November 2012 Archives

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Weekly Plan November 26 - December 3
Lesson Plan
Marie's Class
Marie Lead Teaching

Overview
As we wind up our fall semester, the children continue to enthusiastically explore the various curriculum themes that have sprouted up around the classroom. Opportunities for color mixing and experimentation are available in the art area and the light table, clay and wire inspire artistic creativity and expression in the art area while simultaneously inspiring texture exploration in the science area. Storytelling continues to be a popular choice for many students; there are opportunities to listen to familiar songs and stories in the caves, writing prompts for stories in the writing center, and opportunities for students to act out their own narratives in the dramatic play center. In light of the myriad of changes (schedule and otherwise) that accompany wrapping up the semester, the teachers have decided to minimize the changes taking place in the curriculum.. We will have the materials detailed below through the end of the semester!

Expressive Arts
-Materials: Construction paper, markers, colored pencils, crayons, oil pastels, tape, staplers, glue sticks, paint and sponges, pipettes, clay, animal figurines, wire and natural fall materials.
-Rationale: The clay continues to be a hot spot in the classroom. We have added several forest animal creatures to the clay table to inspire the children and provide focus to their exploration of the clay. After a test run on Thursday this addition has proven to captivate the children's imagination and spark new interest in the material. In addition, we will continue to have materials available for the children to create leaf and bark rubbings to explore textural art, and collage making materials for sensory exploration. Color mixing will be a new feature in the art area this week. Children will have an opportunity to experiment with mixing colored water using a pipette to make various combinations of colors. We will also be adding white and black paint to the paint easel for the children to experiment with the concepts of light and dark.
-Skills: Fine motor strength and coordination, color recognition, self-expression, creative risk-taking, fine motor development, symbolic representation, problem solving, creative exploration.

Sensory
-Materials: Flax seed, sieves, tools for measuring and pouring , small rubber balls, small forest animals
-Rationale: The flax seed has been one of the more popular activities in the room. The children have generated many ideas regarding the origins of the seeds. Their creative processes have flourished in their discussions and collaborations with one another at the table and we will continue to utilize their interests by incorporating new animals and other small motor materials.
-Skills: Experimentation, symbolic representation, sensory stimulation and pleasure, imaginative and creative play problem solving, cause and effect, fine motor

Science
-Materials: Table one: Sticks, straw, leaves, and other nest making materials, magnifying glasses and a tray to build the nest, tweezers, bird and owl figures. The table will also have synthetic owl pellets with artificial bird and mouse bones inside for the children to piece together, and a squirrel skull that one of the students found outside the school. Table two: Various seeds, planters, shovels, spray bottles, measuring tape, milk weeds
-Rationale: Manny's small group has closely examined owls and their habitats which has led to some larger group discussions about predators and prey. To support this growing interest and build awareness about owls and their place in the food chain, we have placed two synthetic owl pellets containing animal bones in the science center for the children to dissect with tweezers. The teachers hope that the owl pellets, along with the squirrel skull, will provide the students with a unique, hands-on way to explore the larger themes of predator and prey. Table two will continue to display a diverse selection of seeds including flax seeds. The children have displayed curiosity about the origins of many of these seeds. The table will include materials for planting and plant care to strengthen their care taking skills and inspire scientific inquiry.
-Skills: Scientific awareness building and investigating, observation skills, comparing, predicting, problem solving, fine motor control, measurement

Math and Manipulate Cave / Light Table
-Materials: Alphabet matching game, puzzles, peg boards and plastic pegs, animal figurines, various colors of animals for sorting, and Legos.
-Rationale: The Legos have been an exciting addition to the children's dramatic play scenarios; this week we will incorporate animal's into the cave to inspire animal home building. The light table will contain various color mixing materials, which will provide the children with another opportunity to experiment with different color combinations. There will also be colored animals figurines for sorting according to colors and/or animal groups.
-Skills: Color and shape recognition, spatial relationships, fine motor skills, comparing and contrasting, pattern making, sorting objects into groups.

Language and Literacy
-Materials: A variety of writing implements, paper, notebooks, a posting of the upper and lower case alphabet, blank books and story phrases, magnetic alphabet. We will continue to provide a well-stocked library with a variety of book. Special thanks to the families that donated books from the Oleanda Book Fair! Our library will now include themes of winter, Thanksgiving and animal hibernation.
-Rationale: Our class has taken a great interest in creating alternate endings to familiar songs and stories. We spent one large group talking about all the different ways the song about Scamper the mouse could end. Teachers encouraged children to write and draw these stories (and many others) in the blank books at the literacy table. Teachers also added familiar story phrases (Once upon and time, The End) to the literacy area, so that children could use these words in their books.
-Skills: Pre-/early literacy skills, letter recognition, listening and receptive abilities, fine motor control, familiarity with symbol systems, creating a school / classroom community, creative risk-taking

Blocks
-Materials: Hollow blocks and unit blocks with small wooden cars, pictures of structures and buildings that the children have made, tubes, steering wheels.
-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. We are adding plastic and metal pieces to extend these ideas and to support the grocery store theme in the loft and kitchen areas.
-Skills: Large-/fine motor skills, dramatic play, symbolic representation, problem solving, cooperative play

Dramatic Play
- Materials: Grocery store items: apron, hats, shelves, cash register, pretend money, wallets, reusable grocery bags, food boxes, construction paper, crayons, scissors, tape, tree mural.
Forest Habitat (in the upper part of the loft): various pieces of bark, pine cones, stuffed animal forest critters, fabrics, artificial plants, photos of forest animals, forest animal books, and pillows.
Dramatic Play Cave: Tape players and tapes of familiar stories and songs with corresponding materials to enact the song/story as through symbolic play.
-Rationale: Our grocery store is packed full! Thank you to all the families for their donations of empty jars and boxes! We will continue to support the children's story lines and dramatic play scenarios as they explore the "grocery store" this week. We have also created a forest habitat in the upper portion of the loft. Here the children will be able to dress up like animals and use stuffed forest creatures to expand their exploration of animal habitats, a theme that has been popping up around the room.
The dramatic play cave will have props for acting out familiar stories and inventing new stories. There will also be tape players for children to listen to stories and songs with their peers.
-Skills: Symbolic play, comparing/contrasting, peer interaction, social problem solving, critical thinking, listening.

Large Motor
Materials: A-frame with ball, donut jumper, stairs, wall climber, obstacle course (cones, broom sticks, mats) track and scooters (hula-hoops, directional arrows, crosswalk).

Rationale: To support social skills and cooperation; upper and lower body muscles, endurance, and to work on skills such as balance, jumping, climbing, and coordination.

Skills: Muscular strength, stretching, stopping, pulling, cardiovascular endurance, dynamic balance, directional awareness, stretching, walking and hopping; dynamic balance (jumping, landing) propulsion skills, spacial awareness, turn-taking, and social awareness

Snack
Monday- Celery & Sunbutter
Wednesday- Apples and whole wheat cracker
Thursday- Class Party

Overview: Welcome back to school! As the children return from the long winter break, many aspects of the classroom remain the same so the children can easily transition back into the classroom routine, and start back where they left off with materials and peers. For example, our housekeeping and babies area remains consistent to continue to encourage the exciting cooking, eating, and caretaking play that was taking place this fall. Additionally, our ongoing exploration of homes and habitats continues. A cozy bear cave is offered to help support the exploration of the concept of "hibernation" and other woodland animal figurines are available in both the block and science area to explore habitat building through a new lens: the cold and snow! Similarly, some snow will likely make it into our classroom sensory table so the children can scoop, pile, and mold the snow as concepts of temperature, changes of state (melting & freezing), and sensory awareness are explored. We are all very excited to come back to school, and get started on all of the great learning and growing that will take place this winter!

Science
*Materials: Woodland animal stuffed animals, Tree, books about wintertime and hibernation,
*Rationale: to continue our ongoing exploration of homes and habitats, and to focus the children's attention on local weather and animals, materials are provided that will allow the children to hypothesize about what animals do in the winter and where they might live.
•Skills: observation, scientific investigation and inquiry, connection to natural world, applying previous experiences and knowledge, hypothesizing, symbolic representation, making comparisons, and 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, Bear Cave (bear costumes, teddy bears, books about hibernation and bears, pillows).
•Rationale: to allow for the continued exploration of home-life and family-life while children use their creativity, imagination, and social interaction skills. To juxtapose human needs (home-life props) with animal needs (hibernation cave) and allow for a variety of dramatic play experiences.
•Skills: creative role-play, peer interaction, social problem solving, symbolic representation, reflection on previous experiences, collaboration and community building, storytelling, connection to the natural world, using books as resources, and early literacy skills.

Language and Literacy
•Materials: the writing center has a variety of writing utensils, paper, envelopes, staplers, tape, scissors, and computer/word processing program. Name cards and mailbox are available to the writing center to support letter writing.
•Rationale: to foster experiences with the alphabetic principle. We will continue to support the children creativity with written and verbal language by giving them opportunities to dictate their stories and letters. To aide in letter writing, children's names and pictures, a mailbox, and envelopes are available.
•Skills: fine motor, letter recognition, emergent writing, curiosity, symbolic reasoning, peer interaction, reflection on community jobs.

•Materials: the library has a variety of non fiction and fiction books, many of which discuss different aspects of winter (snow, cold, winter clothes, etc).
•Rationale: to encourage the children's continued interest in sharing stories communally and individually. To demonstrate how to use books as sources of information. To have the opportunity to reflect on changes to the children's immediate environment (i.e. the winter season).
•Skills: receptive language, phonological awareness, early literacy, listening, community building, expressive language, vocabulary introduction, scientific investigation.

Blocks
•Materials: large hollow blocks, small multi-shaped unit blocks, animal figurines, batting,.
•Rationale: to offer continued building experiences, to allow the children to reflect on and interpret a number of different experiences involving buildings, transportation, etc. Additionally, batting and animal figurines are offered with the unit blocks to encourage the building of animal habitats and allow for the incorporation of "snow" into the building experience.
•Skills: large motor development, expressive creation, symbolic representation, cooperative play, indoor/outdoor connection, using a variety of media for self expression, problem solving, mathematical reasoning, and showing interest and respect for the creative work of self and others.

Expressive Arts (paint, drawing, clay)
•Materials: markers, primary color paint for mixing, large paper for painting, scissors/ clay, wooden clay tools, wire.
•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. As the winter session begins, paint is made available at the art table so the children can begin exploring the mixing of one color (blue) with white and black to create different tones and hues. Other colors will be introduced as the children begin to gain greater experience with color mixing and creation. The clay is also once again available for the children to use for creative expression and sensory input.
•Skills: fine motor development (strength, coordination), creativity, symbolic representation, sensory input, color recognition, cause and effect, hypothesizing and predicting, showing interest and respect for the creative work of self and others, establishing a connection as a member of a community, peer interactions, self expression using a variety of media and tools.

Sensory (water table)
• Materials: snow, molds, scoops, buckets, small shovels
• Rationale: To bring a little bit of outside into our classroom, snow is made available in the sensory table. Children can explore the properties of snow and use their senses to observe the many ways they can change the material.
• Skills: large-/fine-motor strength, cause-and-effect, fostering social relationships, sensory exploration, symbolic representation, acting out previous experiences, comparing amounts, and performing multiple steps,.

Math and Manipulatives
•Materials: Puzzles, counting and stacking cubes, number puzzles, numeral recognition games.
•Rationale: As we move into the winter, the children will have more chances to explore both the skill of counting as well as increased familiarity with the numerals that represent amounts. A variety of materials that encourage counting and matching with numerals are available, as well as puzzles that highlight continued investigation of part-whole relationships.
•Skills: one-to-one correspondence, fine motor development, hand-eye coordination, part-whole relationships, quantification, counting, numeracy awareness, comparison, matching and sorting.

Large Motor
• Materials: stairs with mat jumping station & donut jumper, wall climber, stairs with roller slide, balance rocker, monkey bars .
• Rationale: To support social skills and cooperation; upper and lower body muscles, endurance, and to work on skills such as balance, jumping, climbing, and coordination.
• Skills: Muscular strength, stopping, cardiovascular endurance, dynamic balance, static balance, upper body strength, lower-body strength, dynamic balance (jumping, landing), spatial awareness, turn-taking, and social awareness.

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Weekly Plan November 19-21
Lesson Plan
Marie's Class
Manny Lead Teaching

Overview
The children are increasingly inventive with their dramatic play scenarios, creating imaginary story lines and situations in many parts of the classroom. Last week children were making "popcorn and hot chocolate" at the flax seed table, building elaborate and detailed cities and spaceships with the Legos, and creating animal habitats with the clay and natural materials, In addition, the song Scamper, Scamper (introduced at large group), has unfolded in many forms of play throughout the day. Many children have enjoyed acting out the song, which in turn has inspired block building as the children create props that support their emerging story lines. In addition, the art area has become a popular place for group interactions and conversations, especially at the clay table where the children have begun using animal figurines to inspire their creations.

Expressive Arts
-Materials: Construction paper, markers, colored pencils, crayons, oil pastels, tape, staplers, glue sticks, paint and sponges, pipettes, clay, animal figurines, wire and natural fall materials.
-Rationale: The clay continues to be a hot spot in the classroom. We have added several forest animal creatures to the clay table to inspire the children and provide focus to their exploration of the clay. After a test run on Thursday this addition has proven to captivate the children's imagination and spark new interest in the material. In addition, we will continue to have materials available for the children to create leaf and bark rubbings to explore textural art, and collage making materials for sensory exploration. Color mixing will be a new feature in the art area this week. Children will have an opportunity to experiment with mixing colored water using a pipette to make various combinations of colors. We will also be adding white and black paint to the paint easel for the children to experiment with the concepts of light and dark.
-Skills: Fine motor strength and coordination, color recognition, self-expression, creative risk-taking, fine motor development, symbolic representation, problem solving, creative exploration.

Sensory
-Materials: Flax seed, sieves, tools for measuring and pouring , small rubber balls, small forest animals
-Rationale: The flax seed has been one of the more popular activities in the room. The children have generated many ideas regarding the origins of the seeds. Their creative processes have flourished in their discussions and collaborations with one another at the table and we will continue to utilize their interests by incorporating new animals and other small motor materials.
-Skills: Experimentation, symbolic representation, sensory stimulation and pleasure, imaginative and creative play problem solving, cause and effect, fine motor

Science
-Materials: Table one: Sticks, straw, leaves, and other nest making materials, magnifying glasses and a tray to build the nest, tweezers, bird and owl figures. The table will also have synthetic owl pellets with artificial bird and mouse bones inside for the children to piece together, and a squirrel skull that one of the students found outside the school. Table two: Various seeds, planters, shovels, spray bottles, measuring tape, milk weeds
-Rationale: Manny's small group has closely examined owls and their habitats which has led to some larger group discussions about predators and prey. To support this growing interest and build awareness about owls and their place in the food chain, we have placed two synthetic owl pellets containing animal bones in the science center for the children to dissect with tweezers. The teachers hope that the owl pellets, along with the squirrel skull, will provide the students with a unique, hands-on way to explore the larger themes of predator and prey. Table two will continue to display a diverse selection of seeds including flax seeds. The children have displayed curiosity about the origins of many of these seeds. The table will include materials for planting and plant care to strengthen their care taking skills and inspire scientific inquiry.
-Skills: Scientific awareness building and investigating, observation skills, comparing, predicting, problem solving, fine motor control, measurement

Math and Manipulate Cave / Light Table
-Materials: Alphabet matching game, puzzles, peg boards and plastic pegs, animal figurines, various colors of animals for sorting, and Legos.
-Rationale: The Legos have been an exciting addition to the children's dramatic play scenarios; this week we will incorporate animal's into the cave to inspire animal home building. The light table will contain various color mixing materials, which will provide the children with another opportunity to experiment with different color combinations. There will also be colored animals figurines for sorting according to colors and/or animal groups.
-Skills: Color and shape recognition, spatial relationships, fine motor skills, comparing and contrasting, pattern making, sorting objects into groups.

