September 2012 Archives

Overview
The children have been enjoying all that school has to offer! They have been actively engaged with all the materials in the room as well as busy making social connections. Our primary focus for the week is to continue the relationship building process and also to build a sense of classroom community. Our awareness building activities centered around the topic of homes and individuals, will be expanded to consider important elements of one's habitat that exist outside of the home. The children have also been noticing and talking about the falling leaves and are tuned in to seasonal changes in the environment so we will support this in our outdoor explorations as well as indoor investigations.

Expressive Arts
-Materials: Wood scraps, cardboard, and glue. Easel with orange, yellow, and red paint
-Rationale: The wood scraps will promote the construction of homes using a medium that will encourage creativity and design as well as the opportunity to return to the same structure by adding new details over the course of time. The new paint colors will bring fall colors into the children's artwork and inspire interest and discussion about seasonal change.
-Skills: Self-expression, creative risk-taking, construction skills, fluency with materials, color recognition, and fine motor development.

Sensory
-Materials: Water, toy animals that are found in local ponds, foliage, sponges, and small cups.
-Rationale: To promote cooperative, imaginative play within the "pond" landscape and provide opportunities to make comparisons between human and animal habitats.
-Skills addressed: exploring, touching, socio-dramatic play, small group interaction, making comparisons, sensory stimulation and pleasure.

Science
-Materials: Pictures of items that could be found inside or outside of a house. Light table with an assortment of different shapes in a variety of colors. Pumpkins, gourds, a scale, clipboards, colored pencils, and magnifying glasses. We also have Boxy the box turtle.
-Rationale: We have created a sorting activity in which the children build awareness the elements of their habitat that are outside of their homes. We will encourage conversation and support inquiry by asking questions related to the objects and how they meet the needs of people. At the light table the children will have an opportunity to match and compare shape, size, and color of leaves. By introducing the pumpkins and gourds to the science area we hope to begin to build the children's awareness of an additional aspect of the fall season. Additionally, posted questions such as "Which pumpkin is the heaviest?" and "How are pumpkins and gourds the same? How are they different?" will encourage the children to begin to think scientifically by making comparisons and formulating questions.
-Skills: Inquiry, observation, grouping, sorting, asking questions, hypothesizing, and comparing.

Math and manipulatives
-Materials: Large Lego bases, duplos, interlocking puzzles, tangrams, color/shape bingo
-Rationale: The children have been actively engaged in building individual homes so we added larger lego bases to promote communal building and social interaction. At the same time, this will provide the space necessary to represent additional components of their habitats such as the outdoor environment and their neighborhood.
-Skills addressed: Constructive play opportunity to create three-dimensional objects, representational skills, imaginative play, and social-skills

Language and Literacy
-Materials: A variety of writing implements, paper, notebooks, and a posting of the upper and lower case alphabet. A well-stocked library with books about fall related topics including leaves, trees, and animals.
-Rationale: To provide new books in the library that will begin to interest the children in the topic of fall and promote conversation about their own fall experiences.
-Skills: Letter recognition, listening and receptive abilities, fine motor control, familiarity with symbol systems

Blocks
-Materials: Hollow blocks, unit blocks, small wooden cars, and pictures of houses and buildings.
-Rationale: To support the children's block building, we will provide pictures of houses they built previously as well as a wider variety of actual dwellings for reference or to inspire further elaboration and creative building.
-Skills: Construction skills, geometry, spatial skills, dramatic play, symbolic representation, and problem solving.

Special Interest
-Materials: Face matching game
-Rationale: As we continue the process of building classroom community, we created a personalized matching game that will help the children learn the names of their classmates.
-Skills addressed: Community building, matching, name recognition

Large Motor
-Materials: Slide climber, wall mounted ladders, monkey bars, mini-trampoline, and jumping station. The playground will be set up with shovels, buckets, and rakes.
-Rationale: In the gym we will be playing group games to promote a sense of community. The rakes on the playground have inspired the children to make large leaf piles for jumping into.
-Skills: Risk taking, climbing, coordination, upper body strength, depth perception, balance, jumping and landing. On the playground there are opportunities for digging, hauling, pedaling, running.

Snack
Monday - Rice cakes & raisins
Tuesday - Harvest granola bars (dried apple/cranberry)
Wednesday - Trail mix
Thursday - Tortilla crisps & apple slices
Friday- Cooking project (Oatmeal bars)

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Lesson Plan
Marie's Class
October 1 - October 5
Marie and Pam Team Teaching

Overview
We had a wonderful first full week of class! The students are starting to form friendships as they get to know each other and become increasingly comfortable in our classroom environment. Many of our activities and interactions thus far have been focused on facilitating relationships and supporting peer interactions. We will continue to foster the development of these important relationships by providing a variety of opportunities for the children to collaborate and interact throughout the classroom. Additionally, this week we will begin to build the children's awareness of the fall season and all of the rich, tangible changes that come with the change in the weather. Our science area will have pumpkins and gourds for the children to investigate, contrast and compare and we will get outside to observe and take note of the changes that are happening on our very own playground!

