, logs.
-Rationale: Offer plenty of opportunities for the children to use their large muscles. Encourage cooperation and social connections through dramatic play. Offer opportunities to enjoy the outdoors, and to notice and investigate the changes taking place.
-Skills: Running, biking, pedaling, hauling, digging, balancing, jumping, upper body strength, coordination, strength and endurance.

Special Interest 

Large Group
The hibernation theme will be further developed in large group.
Cooking
Marais' mom will be cooking with us on Thursday ☺
Oleanna Book Sale
Thursday, November 17th in the gym. Come early and check out her special books.

Thank you,
Kate

We are continuing to look at different characteristics of growth and change as we expand this overarching concept to explore human and animal bodies, color, and trees in the environment. We are excited to have new materials and activities that will be added to our classroom plan. For example, in continuing children's interest in learning about snakes (introduced in one of the small groups), Sheila will be bringing in a beautiful corn snake. This will help the children to extend their thinking about snakes as they explore it using scientific observation as well as creative interpretation. We look forward to many colorful pictures as a result of this activity! In addition, we will also continue our exploration of sorting and matching colors. Our baking project this week also highlights the topic of "change," as the children observe how ingredients combine to create dough, how the dough rises, and eventually how heat bakes it into bread. This week our various small groups continue to delve deeper into their specific topic using hands-on exploration activities. Specific individuals from the community will visit our small group session to deepen children's understanding and interest on their small group topic.

Dramatic Play
•Materials: housekeeping materials (furniture, dishes, food), dress-up fabric and shoes; the caves are set as bedrooms with "beds," baby dolls, and baby-care items such as diapers and baby powder.
•Rationale: to allow for the expression of family life and to encourage social interaction while playing with familiar props. To support the extended, cooperative play as children work together to sustain a pretend play session.
•Skills: creative role-play, peer interaction, social problem solving, and symbolic representation

Blocks

•Materials: large hollow blocks, small multi-shaped unit blocks, wooden doll houses, furniture, peg people, wooden cars, and different colored fabrics. This week, a paper train track will be added to the blocks area to enhance children's interest in creating trains.
•Rationale: to support children's creativity and problem solving skills, to develop mathematical skills/awareness of geometry, and to allow for opportunities for social interaction as children collaborate and build together. To continue the already rich social and creative play surrounding building with hollow blocks, by allowing children to reflect and build upon previous block experiences. To bring interests the children express in other areas of the classroom (i.e. creating trains in the art area) and encourage new ways of thinking about a concept.
•Skills: large motor development, expressive creation, symbolic representation, cooperative play, creative problem solving, social problem solving, mathematical thinking, and counting (one-to-one correspondence).

Sensory
•Materials: water, various size containers and scoops, and buckets.
•Rationale: to cooperatively work together while exploring a familiar sensory experience, to emphasize concepts of volume and conservation. Different containers and scoops will encourage comparisons between the amount of water each container can hold.
•Skills: large and fine motor development, hand-eye coordination, knowledge of conservation, scientific exploration, cooperative play, social relationships building, sharing materials, math concepts related to volume.

Math and Manipulatives
•Materials: puzzles, sorting animals, matching color games, beads and laces, large floor puzzle, and memory game.
•Rationale: to encourage children to work with open-ended materials where they can develop more complex skills and collaborate to support each other's learning, to encourage beginning mathematical concepts, such as counting, sorting, and patterning. More complex puzzles are added to this area to challenge students' problem solving skills as well as to encourage social interaction with the other children. As a continuation to the concept of color, children will have the opportunity to sort color based on a spectrum (lightest to darkest). In addition, lacing with primary color beads will be added to this area with a strong focus on children's understanding of patterning. Different memory games will also be added to this area as strong interest in this type of play is starting to grow especially with the older children in the classroom. A home made Van Gogh puzzle (Starry Night) will also be introduced to this area to enhance children's problem solving skill as well as to promote awareness of color.
•Skills: color recognition, shape recognition, number recognition, seriating (i.e. stacking highest to lowest), matching, one-to-one correspondence, counting, fine motor development, and patterning skills.

Expressive Art
•Materials: primary colors (red, blue, and yellow) mixing at the easel and the are table, natural materials for collage, clay, markers, crayons, colored pencils, scissors, beads and laces.
•Rationale: to explore with hands and tools to promote sensory awareness, increase fine motor skills, foster social relationships as children observe and work together with their peers, and engage in an in-depth investigation of a basic element of art. The exploration of different shades continues as different example photos are provided in order to encourage shade matching. This week, collaborative art (group art) will be encouraged and larger sheets of paper will be provided at table. In addition, beads and laces will also be provided for children to string beads as a take-home product. This week, a special live snake will be brought into the classroom to enhance children's learning about colors and patterns. The children will be involved in observing, replicating, and creating their own interpretation of their experiences with the live snake. The brilliant colors of the corn snake are a perfect introduction to mixing with the color yellow. We are EXCITED!
•Skills: fine motor development (strength, coordination), creativity, symbolic representation, sensory input, color recognition, and comparison between shades.