Language and Literacy
-Materials: A variety of writing implements, paper, notebooks, a posting of the upper and lower case alphabet, blank books and story phrases, magnetic alphabet. We will continue to provide a well-stocked library with a variety of book. Special thanks to the families that donated books from the Oleanda Book Fair! Our library will now include themes of winter, Thanksgiving and animal hibernation.
-Rationale: Our class has taken a great interest in creating alternate endings to familiar songs and stories. We spent one large group talking about all the different ways the song about Scamper the mouse could end. Teachers encouraged children to write and draw these stories (and many others) in the blank books at the literacy table. Teachers also added familiar story phrases (Once upon and time, The End) to the literacy area, so that children could use these words in their books.
-Skills: Pre-/early literacy skills, letter recognition, listening and receptive abilities, fine motor control, familiarity with symbol systems, creating a school / classroom community, creative risk-taking

Blocks
-Materials: Hollow blocks and unit blocks with small wooden cars, pictures of structures and buildings that the children have made, tubes, steering wheels.
-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. We are adding plastic and metal pieces to extend these ideas and to support the grocery store theme in the loft and kitchen areas.
-Skills: Large-/fine motor skills, dramatic play, symbolic representation, problem solving, cooperative play

Dramatic Play
- Materials: Grocery store items: apron, hats, shelves, cash register, pretend money, wallets, reusable grocery bags, food boxes, construction paper, crayons, scissors, tape, tree mural.

Forest Habitat (in the upper part of the loft): various pieces of bark, pine cones, stuffed animal forest critters, fabrics, artificial plants, photos of forest animals, forest animal books, and pillows.

Dramatic Play Cave: Tape players and tapes of familiar stories and songs with corresponding materials to enact the song/story as through symbolic play.
-Rationale: Our grocery store is packed full! Thank you to all the families for their donations of empty jars and boxes! We will continue to support the children's story lines and dramatic play scenarios as they explore the "grocery store" this week. We have also created a forest habitat in the upper portion of the loft. Here the children will be able to dress up like animals and use stuffed forest creatures to expand their exploration of animal habitats, a theme that has been popping up around the room.
The dramatic play cave will have props for acting out familiar stories and inventing new stories. There will also be tape players for children to listen to stories and songs with their peers.
-Skills: Symbolic play, comparing/contrasting, peer interaction, social problem solving, critical thinking, listening.

Weekly Lesson Plan for Ross' Class

November 19 - Dec 4, 2012

Lead Teaching This Week: Team teaching

Overview: This week will be a short one because of the Thanksgiving holiday. Small groups will be ending on Wednesday, and the children have enjoyed creating fairy houses, building a large cardboard home, and acting out stories to music! As small groups conclude, a new collaborative project with the afternoon class will continue to help foster the connection between the classrooms. Our classes will work together to create a spider habitat and the children will have a chance to observe actual spiders building their webs. In addition to the cross-classroom community building, we will continue to focus on solidifying the existing social relationships in our class during the last 2 weeks of the fall session. We want to create strong connections within the room before we part for the month of December. Be sure to check upcoming postings and updates about classroom and all-school events taking place over break to help your child stay connected with their peers - four weeks is a long time to be away from school and friends...especially when you're 3, 4, or 5yrs old!

Expressive Art (art table and clay table)

• Materials: clay, wooden tools, cloth, small zoo animals, red and blue paint, mixing containers, paint brushes, paper

• Rationale: We will add yellow paint to color mixing, so the children can create a wide variety of colors. We will also work towards the creation of a large color-mixing collage. As we did with our pink collage, the children will assist us in collecting different shades of purple and other colors they mix. We will then create a rainbow-like collage to put on the wall showcasing the range of shades for each color. At the clay table: Last week a teacher modeled how to use a popsicle stick to make bricks. The children showed an interest in this, so this week they will get a chance to try it themselves. The teachers will create a foundation for a group castle. The children can work together and negotiate what to add and how to complete the castle. We will also demonstrate how to use a sponge to help the bricks stick together, like mortar.
• Skills: color recognition, creativity, fine-motor strength/coordination, symbolic representation, cause and effect, problem-solving, comparing/contrasting, reasoning skills, seriation (i.e. ordering the shades of color from lightest to darkest)

Sensory Table (water table)
• Materials: water, scoops, baby-dolls, sponges, drying rack, different sized pitchers and measuring cups, funnels
• Rationale: Last week the water table was changing colors! Before the children arrived, the teachers added a few drops of food coloring to the table, changing the water to blue and pink. The children showed their excitement by exclaiming the color to their classmates as they arrived. With all this excitement, the children have initiated lots of self-guided play at the table! They filled the containers with the colored water and compared the volume by holding them next to each other. Next week, the teachers will provide containers filled with colored water. The children will have opportunities to gradually mix the colored water into the clear water in the table and observe how the colors change.
• Skills: Fine-motor strength, eye-to-hand coordination, cause-and-effect, fostering social relationships, sensory exploration, symbolic representation, care-taking, dramatic play, comparing-contrasting, counting, color recognition

Science
• Materials: class pets (rats, cockroaches, mealworms), magnifying glasses, clipboards, pencils, felt people and clothing, rotting pumpkin, tarantula shell, spider body in glass, spider photo puzzles, books about spiders
• Rationale: After creating a birds' nest at the science table, the children brought it outside and put it in a tree on our playground. We will check on it over the next week to see if any real animals decided to make it its home. Along the lines of animal homes, many children have commented on the bugs that they are finding inside our classroom. To support this interest, the teachers added various spider materials at the science table. We want to support the children's awareness of where spiders live and how they make their homes. After they have had a chance to learn a little bit about spiders, the teachers will add a large wood frame to the science area. The children will be able to use this frame to cooperatively build a spider web home with help and facilitation from a teacher.
• Skills: observation skills, sensory exploration, collaboration, scientific investigating, critical thinking skills, foster classroom community, fine motor skills, symbolic representation, imaginative/creative play, promote social relationships

Language and Literacy


• Materials: books, cushions/pillows, couch, paper, pencils, staplers, tape, envelopes, mailbox, markers, rulers, children's photos, children's journals, felt storyboards and story pieces
• Rationale: The felt storyboard has been a popular item. We recently added more open-ended story pieces to it such as people, forest animals, and food: allowing the children can create their own stories. They noticed the pieces immediately and began creating stories about the people having a feast. This week we will continue to encourage them to tell their own stories, as the felt board will be a selected choice for activity time.
• Skills: pre-/early literacy skills, social skills, letter recognition, fine motor coordination/endurance, creative expression, foster home-to-school connection, story-telling

Math and Manipulatives (including The Nook)


• Materials: puzzles, weather matching game, multi-link cubes, abacus, seriated Montessori blocks, DUPLOS,
• Rationale: Building on our theme of seriation, the children will get a chance to try new ways of seriating. Other Montessori blocks will be added, so they can begin to distinguish between tallest and shortest and thickest and thinnest. In The Nook: Many children came to this space to build habitats, homes, and vehicles for the DUPLO people. They noticed the photos on the walls that depict different DUPLO structures. Some children recreated these structures; often expanding upon what they see in the photos. The teachers took pictures of the children's creations with the intention of adding the photos to walls the Nook.
• Skills: matching, color recognition, seriation, patterning, counting, one-to-one correspondence, sorting, opportunities for collaborative problem-solving, early concepts of measurement, finger strength and dexterity, symbolic representation, visual referencing

Dramatic Play
• Materials: Play kitchen furniture (i.e. table, chairs, refrigerator, cupboards, stove/oven, highchair, sink), dishes, cooking utensils, cookbook, corks, fruit pits, string, beads, plastic lids and caps, our kitchen photos, dress-up clothes and shoes, restaurant props, phones, pieces of fabric, baby-dolls, clothes, bottles, beds, glow-in-the-dark stars, blue fabric, pretend wetland animals (i.e. frogs, turtles, fish), rocks, logs
• Rationale: The children were eager to use the new cooking materials; including the beads, plastic lids and caps, to make meals for their peers. They worked together to make the meals, often assigning tasks and sharing ideas. In the baby-doll cave, the children figured out how to share the small space and negotiate when the light should go on and off so, "the babies can take their nap." In our 'backyard' cave, the frogs have been a hit! The children had conversations about various frog families, and took their frogs on adventures around the classroom. The teachers will continue to support the children's discussions about what frogs eat, how they grow, and what other animals share their habitat.
• Skills: imaginative/creative play, symbolic representation, promote social relationships, foster home-to-school connection, social skills (i.e. negotiation, compromise), critical thinking skills (i.e. reasoning, comparing/contrasting, perspective-taking)

Blocks


• Materials: large hollow blocks, unit blocks, sticky mats, steering wheels, photos of windows and house numbers, keys, cardboard home, cardboard pieces
• Rationale: The cardboard home created by Anna's small group will be placed in the block area. With this addition, we will see what kind of stories develop. When the house goes away, cardboard pieces will be added for open-ended building. We hope with these the children can problem solve and plan how to create their own homes or structures
• Skills: large/fine-motor skills, symbolic representation, concepts of balance, counting, problem-solving, social relationships, negotiation, compromise, collaboration, creative/imaginative play

Large Motor
• Materials: In the Gym: New gym set-up coming Tuesday. On the Playground: climber, slides, swings, rakes, buckets, shovels, bricks, sand, rope, wheelbarrows, construction trucks, wagons, trikes, traffic signs, jumping board, dishes
• Rationale: Due to the Oleanna Book Sale that took place at the end of last week, the gym is currently in 'transition phase.' We will play a few group games on Monday, and a new set-up will be coming! On the playground, many children are eager to play soccer. The group that participates in this activity has negotiated rules to follow, such as picking the ball up and bringing it back to the grass when it goes 'out of bounds.' They are also figuring out how to share the ball with everyone who wants to play. Other children have become immersed in digging in the sand. Some are working together to dig a large trench, while other are making individual holes to search for buried treasure. The teachers will continue to facilitate this collaborative play and provide opportunities for the children to interact positively with their peers.
• Skills: balance, large-motor strength/coordination/endurance, eye-hand/eye-foot coordination, body in motion/space (i.e. proprioception), cardiovascular strength, depth perception, risk-taking, collaborative play, propulsion skills (kicking), social skills (i.e. negotiation, compromise, turn-taking)

Special Interest
• Class pictures are now available. Stop down and see the sign-up sheet attached to the door.
• Reminder - NO SCHOOL: Thursday, Nov. 22 and Friday, Nov 23 - Thanksgiving weekend.
• Another reminder - Our end of the session "Good-bye" party for Anna and Rebekah is on Thursday, Nov 29 starting at 10.30a. We hope you all can make it!
• Ross will be out of the classroom on Tuesday, Nov. 27 - work compensation day.

Snack
Monday - Pickles and whole wheat crackers
Tuesday - Rice cakes and craisins
Wednesday - Popcorn and milk
Thursday - NO SCHOOL
Friday - NO SCHOOL
**All snacks served with a choice of milk and water, unless noted**

Overview
As the school year progresses we continue to explore the curriculum themes of fall and homes, a sense of community has been created amongst the class. Throughout the children's exploration of fall, we have been exploring how different seeds move, and many children have become interested in planting some of the seeds. To expand on the children's interest of planting seeds, the science table will offer dirt, cups, and water for the children to plant a seed of their own. As part of the homes curriculum, the children have been exploring different animal habitats through various art media, building with the blocks, and in dramatic play. We will be expanding on the theme of habitats, by creating an animal den in the loft, as well as building and exploring an owl's habitat at the science table. To establish a greater sense of community in the classroom, envelopes and the children's names will be added to encourage the children to write to their friends in the class. With the addition of these materials the children will continue to explore and gain a deeper understanding of our curriculum themes.

Expressive Arts
-Materials: Earth clay, wire, small plastic animals and natural materials. Easel with red, green, blue, purple, black, and white paint.
-Rationale: The easel will have new paint colors to use to express their creativity. With the addition of black and white, the children can explore making colors lighter or darker. Earth clay will be provided along with natural materials and wire to encourage the construction of different kinds of habitats.
-Skills: Self-expression, creative risk-taking, artistic expression, fluency with materials, color recognition, and fine motor development, exploration of natural materials

Sensory
-Materials: Flax seed and yellow plastic balls in sensory table, shovels, and sifters, different sized containers, and plastic tubes.
-Rationale: The children have been exploring the flax and enjoying the sensory experience it provides. We have added small yellow balls to the flax seed, to give the children a chance to use the sifters to sift out the balls. Plastic tubes have been also added to the flax seed table for the children to explore how the seeds and balls move through the tubes.
-Skills addressed: Exploring, touching, small group interaction, making comparisons, symbolic representation, measurement, volume, sensory stimulation and pleasure.

Science
-Materials: Boxy the turtle. Seed experiments, dirt, spray bottle, and rulers, various types of seeds, pictures of plants and trees that the seeds came from, clipboards with paper, and colored pencils. Nest making materials like sticks, straw, and leaves, tray to build nest, and an owl pellet with tweezers
-Rationale: After learning about the ways seeds travel, the children have been drawn to plant them, we will encourage this interest by provided materials for the children plant and take care of seeds already provided at the table. With the addition of rulers the children will be encouraged to measure their plant and draw pictures of their observations. The other science table focuses on an owl's habitat by providing materials for children to build a bird's nest, as well as an owl pellet and tweezers for the children to explore inside and look for bones of the animals the owl has eaten.
-Skills: Inquiry, observation, asking questions, hypothesizing, comparing, representing, measuring and experimenting.

Light table
-Materials: Translucent Duplos and translucent colored shapes.
-Rationale: As the children have shown an interest in mixing colors with the paints, various different translucent objects will be at the light table for the children to have more experience creating different colors. The translucent Duplos will remain at the light table as well, since several of the children have been using them to create animal homes.
-Skills: Prosocial skills, creative expression, and construction skills.

Math and manipulatives
-Materials: Legos, puzzles, number bingo, "snail's pace" counting game and small colored transportation vehicles for sorting/grouping.
-Rationale: The children have been using the Legos to creatively build several different types of small structures. With the addition of small colored transportation vehicles, the children will explore sorting along two dimenstions.
-Skills: Constructive play opportunity to create three-dimensional objects, representational skills, imaginative play, sorting, grouping, and counting.

Language and Literacy
-Materials: A variety of writing implements, paper, notebooks, envelopes, a magnetic alphabet, and a file cabinet with the children's names.
-Rationale: Many of the children have been using the provided envelopes, to fill with letters and pictures for their family members. To encourage the children to write letters to one another in the class, a file cabinet with each child's name will be provided so the children can have practice creating to and from labels for their letters.
-Skills: Letter recognition, listening and receptive abilities, fine motor control, familiarity with symbol systems, oral language skills, writing and symbolic representation.

Dramatic Play
-Materials: Dresses, scarves, shoes, bags, wallets, purses, suits, hats, ties, outerwear, aprons and phones. Doctor kits with medical instruments, writing supplies, doctor scrubs, empty medicine bottles, materials to make medicine. Shelves of food, cloth grocery bags, shopping cart, cash register and writing supplies. Story telling cave with storyboard, plastic pigs, bears, ocean animals, zoo animals, furniture, marble, sticks, straw, and books.
-Rationale: As part of the curriculum theme "homes", a grocery store has been created underneath the loft to create a sense of a neighborhood. In this grocery store the children will practice turn-taking, as they share the shopping carts and the cash register. As part of the children's interest of building various animal dens, the loft has been turned into an animal habitat to encourage the children to expand on their interest of animal dramatic play.
Storytelling of the children's favorite stories is continuing in the cave with children retelling the story of "Goldilocks", "The 3 Little Pigs", and "Little Red Riding Hood". A tape recorder and various stories on tape have also been added to encourage the children to act out the story as they hear it aloud. Other animals have also been added to the cave, as well as ocean scenery to encourage the children to explore different pretend play as well as different habitats.
-Skills: Pretend play, fantasy play, role-taking, transformations, cooperation, language skills, listening, communication, and negotiation.

Blocks
-Materials: Hollow blocks, unit blocks, and pictures of houses, buildings, and grocery stores, assorted open ended materials that can be used in building structures, and steering wheels.
-Rationale: The children have been building houses, animal homes, planes, and other types of structures with the blocks. The children continue to use the added props creatively while building. Pictures of grocery stores will be added to encourage block building to be used as part of the grocery store.
-Skills: Construction skills, geometry, spatial skills, dramatic play, symbolic representation, and problem solving.

Large Motor
-Materials: Stair climber, A-frame with high slide, wall mounted ladders, monkey bars with slide mats, mini-gym with baskets and bean bags, wobbly toppler. The playground will be set up with shovels, buckets, rakes, wagons and bikes.
-Rationale: The gym is set up with a "chutes and ladders" theme, where the children have been exploring the climbing equipment and slides. Also the children have been practicing their throwing skills by aiming the bean bags into laundry baskets. On the playground the children have been engaged in a wide variety of activities including digging up a root from a tree stump, jumping in leaves, and digging large holes or trenches in the sand.
-Skills: Risk taking, climbing, coordination, upper body strength, depth perception, throwing, aiming, and hand eye coordination, foot eye coordination, jumping and landing. On the playground there are opportunities for digging, hauling, pedaling, and running.