Expressive Arts
-Materials: Construction paper, markers, colored pencils, crayons, tape, staplers, and glue sticks. Small blocks of wood, glue, and cardboard bases. Easel with red, yellow, and orange paint.
-Rationale: To facilitate children's creative and artistic expression through the use of new and interesting materials and to foster cognitive flexibility by providing opportunities for children to explore the concept of "homes" through a variety of mediums.
-Skills: Fine motor strength and coordination, color recognition, self-expression, creative risk-taking, fine motor development, symbolic representation

Sensory
-Materials: Water, cups, foliage, snakes, insects, frogs and other assorted "pond animals"

-Rationale: Adding pond animals and foliage to the water table provides an opportunity for the children to expand on their awareness of homes and habitats through symbolic play. As the children play in the water and create homes for their animals, teachers will facilitate their interactions and exploration by asking questions that encourage children to think creatively, problem solve, and make predictions. "What do you think might happen if a snake was swimming in the water and the snake saw a frog? What could the frog do to escape?"

-Skills: Experimentation, symbolic representation, sensory stimulation and pleasure, imaginative and creative play, problem solving, making predictions

Science
-Materials: Pairs of photos of each of the children for a matching game, pumpkins, gourds, a scale, clipboards, colored pencils, and magnifying glasses. We also have Boxy the box turtle.
-Rationale: We will continue to build our classroom community by providing children with the opportunity to play a matching game with photos of themselves and their classmates. By introducing the pumpkins and gourds to the science area we hope to begin to build the children's awareness of the fall season. The observable changes that are occurring outside will provide rich learning opportunities throughout the year. Additionally, posted questions such as "Which pumpkin is the heaviest?" and "How are pumpkins and gourds the same? How are they different?" will encourage the children to begin to think scientifically by making comparisons and formulating questions.
-Skills: Scientific awareness building and investigating, observation skills, sorting, weighing, comparing, matching, fostering a sense of school/classroom community
Math and Manipulatives
-Materials: Color and shape bingo game, shape sorter/stacker, puzzles emphasizing color/shape, interlocking animal puzzles, duplos, large duplo bases, tanagram puzzles and sheets.

-Rationale: We are continuing to provide opportunities for students to sort and classify objects by shape and color to emphasize recognition and labeling and to lay a foundation for later mathematical concept development. Additionally, we have added large duplo bases to the math cave in order to expand the children's use of the duplo blocks. The children have been busy building houses and buildings out of the blocks; the large bases will provide the children with the opportunity to build collaboratively and navigate social interactions as they build multiple structures in a communal space.

-Skills: Color and shape recognition, seriation, whole/part relationships, fine motor skills, opportunities for collaborative problem solving, counting

Language and Literacy
-Materials: A variety of writing implements, paper, notebooks, and a posting of the upper and lower case alphabet. A well stocked library with books about families, animals, fall, and habitats.

-Rationale: The library is placed near the couch for cozy reading time with new friends and teachers. Throughout the room there will be many opportunities to enjoy the spoken and written word.

-Skills: Pre-/early literacy skills, letter recognition, listening and receptive abilities, fine motor control, familiarity with symbol systems, creating a school / classroom community

Blocks
-Materials: Hollow blocks and unit blocks with small wooden cars, pictures of structures and buildings that the children have made.

-Rationale: The blocks will continue to provide a variety of opportunities for children to explore peer relationships and social interactions as they collaborate and build together. Explorations in the block area support children's creativity and problem solving skills while developing their awareness of geometry through building.

-Skills: Large-/fine motor skills, dramatic play, symbolic representation, problem solving, cooperative play

Dramatic Play
-Materials: Kitchen with dishes, fruits and veggies, and dress-up clothes. The loft has dolls with books and items to use to care for the babies. The stuffed dogs and cats have been moved to the loft as well. In the animal cave there is a small dollhouse with people and assorted pieces of small furniture. There are also small beavers, hedgehogs, squirrels, pine trees and other natural materials.
-Rationale: The kitchen / home dramatic play area will continue to provide the children with opportunities to engage in social interactions while playing with familiar props. The new materials in the cave will encourage children to expand their awareness of homes and habitats by providing children with the opportunity to contrast and compare the concepts of "inside" vs. "outside."