Science
•Materials: cockroaches, beetles, mealworms, salamander, feeding chart, bean seeds, light tables with x-rays, eye droppers, different water colors, and a pumpkin •Rationale: to support children's curiosity of the natural world around us and to encourage the investigation of nature. Exploration activities in science area are also created to promote early understanding on the needs of other living things. The children are also encouraged to begin using different tools to observe, investigate and record. We will continue mixing watercolors at the light table, and begin keeping track of the different shades we create. We will also continue to observe and record the growth of the bean seed we began to germinate last week. Similar to the idea of investigating the inside of our body, children will also be engage in investigating the inside of a pumpkin at the science table. The children will have the opportunity to cut open the pumpkin and explore the outside and inside make-up of a pumpkin (seeds, pumpkin flesh etc.).
•Skills: observation, scientific investigation and inquiry, outdoor/indoor connection.

Language and Literacy
•Materials: the writing center has a variety of writing utensils, paper, envelopes, staplers, tape, and pictures of children in our classroom.
•Rationale: to involve children in writing and the social activity of note and letter writing. To give children the opportunity to create their own stories and writings. Parent volunteers will be available to facilitate writing at the writing center, extending the children's interests in writing letters to friends and their loved ones.
•Skills: fine motor, pre-writing, and letter recognition.
•Materials: the library has books that are reflective of our continuing curricula such as trees, colors, and the growth and development of our bodies.
•Rationale: to encourage reading time with friends and teachers, encourage exploration of fiction and nonfiction texts. In addition, the children are also encouraged to regard books as a source of information.
•Skills: receptive language, early literacy, listening, and community building.

Large Motor/Gym
•Materials: Monkey bars with swing, Slide, Donut, A framed with multiple balance beam, Jumping an Running station.

•Rationale: To support upper and lower body coordination, strength and balance. To provide opportunities for classifying and identifying shapes and colors. To support social skills, turn taking, and collaboration. This week, a teacher-facilitated "Red Light, Green Light" game will be introduced on the playground to offer another experience to play a game with rules. This organized game will focus on children's body coordination, impulse control, listening skills, and responding to cues.
•Skills: 
Running and jumping zone: jumping from one space to another, spatial relationships. Monkey bar with swings: core strength, balance, and turn taking. Slide with donut: climbing, visual-depth perception, jumping, sliding, balancing, motor coordination. A frame with balance beam: climbing, balance, and motor coordination.

Special Announcements:
Cooking project: Elizabeth will lead in making tasty Bread & Butter cooking on Wednesday. 

Fiza will be lead teaching for the second time this week.

Snacks:
Monday: Peas and Crackers
Wednesday: 
Yogurt and granola
Thursday: Bread & Butter

Overview
The children have continued to be very interested in the woodland creatures and have spent a lot of time making environments for them out of the clay and natural materials. They have also continued to incorporate these animals into their dramatic play, and we will be transforming the back of the room to be more conducive for animal dramatic play. We will rotate the loft to face the block area in order to encourage construction ideas for their play. Various animal-inspired fabrics and costumes, natural materials, and woodland stuffed animals will also be moved underneath the loft. This transformed environment will provide the children with materials and opportunities to deepen their play and better express their growing knowledge.

In addition, we will be creating our own class tree on the loft to accompany the tree that has been started by the afternoon class. The children will work together to brainstorm, create, and assemble the necessary parts and materials. Along with providing another opportunity for collaborative artwork, creating this forest environment will help to encourage the woodland creature dramatic play.

The children will be able to extend their "leaf hunt" field trip experience this week as well. The type of tree that we create as a class will be determined by a class vote on their favorite type of tree from the trip. In addition, the children will be creating smaller scale trees from the leaves they found on our walk, and various activities in the science, math, and literacy centers will also provide them with opportunities to express their learning in this area.