Snack
Monday - Pickles & whole wheat crackers
Tuesday - Pretzels & craisins
Wednesday - Popcorn & milk
Thursday - No School
Friday - No School

Weeks of November 20th--27th and November 30-Dec 4th
Katya Lead Teaching first week

Overview: As we near the end of the term, there will be many transitions happening in our class: Thanksgiving Holiday break, winter break, the addition of a new teacher, Jamie, and changes in the student teachers. Our focus in the next couple of weeks will be on preparing the children for these transitions. We will be discussing the upcoming transitions with the children during large group and snack time. Throughout the week, we will also focus on continuing to foster the children's ever growing friendships with one another, self help skills, and emerging literacy.

Expressive art
• Materials: Paper, colored pencils, alphabet letter stencils, cards with the children's names printed on them, and cards with the children's names outlined with traceable dots.
Rationale: To create alphabet awareness. To encourage the children to start recognizing their names and the letters that are in them. The children will have the opportunity to trace their names using the cards with the dotted outlines.
Skills: Phonological awareness, letter recognition, fine motor skills, and communication.
• Materials: Play dough, natural materials, and woodland animals.
Rationale: To give the children an opportunity to create homes/hiding places for the woodland animals. To use playdough in a variety of ways, such as homes, food, foundation, etc.
Skills: Observation, representation, hand eye coordination, investigation.
• Materials: Easel, paper, watercolors
Rationale: To expose the children to a different art medium. To encourage the children to explore use of color and color mixing. To encourage the children to represent ideas through art.
Skills: Fine motor control, hand-eye coordination, turn taking, and observation.

Science 

• Materials: Brown playdough, natural materials, tree stumps, branches, twigs and woodland animals.
Rationale: To expand on the science exploration of animal homes.
To give the children an opportunity to create homes/hiding places for the woodland animals in their own way using playdough
Skills: Fine motor control, representation, socialization, observation, and sharing.
*Materials: Light table, eye droppers, color mixing water, small mixing dishes
Rationale: To continue supporting the children's exploration of colors and color mixing. To encourage the children to experiment with mixing primary colors in order to create secondary colors.
Skills: Observation, comparison, cause and effect, fine motor control.


Sensory 

• Materials: Sand in the sand table, buckets, shovels, dump trucks and diggers, sand molds rakes, and rocks and seashells hidden in the sand.
Rationale: To promote exploration using the dump trucks diggers and shovels to extract the rocks and seashells. To continue fostering play and social interactions that occurs though collaborative play.
Skills: Observation, turn taking/ negotiation, socialization and fine motor.


Dramatic Play

•Materials: Conductor hats and shirts, wooden trains, wood blocks, and chairs.
Rationale: To develop awareness of trains and discover who a conductor is, how to build tracks, and how trains move.
Skills: Social interactions, symbolic representation, sharing, imaginative play, cooperation, fine and gross motor skills, communication (speaking and listening).
• Materials: Grocery store food items, paper shopping bags, shopping baskets, calculators, shopping lists, writing utensils, paper "receipts", printouts of the children's grocery store rituals, paper "money", conveyer belt and video of a conveyer belt and scanner being used.
Rationale: To encourage social interactions and collaborative play between the children. The children will be able to look at shopping lists, collect groceries, put them in shopping baskets, and go through the checkout line. A video of how a conveyer belt is used in the grocery store will be playing on the computer nearby in order to expand the children's grocery shopping experience
Skills: Collaboration, imaginative play, role-play, and communication.


Math and Manipulatives
• Materials: Colored pegs and board, counting bears, automotive puzzles, number and letter puzzles.
Rationale: To promote fine motor development, shape and color differentiation, hand-eye coordination for spatial awareness and promote emergent literacy and number awareness.
Skills: visual discrimination, turn taking, fine motor control, number and letter recognition, and one to one correspondence.


Language and Literacy

• Materials: Signs, questions, and related books posted in various curriculum areas and a variety of books on the bookshelf. Children's pictures with their names.
Rationale: To support their development in language and literacy and emergent reading, such as the process of independently turning pages in a book and dictating a story from the pictures. Begin emergent reading through letter recognition of their names.
Skills: Listening, speaking, phonological awareness, and vocabulary expansion.

Blocks

• Materials: Hollow, foam, and cardboard blocks.
Rationale: To be incorporated into building train tracks for the trains located nearby. To support mathematical skills, social interaction, and collaborative building. 

Skills: Communication, collaboration, large motor, expressive creation, and mathematical concepts.


Large Motor

• Materials:
Indoors - Climbing equipments, monkey bars, stairs, slide, balance beam, doughnut hole with bean bags inside the hole.
Outside - Dump trucks, sit and ride cars, street signs, shovels (small and large), buckets, and dishes.
Rationale: To support basic skills such as jumping, climbing, balance, coordination, and upper and lower body development and promote social interaction and role play. To promote recognizing symbols and signs.
Skills: Perceptual Motor Skills (spatial, temporal, directional, and body awareness) and physical fitness (cardio vascular endurance, muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, and agility), hand eye coordination, propulsion skills, role-playing, and social interactions with peers and teachers.


Large group

• Materials: Review of the poster with children and teachers heights.
Rationale: Help solidify what the children learned about heights.
Skills: Listening, patience, making connections, observing.
• Materials: Calendar with days marked off and show the children the days we have left before winter break. Pictures of new teachers. (3am-end of small groups)
Rationale: Prepare the children for the future changes and help understand concept of time.
Skills: Listening, speaking, turn taking, and observing.
• Materials: Stories, songs (finger play and hello songs), and teacher lead discussions/demonstrations.
Rationale: Keep with the routine of the day while introducing new stories or songs. Communicate with children about events that are happening in our class.
Skills: Listening, speaking, turn taking, and observing.


Music - Music will be apparent throughout the day to support transitions and encourage participation. 

• Materials: Piano, shakers, CD player to play songs and bells.
Rationale: to promote exploration of sound, volume, rhythm and social interaction.
Skills: turn taking, fine motor development, and mathematical concepts such as beats and patterns.

Snacks:
Tuesday: Rice cakes and milk

Weeks of November 19th--27th and November 28-Dec 3rd
Katya Lead Teaching first week

Overview: As we near the end of the term, there will be many transitions happening in our class: Thanksgiving Holiday break, winter break, the addition of a new teacher, Jamie, and changes in the student teachers. Our focus in the next couple of weeks will be on preparing the children for these transitions. We will be discussing the upcoming transitions with the children during large group and snack time. Throughout the week, we will also focus on continuing to foster the children's ever growing friendships with one another, self help skills, and emerging literacy.

Expressive art
• Materials: Paper, colored pencils, alphabet letter stencils, cards with the children's names printed on them, and cards with the children's names outlined with traceable dots.
Rationale: To create alphabet awareness. To encourage the children to start recognizing their names and the letters that are in them. The children will have the opportunity to trace their names using the cards with the dotted outlines.
Skills: Phonological awareness, letter recognition, fine motor skills, and communication.
• Materials: Play dough, natural materials, and woodland animals.
Rationale: To give the children an opportunity to create homes/hiding places for the woodland animals. To use playdough in a variety of ways, such as homes, food, foundation, etc.
Skills: Observation, representation, hand eye coordination, investigation.
• Materials: Easel, paper, watercolors
Rationale: To expose the children to a different art medium. To encourage the children to explore use of color and color mixing. To encourage the children to represent ideas through art.
Skills: Fine motor control, hand-eye coordination, turn taking, and observation.
•Materials: Sock creations that the children made, glue, tape, yarn, and large needles.
Rationale: To continue to encourage the children to collaborate together in order to make the class toy. The children will help connect the sock creations together using tape and glue. The children could also attempt to sew them together using large needles and yarn. The finished product will be available in the classroom for all of the children to look at and play with.
Skills: Fine motor, collaboration, communication, persistence, and creativity.

Science 

• Materials: Brown playdough, natural materials, tree stumps, branches, twigs and woodland animals.
Rationale: To expand on the science exploration of animal homes.
To give the children an opportunity to create homes/hiding places for the woodland animals in their own way using playdough
Skills: Fine motor control, representation, socialization, observation, and sharing.
*Materials: Light table, eye droppers, color mixing water, small mixing dishes
Rationale: To continue supporting the children's exploration of colors and color mixing. To encourage the children to experiment with mixing primary colors in order to create secondary colors.
Skills: Observation, comparison, cause and effect, fine motor control.


Sensory 

• Materials: Sand in the sand table, buckets, shovels, dump trucks and diggers, sand molds rakes, and rocks and seashells hidden in the sand.
Rationale: To promote exploration using the dump trucks diggers and shovels to extract the rocks and seashells. To continue fostering play and social interactions that occurs though collaborative play.
Skills: Observation, turn taking/ negotiation, socialization and fine motor.


Dramatic Play

•Materials: Conductor hats and shirts, wooden trains, wood blocks, and chairs.
Rationale: To develop awareness of trains and discover who a conductor is, how to build tracks, and how trains move.
Skills: Social interactions, symbolic representation, sharing, imaginative play, cooperation, fine and gross motor skills, communication (speaking and listening).
• Materials: Grocery store food items, paper shopping bags, shopping baskets, calculators, shopping lists, writing utensils, paper "receipts", printouts of the children's grocery store rituals, paper "money", conveyer belt and video of a conveyer belt and scanner being used.
Rationale: To encourage social interactions and collaborative play between the children. The children will be able to look at shopping lists, collect groceries, put them in shopping baskets, and go through the checkout line. A video of how a conveyer belt is used in the grocery store will be playing on the computer nearby in order to expand the children's grocery shopping experience
Skills: Collaboration, imaginative play, role-play, and communication.


Math and Manipulatives
• Materials: Colored pegs and board, counting bears, automotive puzzles, number and letter puzzles.
Rationale: To promote fine motor development, shape and color differentiation, hand-eye coordination for spatial awareness and promote emergent literacy and number awareness.
Skills: visual discrimination, turn taking, fine motor control, number and letter recognition, and one to one correspondence.


Language and Literacy

• Materials: Signs, questions, and related books posted in various curriculum areas and a variety of books on the bookshelf. Children's pictures with their names.
Rationale: To support their development in language and literacy and emergent reading, such as the process of independently turning pages in a book and dictating a story from the pictures. Begin emergent reading through letter recognition of their names.
Skills: Listening, speaking, phonological awareness, and vocabulary expansion.

Blocks

• Materials: Hollow, foam, and cardboard blocks.
Rationale: To be incorporated into building train tracks for the trains located nearby. To support mathematical skills, social interaction, and collaborative building. 

Skills: Communication, collaboration, large motor, expressive creation, and mathematical concepts.


Large Motor

• Materials:
Indoors - Climbing equipments, monkey bars, stairs, slide, balance beam, doughnut hole with bean bags inside the hole.
Outside - Dump trucks, sit and ride cars, street signs, shovels (small and large), buckets, and dishes.
Rationale: To support basic skills such as jumping, climbing, balance, coordination, and upper and lower body development and promote social interaction and role play. To promote recognizing symbols and signs.
Skills: Perceptual Motor Skills (spatial, temporal, directional, and body awareness) and physical fitness (cardio vascular endurance, muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, and agility), hand eye coordination, propulsion skills, role-playing, and social interactions with peers and teachers.


Large group

• Materials: Review of the poster with children and teachers heights.
Rationale: Help solidify what the children learned about heights.
Skills: Listening, patience, making connections, observing.
• Materials: Calendar with days marked off and show the children the days we have left before winter break. Pictures of new teachers. (3am-end of small groups)
Rationale: Prepare the children for the future changes and help understand concept of time.
Skills: Listening, speaking, turn taking, and observing.
• Materials: Stories, songs (finger play and hello songs), and teacher lead discussions/demonstrations.
Rationale: Keep with the routine of the day while introducing new stories or songs. Communicate with children about events that are happening in our class.
Skills: Listening, speaking, turn taking, and observing.


Music - Music will be apparent throughout the day to support transitions and encourage participation. 

• Materials: Piano, shakers, CD player to play songs and bells.
Rationale: to promote exploration of sound, volume, rhythm and social interaction.
Skills: turn taking, fine motor development, and mathematical concepts such as beats and patterns.

Snacks:
Monday: Rice cakes and milk
Wednesday: Graham crackers and sunbutter sandwiches

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Overview
This week's plan includes broadening the curriculum to incorporate the children's creative ideas with respect to storytelling, doctor play, painting, and building. The easel is returning to rainbow colors after a long time with fall colors to promote children's creativity with representation and color mixing. Legos have been added to open the children's minds to think of new structures to build. Children's original stories will be placed at the light table with props to encourage them to act out their stories. The doctor's play will be influenced by pictures of germs and medicine making materials to focus the children's play towards how we get sick and how we can get better. With these new materials the children will expand their current play themes and deepen their school experience.

Expressive Arts
-Materials: Earth clay with natural materials. Easel with red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple paint, large paper, and images of germs.
-Rationale: The easel will have new paint colors and large pieces of paper for children to express their creativity. Images of germs we have been talking about will be nearby to inspire children to represent the germ or create their own germ with the paint. The children have been inspired to use the materials for impressions to press into the clay to make fairy houses. Earth clay will be provided along with natural materials to encourage the construction of homes.
-Skills: Self-expression, creative risk-taking, artistic expression, fluency with materials, color recognition, and fine motor development, inquiry of natural materials

Sensory
-Materials: Flax seed in sensory table, shovels, mills, sifters, measuring cups, and large containers.
-Rationale: The children have been exploring the flax and enjoying the sensory experience it provides. The mills will allow children to experiment with cause and effect as they watch what happens when they pour the flax through. The measuring cups and large containers will provide opportunities for scooping and measuring.
-Skills addressed: Exploring, touching, socio-dramatic play, small group interaction, making comparisons, symbolic representation, measurement, volume, sensory stimulation and pleasure.

Science
-Materials: Boxy the turtle. Seed experiments, various types of seeds, pictures of plants and trees that the seeds came from, fur, shallow bin of water, clipboards with paper, and colored pencils. Nest making materials like sticks, straw, and leaves, tray to build nest, pictures of animal homes and their corresponding animals.
-Rationale: After learning about the ways seeds travel, the children have been drawn to plant them. We will bring those experiments to the science table to encourage children to observe the plants and notice any changes they see. Other seeds will also be available for the children to examine and predict what would grow from them. The furs and water will allow children to experiment with how different seeds travel. Planting materials will be provided if any more children want to conduct an experiment to see what will grow. The other science table focuses on animal's homes by providing materials for children to build a bird's nest and a guessing game for children to predict which homes belong to which animals.
-Skills: Inquiry, observation, asking questions, hypothesizing, comparing, representing, and experimenting

Light table
-Materials: Storymaking supplies, translucent duplos, transparent fabrics, other prop materials used during previous home building activities, and the children's finished storybooks.
-Rationale: The light table has become a stage for the children to tell stories. Props related to their stories will be available along with builders they can use to create props they need to act them out.
-Skills: Prosocial skills, receptive and expressive language skills, story developing, literacy, using props to integrate on a stage-like set, promoting meta-communication

Math and manipulatives
-Materials: Legos, puzzles, numbered peg-boards, unifix cubes, number bingo and "snail's pace" counting game.
-Rationale: The children have been using the unifix cubes to practice their counting skills by filling counting trays and building towers. We will keep the unifix cubes to continue that learning and also extend the development of counting skills by adding board games that require counting skills. We will change the building material to legos to encourage children to build creatively.
-Skills: Constructive play opportunity to create three-dimensional objects, representational skills, imaginative play, counting using one-to-one correspondence, number sense, color and shape recognition.

Language and Literacy
-Materials: A variety of writing implements, paper, notebooks, pre-made books with lines for words, a posting of the upper and lower case alphabet, a character's idea list developed by the children, and baskets to put works in progress.
-Rationale: Children have been very motivated to write their own stories using the blank books. To encourage adding words to their stories we will use paper with lines at the bottom. A list of the children's character ideas for their stories will be posted to inspire children's writing. Providing baskets to keep works in progress will help foster the process of children adding to their work.
-Skills: Letter recognition, listening and receptive abilities, fine motor control, familiarity with symbol systems, storytelling, oral language skills, writing and symbolic representation.