-Skills: Comparison, outdoor/indoor connection, role-play, peer interaction, social problem solving, creating imaginary scenarios, symbolic representation

Large Motor
-Materials: Slide climber, wall mounted ladders, monkey bars, mini-trampoline, and jumping station. Beginning this week the playground will be set up with shovels, buckets, bikes, and wagons. On the playground we will also encourage exploration of the natural areas and draw children's attention to the vegetable garden, plant and animal life.

-Rationale: We will continue to use the simple set-up in the gym. It is inviting and allows us to assess gross motor abilities and confidence.

-Skills: Risk taking, climbing, coordination, upper body strength, depth perception, balance, jumping and landing. On the playground there are opportunities for digging, hauling, pedaling, running. Both areas provide endless opportunities for cooperative play and community building.

Snack
Monday- Pretzels and raisins
Wednesday- Applesauce and graham crackers
Thursday- Pumpkin smoothies

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Overview: This school year has already gotten off to a busy start, as the children have eagerly engaged with a variety of materials offered in the classroom. This week, we will introduce some new materials to help extend the rich play that the children demonstrated last week. Several other areas of the classroom will remain the same to help foster familiarity with materials and allow the children to continue to build comfort with the classroom and develop deeper relationships with peers and teachers. We will also continue to support the exploration of our overarching theme of homes and habitats by including pictures of homes in our dramatic play/housekeeping area, encouraging house building in the block area, and providing "building" materials to use for collage in the art area. Finally, a cooking project will take place this week to provide the class with the opportunity to communally prepare and eat a nutritious snack.

Expressive Arts (paint, collage, clay)

•Materials: primary colors (blue, red, yellow) at the easel, natural materials for collage, (sticks, corks, popsicle sticks,) clay, markers, crayons, colored pencils, scissors

•Rationale: to explore with hands and tools to promote sensory awareness, increase fine motor skills, and foster social relationships as children observe and work together with their peers. To offer materials that can extend children's interests in building nests and other animal homes.

•Skills: fine motor development (strength, coordination), creativity, symbolic representation, sensory input, color recognition, indoor/outdoor connection

Sensory (sand, scoops, funnels, containers)

•Materials: sand with shovels, funnels, and miscellaneous containers for scooping and pouring, "castle" molds, seashells

•Rationale: to cooperatively work together while exploring a familiar sensory experience. To extend imaginative play involving castle building.

•Skills: large and fine motor development, hand-eye coordination, knowledge of conservation, cooperative play, symbolic representation, observation skills, social relationships building, sharing materials, cause and effect relationships.

Science

•Materials: cockroaches, beetles, mealworms, rats, magnifying glasses, examples of different animal homes: birds' nests, wasps nests, etc. Pictures of different types of homes and habitats.
•Rationale: to support children's curiosity of the natural world around us and to encourage the investigation of nature. These year-long members of our classroom provide a variety opportunities to understand the needs and behaviors of living things. This week, they serve to build awareness of the idea of homes and where animals live.

•Skills: observation, scientific investigation and inquiry, outdoor/indoor connection, hypothesizing, developing curiosity.

Dramatic Play

•Materials: housekeeping materials (furniture, dishes, food) and dress-up fabric and shoes; one cave is set as bedrooms with "beds," baby dolls, and baby-care items, another cave contains stuffed dogs and cats and animal care items, pictures of different types of kitchens (including some from children's homes)
•Rationale: to allow for the expression of family life and to encourage social interaction while playing with familiar props. To create home-school connections. To help foster relationships between peers as they cooperate and play together in shared story-lines.

•Skills: creative role-play, peer interaction, social problem solving, symbolic representation

Math and Manipulatives

•Materials: puzzles, seriation stacker, cookie shape matching game, wooden building set, geometrical shapes peg board, counting pegs and numbered peg-boards, classroom pictures matching game.

•Rationale: to encourage children to work with open-ended materials where they can develop more complex skills and work together in a group. New puzzles are added to the manipulative area to continue to provide challenges in this popular area of the classroom. Other materials are added to emphasize one-to-one correspondence as well as matching concepts such as "same and different."

•Skills: color recognition, shape recognition, seriating (i.e. stacking highest to lowest), one-to-one correspondence, counting, fine motor development, geometrical awareness, hand-eye coordination, part-whole relationships, matching and sorting.

Language and Literacy

•Materials: the writing center has a variety of writing utensils, paper, envelopes, staplers, tape, scissors, computer/word processing program.
•Rationale: to foster experiences with the alphabetic principle. To give children the opportunity to create their own stories and writings.
•Skills: fine motor, pre-writing, letter recognition, symbolic reasoning.