Expressive Arts
-Materials: Cardboard, construction paper, tacky glue, scissors, markers, leaves, sticks, "expandos", small wood pieces, fabric pieces, string, paint, bark pieces
-Rationale: The children have enjoyed creating animal habitats in the block area and with the clay, so these collage materials will provide them with another way to express their ideas and create three-dimensional animal habitats that can be saved and incorporated into play. In addition, some of these materials will also be used for creating our "tree loft" in the back of the room.
-Skills: Self-expression, fine motor strength and control, formulating and expressing ideas, imagination, planning

Sensory
-Materials: Sand table, shovels, pails, sifters, woodland animal figurines, sticks, wood pieces, small rocks
-Rationale: The children have really enjoyed using the sensory table in earlier activities, so the sand table provides another sensory experience that they haven't had in the classroom yet this year. We will begin with basic sand toys for them to explore the new material, then later, the animals and natural materials will be incorporated in order to encourage another outlet for habitat building and animal dramatic play.
-Skills: Fine motor control, observation, familiarity with physical properties, familiarity with simple objects, formulating and expressing ideas, planning

Math and Manipulatives
-Materials: Puzzles that highlight animals and their habitats, objects to create patterns (colored caps, small plastic disks, ribbon pieces, jewel stones, etc.), symbol matching, matching leaf shapes, weight and balance scales
-Rationale: The children have enjoyed puzzles, so highlighting those that picture animals will extend their learning about habitats. They have also been busy creating patterns, so by introducing and rotating new materials, we hope to expand their explorations in this area. The leaf matching will be an extension of our "leaf hunt" field trip last Friday. The use of the balance scales was very popular, so we will now bring in a weight scale as well to extend their experimentation and discovery.
-Skills: Problem-solving, fine-motor control, planning, patterning, grouping, matching, prediction, experimentation

Science
-Materials: "I Spy" game that includes animal habitats, tree/leaf/seed matching activity, leaf poster and leaves to match, pictures from our "leaf hunt"
-Rationale: The children have been very interested in the animals, so we hope that the habitat game will help to extend their knowledge about how and where the animals live. The tree materials will be an extension of the children's discoveries on our "leaf hunt" field trip.
-Skills: Observation, generalizing, hypothesizing, analyzing

Language and Literacy
-Materials: Fiction and nonfiction books about forest-dwelling animals, paper, scissors, markers, tape, staplers at the writing table, labeled pictures of animals and trees
-Rationale: To expand on the children's interest in animals, we will introduce a variety of books about them to be read individually and during story time. We will add labeled pictures of animals and trees to encourage expression of their ideas about these topics.
-Skills: Enjoyment of/familiarity with books, accessing appropriate sources of information, interest in/awareness of print, phonological awareness, comprehension, self-expression, fine-motor control

Blocks
-Materials: Pictures of forest dwelling animals in their homes/habitats, small wood pieces, sticks, logs, bark pieces
-Rationale: The children are very interested in playing with the animals, so highlighting photographs of these animals in their natural environment may serve as inspiration to deepen their play. The incorporation of natural materials both by the unit blocks and the hollow blocks in the back of the room will provide opportunities for the children to express their learning about these animals both in their play with figurines and in their own dramatic play.
-Skills: Self-expression, observation, planning, fine-motor control and strength, large-motor control and strength

Dramatic Play
-Materials: We will rotate the loft to connect more to the block area and add animal inspired fabrics, forest dwelling stuffed animals, natural colored pillows, and natural materials to encourage dramatic play. On the top of the loft, we will focus on birds with various scarves, bird print fabrics, and pictures of birds. We will also provide materials for adding to our tree (such as string, tape, sticks, and the leaves that they've painted) on the top of the loft for them to add during their play.
-Rationale: By rotating the loft toward the block area, we hope to open up the space to inspire deeper dramatic play. Our class tree will also help work toward this goal. The children have displayed a lot of interest in animals, so by providing them with these natural materials and fabric pieces, they will have the opportunity to express their learning and excitement about animals in a very active way.
-Skills: Self-expression, role-play, large-motor control and strength, communication, creativity, social skills, planning, problem-solving

Large Motor
-Materials: Swings, slide, balance beams, wall climber, donut slide, jumping track in the gym. Rakes, tricycles, shovels, buckets, wheelbarrows, and wagons out on the playground. Animal movement songs in the classroom.
-Rationale: To support the development of balance, upper and lower body strength, coordination, and healthy risk-taking. The materials on the playground provide "real-world" physical activity in the form of raking, digging, pulling/pushing wagons and wheelbarrows and help to connect the children to the natural world. The movement songs in the classroom not only extend their learning about animals, but also provide a means for developing large motor strength and coordination.
-Skills: Large motor control and strength, coordination, static and dynamic balance, endurance, propulsion skills, spatial awareness, locomotion skills, flexibility

Snack
Monday - Toast & pumpkin butter
Tuesday - Orange slices & animal crackers
Wednesday - Graham crackers & milk
Thursday - Rice cakes & milk
Friday- Trail mix & milk

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Large Group

Cooking

Connections

Math and Manipulatives

Large Group

Symbolic Play

Language and Literacy

Monday, November 7th, 2011