Dramatic Play
-Materials: Dresses, scarves, shoes, bags, wallets, purses, suits, hats, ties, outerwear, and phones. Doctor kits with medical instruments, writing supplies, doctor scrubs, empty medicine bottles, materials to make medicine, a cot, images of germs, and magnifying glasses. Shelves of food, cloth grocery bags, shopping cart, and writing supplies. Story telling cave with storyboard, plastic pigs, bears, houses, furniture, marble, sticks, straw, and books.
-Rationale: To encourage the children's interest in helping patients feel better we will provide empty prescription bottles along with medicine making materials for the children to fill prescriptions for their patients. With the topic of germs related to the children's doctor play, we will provide images of germs and drawing materials in the loft for children to make germs as well as magnifying glasses and play microscopes for the children to examine the "germs" more carefully.
Food has also been talked about as a way to make us feel better emphasizing eating healthy foods. A grocery store will be added under the loft for children to shop for the foods that will help them stay healthy. Writing supplies will be kept in the kitchen to encourage making a shopping list.
Storytelling of the children's favorite stories is continuing in the cave with children retelling the story of "Goldilocks" and "The 3 Little Pigs". We will add story boards of stories we have been reading lately like "The Gingerbread Man" and "5 Little Monkeys".
-Skills: Pretend play, fantasy play, role-taking, transformations, cooperation, language skills, communication, and negotiation.

Blocks
-Materials: Hollow blocks, unit blocks, and pictures of houses, buildings, and grocery stores, assorted open ended materials that can be used in building structures, and steering wheels.
-Rationale: The children have been building houses, planes, and other types of structures with the blocks. The have started to use the new materials we added. We will keep these materials to continue their creative building. Pictures of grocery stores will be added to encourage block building to be used as part of the grocery store.
-Skills: Construction skills, geometry, spatial skills, dramatic play, symbolic representation, and problem solving.

Large Motor
-Materials: Stair climber, A-frame with high slide, wall mounted ladders, monkey bars with slide mats, mini-gym with baskets and bean bags, wobbly toppler. The playground will be set up with shovels, buckets, rakes, wagons and bikes.
-Rationale: The gym is set up with a "chutes and ladders" theme. In the gym the children have enjoyed using the parachute as a community building activity. On the playground the children have been engaged in a wide variety of activities including digging up a root from a tree stump, jumping in leaves, and searching for worms.
-Skills: Risk taking, climbing, coordination, upper body strength, depth perception, proprioception, throwing, aiming, hand eye coordination, foot eye coordination, jumping and landing. On the playground there are opportunities for digging, hauling, pedaling, and running.

Snack
Monday - Cinnamon sugar whole wheat tortilla chips
Tuesday - Carrots & whole wheat crackers
Wednesday - Cereal & milk
Thursday - Pretzels & craisins
Friday - Apples & rice cakes

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Weekly Lesson Plan for Ross' Class

November 12 - 16, 2012

Lead Teaching This Week: Anna

Overview: Animal habitats were a big focus last week. In large group, we discussed bird's nests and we began building a collaborative nest. Continuing with our animal habitat theme, we sang and acted out the song Five Green and Speckled Frogs. In the song, the frogs jump into their home (a pool), similar to our frog habitat in the classroom. This week we will continue to explore our animal habitat theme by completing our collaborative bird's nest with the afternoon class and we will try to "think like a bird" to find the best place for it. Another thing we've focused on is color mixing. The children did an exciting cooking project that involved "coloring" their muffins. This week we will add a new paint color to the mixing table: blue. The children will get to apply their growing understanding of color mixing as they make different shades of purple!

Expressive Art (art table and clay table)
• Materials: clay, wooden tools, cloth, small zoo animals, red and blue paint, mixing containers, paint brushes, paper
• Rationale: This week we will introduce blue paint to color mixing and challenge them to see how many shades of purple they can create with red and blue. The children will also work on seriating their purple colors from lightest to darkest. At the clay table, the children have continued to enjoy using the animals. This week we will help the children move from sensory-based play to imaginative play by modeling and encouraging them to create habitats for the animals and act out stories with them.
• Skills: color recognition, creativity, fine-motor strength/coordination, symbolic representation, cause and effect, problem-solving, comparing/contrasting, reasoning skills, seriation (i.e. ordering the shades of color from lightest to darkest)

Sensory Table (water table)

• Materials: soapy water, scoops, baby-dolls, sponges, drying rack, different sized pitchers and measuring cups, funnels, eye droppers, turkey basters, pipes

• Rationale: Last week we added a sign at the water table that asked, "How many scoops does it take to fill each container?" along with photos of the different containers. A few children worked on filling the containers, with one child even using a sponge to squeeze water into it. This week we will facilitate the activity by showing them the different measuring cups they can use to fill the containers and counting with them as they fill them up. A few new materials will be added, so the children can compare them. A chart will be created and put on the wall nearby, so the children can begin recording their findings.
• Skills: Fine-motor strength, eye-to-hand coordination, cause-and-effect, fostering social relationships, sensory exploration, symbolic representation, care-taking, dramatic play, comparing-contrasting, counting

Science 

• Materials: class pets (rats, cockroaches, mealworms), birds' nests, pretend birds and eggs, magnifying glasses, clipboards, pencils, nest building materials (sticks, leaves, yarn, grass), felt people and clothing, rotting pumpkin

• Rationale: We introduced the larger collaborative nest frame to be created by both morning and afternoon classes. A group of children worked together to make the frame stronger by weaving string through the sticks. The children will continue to add materials to the nest until we decide that it is complete. The children will think about a bird's needs and weather conditions to determine if the nest is finished. We will then have a discussion about where to put the nest.
• Skills: observation skills, sensory exploration, collaboration, scientific investigating, critical thinking skills, foster classroom community, fine motor skills, symbolic representation, imaginative/creative play, promote social relationships

Math and Manipulatives (including The Nook)

• Materials: puzzles, weather matching game, multi-link cubes, abacus, seriated Montessori blocks, DUPLOS, photos of DUPLO homes

• Rationale: We will continue to build on our theme of color seriation by adding a color matching memory game. This will help the children learn to recognize different shades of colors and determine which shades are dark and which are light. In The Nook: Last week the children built several structures such as a hospital and veterinary clinic. A photo of a tall tower inspired several children and they worked to build their own tower. This week we will take pictures of the children's structures and add them to the wall, so the children can revisit them with a sense of pride and accomplishment in their work.
• Skills: matching, color recognition, seriation, patterning, counting, one-to-one correspondence, sorting, opportunities for collaborative problem-solving, early concepts of measurement, finger strength and dexterity

Language and Literacy

• Materials: books, cushions/pillows, couch, paper, pencils, staplers, tape, envelopes, mailbox, markers, rulers, children's photos, children's journals, felt storyboard
• Rationale: Due to the children's interest in story-telling, a felt storyboard will be added to the book cave, so the children can bring their stories to life, or tell their own version of a favorite story. In the writing center, the children have discovered their journals and drawing/"writing" in them has become a popular activity. Needless to say, we have a full mailbox everyday! This week in large group we will begin to incorporate their journals by doing activities such as having the children practice writing their name. This will give them a chance to see the different ways they can use their journals.
• Skills: pre-/early literacy skills, social skills, letter recognition, fine motor coordination/endurance, creative expression, foster home-to-school connection, story-telling

Dramatic Play

• Materials: Play kitchen furniture (i.e. table, chairs, refrigerator, cupboards, stove/oven, highchair, sink), dishes, cooking utensils, cookbook, corks, fruit pits, string, beads, plastic lids and caps, our kitchen photos, dress-up clothes and shoes, restaurant props, phones, pieces of fabric, baby-dolls, clothes, bottles, beds, glow-in-the-dark stars, blue fabric, pretend wetland animals (i.e. frogs, turtles, fish), rocks, logs

• Rationale: In the play kitchen, we thinned out the materials to change the children's focus. We added abstract materials, such as beads and string to stretch their imaginations and allow them to transform the materials into their desired food/cooking item. Since the children have been building tables in the block area and taking the food they cooked to them, we added some restaurant props in the dress-up area. In the caves, our backyard frog habitat has taken off, especially after we sang the song Five Green and Speckled Frogs in large group. The children are going to the habitat and acting it out with the frogs and logs. We will continue to facilitate play and discussion about our "backyard," including what the frogs eat, who else lives with them, and how/why frogs can go on land and in the water.
• Skills: imaginative/creative play, symbolic representation, promote social relationships, foster home-to-school connection, social skills (i.e. negotiation, compromise), critical thinking skills (i.e. reasoning, comparing/contrasting, perspective-taking), counting

Blocks

• Materials: large hollow blocks, unit blocks, sticky mats, steering wheels, photos of windows and house numbers, keys

• Rationale: Music continues to be a driving force in this area. The children are putting on dress-up clothes and dancing and acting out songs. They continuously request that we put on the Peter and the Wolf record. Now that they are familiar enough with the music to know what's happening in the story, we will encourage the children to build props that they can use while acting it out.
• Skills: large/fine-motor skills, symbolic representation, concepts of balance, counting, problem-solving, social relationships, negotiation, compromise, collaboration, creative/imaginative play

Large Motor

• Materials: in the Gym: A-frame (with attached slide), stair climber with donut and climbing rope, climbing wall, stacked mats, monkey bars with triangle-block slide, trampoline/teeter-totter, balancing dome, throwing station with bean bags and hanging basket targets. On the Playground: climber, slides, swings, rakes, buckets, shovels, bricks, sand, rope, wheelbarrows, construction trucks, wagons, trikes, traffic signs, jumping board, dishes

• Rationale: The children are having a blast with the new gym arrangement. Popular activities include jumping off the mats while holding hands and jumping over the triangle-block slide at the end of the monkey bars. This week the bolsters with the stair climber will be replaced by the large blue donut, which the children can use for climbing. On the playground, a ball was brought out and the children got involved in a game of soccer. We will continue to assist with this to help the children learn about the rules of the game and to ensure safe and fair play.
• Skills: balance, large-motor strength/coordination/endurance, eye-hand/eye-foot coordination, body in motion/space (i.e. proprioception), cardiovascular strength, depth perception, risk-taking, collaborative play, propulsion skills (throwing)

Special Interest
• The dance students will be with us for one more week! So far, the children have really enjoyed their visits!!
• Oleanna Book Sale!! See the flyer for details, but do try to stop by the gym on Thursday or Friday and see all the great books!
• NO SCHOOL: Thursday, Nov. 22 and Friday, Nov 23 - Thanksgiving weekend.
• Believe it or not, the end of the session is quickly approaching! We will have our end of the session "Good-bye" party for Anna and Rebekah on Thursday, Nov 29. We invite you all to join us for snack around 10.30a, followed by a quick sing-a-long. We hope you all can make it!

Snack
Monday - Cinnamon sugar whole-wheat tortilla chips
Tuesday - Carrots and crackers
Wednesday - Pretzels and Craisins
Thursday - Cereal and milk
Friday - Class-made pretzels (made with Anna!)
**All snacks served with a choice of milk and water, unless noted**

Overview: This week we will continue our focus on homes and the weather. We will make connections to the changing weather through songs and stories to support understanding. As teachers facilitate play, we will encourage students to work cooperatively with our class as well as the morning class. Letter writing has become a key interest at the writing center. To add to this experience a large mailbox is available to "mail" letters to the morning class, the teachers and even home. The students have been working collaboratively to build rooms for their home. Group discussions have been very interesting as they talk about where they will put the stairs, furniture and have begun cutting doors and windows.

Science (Including the Nook)
•Materials: a story board with different clothing and picture that depict of types of weather, nest building materials, and pictures of different types of homes and habitats. In the Nook: duplos blocks and photos of duplos structures.
•Rationale: to support children's curiosity of the natural world around us and to encourage the investigation of nature. To extend the children's interest in creating nests, the children continue to have the chance to build a nest along with the morning class. A large stick frame has been added to the science table where the children from both classes have been adding various materials to create a large nest. The children will be encouraged to look at the weather story board to continue building awareness of the change in weather that is happening outside. The children have showed continued interest in building and construction. To further support this interest, Duplo building blocks along with photos of Duplo buildings will be included in the nook.
•Skills: observation, scientific investigation and inquiry, outdoor/indoor connection, hypothesizing, symbolic representation, peer interactions, and 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, wetlands creatures, blue fabric, pieces of wood, pictures of different types of kitchens (including some from children's homes), and cookbooks.
•Rationale: to allow for the expression of family life and to encourage social interaction while playing with familiar props to help create home-school connections. Glow-in-the-dark stars will be added to the cave with the dolls to help simulate night time to support the children investigation of caretaking roles when putting their dolls to sleep. In the other cave the children the wet land habitat has been a big hit. The children have been cooking food for the frogs and discussing what they would eat. To help foster relationships between peers as they cooperate and play together in shared story-lines. We continue to provide open-ended "loose-parts" such as corks to extend imaginative cooking experiences. Additional loose-parts will be added while some of the representational food items will be removed to support open-ended exploration of food.
•Skills: creative role-play, peer interaction, social problem solving, symbolic representation, and early literacy skills.

Language and Literacy
•Materials: the writing center has a variety of writing utensils, paper, envelopes, staplers, tape, scissors, a rhyming words puzzle, and computer/word processing program. Name cards to the writing center to support letter writing.
•Rationale: to foster experiences with the alphabetic principle. We will continue to support the children creativity with written and verbal language by giving them opportunities to dictate their stories and letters. To aid in letter writing, chlidren's names and pictures will be added as a reference for writing letters to their classmates.
•Skills: fine motor, letter recognition, emergent writing, curiosity, symbolic reasoning.

•Materials: the library has books on a variety of topics new and familiar to the children. A Story board will be added this week.
•Rationale: to encourage cozy reading time with friends and teachers. Family visitors continue to join us in the reading center to facilitate group reading experiences and foster joy in reading. A story board will be added to help aid in storytelling and encourage children to act out characters from the stories.
•Skills: receptive language, phonological awareness, early literacy, listening, community building

Blocks
•Materials: large hollow blocks, small multi-shaped unit blocks, large pieces of cloth, castle blocks/small carpet squares, keys, computer key boards, pictures of the children's structures they have built, and books related to rocket ships and astronauts.
•Rationale: to support children's creativity and problem solving skills while they continue to work together and use symbolic reasoning. The children have displayed interest in building planes and spaceships in the block area, so computer keyboards as well as books have been added to the area to help enhance the children's play along this theme. As there have been many different interesting structures the children have built since the school year started, we will provide a book with pictures of their past creations to support the children's reflection and creativity in the block area.
•Skills: large motor development, expressive creation, symbolic representation, cooperative play, problem solving, mathematical reasoning, and showing interest and respect for the creative work of self and others.

Expressive Arts (drawing, collage, glurch)
•Materials: primary color markers at the easel, large paper for drawing, materials for collage, ( large boxes, fabric, bottle tops, extra parts) glurch, scissors, and children's pictures.
•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. The children continue to show interest in building homes at the art table. To promote group home making at the collage table, an emphasis has been placed on cooperative creativity. Also more pictures of the children have been placed at the table to provide the opportunity to place themselves or their follow classmates in the rooms they are creating. The children have begun connecting their boxes to create rooms in a home with the addition of doors, stairs and even a second level. Additionally, through collaborative home building the children have begun creating stories to go with their home. Clay will be removed this week and replaced with glurch. The children will have the opportunity to explore this new medium and have the option to add color to the glurch.
•Skills: fine motor development (strength, coordination), creativity, symbolic representation, sensory input, color recognition, indoor/outdoor connection, home/school connection, community building, showing interest and respect for the creative work of self and others, establishing a connection as a member of a community, and peer interactions.

Sensory (water table)
• Materials: water, large containers, measuring cups, measuring spoons, soap, funnels, smaller containers and eye droppers.
• Rationale: We will continue providing the water table where the children can begin to explore the physical properties of water, by scooping, dumping, pouring, filling, squeezing and dropping. The children have expressed interest in measuring various amount of water by using measuring cups and reading the measurements on the cups. To support the children's interest, different sizes of measuring cups and spoons will remain in the sensory table.
• Skills: large-/fine-motor strength, eye-to-hand coordination, math conceptions related to counting/measurement/comparing-contrasting, cause-and-effect, fostering social relationships, sensory exploration, creative expression, numeracy, comparing amounts, and conservation concepts.

Math and Manipulatives
•Materials: Puzzles, unifix cubes, rulers, abacus, and a new color 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. Rulers and unifix cubes will remain in the area this week to support the growing interest of measurement. The children will be encouraged to measure various item found in the classroom; including plants.
•Skills: color recognition, seriating (i.e. stacking highest to lowest), one-to-one correspondence, fine motor development, hand-eye coordination, part-whole relationships, establishing familiarity using tools for measurement, quantification, counting, comparison, matching and sorting.