•Materials: the library has books that might be familiar to the children on topics about homes, school, families, and friendship.
•Rationale: to encourage cozy reading time with friends and teachers

•Skills: receptive language, phonological awareness, early literacy, listening, community building

Blocks

•Materials: large hollow blocks, small multi-shaped unit blocks, wooden doll house, furniture, peg people, wooden cars, books related to homes and buildings.

•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 support imaginative and creative exploration. To provide a place to explore the creation of homes while offering sources of information to inform home building.

•Skills: large motor development, expressive creation, symbolic representation, cooperative play, problem solving, mathematical, using books as resources.

Large Motor

•Materials: gym--A-frame jumping station, wall mounted ladders, monkey bars, trampoline, steps and ladder.
•Rationale: a simple set-up in the gym is inviting and allows the children to explore gross motor abilities and gain confidence

•Skills: Risk taking, climbing, coordination, upper body strength, depth perception, balance, jumping and landing

•Materials: playground--shovels, buckets, bikes, and wagons

•Rationale: to support basic motor skills, and to promote social interaction and role play as children dig, haul, run, and pedal

•Skills: upper and lower body development, physical fitness, coordination, and perceptual motor skills (spatial, temporal, directional, and body awareness)

Special Interest

Large Group Meeting--music and movement will be used to help the children learn each other's names and the classroom routines. This time together emphasizes togetherness and fosters the building of classroom community.

Cooking Project--This week the children will help cut up a pumpkin from our playground and use it to cook some pumpkin soup for our Wednesday snack. The book Pumpkin Soup will also be used to highlight this community building experience.

Snack

Tuesday: Raisins and Pretzels

Wednesday: Pumpkin Soup

Thursday: Toasted Pumpkin Seeds and Apple Slices

Lesson Plan-Ayuko's 2AM Classroom
Week of 10/2
Ayuko, Katya, Megan, and Grace Co-Lead Teaching

Overview: We will be focusing on a few themes that have been developing naturally in the classroom and the world around them: Fall/Autumn, Bodies, and Relationships. As the children are beginning to adjust and settle into our classroom routine and environment, we are starting to see budding relationships. They are starting to see the physical and social similarities and differences in each other. This will also be a great opportunity to dig deeper into the seasonal change that is happening at this moment. Day by day it is getting colder, so how will this affect us and the environment? The curriculum areas are arranged to promote these themes. Morning large group times will also consist of well-known songs and songs that include languages spoken in their own homes in order to provide familiarity and help the children's transitions throughout the morning.

Expressive Arts
• Materials: Wooden paint brushes, paper, and fall color paints (red, yellow, and green)
Rationale: To promote awareness of what is considered to be fall colors. To explore brush strokes and
color mixing.
Skills: Fine motor control, experimentation, observation, and hand-eye coordination.
• Materials: Playdough, oven, stove top, baking, and a variety of molding tools.
Rationale: To support the children's interest in cooking and produce an outlet for creative expression and
social interaction.
Skills: Fine motor development (squeezing, poking, and pinching), observation, generating ideas, and sensory input.
• Materials: Paper, markers, crayons, bingo markers, stickers, and scissors.
Rationale: To explore the properties of a variety of art materials.
Skills: Fine motor control and hand-eye coordination.

Sensory
• Materials: Basters, measuring cups, funnels, large and small jars.
Rationale: To begin experimenting with another tool that holds water. To develop the concept of empty and full, less and more, and in and out. To encourage social awareness as children notice what those across from them are doing with the same materials
Skills: Observation, math skills (volume and spatial relations), comparison, prediction, and fine motor.
• Materials: Mini rain sticks.
Rational: To promote experimentation with sound and how to produce sound.
Skills: Physical coordination, observation, and sensory input.

Science
• Materials: Natural materials such as various types of leaves, paper, crayons, and magnifying glasses.
Rationale: To observe and feel the texture of the leaves, make leaf rubbings in order to see
more details such as the veins in the leaves. To start becoming aware of the changes happening
in the world around them, particularly in the leaves, as we enter fall.
Skills: Observation, exploration, try out, comparison, and fine motor.

Dramatic Play
• Materials: Flannel board with fall themed flannel cutouts, multiethnic babies, and materials for the loft (baby bed, blankets, carriers)
Rationale: To create spaces in the classroom where children are encouraged to pair up and interact together in smaller groups.
Skills: Social skills, fine motor skills, role playing, symbolic representation, communication (speaking and listening), and turn taking
• Materials: Familiar household kitchen items and dump trucks and cars.
Rationale: To support pretend play, symbolic play, foster social interaction and cooperative play.
Skills: Communication, cooperation, turn taking, role play, symbolic representation, and social skills.
• Materials: Dresses, skirts, jackets, hats, shoes, aprons, and a mirror.
Rationale: To support pretend play, body awareness, foster social interactions, and notice similarities and differences amongst each other and help recognize the ability to change appearance with the use of the dress up clothes.
Skills: Role-play, communication, compare and contrast, cooperation, and social skills.
• Materials: Stuffed bears, pillows, sheer sheets, scarves, bear costumes, visuals (pictures, felt
story board, song lyrics), and books.
Rationale: To promote more intimate social interactions between children and teachers, provide a cozy "cave" like environment to stimulate pretend play about animals that live in caves.
Skills: Social skills, communication, cooperation, turn taking, role play, and literacy.

Math and Manipulatives
• Materials: Pictures of the children in 3x5 frames.
Rationale: To continue to encourage relationships between classmates and foster their awareness of each other. Framed pictures of the children will be placed in a visible part of the classroom where they are encouraged to notice them and examine them closer.
Skills: Social skills, turn taking, visual discrimination, communication.
• Materials: Pegs and peg boards, shape sorters, and puzzles.
Rationale: To promote fine motor development, one to one correspondence, patterning, shape differentiation, and hand-eye coordination for spatial awareness.
Skills: visual discrimination, turn taking, fine motor control.

Language and Literacy
• Materials: Felt stories, Signs, questions, and related books posted in various curriculum areas and a variety of books on the book shelf.
Rationale: To provide a variety of media to support their development in language and literacy and emergent reading. To provide familiar stories to help the children feel more comfortable in school.
Skills: Listening, speaking, reading, phonological awareness, vocabulary expansion.

Blocks
• Materials: Hollow, foam, plank, and cardboard blocks.
Rationale: To begin supporting the interest in creating ramps using new block materials. To support mathematical skills, social interaction, and collaborative building. To be incorporated into buildings, ramps, and roads for the vehicles located nearby.
Skills: Communication, collaboration, large motor, expressive creation, mathematical and scientific concepts.

Large Motor
• Materials: Indoors - Climbing equipments, monkey bars, stairs, slide, and trampoline. Outside - Gardening bed with fruit and vegetables, rakes, shovels, buckets, yellow race cars, natural materials such as tall grass, stumps, plants, and trees, wooden house, picnic table, and teeter totter.
Rationale: To promote social interaction, experiment with how our bodies move, and.support basic skills such as jumping, climbing, balance, coordination, and upper and lower body development and promote social interaction and role play.
Skills: Perceptual Motor Skills (spatial, temporal, directional, and body awareness), and physical fitness (cardio vascular endurance, muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, and agility), taking turns, negotiating, social awareness.

Large group
• Materials: name and hello songs, books, body shape and size awareness activities, leaf rubbing demonstration, fingerplay.
Rationale: To familiarize the children with each other's names, promote awareness of a variety of languages spoken at home, and begin introducing some curriculum themes that will begin to develop this week.
Skills: fine motor development, hand eye coordination, listening, speaking, patience, taking turns, communication, and social skills.

Music
• Materials: song lyric printouts with helpful visual cues, a wider selection of musical instruments, songs on a CD, and scarves.
Rationale: To incorporate songs that the children might be more familiar with in order to help them feel more comfortable in the classroom. To promote exploration of sound, volume, rhythm and social interaction. To hear music (the different tempos, volumes, feeling associated with the
song) and respond with various body movements, instruments, and/or scarves to interpret the music.
Skills: turn taking, mathematical concepts such as beats and patterns, body awareness, large and fine motor abilities, social interactions, and the ability to hear differences in songs and music.

Snacks:
Tuesday: Rice cakes and raisins
Friday: Class made pumpkin muffins

Lesson Plan-Ayuko's 3AM Classroom
Week of 10/1
Ayuko, Katya, Megan, and Grace Co-Lead Teaching

Overview: We will be focusing on a few themes that have been developing naturally in the classroom and the world around them: Fall/Autumn, Bodies, and Relationships. As the children are beginning to adjust and settle into our classroom routine and environment, we are starting to see budding relationships. They are starting to see the physical and social similarities and differences in each other. This will also be a great opportunity to dig deeper into the seasonal change that is happening at this moment. Day by day it is getting colder, so how will this affect us and the environment? The curriculum areas are arranged to promote these themes. Morning large group times will also consist of well-known songs and songs that include languages spoken in their own homes in order to provide familiarity and help the children's transitions throughout the morning.