Large Motor
• Materials: A frame with slide, stair climber, monkey bars, baskets, balls, and a "toppler".
• Rationale: To support social interaction and cooperation, support upper and lower body muscle and strength endurance, and work on skills such as balance, jumping, climbing, and coordination,
• Skills: Full body coordination, risk-taking, proprioception, hand-eye-foot coordination, upper body strength, spatial awareness, gripping, climbing up, motor planning, dynamic balance (jumping, landing), hand strength/grasping, upper-body strength coordination and endurance, lower body strength and endurance (when hanging upside down), propulsion skills: overhand, underhand, aiming, targeting skills, core strength, and physical fitness, propulsion skills, spatial awareness, turn taking, and social awareness.

Special Announcements:

*Bethany will lead teach for a second time this week
*See the lab school website for information regarding the Oleanna book sale taking place this week
*Family volunteers continue to visit the classroom this week: Ethan's mom will help us make pasta on Monday and Augie's grandparents will read to us on Thursday.

Snack This Week:
Monday: Class made Pasta and Red Sauce
Wednesday: Pretzels and Carrots
Thursday: Whole Wheat Cinnamon and Sugar Tortilla Chips

Fall Lesson Plan: Week of 11.13.12

Lesson Plan - Ayuko's 2AM Classroom
Week of 11/13
Grace Lead Teaching

Overview: As the school year is progressing, the children are becoming more familiar with each other and comfortable interacting and playing together. It is very exciting to see play partner preferences becoming more apparent. As a way to foster these connections, we will be providing opportunities for groups of 2-3 children to go on short trips outside of the classroom and ways for them to play with each other in more intimate settings. These opportunities will give the children more chances to interact with each other on a more personal basis in order to further their budding relationships. This week, we will also be focusing on beginning literacy and numeracy and will be supporting the children to identify the letters of the alphabet, specifically the first letters of their names, and counting numbers. We will continue to support the children's self-help skills with getting their jackets, hats, mittens, and boots on so that they can be more independent while getting ready to go outside. We will also be finishing up the many of the curriculum areas that we have been focusing on over the past five weeks.

Expressive Arts:
• Materials: Colored play dough, potato mashers, pizza cutters, wooden mallets, and garlic presses.
Rationale: To continue supporting color awareness. To provide opportunities for the children to interact with each other express their creativity. Two colors of play dough will be available for the children to use. They can mix them together and see what happens.
Skills: Observation, fine motor development (squeezing, poking, pinching, and kneading), sharing, and communication.
• Materials: Art easel, watercolor paints, and paint brushes.
Rationale: To continue to support the children's exploration of different kinds of paints. To encourage their artistic expression, and creativity.
Skills: Fine motor, creativity, cause and effect.

Sensory:
• Materials: Sand table, small trucks and diggers, shovels, rakes, buckets, and molds.
Rationale: To continue supporting collaborative play between the children. To encourage their exploration of sensory materials and provide ways for them to create new play themes in the sand area.
Skills: Fine motor, turn taking, communication, and collaboration.

Science:
• Materials: Light table, color mixing bottles, color paddles, and mirrors.
Rationale: To continue supporting the children's exploration of colors and color mixing. To encourage them to notice changes in the colors and how they can look different when they hold the color paddles up to their faces.
Skills: Observation, comparison, and cause and effect.
Materials: Bird house, logs, woodland animals (figurines, stuffed animals), animal home visuals, and magnifying glasses.
Rationale: To learn more about and explore different types of animal homes. To start making connections between animals and the homes they live in.
Skills: Observation, making connections, and predicting.
Materials: Sunflower, tweezers, and magnifying glasses.
Rationale: To dissect the sunflower, use the seeds as pretend play food for the toy birds and animals at the science table, and use the seeds for the bird feeder outside. To make connections about the sunflower and the purposes it can have.
Skills: Observation, making connections, exploration, and predicting.

Dramatic Play:
• Materials: Grocery store food items, paper shopping bags, shopping baskets, calculators, shopping lists, writing utensils, paper "receipts", printouts of the children's grocery store rituals, paper "money," and slideshow of grocery store visuals and shopping experiences.
Rationale: To encourage social interactions and collaborative play between the children. The children will be able to look at shopping lists, collect groceries, put them in shopping baskets, and go through the checkout line. A slideshow of grocery store visuals and shopping experiences will be playing on the computer nearby in order to give the children ideas for their play and possibly remind them of their own experiences going grocery shopping. Paper "money" will be used later in the week to encourage the "buying process:" giving money in exchange for food.
Skills: Collaboration, imaginative play, role-play, and communication.
Materials: Construction worker gear (vests, boots, hard hats), toolboxes, and tools.
Rationale: To encourage the children to engage in the building process in the block area from the perspective of being construction workers. To encourage collaborative play and social interactions while continuing to explore the idea of how we can change our appearances but stay the same person.
Skills: Social interactions, symbolic representation, fine and gross motor skills, sharing, imaginative play, cooperation, and communication.

Math and Manipulatives:
• Materials: Number and shape puzzles, shape stacking sorter, counting bears, and circular pegs and peg boards.
Rationale: To provide a variety of manipulatives for the children in order to help them become familiar with different shapes, numbers, and colors. To continue to promote fine motor development and hand-eye coordination, as well as color awareness, grouping, sorting, and counting skills.
Skills: Visual discrimination, fine motor control, and one-to-one correspondence.

Language and Literacy:
• Materials: Signs, questions, and related books posted in various curriculum areas, and a variety of books on the bookshelves. A display of all of the letters of the alphabet with pictures of the children and their names arranged under the corresponding letter of their first names.
Rationale: To support the children's development in language literacy and emergent reading. To begin emergent reading through letter recognition of their names, such as displaying the children's pictures under the letter that corresponds with the first letter in their names.
Skills: Listening, speaking, phonological awareness, emerging literacy, and vocabulary expansion.
Materials: Alphabet letter stencils, paper, and colored pencils.
Rationale: To foster the children's emerging literacy, promote print awareness and letter identification, and give them opportunities to practice their writing skills.
Skills: Fine motor control, visual discrimination, risk taking, and communication.

Blocks:
• Materials: Wooden planks, hollow, foam, and cardboard blocks.
Rationale: To continue to support mathematical skills, social interactions, and collaborative building. The children can incorporate the construction equipment (tools, vests, hard hats) and vehicles (dump trucks, cement mixers, small cars) into their play with the blocks. The children can work together to build roads, buildings, and other structures out of the different blocks that are available.
Skills: Communication, collaboration, sharing, symbolic representation, expressive creation, and mathematical concepts.

Large Motor:
• Indoor Materials: Monkey bars with foam slide, A-frame ladder with slide, steps, large foam climbing cylinders with rope, climbing wall, and bean bag game.
Outdoor Materials: Natural materials (stumps, logs, tall grass, plants, and trees), wooden house, picnic table, dishes, rakes, shovels, buckets, dump trucks, basketball hoop, balls, wheelbarrows, tricycles, and small road signs.
Rationale: To support sign recognition, climbing, sliding, balance, coordination, and upper and lower body development. To continue to promote role-play and social interactions with teachers and peers.
Skills: Perceptual motor skills (spatial, temporal, directional, and body awareness), physical fitness (cardio vascular endurance, muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, and agility), hand-eye coordination, propulsion skills, role-playing, and social skills.

Large Group:
• Materials: Stories, songs (name, hello, and finger play songs), and teacher lead discussions and demonstrations.
Rationale: To provide a set routine each school day so that the children can gather together, listen to each other and their teachers, and participate in a group. To communicate with the children about events, draw their attention to activities in the classroom, and introduce them to new stories and songs.
Skills: Communication, listening, observing, patience, and social skills.

Music:
• Materials: Piano, drums, xylophones, bells, shakers CD player and CDs.
Rationale: To continue to support the children's exploration of sounds, volume, and rhythm. To promote social interactions and collaboration.
Skills: Turn taking, sound discrimination, fine motor development, and creative expression.
Materials: Tape recorders, blank cassette tapes, and musical instruments (drums, xylophones, bells, shakers, and piano).
Rationale: To provide a way for the children to record the music that they make so that they can listen to it afterwards. To help the children utilize what they have been learning about sounds, volume, and rhythms over the past five weeks and apply it to a new situation (recording and listening to the results).
Skills: Listening, turn taking, collaboration, and creative expression.

Snacks:
Tuesday - Dairy free smoothies & rice chex
Friday- Cinnamon sugar whole wheat tortilla chips & craisins

Fall Lesson Plan: Week of 11.12.12

Lesson Plan - Ayuko's 3AM Classroom
Week of 11/12
Grace Lead Teaching

Overview: As the school year is progressing, the children are becoming more familiar with each other and comfortable interacting and playing together. It is very exciting to see friendships and play partner preferences becoming more apparent. As a way to foster these connections, we will be providing opportunities for groups of 2-3 children to go on short trips outside of the classroom and ways for them to play with each other in more intimate settings. These opportunities will give the children more chances to interact with each other on a more personal basis in order to further their budding friendships. This week, we will also be focusing on beginning literacy and numeracy and will be supporting the children to identify the letters of the alphabet, specifically the first letters of their names, and counting numbers. We will continue to support the children's self-help skills with getting their jackets, hats, mittens, and boots on so that they can be more independent while getting ready to go outside. We will also be finishing up the many of the curriculum areas that we have been focusing on over the past five weeks.

Expressive Arts:
• Materials: Colored play dough, potato mashers, pizza cutters, wooden mallets, and garlic presses.
Rationale: To continue supporting color awareness. To provide opportunities for the children to interact with each other express their creativity. Two colors of play dough will be available for the children to use. They can mix them together and see what happens.
Skills: Observation, fine motor development (squeezing, poking, pinching, and kneading), sharing, and communication.
Materials: Art easel, watercolor paints, and paint brushes.
Rationale: To continue to support the children's exploration of different kinds of paints. To encourage their artistic expression, and creativity.
Skills: Fine motor, creativity, cause and effect.
Materials: Socks, stuffing, round puff balls, caps, small felt pieces and glue. Rationale: To create a class "toy." To provide the children with an opportunity to work on a collaborative project together. The children will stuff their socks with stuffing and tape up the ends. Afterwards, they can decorate with caps and puff balls and glue small felt pieces on to create "little animals" or "monster" of sorts. Later, with the help of the children, all of the sock creations will be taped and sewn together and the finished toy will be kept in the classroom for the children to play with.
Skills: Collaboration, communication, creativity, and fine motor.

Sensory:
• Materials: Sand table, small trucks and diggers, shovels, rakes, buckets, and molds.
Rationale: To continue supporting collaborative play between the children. To encourage their exploration of sensory materials and provide ways for them to create new play themes in the sand area.
Skills: Fine motor, turn taking, communication, and collaboration.

Science:
• Materials: Light table, color mixing bottles, color paddles, and mirrors.
Rationale: To continue supporting the children's exploration of colors and color mixing. To encourage them to notice changes in the colors and how they can look different when they hold the color paddles up to their faces.
Skills: Observation, comparison, and cause and effect.
Materials: Bird house, logs, woodland animals (figurines, stuffed animals), animal home visuals, and magnifying glasses.
Rationale: To learn more about and explore different types of animal homes. To start making connections between animals and the homes they live in.
Skills: Observation, making connections, and predicting.
Materials: Sunflower, tweezers, and magnifying glasses.
Rationale: To dissect the sunflower, use the seeds as pretend play food for the toy birds and animals at the science table, and use the seeds for the bird feeder outside. To make connections about the sunflower and the purposes it can have.
Skills: Observation, making connections, exploration, and predicting.

Dramatic Play:
• Materials: Grocery store food items, paper shopping bags, shopping baskets, calculators, shopping lists, writing utensils, paper "receipts", printouts of the children's grocery store rituals, paper "money", and slideshow of grocery store visuals and shopping experiences.
Rationale: To encourage social interactions and collaborative play between the children. The children will be able to look at shopping lists, collect groceries, put them in shopping baskets, and go through the checkout line. A slideshow of grocery store visuals and shopping experiences will be playing on the computer nearby in order to give the children ideas for their play and possibly remind them of their own experiences going grocery shopping.
Skills: Collaboration, imaginative play, role-play, and communication.
Materials: Construction worker gear (vests, boots, hard hats), toolboxes, and tools.
Rationale: To encourage the children to engage in the building process in the block area from the perspective of being construction workers. To encourage collaborative play and social interactions while continuing to explore the idea of how we can change our appearances but stay the same person.
Skills: Social interactions, symbolic representation, fine and gross motor skills, sharing, imaginative play, cooperation, and communication.

Math and Manipulatives:
• Materials: Number and shape puzzles, shape stacking sorter, counting bears, and circular pegs and peg boards.
Rationale: To provide a variety of manipulatives for the children in order to help them become familiar with different shapes, numbers, and colors. To continue to promote fine motor development and hand-eye coordination, as well as color awareness, grouping, sorting, and counting skills.
Skills: Visual discrimination, fine motor control, and one-to-one correspondence.

Language and Literacy:
• Materials: Signs, questions, and related books posted in various curriculum areas, and a variety of books on the bookshelves. A display of all of the letters of the alphabet with pictures of the children and their names arranged under the corresponding letter of their first names.
Rationale: To support the children's development in language literacy and emergent reading. To begin emergent reading through letter recognition of their names, such as displaying the children's pictures under the letter that corresponds with the first letter in their names.
Skills: Listening, speaking, phonological awareness, emerging literacy, and vocabulary expansion.
Materials: Alphabet letter stencils, paper, and colored pencils.
Rationale: To foster the children's emerging literacy, promote print awareness and letter identification, and give them opportunities to practice their writing skills.
Skills: Fine motor control, visual discrimination, risk taking, and communication.

Blocks:
• Materials: Wooden planks, hollow, foam, and cardboard blocks.
Rationale: To continue to support mathematical skills, social interactions, and collaborative building. The children can incorporate the construction equipment (tools, vests, hard hats) and vehicles (dump trucks, cement mixers, small cars) into their play with the blocks. The children can work together to build roads, buildings, and other structures out of the different blocks that are available.
Skills: Communication, collaboration, sharing, symbolic representation, expressive creation, and mathematical concepts.

Large Motor:
• Indoor Materials: Monkey bars with foam slide, A-frame ladder with slide, steps, large foam climbing cylinders with rope, climbing wall, and bean bag game.
Outdoor Materials: Natural materials (stumps, logs, tall grass, plants, and trees), wooden house, picnic table, dishes, rakes, shovels, buckets, dump trucks, basketball hoop, balls, wheelbarrows, tricycles, and small road signs.
Rationale: To support sign recognition, climbing, sliding, balance, coordination, and upper and lower body development. To continue to promote role-play and social interactions with teachers and peers.
Skills: Perceptual motor skills (spatial, temporal, directional, and body awareness), physical fitness (cardio vascular endurance, muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, and agility), hand-eye coordination, propulsion skills, role-playing, and social skills.

Large Group:
• Materials: Stories, songs (name, hello, and finger play songs), and teacher lead discussions and demonstrations.
Rationale: To provide a set routine each school day so that the children can gather together, listen to each other and their teachers, and participate in a group. To communicate with the children about events, draw their attention to activities in the classroom, and introduce them to new stories and songs.
Skills: Communication, listening, observing, patience, and social skills.

Music:
• Materials: Piano, drums, xylophones, bells, shakers CD player and CDs.
Rationale: To continue to support the children's exploration of sounds, volume, and rhythm. To promote social interactions and collaboration.
Skills: Turn taking, sound discrimination, fine motor development, and creative expression.
Materials: Tape recorders, blank cassette tapes, and musical instruments (drums, xylophones, bells, shakers, and piano).
Rationale: To provide a way for the children to record the music that they make so that they can listen to it afterwards. To help the children utilize what they have been learning about sounds, volume, and rhythms over the past five weeks and apply it to a new situation (recording and listening to the results).
Skills: Listening, turn taking, collaboration, and creative expression.

Snacks:
Monday - Pretzels & apples
Wednesday - Cereal & milk
Thursday - Cinnamon sugar whole wheat tortilla chips & craisins

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Weekly Plan November 12-16
Lesson Plan
Marie's Class
Pam Lead Teaching

Overview
The children have had a busy week exploring many things in our classroom. The clay table has been a popular choice; many students have been exploring the various textured materials and how they interact with the clay. Our class has shown their creativity during several large group discussions by creating alternative endings to songs and stories. Teachers are building on these ideas in the dramatic play cave and at the literacy area by providing props and story starters ("Once upon a time," etc.) that support the children's burgeoning interests. Animal homes continue to be a recurring theme throughout our day and will continue to be explored in the science area and in the loft and block areas. Through several different art media and at the sensory table, children will be able to continue to explore and experiment with many different textures.