Expressive Arts
• Materials: Wooden paint brushes, paper, and fall color paints (red, yellow, and green)
Rationale: To promote awareness of what is considered to be fall colors. To explore brush strokes and
color mixing.
Skills: Fine motor control, experimentation, observation, and hand-eye coordination.
• Materials: Playdough, oven, stove top, baking, and a variety of molding tools.
Rationale: To support the children's interest in cooking and produce an outlet for creative expression and
social interaction.
Skills: Fine motor development (squeezing, poking, and pinching), observation, generating ideas, and sensory input.
• Materials: Paper, markers, crayons, bingo markers, stickers, and scissors.
Rationale: To explore the properties of a variety of art materials.
Skills: Fine motor control and hand-eye coordination.

Sensory
• Materials: Basters, measuring cups, funnels, large and small jars.
Rationale: To begin experimenting with another tool that holds water. To develop the concept of empty and full, less and more, and in and out. To encourage social awareness as children notice what those across from them are doing with the same materials
Skills: Observation, math skills (volume and spatial relations), comparison, prediction, and fine motor.
• Materials: Mini rain sticks.
Rational: To promote experimentation with sound and how to produce sound.
Skills: Physical coordination, observation, and sensory input.

Science
• Materials: Natural materials such as various types of leaves, paper, crayons, and magnifying glasses.
Rationale: To observe and feel the texture of the leaves, make leaf rubbings in order to see
more details such as the veins in the leaves. To start becoming aware of the changes happening
in the world around them, particularly in the leaves, as we enter fall.
Skills: Observation, exploration, try out, comparison, and fine motor.

Dramatic Play
• Materials: Flannel board with fall themed flannel cutouts, multiethnic babies, and materials for the loft (baby bed, blankets, carriers)
Rationale: To create spaces in the classroom where children are encouraged to pair up and interact together in smaller groups.
Skills: Social skills, fine motor skills, role playing, symbolic representation, communication (speaking and listening), and turn taking
• Materials: Familiar household kitchen items and dump trucks and cars.
Rationale: To support pretend play, symbolic play, foster social interaction and cooperative play.
Skills: Communication, cooperation, turn taking, role play, symbolic representation, and social skills.
• Materials: Dresses, skirts, jackets, hats, shoes, aprons, and a mirror.
Rationale: To support pretend play, body awareness, foster social interactions, and notice similarities and differences amongst each other and help recognize the ability to change appearance with the use of the dress up clothes.
Skills: Role-play, communication, compare and contrast, cooperation, and social skills.
• Materials: Stuffed bears, pillows, sheer sheets, scarves, bear costumes, visuals (pictures, felt
story board, song lyrics), and books.
Rationale: To promote more intimate social interactions between children and teachers, provide a cozy "cave" like environment to stimulate pretend play about animals that live in caves.
Skills: Social skills, communication, cooperation, turn taking, role play, and literacy.

Math and Manipulatives
• Materials: Pictures of the children in 3x5 frames.
Rationale: To continue to encourage relationships between classmates and foster their awareness of each other. Framed pictures of the children will be placed in a visible part of the classroom where they are encouraged to notice them and examine them closer.
Skills: Social skills, turn taking, visual discrimination, communication.
• Materials: Pegs and peg boards, shape sorters, and puzzles.
Rationale: To promote fine motor development, one to one correspondence, patterning, shape differentiation, and hand-eye coordination for spatial awareness.
Skills: visual discrimination, turn taking, fine motor control.

Language and Literacy
• Materials: Felt stories, Signs, questions, and related books posted in various curriculum areas and a variety of books on the book shelf.
Rationale: To provide a variety of media to support their development in language and literacy and emergent reading. To provide familiar stories to help the children feel more comfortable in school.
Skills: Listening, speaking, reading, phonological awareness, vocabulary expansion.

Blocks
• Materials: Hollow, foam, plank, and cardboard blocks.
Rationale: To begin supporting the interest in creating ramps using new block materials. To support mathematical skills, social interaction, and collaborative building. To be incorporated into buildings, ramps, and roads for the vehicles located nearby.
Skills: Communication, collaboration, large motor, expressive creation, mathematical and scientific concepts.

Large Motor
• Materials: Indoors - Climbing equipments, monkey bars, stairs, slide, and trampoline. Outside - Gardening bed with fruit and vegetables, rakes, shovels, buckets, yellow race cars, natural materials such as tall grass, stumps, plants, and trees, wooden house, picnic table, and teeter totter.
Rationale: To promote social interaction, experiment with how our bodies move, and.support basic skills such as jumping, climbing, balance, coordination, and upper and lower body development and promote social interaction and role play.
Skills: Perceptual Motor Skills (spatial, temporal, directional, and body awareness), and physical fitness (cardio vascular endurance, muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, and agility), taking turns, negotiating, social awareness.