Expressive Arts
-Materials: Construction paper, markers, colored pencils, crayons, tape, staplers, glue sticks, paint and sponges, clay, and natural fall materials.

-Rationale: Many of the children have enjoyed exploring the clay. To continue with our fall theme and to go deeper with this material, we are adding sticks and pine cones to the clay table. The teachers hope these materials will inspire further exploration with the clay, and inspire children to experiment with the material. In addition, we will be showing children how to make leaf and bark rubbings. We will use leaves and bark to make rubbings that show the different shapes and textures of these materials. We are branching out from fall colors of paint at the easels, so that children can have the chance to explore and experiment with other colors. Also, to further explore textures, we will be using different shapes and sizes of sponges at the easle instead of paintbrushes.

-Skills: Fine motor strength and coordination, color recognition, self-expression, creative risk-taking, fine motor development, symbolic representation

Sensory
-Materials: Flax seed, sieves, tools for measuring and pouring, mills for pouring seeds

-Rationale: The flax seed provides a unique sensory experience for the children. In addition to offering the children an opportunity to explore the properties of the seeds themselves, the flax seeds will also provide a new and interesting tactile extension to the inquiry and exploration in the science center.

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

Science
-Materials: Sticks, straw, leaves, and other nest making materials, magnifying glasses and a tray to build the nest, a stuffed animal bird. The table will also have large pictures of animal homes and their corresponding animals. The other science table will continue to have tree seeds and photos of the matching trees, magnifying glasses and tongs to strengthen fine muscle control, as well as sorting trays and books about animals and their homes.

-Rationale: We continue to make nests with a variety of natural materials. Two real nests complete with birds and eggs will help inspire children to construct a nest for the bird family using sticks, straw, leaves, and even some string and ribbon. Children will continue to be able to play the animal home guessing game by lifting the "mystery flap" that reveals the matching animals! The seed table continues to provide an engaging opportunity for children to explore the properties of various trees and their corresponding seeds.

-Skills: Scientific awareness building and investigating, observation skills, comparing, predicting, problem solving

Math and Manipulatives
-Materials: Color and shape bingo game, puzzles, locks and latches box, peg boards and plastic pegs, Unifix cubes and number trays, and Legos.

-Rationale: Legos are here! Children have spent time with Duplos in the math cave and at the light table. We are adding Legos to provide opportunities for children to explore ways to make homes and other buildings, and to extend the storytelling occurring throughout the classroom.

-Skills: Color and shape recognition, seriation, whole/part relationships, fine motor skills, opportunities for collaborative problem solving, counting, one-to-one correspondence, pattern making, number awareness

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

-Rationale: Our class has many stories to tell! Teachers discovered this when we spent one large group talking about all the different ways the song about Scamper the mouse could end. Teachers encouraged children to write and draw these stories (and many others) in the blank books at the literacy table. Teachers also added familiar story phrases (Once upon and time, The End) to the literacy area, so that children can use these words in their books.

-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, tubes, steering wheels.
-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. We are adding plastic and metal pieces to extend these ideas and to support the grocery store theme in the loft and kitchen areas.

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

Dramatic Play
- Materials: Grocery store items: apron, hats, shelves, cash register, pretend money, wallets, reusable grocery bags, food boxes, construction paper, crayons, scissors, tape, tree mural. Sticks, straw, marble pieces, animal characters, felt board.

-Rationale: Our grocery store is growing! Teachers added several items so that under the loft feels more like a grocery store. This scenario provides opportunity for children to explore different roles and new social settings.

Children will still have the opportunity to cut out and decorate leaves for the tree on the side of the loft. Teachers will add animal shapes and stencils, so that our tree can be the home of some of the animals the children have been learning and talking about.
The dramatic play cave will continue to have various animal figurines, characters and props found in The Three Little Pigs. We are adding props from some of the songs that we sing in class, for example "Five Little Ducks." Children will have the opportunity to act out these simple stories and make up ones of their own.

-Skills: Symbolic play, comparing/contrasting, peer interaction, social problem solving, critical thinking

Large Motor
-Materials: Playground: shovels, tricycles, shovels, wagons, play equipment. Gym: bean bags and baskets, monkey bars, climbing mats, Toppler (half dome).

-Rationale: Children were very excited about the new gym set up this week. They enjoyed throwing bean bags into laundry baskets and practicing their balancing skills. This equipment provides many opportunities to develop many large motor skills. We continue to take advantage of the warm weather to encourage children to engage in new large motor activities on the playground.

-Skills: Risk taking, climbing, coordination, upper body strength, depth perception, balance, jumping and landing. On the playground, children can dig, haul, pedal, run, swing, and rake. Both areas provide endless opportunities for cooperative play and community building.

Snack
Monday: Pretzels and carrots
Wednesday: Cinnamon sugar whole wheat tortilla chips
Thursday: Class-made pasta and cheese sauce (Cooking project with Sheila!)

Announcements:
- There will be NO SCHOOL on Thursday, November 22 in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday. The Lab School will also be closed that Friday, November 23.

- There is a research project at the ICD taking place as we speak, which means that parking is tighter than ever! Please respect the 20 minute parking pass rule. If you plan to stay longer (and please feel free to do so!) I ask that you find a metered spot. Thanks!

-The Oleanna Book Sale is coming! On Thursday (Nov. 15) and Friday (Nov. 16), the gym will be FILLED with great books at great prices! Please stop in and check it out. It's a great way to take care of some holiday gift shopping, as well as support a great local bookseller. Also, we (the Lab School) receive a credit to add books to our school library based on the number of books sold during the sale. Basically, the more books purchased during the book sale, the more books we get to add to our school library! Everybody wins! Finally, each teacher typically creates a "wish list" for books they'd like to add to their collection. Please talk with Susan (the kind woman running this book sale - all by herself, no less!) for details if you're interested in giving a gift to the school/classroom teacher.

- I can hardly believe that it's time for this already, but our end of the session class party will take place on Thursday, November 29th! Our last day of school for the session will be Monday, December 3. More information will be coming your way soon!

Elizabeth's class continues their study of homes and houses. Several children had collaborated to start some "rooms" of a house on a prior day. On the day I visited, we took those rooms and began to add parts to them. Eventually, the idea of connecting the rooms into one house took shape. I was struck by the ease with which children could look at possible materials, see a shape which reminded them of something they needed in their room, and then go about adding it to the space. There was a clear energy burst when they made that connection. Also evident in the process was the persistence needed, on occasion, to construct things that stood up, or otherwise looked like the image they had in their mind. Experimentation was tried, supports were brought in and ideas were copied by others when they worked. It was clear that basic lessons in physics and engineering were being absorbed by the hands on work.

Weekly Lesson Plan:
Lesson Plan
Marie's Class
November 5 - November 9
Manny and Pam Team Teaching

Overview: After week two of small groups, the teachers have begun to notice new friendships flourishing in the classroom! The shared experiences of small group are beginning to extend to other parts of the classroom as the children build, explore, and play together with their "new" friends. The storytelling theme has become a focus in several areas of the room as children write and illustrate their own books at the writing center, retell familiar stories in the dramatic play cave, and snuggle up on the couch with the many reading volunteers we have had coming into our room! This week the teachers will continue to support that rich interest by introducing students to simple story structures during large group and working with children in the literacy center to create and enact their own tales.

Expressive Arts:
• Materials: Construction paper, markers, colored pencils, crayons, tape, staplers, and glue sticks. Clay and natural fall materials: sticks and pinecones. Bark and leaves.
• Rationale: Many of the children have enjoyed exploring the clay. To continue with our fall theme and to go deeper with this material, we are adding sticks and pine cones to the clay table. The teachers hope these materials will inspire further exploration with the clay, and inspire children to experiment with the material. In addition, we will be showing children how to make leaf and bark rubbings. We will use leaves and bark to make rubbings that show the different shapes and textures of these materials.
• Skills: Fine motor strength and coordination, color recognition, self-expression, creative risk-taking, fine motor development, symbolic representation

Light Table:
• Materials: Props that correspond to familiar stories (Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Three Little Pigs, etc.).
• Rationale: Last week we began building awareness of storytelling through various activities and lessons throughout the classroom. The light table will be moved to an area of the room, which is inviting and visually appealing. Here children will be encouraged to use another form of media to perform storytelling and develop children's creative and cognitive abilities by acting out the events in a story.
• Skills: Social & Emotional Development: Use play to explore, practice, and understand social roles and relationships. Fine Motor Control: Provide opportunities for play with small manipulative objects. Scientific Thinking and Problem Solving: Encourage and provide materials for a variety of sensory experiences.

Sensory:
• Materials: Flax seed, dump trucks, sieves, tools for measuring and pouring
• Rationale: Our turn with the sand table is at an end; this week our sensory area will contain a table filled with flax seed. The flax seed provides a unique sensory experience for the children. In addition to offering the children an opportunity to explore the properties of the seeds themselves, the flax seeds will also provide a new and interesting tactile extension to the inquiry and exploration going on in the science center.
• Skills: Hand-eye coordination, cooperative play, cause and effect relationships, sensory exploration, experimentation

Science:
• Materials: Sticks, straw, leaves, and other nest making materials, magnifying glasses and a tray to build the nest, a stuffed animal bird. The table will also have large pictures of animal homes and their corresponding animals. The other science table will continue to have tree seeds and photos of the matching trees, magnifying glasses and tongs to strengthen fine muscle control, as well as sorting trays and books about animals and their homes.
• Rationale: We bid farewell to our visitor Alexander Salamander! Taking his place at the science table, nest making materials have been provided to allow the children to explore techniques needed to construct a nest and to continue to support the children's curiosity and exploration of the natural world. There is a stuffed bird placed on a table with a question posted which states: Can you build me a home? There is also a guessing game that provides the children with an opportunity to make predictions about which animal belongs in which home; children can lift the "mystery flap" to reveal the matching animals! The seed table continues to provide an engaging opportunity for children to explore the properties of various trees and their corresponding seeds.
• Skills: Scientific Thinking and Problem-Solving: Use senses to explore materials and the environment. Identify and/or describe objects by physical characteristics. Make predictions about objects and natural events. Motor Development: Develop small muscle control and coordination. Use eye-hand coordination to perform a variety of tasks. Creating: Use a variety of media and materials for exploration and creative expression. Cognitive Development: Provide opportunities for children to count, group, and order materials through developmentally appropriate play.

Language and Literacy
• Materials: The writing center has a variety of writing utensils, paper, staplers, tape, scissors, and a computer/word-processing program . This week we continue to have blank stapled books to support the children's emerging interest in storytelling. Several of the children have begun to create books, and teachers have been helping them add words and descriptions to their pictures. The book area will continue to have fiction and nonfiction books, many of the books are representative of the fall season and the accompanying changes in weather.
• Rationale: To continue to foster experiences with the alphabetic principle and an interest and enthusiasm for the written word. We have had guest readers coming in on Thursdays for the past few weeks. Having these volunteers in our classroom, specifically to foster an increased interest in reading and storytelling, has been a real gift to the children and has resulted in a renewed interest in the book area!
• Skills: Imagination and inventiveness, literacy utilization, phonological awareness, letter recognition, creative expression, fine motor development initiate stories and respond to stories told or read aloud

Manipulative & Math
• Materials: Mobilo's, Mobilo wheels, puzzles, Locks and Latches box, unifix cubes and numbered trays
• Rationale: The children continue to show an active interest in the Mobilo's; the addition of the wheels has sparked a renewed interest in building vehicles and robots. The unifix cubes and numbered trays will continue to provide the children with an opportunity to practice patterning and one-to-one correspondence.
• Skills: Constructive play opportunity to create three-dimensional objects, representational skills, imaginative play, counting using one-to-one correspondence, number sense, color and shape recognition, fine motor

Dramatic Play
• Materials: Loft area: Inside/outside clothes and accessories, aprons, hats, boxes of food, phones, suitcases, play kitchen and kitchen materials, table and chairs, coloring utensils, leaf paper cut outs, tape, scissors, tall cardboard tree trunk.
• The dramatic play cave will continue to have various puppets, animal figurines, and characters and props found in The Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks and the Three Bears and other familiar tales. Storybooks corresponding to the available props will also be available. Many children have shown an interest in retelling the familiar stories using the props provided in the cave.
• Rationale: During large group we discussed the differences between how animals and humans get food. After our discussion, several of the children started using the kitchen as a grocery store. To extend this idea, we will be adding a few items commonly found in grocery stores: hats and aprons, real (empty) boxes of food, etc. Children will be able to continue to cut out and decorate leaves for the tree on the side of the loft.
• Skills: Symbolic play, comparing/contrasting, peer interaction, social problem solving, critical thinking, fine motor skills

Blocks
• Materials: Hollow blocks and unit blocks with small wooden cars, pictures of structures and buildings that the children have made, plastic and metal pieces.
• 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. Children have continued to build houses and neighborhoods in the block area and several children have made schools. We are adding plastic and metal pieces (odds and ends from surplus stores) to extend these ideas and to support the grocery store theme in the loft and kitchen areas.
• Skills: Large-/fine motor skills, dramatic play, symbolic representation, problem solving, cooperative play

Large Motor
• A frame with slide: full body coordination, risk-taking, proprioception, hand-eye-foot coordination
• Stair Climber: upper body strength, spatial awareness, gripping, climbing up, motor planning
• Monkey Bars with slide: dynamic balance, hand strength/grasping, upper-body strength coordination and endurance, lower body strength and endurance (when hanging upside down)
• Baskets: propulsion skills--overhand, underhand, aiming, targeting skills
• Toppler (half dome): core strength, balance

Snack
• Monday: Bananas and rice chex
• Wednesday: Bagels and pumpkin butter
• Thursday: Oatmeal and raisins

Reminders and Announcements:
• Picture day is Wednesday, November 7! If you send your picture orders in with your child, please let me know. I'll try to check backpacks but sometimes our days get busy and it slips me mind. ☺
• There is a research project at the ICD taking place as we speak, which means that parking is tighter than ever! Please respect the 20 minute parking pass rule. If you plan to stay longer (and please feel free to do so!) I ask that you find a metered spot. Thanks!
• The Oleanna Book Sale is coming! On Thursday (Nov. 15) and Friday (Nov. 16), the gym will be FILLED with great books at great prices! Please stop in and check it out. It's a great way to take care of some holiday gift shopping, as well as support a great local bookseller. Also, we (the Lab School) receive a credit to add books to our school library based on the number of books sold during the sale. Basically, the more books purchased during the book sale, the more books we get to add to our school library! Everybody wins! Finally, each teacher typically creates a "wish list" for books they'd like to add to their collection. Please talk with Susan (the kind woman running this book sale - all by herself, no less!) for details if you're interested in giving a gift to the school/classroom teacher.

Overview: We continue to investigate our topics of homes and weather as we begin our eighth week of class. To extend the continuing awareness of community, the children will be encouraged to participate in a variety of group activities with children in our class and students from the morning class. A large nest will be placed in the science area for our class and the students from the morning class to build together. Throughout the day the children will be encouraged to examine what the morning class has added to the nest and add more materials also. This will help strength the sense of community among the students. We will also encourage the students to continue to create rooms in large boxes with their classmates.

Science (Including the Nook)
•Materials: a story board with different clothing and picture that depict of types of weather, nest building materials, and pictures of different types of homes and habitats. In the Nook: popsicle sticks, styrofoam squares, hay, lego pieces, plastic animals, and the three little pigs books.
•Rationale: to support children's curiosity of the natural world around us and to encourage the investigation of nature. We will continue to observe and discuss the ideas of homes and what various types of homes animals live in. To extend the children's interest in creating nests, the children be encourage to build a nest along with the morning class. A large stick frame will be added to the science table where the children from both classes are encouraged to add various materials to create a large nest. The children will be encouraged to look at the weather story board to continue building awareness of the change in weather that is happening outside. In the Nook, a story basket will be added to the nook area this week. The children will be provided an opportunity to explore the story of the three little pigs through symbolic and dramatic play. There will be different building materials in the basket for the children to recreate the three pigs' homes; such as lego blocks, straw, and popsicle sticks. The children will be encouraged to investigate the various types of building materials in the story of the three little pigs and develop their own ideas about how to build the different homes for the characters.
•Skills: observation, scientific investigation and inquiry, outdoor/indoor connection, hypothesizing, symbolic representation, peer interactions, and 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, glow-in-the-dark-stars, wetlands creatures, blue fabric, pieces of wood, pictures of different types of kitchens (including some from children's homes), and cookbooks.
•Rationale: to allow for the expression of family life and to encourage social interaction while playing with familiar props to help create home-school connections. Glow-in-the-dark stars will be added to the cave with the dolls to help simulate night time to support the children investigation of caretaking roles when putting their dolls to sleep. In the other cave we have added materials for the children to create a wet land habitat. The children will be encourage to explore through their play what creatures live in wetlands and what materials are needed to create their habitat. To help foster relationships between peers as they cooperate and play together in shared story-lines. Cookbooks will be provided for the children to create new recipes to cook together. We continue to provide open-ended "loose-parts" such as corks are added to extend imaginative cooking experiences.
•Skills: creative role-play, peer interaction, social problem solving, symbolic representation, and early literacy skills.

Language and Literacy
•Materials: the writing center has a variety of writing utensils, paper, envelopes, staplers, tape, scissors, a rhyming words puzzle, and computer/word processing program.
•Rationale: to foster experiences with the alphabetic principle. We will continue to support the children creativity with written and verbal language by giving them opportunities to dictate their stories and letters. A rhyming words puzzle will be added to the area this week. The puzzle will help foster a growing interest in words and letter recognition.
•Skills: fine motor, pre-writing, letter recognition, and symbolic reasoning.
•Materials: the library has books on a variety of topics new and familiar to the children.
•Rationale: to encourage cozy reading time with friends and teachers. Family visitors continue to join us in the reading center to facilitate group reading experiences and foster joy in reading.
•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, pictures of house items, large pieces of cloth, castle blocks/small wooden figurines, carpet squares, keys, computer key boards, pictures of the children's structures they have built, and books related to homes and buildings.
•Rationale: to support children's creativity and problem solving skills while they continue to work together and use symbolic reasoning. To help support the children's interest in building various types of homes, we will continue to provide materials that depict to build houses and common household items. The children have also displayed interest in building planes and spaceships in the block area, so computer keyboards are added to the area to help enhance the children's play along this theme. As there have been many different interesting structures the children have built since the school year started, we will provide a book with pictures of their past creations to support the children's reflection and creativity in the block area.
•Skills: large motor development, expressive creation, symbolic representation, cooperative play, problem solving, mathematical, and showing interest and respect for the creative work of self and others.

Expressive Arts (paint, collage, clay)
•Materials: primary colors (blue, red, yellow) at the easel, large paper for painting, materials for collage, ( large boxes, fabric, bottle tops, extra parts) clay, plastic woodland animals, markers, crayons, colored pencils, scissors, and children's pictures.
•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. The children continue to show interest in building animal homes at the art table. Wood pieces of have been added to the area to help extend their creative expression. We also will continue to encourage the children to look at a book that features various clay creations of animals that has been placed in at the clay table. Larger boxes will be provided at the art table to promote group home making at the collage table, emphasizing cooperative creativity and collaboration during art exploration. Pictures of the children will be placed in the art area to provide the children the opportunity to place themselves or their follow classmates in the rooms they are creating.
•Skills: fine motor development (strength, coordination), creativity, symbolic representation, sensory input, color recognition, indoor/outdoor connection, home/school connection, community building, showing interest and respect for the creative work of self and others, establishing a connection as a member of a community, and peer interactions.

Sensory (water table)
• Materials: water, large containers, measuring cups, measuring spoons, soap, funnels, smaller containers and eye droppers.
• Rationale: We will continue providing the water table where the children can begin to explore the physical properties of water, specifically the movement of water, by scooping, dumping, pouring, filling, squeezing and dropping. The children have express interest in measuring various amount of water by using measuring cups and reading the measurements on the cups. The support the children's interest, different sizes of measuring cups and spoons will be added to the area this week.
• Skills: large-/fine-motor strength, eye-to-hand coordination, math conceptions related to counting/measurement/comparing-contrasting, cause-and-effect, fostering social relationships, sensory exploration, creative expression, numeracy, comparing amounts, and conservation concepts.

Math and Manipulatives
•Materials: weather and building puzzles, weather bingo, unifix cubes, rulers, measuring activity, abacus, and fine motor bird feeding game.
•Rationale: to encourage children to work with open-ended materials where they can develop more complex skills and work together in a group. The weather bingo game will continue to be available for another week to further the children's discussions various weather conditions with their peers and support their development of matching and grouping skills. We continue to encourage the children to explore their fine motor abilities by providing a tweezers and small materials will be added to help support a connection between birds and what how they eat. Rulers and unifix cubes will be added to the area this week the support the growing interest of measurement. The children will be encouraged to measure various item found in the classroom; including plants. An abacus will also be placed in the math area to support the children's counting.
•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, establishing familiarity using tools for measurement, quantification, counting, comparison, matching and sorting.

Large Motor
• Materials: A frame with slide, stair climber, monkey bars, baskets, balls, and a "toppler".
• Rationale: To support social interaction and cooperation, support upper and lower body muscle and strength endurance, and work on skills such as balance, jumping, climbing, and coordination,
• Skills: Full body coordination, risk-taking, proprioception, hand-eye-foot coordination, upper body strength, spatial awareness, gripping, climbing up, motor planning, dynamic balance (jumping, landing), hand strength/grasping, upper-body strength coordination and endurance, lower body strength and endurance (when hanging upside down), propulsion skills: overhand, underhand, aiming, targeting skills, core strength, and physical fitness, propulsion skills, spatial awareness, turn taking, and social awareness.

Special Announcements:
*Sara will be lead teaching this week.
*Small groups will meet for the fourth week: Please look at all the documentation for the Music, Weather, and Homes small groups.
* Augie's Mom will help us make applesauce this week, and Hannah's mom will read to us in the book area.
* Picture day will be Wednesday, November 7

Snack This Week:
Monday: Bananas and rice chex
Wednesday: Applesauce and graham crackers
Thursday: Bagels and pumpkin butter

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Weekly Lesson Plan for Ross' Class
November 5 - 9, 2012
Lead Teaching This Week: Rebekah

Overview: Small groups have really taken off; with lots of productive play is happening in all three groups! The children are starting to create things that they will be able to share with the rest of their classmates, including a musical performance, a child-size house made of wood, and a habitat for fairies! We have also started open-snack three days a week. This involves clearing only one table for snack service and allowing the children to choose when they want to come and eat during free play. This gives them a sense of ownership over their schedule and allows for less intrusion during productive play scenarios. The children have adapted to this change very well. During large groups, the children have continued to adapt the familiar 5 Little Pumpkins song to fit other subjects, such as birds, cats, and children. They are able to practice rhyming by suggesting new words to use in the songs. They show excitement during these activities and are eager to share their ideas with the group. Music has become a very popular activity in our classroom. The teachers will continue to encourage the children to use music to enrich and expand upon their dramatic play. This will involve them acting out songs and coming up with their own stories to go along with instrumental music.

Expressive Art (art table and clay table)
• Materials: clay, wooden tools, cloth, small zoo animals, pink, white, and black paint, mixing containers, paint brushes, paper, color swatches (shades of pink and red)
• Rationale: The children have been exploring color mixing by combining red and white to make different shades of pink. They have made produced tons of sheets of different colored pink- and red-painted paper! The teachers have started to cut these sheets into small squares that the children will be able to use to create a large mosaic piece of art for our classroom. The color-mixing exploration has also produced a lot of extra pink paint. The teachers have been collecting this paint in cups. We will give the children opportunities to use this extra paint to make more sheets of pink- and red-painted paper to use for our large mosaic display. During this process we will support the children's understanding of 'lighter' and 'darker' by encouraging them to order their color creations from lightest to darkest.
• Skills: color recognition, creativity, fine-motor strength/coordination, symbolic representation, cause and effect, problem-solving, comparing/contrasting, reasoning skills, seriation (i.e. ordering the shades of color from lightest to darkest)

Sensory Table (water table)
• Materials: soapy water, scoops, baby-dolls, sponges, drying rack
• Rationale: The children have recently developed an interest in washing baby-dolls at the water table. To support this play, the teachers added soap to the water to create a "bubble-washing table." Sponges and a drying rack have also been added to this space. The children can use the scoops and sponges to wash their babies. The teachers will listen to the children's conversations to gain an understanding of where their play can go next.
• Skills: Fine-motor strength, eye-to-hand coordination, cause-and-effect, fostering social relationships, sensory exploration, symbolic representation, care-taking, dramatic play

Science
• Materials: class pets (rats, cockroaches, mealworms), birds' nests, pretend birds and eggs, magnifying glasses, clipboards, pencils, nest building materials (sticks, leaves, yarn, grass), felt people and clothing, rotting pumpkin
• Rationale: The children have had opportunities to use natural materials to create birds' nests at the science table. As a provocation, the teachers will build a stick frame to promote a more collaborative effort between the children in creating a bird home. We hope that by presenting a foundation, the children will be inspired to add to the frame to make it 'safe' and 'warm' for the birds that may live there. We will also add a notebook in which the children can keep track of tasks completed, or make 'to-do' lists. This way, they can think about the benefits of sharing responsibilities and working together. The teachers have also discovered that one of our pumpkins is beginning to rot. This week, we plan to put the pumpkin in a glass aquarium (tightly sealed) and allow the children to observe the changes that occur.
• Skills: observation skills, sensory exploration, collaboration, scientific investigating, critical thinking skills, foster classroom community, fine motor skills, symbolic representation, imaginative/creative play, promote social relationships

Math and Manipulatives (including The Nook)
• Materials: puzzles, home matching game, weather matching game, unifix cubes, abacus, seriated montessori blocks, DUPLOS, photos of DUPLO homes
• Rationale: The children have shown interest in measuring many things in our classroom, including themselves! They have used both a tape measure and stacking pegs to determine the heights and lengths of different objects. The teachers want to build on this concept by promoting seriation: ordering objects based on a physical property, such as height, length, or shade of color (i.e. lightest to darkest, shortest to tallest, etc.). We will encourage the children to use their measurements, as well as visual observation, to put objects in order. The children have also demonstrated a shared interest in construction. In order to further support this interest, we will transform the nook into a construction site for DUPLO building. The teachers will include photos of DUPLO homes built by us to give the children some ideas of what to make.
• Skills: matching, color recognition, seriation, patterning, counting, one-to-one correspondence, sorting, opportunities for collaborative problem-solving, early concepts of measurement, finger strength and dexterity

Language and Literacy
• Materials: books, cushions/pillows, couch, paper, pencils, staplers, tape, envelopes, mailbox, markers, rulers, children's photos, children's journals
• Rationale: Many of the children have had opportunities to act out stories through their dramatic play. These experiences have evolved and the children are beginning to develop their own stories. In order to support their ideas and to facilitate their story-telling, the teachers will provide each child with their own journal. The children can use these journals to depict/illustrate/"write" their stories. They can also use them for note-taking during scientific observation. These will be available at the writing table. The teachers will also include a play mailbox to support the popular activity of letter-writing.
• Skills: pre-/early literacy skills, social skills, letter recognition, fine motor coordination/endurance, creative expression, foster home-to-school connection, story-telling

Dramatic Play
• Materials: Play kitchen furniture (i.e. table, chairs, refrigerator, cupboards, stove/oven, highchair, sink), dishes, cooking utensils, pretend food, cookbook, corks, fruit pits, our kitchen photos, dress-up clothes and shoes, phones, pieces of fabric, baby-dolls, clothes, bottles, beds, glow-in-the-dark stars, blue fabric, pretend wetland animals (i.e. frogs, turtles, fish), rocks, logs
• Rationale: Many children are continuing to care for the baby-dolls in this area. They are dressing the babies and putting them to bed when playtime is done. In order to help simulate 'nighttime,' the teachers will add glow-in-the-dark stars to the ceiling of the baby-doll cave. The children can turn off the light to darken the space and see the stars glow. We will encourage them to count the stars and compare their sizes. The teachers will also transform the pet cave into the 'backyard' of our dramatic playhouse. We will encourage the children to think about their yards and neighborhoods at home and about what things they notice in these places. Due to the budding interest of frogs amongst the children, the teachers have included a basket with blue fabric to act as water, rocks, logs, and various wetland animals. During 'Activity Time,' a small group will come to this space to help set up these materials according to their ideas and suggestions.
• Skills: imaginative/creative play, symbolic representation, promote social relationships, foster home-to-school connection, social skills (i.e. negotiation, compromise), critical thinking skills (i.e. reasoning, comparing/contrasting, perspective-taking), counting

Blocks
• Materials: large hollow blocks, unit blocks, sticky mats, steering wheels, photos of windows and house numbers, keys
• Rationale: This has been such a productive space! The children are working collaboratively to build large structures, such as trucks and zoos. They are also using this space to act out stories within songs, such as Scamper, Bear Hunt, and more recently, Peter and the Wolf. The children build the scenes of these stories using large blocks and other props. They adopt roles and listen to the music to help direct their actions. They discuss their ideas for building and negotiate who gets to be what character. The teachers will continue to incorporate music in block play.
• Skills: large/fine-motor skills, symbolic representation, concepts of balance, counting, problem-solving, social relationships, negotiation, compromise, collaboration, creative/imaginative play

Large Motor
• Materials: in the Gym: A-frame (with attached slide), stair climber with seriated cylinder bolsters and climbing rope, climbing wall, stacked mats, monkey bars with triangle-block slide, trampoline/teeter-totter, balancing dome, throwing station with bean bags and hanging basket targets. On the Playground: climber, slides, swings, rakes, buckets, shovels, bricks, sand, rope, wheelbarrows, construction trucks, wagons, trikes, traffic signs, jumping board, dishes
• Rationale: The children are enthusiastic about the new gym set-up. Its activities promote a higher level of risk-taking, which the children are embracing. They are exploring different ways to use the materials, such as going down the slide backwards, jumping from one pile of stacked mats over another, and going up and down the seriated bolsters. Many have also participated in throwing bean bags through the basket targets. The teachers will continue to encourage the children engaged in this activity to all throw at the same time, and to all collect the bean bags at the same time, so that no one gets hit accidentally. Outside, there has been a lot of work happening at the 'construction site,' including digging holes and paving roads. The teachers will continue to make the dump trucks and shovels accessible to the children for this play.
• Skills: balance, large-motor strength/coordination/endurance, eye-to-hand/eye-to-foot coordination, body in motion/space (i.e. proprioception), cardiovascular strength, depth perception, risk-taking, social skills, collaborative play, propulsion skills (throwing)

Special Interest
• Picture day is coming! Our class will take their pictures (individual and class photos) during the school day on Wednesday. It is also a bit of a "busier" day, so it will be a simpler schedule that day: no small groups, longer time outside (as there probably will be no gym before taking pictures)
• The Oleanna Book Sale is coming! On Thursday (Nov. 15) and Friday (Nov. 16), the gym will be FILLED with great books at great prices! Please stop in and check it out. It's a great way to take care of some holiday gift shopping, as well as support a great local bookseller. Also, we (the Lab School) receive a credit to add books to our school library based on the number of books sold during the sale. Basically, the more books purchased during the book sale, the more books we get to add to our school library! Everybody wins! Finally, each teacher typically creates a "wish list" for books they'd like to add to their collection. Please talk with Susan (the kind woman running this book sale - all by herself, no less!) for details if you're interested in giving a gift to the school/classroom teacher.

Snack
Monday - Oatmeal
Tuesday - Apples and sunbutter dip
Wednesday - Rice chex and raisins
Thursday - Bagels and pumpkin butter
Friday - Colorful muffins (made with Rebekah!)
**All snacks served with a choice of milk and water unless otherwise noted**

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Overview
As fall is in full swing the curriculum in the classroom continues to be impacted by this season through exploring themes that have emerged from the movement and excitement of the changing landscape. The children in the classroom are busy writing stories, playing doctor, and building structures large and small. As the leaves on the trees are getting bare, the seeds are in movement. The questions that we are asking this week continue to reflect a deeper understanding of seeds and movement of seeds. Questions such as: how do the seeds move, float, propel or travel around and eventually find their way to the land, inform the students understanding of what is happening outside. Stories are a theme that is emerging in the classroom and will be highlighted this week. We will focus on the elements that are in use in the classroom centers and caves such as: puppets, book making, the light table as a stage, and encouraging stories to emerge in dramatic play. We hope to give the students an opportunity to share the stories that they are writing and even read the stories during large group reading times, which would encourage a deeper understanding of stories and the role of storytelling in the classroom.

Expressive Arts
-Materials: Earth clay with shells, pine cones, coral, bark, acorns, fabrics and various natural objects, easel with orange, yellow, red, and green paint, fall related images, and paper shaped like leaves, shells, pine cones, coral, assorted bark
-Rationale: Earth clay will be provided and the children are encouraged to use various natural materials to make impressions on the clay. The easel will have large cutouts of leaves including elm, maple, and oak and inspiration for color choices from real leaves nearby.
-Skills: Self-expression, creative risk-taking, artistic expression, fluency with materials, color recognition, and fine motor development, inquiry of natural materials

Sensory
-Materials: Flax seed in sensory table, toy (local) animals, shovels, construction vehicles, mills and sifters
-Rationale: The children can explore flax as a sensory material for sifting, sorting, milling, and using construction vehicles to move flax around.
-Skills addressed: Exploring, touching, socio-dramatic play, construction skills, small group interaction, making comparisons, symbolic representation, sensory stimulation and pleasure.