Large group
• Materials: name and hello songs, books, body shape and size awareness activities, leaf rubbing demonstration, fingerplay.
Rationale: To familiarize the children with each other's names, promote awareness of a variety of languages spoken at home, and begin introducing some curriculum themes that will begin to develop this week.
Skills: fine motor development, hand eye coordination, listening, speaking, patience, taking turns, communication, and social skills.

Music
• Materials: song lyric printouts with helpful visual cues, a wider selection of musical instruments, songs on a CD, and scarves.
Rationale: To incorporate songs that the children might be more familiar with in order to help them feel more comfortable in the classroom. To promote exploration of sound, volume, rhythm and social interaction. To hear music (the different tempos, volumes, feeling associated with the
song) and respond with various body movements, instruments, and/or scarves to interpret the music.
Skills: turn taking, mathematical concepts such as beats and patterns, body awareness, large and fine motor abilities, social interactions, and the ability to hear differences in songs and music.

Snacks:
Monday: Class made apple sauce and graham crackers
Wednesday: Rice cakes and raisins
Thursday: Pears and cheerios

Weekly Lesson Plan for Ross' Class
October 1-5, 2012
Lead Teaching This Week: Team Teaching

Overview: The first two weeks have wrapped up, and it is safe to say our class has quickly settled into the daily routines as well as have excitedly met their new classmates - resulting in many new friendships! Being that our class is consists of all returning children to the Lab School, the quick settling-in is no surprise; however it also makes it clear that we will need to add some more supporting materials to various learning centers. The children are raring to go - excited to learn and make new friends. And although the group has settled in quite comfortably, we will continue to foster the social/classroom community during these next several weeks. With that, even as "veterans" of the school, some children need more time to fully warm up to the idea of coming back to Lab School. Please let me know if your child is sharing any apprehensions about coming back, and we will make sure to give them the extra support they need.

Expressive Arts (paint, collage, clay)
• Materials: primary color paint at the easel, various natural and "beautiful" materials for collage (e.g. wood shavings, pinecones, seed pods, leaves, shells, corks, cardboard pieces, other "house" like props, etc.), markers, crayons, clay (with supportive tools: mallets and wood knives)
• Rationale: The art table has been a popular place for a select group of children; seeing the regular visitors nearly every day. However, to build the interest for others (as well as tying in our focus on homes), some "house-like" props have been added to hopefully inspire some new visitors to stop by and start creating!
• Skills: color recognition, creativity, fine-motor strength/coordination, artistic expression, symbolic representation, social skills

Sensory (sand table)
• Materials: sand will be available with scoops/shovels, funnels, buckets, seashells
• Rationale: The sand has been a very popular area, especially with the new possibility of building sand castles. Water was added to the sand table to keep the dust done, and the sand castle creating exploded! We have added shells to support the new "home" building, and will watch to see what happens next.
• Skills: large-/fine-motor strength, eye-to-hand coordination, math conceptions related to counting/measurement/comparing-contrasting, cause-and-effect, fostering new/existing social relationships

Science
• Materials: various bird nests/animal homes, animal homes matching game, critters living in the science area (i.e. hissing cockroaches, mealworms, and a tiger salamander), magnifying glasses, clipboards, and pencils
• Rationale: The children have really enjoyed checking in on the creatures nearly every day - the most exciting being the rats and their new (bigger) home. A group of children helped create a care sheet for the rats, thinking about the things they needed (i.e. food, water, a clean cage). We will continue to investigate the rats' new home; critically thinking about what else they may need, as well as taking a similar look at the cages/homes for the mealworms and cockroaches.
• Skills: scientific awareness building and investigating, observation skills, critical thinking skills, strengthening home-to-school connection, foster sense of school/classroom community

Dramatic Play
• Materials: "house" furniture (e.g. stove, fridge, sink, and cupboard), plates, pretend food, shoes, fabric, stuffed animals, baby-dolls, and care supplies
• Rationale: The "house" has been one of the hottest spots in the classroom: many coming to prepare food for fellow classmates and teachers, while others are inclined to take care of the babies and pets. To build a more personal connection to the area, as well as bring in our focus on homes, the children will be asked to bring in a picture of their home this week- starting with the kitchen. We are hoping that bringing in a picture of their home will inspire the telling/reenacting stories from home and strengthening the home-to-school connection.
• Skills: imaginative/creative play, symbolic representation, fostering social relationships