Science
-Materials: Boxy the turtle, various types of seeds including pumpkin, apple, gourd, milkweed, burr, and helicopter. Tweezers, dishes, water, and fur; with pictures of plants and trees that the seeds came from, fans
-Rationale: As the children have been sorting the seeds, exploring different means of movement is the next question that will begin to extend the children's learning about the seeds. We will focus their attention to the characteristics of the seeds that help their dispersal and later growth into new trees/plants.
-Skills: Inquiry, observation, sequencing, grouping, sorting, asking questions, hypothesizing, and comparing

Light table
-Materials: Storymaking supplies, clear builders, transparent fabrics, and other prop materials used during previous home building activities.
-Rationale: Allowing the children to have a new medium to tell stories at, the light table as a stage will promote social encounters and allow the children to move around all sides of the light table. We will promote storytelling and the light table as a stage this week. We will start out with a story that the children already know (goldy & the 3 little bears) and hope to extend to stories that they can invent, and create a set for, using prop material from around the classroom.
-Skills: Prosocial skills, receptive and expressive language skills, story developing, using props to integrate on a stage-like set, promoting meta-communication

Math and manipulatives
-Materials: Mobilo's, puzzles, numbered peg-boards, and Unifix cubes, images of different crafts (railroads, monorails, rockets, airplanes)
-Rationale: The children have been busy building a variety of vehicles and flying crafts with the mobilos so we added wheels to help support their designs. The Unifix cubes will foster the development of the children's counting skills as they practice counting and stacking the cubes.
-Skills: Constructive play opportunity to create three-dimensional objects, representational skills, imaginative play, counting using one-to-one correspondence, number sense, color and shape recognition.

Language and Literacy
-Materials: A variety of writing implements, paper, notebooks, pre-made books, and a posting of the upper and lower case alphabet. Baskets to put in progress work, and finished stories
-Rationale: Children have been very motivated to write their own stories using the blank books. To support and encourage the children's independence with beginning to write we have posted signs with the words "once upon a time" and "the end". Baskets will be provided to allow children to display finished stories, to use them to make an acting out of the story with other classroom materials, or simply telling their fellow students about the stories that they like to write.
-Skills: Letter recognition, listening and receptive abilities, fine motor control, familiarity with symbol systems, storytelling, oral language skills, writing and symbolic representation.

Dramatic Play
-Materials: Dresses, scarves, shoes, bags, suits, hats, ties, outerwear, pets, phones, briefcases, writing pads, doctor kits with medical instruments, writing supplies, and a cot. One of the caves will turn into a storytelling cave with a storyboard, plastic pigs, bears, houses, marble, sticks and straw, puppets, and books.
-Rationale: To expand on the children's doctor play we will add images of blood cells, circulatory system images, as well as other germs as children have been interested in blood and germs. To support the children's interest in the story of the "3 Little Pigs", a story board and props will be added to the cave, to encourage the children to act out familiar stories as well as create new stories.
-Skills: Pretend play, fantasy play, role-taking, transformations, cooperation, language skills, communication, and negotiation.

Blocks
-Materials: Hollow blocks, unit blocks, and pictures and books of houses, buildings, and planes, assorted abstract materials that can be used in building structures, steering wheels
-Rationale: The children have been building houses, planes, and other types of structures with the blocks. To support the children's block building, we have added new materials to use to build with, provided books and pictures of structures they've previously built as well as a wider variety of actual structures for reference or to inspire their creative building.
-Skills: Construction skills, geometry, spatial skills, dramatic play, symbolic representation, and problem solving.

Large Motor
-Materials: Stair climber, A-frame with high slide, wall mounted ladders, monkey bars with slide mats, mini-gym with baskets and bean bags, wobbly toppler. The playground will be set up with shovels, buckets, rakes, wagons and bikes.
-Rationale: The gym is set up with a "chutes and ladders" theme. In the gym the children have enjoyed using the parachute as a community building activity. On the playground the children have been engaged in a wide variety of activities including collecting colorful leaves, having tea-parties and baking "cakes" in the sand, making roads, and digging for treasure.
-Skills: Risk taking, climbing, coordination, upper body strength, depth perception, proprioception, throwing, aiming, hand eye coordination, foot eye coordination, jumping and landing. On the playground there are opportunities for digging, hauling, pedaling, and running.

Snack
Monday - Bananas & whole wheat crackers
Tuesday - Rice chex & apples
Wednesday - Apples & sunbutter dip
Thursday - Rice cakes & raisins
Friday - Bagels & pumpkin butter

Week of November 6th-9th
Megan Lead Teaching
Overview: As the weather continues to grow colder, the children are becoming more familiar with the routine of getting ready to go outside. We will keep practicing self help skills with them in order to help them become more independent with getting their jackets, hats, and mittens on. We have noticed the emergence of an interest in animals from the children since the weather has been changing and as we have spent some time talking and learning about hibernation. In the science area we will be focusing on this topic. Another new topic that has risen in the class is the concept of colors. Many children have been naming the colors of different items, so we will be incorporating colors into the classroom today.

Expressive Arts
Materials: Plexiglas easel, and finger-paints.
Rationale: To encourage the children to notice what each other are doing and create social interactions between them. To expose the children to a different art medium and painting experience.
Skills: Fine motor, communication, observation, cause and effect.
Materials: Easel and water color paints, paint brushes.
Rationale: To experience a different kind of paint with different kinds of color and a different texture.
Skills: Fine motor control, experimentation, observation, and hand-eye coordination.
Materials: Colored play dough, garlic presses, pizza cutters, wooden mallets, potato mashers
Rationale: To begin raising color awareness, and to provide an outlet for creative expression and social interactions.
Skills: fine motor development (squeezing, poking, and pinching), observation, generating ideas, and symbolic representation.

Sensory
Materials: Sand table, scoops and shovels, buckets.
Rationale: To explore a new sensory activity in the classroom, to support collaborative play between the children, and to make observations and predictions.
Skills: Exploration, volume and spatial relations, comparison, cause and effect, fine motor, collaboration, turn taking, communication.

Science
Materials: Bird house, logs, woodland animals (figurines), magnifying glasses.
Rationale: To raise awareness about animal homes. To start making connections between animals and the homes they live in.
Skills: Observation, making connections, predicting.
Materials: Light table, color mixing bottles, color paddles.
Rationale: To explore and raise awareness of colors and color mixing.
Skills: Comparison, cause and effect, prediction.

Dramatic Play
Materials: Grocery store food items, shopping bags, checkout aisle with calculators. Story line with what to do when going grocery shopping.
Rationale: Since the children brought in vegetables from their homes last week we will expand on this by introducing the idea of going to the grocery store into their imaginary play. There will be a story line to help some children play along a story line - collect groceries, go to the checkout to buy them, and take them home to make something/store away. To encourage social interactions and collaboration between the children.
Skills: Role play, social interaction, communication, collaboration.
Materials: Construction worker gear, tools, toolbox, boots and construction hats, construction slideshow on the computer.
Rationale: Expand the community workers theme from firefighters to construction workers. Continue to explore options about how we change our appearance, but stay the same person. To make connections/get ideas from the slideshow to inspire construction play.
Skills: Social interactions, symbolic representation, sharing, imaginative play, cooperation, fine and gross motor skills, communication (speaking and listening).

Math and Manipulatives
Materials: Measuring chart, pictures, string/tape.
Rationale: Continue measuring the height of the children and compare their height to buildings they create, teachers, themselves, and each other. To become aware of different forms of measurement and their growing bodies.
Skills: Observation, comparison, prediction, cooperation, turn taking, counting, and measuring.
Materials: Picture chart of the children's special toys from home, corresponding pictures of the children, and a small survey of questions for them to answer.
Rationale: To give the children more opportunities to learn about each other. The children can match the appropriate child's face to the picture of his or her toy. The teachers will help conduct a small survey related to the children's pictures (Ex. Do you have a dog at home, do you like to play with trucks, etc.). The results will be complied so the children can see the similarities and differences between them.
Skills: Observation, communication, one-to-one correspondence.
Materials: Counting bears, puzzles, and zipper and button boards.
Rationale: To promote fine motor development, grouping, counting, seriation, hand-eye coordination for spatial awareness, and develop self help skills.
Skills: visual discrimination, turn taking, fine motor control.

Language and Literacy
• Materials: Labels of food in the "grocery store," signs, questions, and related books posted in various curriculum areas and a variety of books on the bookshelf. Children's pictures with their names.
Rationale: Begin emergent reading through letter recognition of their names.
To support their development in language and literacy and emergent reading, such as the process of independently turning pages in a book and dictating a story from the pictures.
Skills: Listening, speaking, phonological awareness, and vocabulary expansion.

Blocks
• Materials: Hollow, foam, and cardboard blocks.
Rationale: To support mathematical skills, social interaction, and collaborative building. To be incorporated into buildings or roads for the vehicles and construction equipment located nearby.
Skills: Communication, collaboration, large motor, expressive creation, and mathematical concepts.

Large Motor
Indoor Materials: Monkey bars with foam slide, A frame ladder with slide, steps, large foam climbing cylinders with rope, climbing wall, bean bag game.
Outdoor Materials: Natural materials such as tall grass, stumps, plants, and trees, wooden house, picnic table, plates and bowls, rakes, tools for digging and molding sand, dump trucks, basketball hoops, balls, wheel barrows, and tricycles.
Rationale: To support climbing, sliding, 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), hand eye coordination, propulsion skills, role-playing, and social interactions with peers and teachers.

Large Group
• Materials: Stories, songs (finger play and hello songs), and teacher lead discussions/demonstrations.
Rationale: Keep with the routine of the day while introducing new stories or songs. Communicate with children about events that are going on in our class.
Skills: Listening, speaking, turn taking, and observing.

Music - Music will be apparent throughout the day to support transitions and encourage participation. 

• Materials: Piano, shakers, drums (many different sizes), hollow blocks, cd player to play songs, crow sounder, and bells.
Rationale: to promote exploration of sound, volume, rhythm and social interaction. To help recognize that we can change our bodies (how we move or play instruments) as the music changes.
Skills: turn taking, fine motor development, and mathematical concepts such as beats and patterns.

Snacks:
Tuesday: Bananas and rice chex
Friday: Bagels and pumpkin butter

Week of November 5th-9th
Megan Lead Teaching
Overview: As the weather continues to grow colder, the children are becoming more familiar with the routine of getting ready to go outside. We will keep practicing self help skills with them in order to help them become more independent with getting their jackets, hats, and mittens on. Some of the curriculum areas are coming to an end (making vegetable soup), or are in the utilization phase of the learning cycle this week. We have noticed the emergence of an interest in animals and animal homes from the children since the weather has been changing and as we have spent some time talking and learning about hibernation. In the science area we will be focusing on this topic. Another new topic that has risen in the class is the concept of colors. Many children have been naming the colors of different items, so we will be incorporating colors into the classroom today.

Expressive Arts
Materials: Plexiglas easel, and finger-paints.
Rationale: To encourage the children to notice what each other are doing and create social interactions between them. To expose the children to a different art medium and painting experience.
Skills: Fine motor, communication, observation, cause and effect.
Materials: Easel and water color paints, paint brushes.
Rationale: To experience a different kind of paint with different kinds of color and a different texture.
Skills: Fine motor control, experimentation, observation, and hand-eye coordination.
Materials: Colored play dough, garlic presses, pizza cutters, wooden mallets, potato mashers
Rationale: To begin raising color awareness, and to provide an outlet for creative expression and social interactions.
Skills: fine motor development (squeezing, poking, and pinching), observation, generating ideas, and symbolic representation.

Sensory
Materials: Sand table, scoops and shovels, buckets.
Rationale: To explore a new sensory activity in the classroom, to support collaborative play between the children, and to make observations and predictions.
Skills: Exploration, volume and spatial relations, comparison, cause and effect, fine motor, collaboration, turn taking, communication.

Science
Materials: Bird house, logs, woodland animals (figurines), magnifying glasses.
Rationale: To raise awareness about animal homes. To start making connections between animals and the homes they live in.
Skills: Observation, making connections, predicting.
Materials: Light table, color mixing bottles, color paddles.
Rationale: To explore and raise awareness of colors and color mixing.
Skills: Comparison, cause and effect, prediction.

Dramatic Play
Materials: Grocery store food items, shopping bags, checkout aisle with calculators. Story line with what to do when going grocery shopping.
Rationale: Since the children brought in vegetables from their homes last week we will expand on this by introducing the idea of going to the grocery store into their imaginary play. There will be a story line to help some children play along a story line - collect groceries, go to the checkout to buy them, and take them home to make something/store away. To encourage social interactions and collaboration between the children.
Skills: Role play, social interaction, communication, collaboration.
Materials: Construction worker gear, tools, toolbox, boots and construction hats, construction slideshow on the computer.
Rationale: Expand the community workers theme from firefighters to construction workers. Continue to explore options about how we change our appearance, but stay the same person. To make connections/get ideas from the slideshow to inspire construction play.
Skills: Social interactions, symbolic representation, sharing, imaginative play, cooperation, fine and gross motor skills, communication (speaking and listening).

Math and Manipulatives
Materials: Measuring chart, pictures, string/tape.
Rationale: Continue measuring the height of the children and compare their height to buildings they create, teachers, themselves, and each other. To become aware of different forms of measurement and their growing bodies.
Skills: Observation, comparison, prediction, cooperation, turn taking, counting, and measuring.
Materials: Picture chart of the children's special toys from home, corresponding pictures of the children, and a small survey of questions for them to answer.
Rationale: To give the children more opportunities to learn about each other. The children can match the appropriate child's face to the picture of his or her toy. The teachers will help conduct a small survey related to the children's pictures (Ex. Do you have a dog at home, do you like to play with trucks, etc.). The results will be complied so the children can see the similarities and differences between them.
Skills: Observation, communication, one-to-one correspondence.
Materials: Counting bears, puzzles, and zipper and button boards.
Rationale: To promote fine motor development, grouping, counting, seriation, hand-eye coordination for spatial awareness, and develop self help skills.
Skills: visual discrimination, turn taking, fine motor control.

Language and Literacy
• Materials: Labels of food in the "grocery store," signs, questions, and related books posted in various curriculum areas and a variety of books on the bookshelf. Children's pictures with their names.
Rationale: Begin emergent reading through letter recognition of their names.
To support their development in language and literacy and emergent reading, such as the process of independently turning pages in a book and dictating a story from the pictures.
Skills: Listening, speaking, phonological awareness, and vocabulary expansion.

Blocks
• Materials: Hollow, foam, and cardboard blocks.
Rationale: To support mathematical skills, social interaction, and collaborative building. To be incorporated into buildings or roads for the vehicles and construction equipment located nearby.
Skills: Communication, collaboration, large motor, expressive creation, and mathematical concepts.

Large Motor
Indoor Materials: Monkey bars with foam slide, A frame ladder with slide, steps, large foam climbing cylinders with rope, climbing wall, bean bag game.
Outdoor Materials: Natural materials such as tall grass, stumps, plants, and trees, wooden house, picnic table, plates and bowls, rakes, tools for digging and molding sand, dump trucks, basketball hoops, balls, wheel barrows, and tricycles.
Rationale: To support climbing, sliding, 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), hand eye coordination, propulsion skills, role-playing, and social interactions with peers and teachers.

Large Group
• Materials: Stories, songs (finger play and hello songs), and teacher lead discussions/demonstrations.
Rationale: Keep with the routine of the day while introducing new stories or songs. Communicate with children about events that are going on in our class.
Skills: Listening, speaking, turn taking, and observing.

Music - Music will be apparent throughout the day to support transitions and encourage participation. 

• Materials: Piano, shakers, drums (many different sizes), hollow blocks, cd player to play songs, crow sounder, and bells. Frances will come into our class on Wednesday to do a music and movement activity.
Rationale: to promote exploration of sound, volume, rhythm and social interaction. To help recognize that we can change our bodies (how we move or play instruments) as the music changes.
Skills: turn taking, fine motor development, and mathematical concepts such as beats and patterns.

Snacks:
Monday: Bagels and pumpkin butter
Wednesday: non dairy fruit smoothies and graham crackers
Thursday: Oatmeal and non-dairy milk