Math and Manipulatives
• Materials: seriated Montessori beads, puzzles, and multi-colored wood pegs and connectors
• Rationale: New puzzles have been added to the math table, as it was clear our group was ready for some new challenges! We will also begin exploring the math concept of matching by bringing in manipulative sets that challenge to children to match items by various qualifiers. Matching is a key concept necessary for later mathematical thinking and conceptual development.
• Skills: matching, color recognition, seriation (i.e. stacking highest to lowest), patterning, counting, one-to-one correspondence, sorting, opportunities for collaborative problem solving

Language and Literacy
• Materials: pencils, markers, paper, envelopes, staplers, tape
• Rationale: As many of you might have already seen, there have been many letters written and brought home for many family members. To help personalize these letters, as well as foster pre-/early-literacy skills, we added a picture-sorting tray - loaded with many copies of each child's picture in its own tray. This allows children to "sign" their letter with their picture, and "address" a letter to a new friend!
• Skills: pre-/early-literacy skills, social skills, letter recognition, introduction to storytelling, fine-motor coordination/endurance (as children hand muscles grow stronger with holding writing utensils)

Blocks
• Materials: large hollow blocks, small multi-shaped unit blocks, peg people, wood houses
• Rationale: The other "hot spot" in the room is the block area. Many children find their way to the back of the room every day, and begin a large-scale building project. So far, we have seen: trucks, princess houses, super-hero houses, giant "stairs," telescopes, and even a new "play" area for the rats (which will still be up Monday morning). This area will be a great spot to bring children together and foster the new friendships that are quickly forming!
• Skills: large-/fine-motor skills, symbolic representation, concepts of balance, counting, comparing/contrasting skills, social relationships, opportunities for endless dramatic play

Large Motor
• Materials: in the GYM: A-frame, slide, jumping station with padded donut landing zone, climbing wall, monkey bars, trampoline
on the PLAYGROUND: climber, slides, swings, and lush grasses and tress provided by Mother Nature
• Rationale: The children are quite eager to get the to gym every morning, and the past week we have started our time with a group game. Having the group come in and play a game helps develop waiting, turn-taking, and inhibitory control skills (a.k.a. executive function skills) as they start their time with a teacher-facilitated activity. Ask your children about the jumping games of "1,2, or 3," "Through the Hoop," as well as the class-favorite "Sleeping Children." Outside, the rakes, shovels, and buckets have been added to support all the play taking place on every inch of the playground. The stick house has also become a favorite place for many!
• Skills: large-motor strength/coordination/endurance, eye-to-hand and eye-to-foot coordination, body in motion (i.e. jumping and sliding), cardiovascular strength, depth perception, turn taking, social

Special Interest (large group, music, cooking, fire drill, etc)
• The "Dish Helper Chart" is posted on the door of the classroom. Thanks to those that have signed up! We still have a few more days and would greatly appreciate just a bit more help!
• Stay tuned for the "homework assignments" coming from Anna and Rebekah this week!
• The first PAC meeting is Monday Oct. 8 from 7-8.30p. Again, the participation, idea-sharing, and discussions that take place during these meetings really help make our school a great place for all families!
• Creativity Night is coming soon...put Tuesday Oct 16 from 6-7.30p on the calendar and we'll see you there!

Snack
Monday - Rice cakes & raisins
Tuesday - lass-made applesauce
Wednesday - Harvest granola bars (dried apple/cranberry)
Thursday - Tortilla crisps & apple slices
Friday- Cheerios & milk
*All snacks served with milk/water unless otherwise noted*

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7.30-8.30 Teachers arrive, set up the environment, and discuss the day

8.30-9.00 Arrival/Exploration Time/Gym: teachers walk children into the building, and help them start the day. Children choose an activity in the front of the room: art, puzzles, manipulatives, sensory table, playdough, computer, science exploration, writing center, or "the caves"

9.00-9.15 Large Group: children come together to share music, stories, as well as new information pertaining to classroom interests, events, or projects

9.15-10.15 Activity Time/Free-play: children will join a teacher-facilitated group with their peers and participate in an activity relevant to the topics being explored in the room; afterwards they may finish an activity they started during arrival/exploration time or choose from additional activities throughout the room

10.15-10.25 Clean-up and handwashing

10.25-10.45 Whole-group snack: a daily community-building experience that allows teachers and children to connect with one another; reflecting on the day, as well as sharing information/stories to help strength social relationships

10.45-11.15 Toileting, getting ready to go outside, and playing on the playground

11.15-11.30 Pick-up/end of the day story reading

11.30-1.00 Teachers clean-up the room and discuss the day

*Note: the schedule will change slightly once "small groups" begin in October. Free-play will include "open snack" (i.e. children choose when to come to the table and have snack) rather than whole-group snack. Small groups will take the place of the whole-group snack on the schedule and will be held on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays*