Recently in Ayuko's Weekly Plans F11 Category

Weekly Plan for 5.21-5.25
Kelsey Lead Teaching
Overview:

With the school year nearing its end, this week we will focus on supporting the children in making this transition. We will support the children's quantifying and number skills by counting down the number of school days left using the calendar and a number chart. We will encourage the children to begin thinking about what they will be doing this summer. We will discuss their plans, special occasions, and potential trips. As the children finished building the garden bed on the playground, we will begin planting and putting a variety of seeds in the dirt and water them.

Expressive Arts:
Materials: Art easel, three colors of tempera paint, paint brushes, paper
Rationale: To continue to allow the children to explore the cause and effect of shading. To provide opportunities for the children the children to investigate what happens when primary and secondary colors are mixed with white.
Skills: cause and effect, creative expression, fine motor skills, investigation, observation
Materials: clear art easel, wooden art easel, tempera paint, watercolor pain, paint brushes, and paper
Rationale: To expand on the children's interest in painting on easels. To continue to encourage collaboration and socialization using the clear easel. To encourage the children to compare and contrast between the different types of easels and how they are used.
Skills: cause and effect, creative expression, fine motor skills, investigation, observation, compare and contrast.

Sensory:
Materials: Sand table, wet sand, scoops and shovels, rakes, plastic bugs, bug catchers, and magnifying glasses
Rationale: To expand on the children's interest in finding bugs outside. To encourage the children to apply their knowledge of looking for bugs in a new context. To continue to foster symbolic representation.
Skills: symbolic representation, observation, fine motor skills, cause and effect, collaboration, cooperation, sensory input and exploration, pre-math skills - counting, grouping, ordering.
Materials: Red, green, and orange play dough, rolling pins, garlic presses, slicers, cutting boards, baking pans, and cupcake pans
Rationale: To continue to expand the children's interest in baking and cooking by using the play dough to symbolically represent food and tools in the kitchen. 
To encourage the children to create their own recipes using the play dough.

Skills: sensory input and exploration, storytelling, creative symbolic representation, fine motor skills, creative expression and imagination, and turn taking

Science:
Materials: small wind mills, ribbons, various small materials such as feathers, cotton balls, beads, and rollers, air pumps, paper fans, small electric fan, wind chime, and video on computer of wind and wind sounds
Rationale: To continue to expand on the children's interest in storms and weather. To explore the different aspects of wind. To provide opportunities for the children to create wind using different materials and notice the effect it has on different objects. To allow the children to compare and contrast between various materials to see what is easier and harder to blow. To provide opportunities for the children to observe wind by placing ribbons near an open window.
Skills: observation, investigation, compare and contrast, cause and effect, collaboration, prediction, conversation, explanation
Materials: light table, various x-rays of different animals
Rationale: To expand on the children's interest in veterinarians. To provide opportunities for the children to begin to explore x-rays, and the different parts of the animals bodies such as bones.

Skills: observation, investigation, collaboration, symbolic representation, explanation, creative expression

Dramatic Play:
Materials: Stuffed animal dogs, cats, and rabbits, pet carriers, pet dishes and leashes, veterinarian uniforms, syringes, medicine bottles, table, bandage wraps, stethoscopes, and x-rays
Rationale: To continue to expand the children's interest in veterinarians and different animals that veterinarians care for. To continue to encourage children to engage in symbolic play. To continue to take care of sick/injured animals using doctor materials. To provide opportunities for the children to collaborate and help the animals.
Skills: collaboration, social skills, cooperation, turn taking, communication, symbolic representation, creative expression, symbolic play, fine-motor skills, role-play, observation

Materials: kitchen furniture, food, utensils, mixing bowls, play dough, picnic table, picnic baskets, flowers, several picnic blankets

Rationale: To expand on the children's interest in picnics and baking. To continue to make and bake food using play dough as a representational tool. To continue to promote beginning literacy by making recipes and posting children's favorite foods. To further support symbolic play and collaboration. To allow the children to act out what they experience during snack when we have picnics.
Skills: social skills, collaboration, symbolic representation, cooperation, communication, creative expression, role-play, early literacy skills, fine motor skills

Materials: grocery baskets, various food items, grocery lists, calculators, credit cards, and credit card swipe
Rationale: To expand on children's interest in grocery shopping. To provide opportunities for children to go grocery shopping and buy various food items to cook with in the kitchen. To encourage the children to make grocery lists of what they need to buy. To promote symbolic representation.
Skills: symbolic representation, collaboration, cooperation, turn-taking, creative expression, early literacy skills, role play, decision making, communication

Materials: tutus and skirts, capes, paper strips and various colorful art materials

Rationale: To continue to expand on the children's interest in castle play. To allow the children to create their own crown using the art materials available. To promote symbolic representation of what it means to live in a castle.
Skills: collaboration, cooperation, role-play, symbolic representation, creative expression, fine motor skills, communication

Math and Manipulatives:
Materials: sorting by 2 categories (color and shape), zippers and buttons, nesting cups, and matching materials (photos to line drawings)
Rationale: To support cognitive development through the use of math and manipulatives. To provide new ways for the children to practice seriation, matching, and grouping. To continue to develop the children's self-help skills by practicing buttoning and zipping. To strengthen the children's fine motor skills.
Skills: fine-motor, turn taking, counting, matching, problem solving, risk-taking, seriation, sorting, trial and error, and persistence

Language and Literacy:

Materials: recipes in the kitchen area, grocery lists, paper and pencils available (in kitchen and grocery store), name cards and letters available in art area, new books about topics related to classroom activities

Rationale: To continue to use symbolic representation and imagination by creating their own recipes and grocery lists. To continue to encourage the children to learn the different letters in their name. To encourage the children to use books to expand their understanding of the different classroom topics.
Skills: listening, speaking, observing, spelling, letter identification, conversation, turn taking, symbolic representation, creative expression, fine-motor development, early literacy skills such as comprehension and left-right reading

Music:
Materials: accordions, harp, triangles, tone-bells, piano, and cds of classical music

Rationale: To continue to explore and learn about different musical instruments related to classical music. To further encourage the children's use of rhythm and temporal awareness. To allow the children to creatively express themselves through sound. To encourage the children to incorporate music into their symbolic play.
Skills: sensory input and exploration, hand eye coordination, creative expression, listening, turn taking, auditory discrimination, fine and large motor skills

Blocks: 

Materials: Hollow blocks, wooden blocks, foam blocks, planks, castle visuals, triangle cones

Rationale: To continue to support the children assuming different roles in fantasy play. To encourage the children to build various castles and structures by using visuals as models. To continue to encourage meaningful building and problem solving.
Skills: Communication, collaboration, problem solving, role-taking, symbolic representation, turn-taking, spatial concepts, fine and large motor skills, cooperation, creative expression

Large Motor:
Outdoor Materials: scoops, shovels, buckets, bug catchers, tricycles, basketball hoop, target throw, balls, seeds for the garden, and watering cans 

Rationale: To continue looking for worms, caterpillars, and various insects. To continue role-playing through the use of various kitchen materials available. To encourage the children to begin throwing balls to a target. To continue to build our new garden and care for the seeds that we plant.


Skills: turn taking, large motor skills, motor coordination, searching, scanning, muscular endurance, hand eye coordination, balance, cardiovascular endurance, role-taking, fine-motor skills, target practice, throwing and catching

Indoor Materials: monkey bars, rope climb up the bumpy ramp, aim and jump, aim and throw, wall ladder, and bridge

Rationale: To support and develop upper body strength and core muscles. To provide challenging activities that foster the children's muscular and cardiovascular endurance.
Skills: upper body strength, motor coordination, hand eye coordination, propulsion skills, balance, depth perception, visual perception, lower body strength, turn taking, dynamic balance

Large Group:
Materials: Songs and welcome activities led by the teacher, calendar, and end of the year count down, children's pictures on floor,
Rationale: To support the children in making the transition from the end of the school year into summer. To support their understanding of moving to the multiage classrooms next year. To continue to encourage the children to sit on the circle tape, similar to what they will experience in the multiage classrooms.
Skills: Attention span, listening, receptive skills, speaking, taking turns, communication, social skills, literacy, trying new things, impulse control, group membership, collaboration

Weekly Plan for May 14th-18th
Hannah Lead Teaching
Overview:
Because many of our curriculum areas culminated last week, this week we will focus on exploring many new topics that the children have been interested in. We will be introducing new areas such as grocery shopping, wind exploration, and castle play. These areas emerged through the children's conversations and ideas. We will also be continuing to support the children as the transition to the multiage room gets closer. Through visiting the classrooms and playground, we hope to help the children ease their way into the transition so that it is as smooth as possible. Many of the children have also been very interested in picnics. To incorporate their interest, we will begin participating in picnic snacks outside on our playground on a weekly basis depending on the weather.

Expressive Art:
Materials: Art easel, three colors of tempera paint, paintbrushes, paper

Rationale: To continue to allow the children to explore the cause and effect of shading. To provide opportunities for the children the children to investigate what happens when primary and secondary colors are mixed with white.
Skills: cause and effect, creative expression, fine motor skills, investigation, observation

Materials: clear art easel, wooden art easel, tempera paint, paintbrushes, paper
Rationale: To expand on the children's interest in painting on easels. To allow the children to explore the difference between the clear easel and the opaque easel. To encourage the children to compare and contrast between the different types of easels and how they are used.
Skills: cause and effect, creative expression, fine motor skills, investigation, observation, compare and contrast.

Sensory:
Materials: sand table, wet sand, scoops and shovels, various construction trucks (dump trucks, diggers, motor graders)
Rationale: To expand on the children's interest in construction using the sand. To allow the children to build and create various structures using the wet sand and trucks. To continue to foster symbolic representation.
Skills: symbolic representation, creative expression, observation, fine motor skills, cause and effect, collaboration, cooperation, sensory input and exploration

Materials: white play dough, rolling pins, slicers, garlic presses, cutting boards, baking pans, and cupcake pans 

Rationale: To continue to expand the children's interest in baking and cooking by using the play dough to symbolically represent food and tools in the kitchen. 
To encourage the children to create their own recipes using the play dough.
Skills: sensory input and exploration, storytelling, creative symbolic representation, fine motor skills, creative expression and imagination, and turn taking

Science:
Materials: small wind mills, ribbons, various small materials such as feathers, cotton balls, beads, and rollers, air pump, video on computer of wind during a storm
Rationale: To expand on the children's interest in storms and weather. To begin to explore the different aspects of wind. To provide opportunities for the children to create wind and notice the effect it has on different objects. To allow the children to compare and contrast between various materials to see what is easier to blow and what is harder. To provide opportunities for the children to observe wind through placing ribbons near and open window.
Skills: observation, investigation, compare and contrast, cause and effect, collaboration, prediction, conversation, explanation

Materials: light table, various x-rays of different animals
Rationale: To expand on the children's interest in veterinarians. To provide opportunities for the children to begin to explore x-rays, and the different parts of the animals bodies such as bones.
Skills: observation, investigation, collaboration, symbolic representation, explanation, creative expression

Dramatic Play:
Materials: Stuffed animal birds, blankets, fabric, veterinarian uniforms, syringes, medicine bottles, table, bandage wraps, stethoscopes, hair nets, x-rays
Rationale: To continue to expand the children's interests in veterinarians and birds. To continue to encourage children to engage in symbolic play. To continue to explore the idea of taking care of a sick bird through the available materials. To provide opportunities for the children to work together to help the sick birds feel better.
Skills: collaboration, social skills, cooperation, turn taking, communication, symbolic representation, creative expression, symbolic play, fine-motor skills, role-play, observation

Materials: kitchen furniture, food, utensils, mixing bowls, play dough, picnic table, picnic baskets, flowers, picnic blanket
Rationale: To expand on the children's interest in picnics and baking. To continue to make and bake food using play dough as a representational tool. To continue to promote beginning literacy by making recipes and posting children's favorite foods. To further support symbolic play and collaboration. To allow the children to act out what they experience during snack when we have picnics.
Skills: social skills, collaboration, symbolic representation, cooperation, communication, creative expression, role play, early literacy skills, fine motor skills

Materials: grocery baskets, various food items, grocery lists, paper bags
Rationale: To expand on children's interest in grocery shopping. To provide opportunities for children to go grocery shopping and buy various food items to cook with in the kitchen. To encourage the children to make grocery lists of what they need to buy. To promote symbolic representation.
Skills: symbolic representation, collaboration, cooperation, turn-taking, creative expression, early literacy skills, role play, decision making, communication

Materials: tutus and skirts, capes, paper strips and various colorful art materials
Rationale: To expand on the children's interest in castle play. To allow the children to create their own crown using the art materials available. To promote symbolic representation of what it means to live in a castle.
Skills: collaboration, cooperation, role-play, symbolic representation, creative expression, fine motor skills, communication

Math and Manipulatives:
Materials: pegs and peg boards, matching file folder games, beading materials, seriation puzzles
Rationale: To encourage cognitive development through the use of the math manipulatives. To continue to allow the children to practice patterning and grouping, To encourage the children to practice counting. To strengthen the children's fine-motor skills. To provide opportunities for children to match and group objects.
Skills: fine-motor skills, turn taking, patterning, counting, matching, grouping, one-to-one correspondence, problem solving, risk-taking, seriation, persistence, trial and error

Language and Literacy:
Materials: recipes in the kitchen area, grocery lists, paper and pencils available (in kitchen and grocery store), name cards and letters available in art area, new books about topics related to classroom activities
Rationale: To continue to use symbolic representation and imagination by creating their own recipes and grocery lists. To continue to encourage the children to learn the different letters in their name. To encourage the children to use books to expand their understanding of the different classroom topics.
Skills: listening, speaking, observing, spelling, letter identification, conversation, turn taking, symbolic representation, creative expression, fine-motor development, early literacy skills such as comprehension and left-right reading

Music:
Materials: accordions, harp, triangles, tone-bells, cds of classical music
Rationale: To continue to explore and learn about different musical instruments related to classical music. To further encourage the children's use of rhythm and temporal awareness. To allow the children to creatively express themselves through sound.
Skills: sensory input and exploration, hand eye coordination, creative expression, listening, turn taking, auditory discrimination, fine and large motor skills

Blocks:
Materials: Hollow blocks, wooden blocks, foam blocks, planks, castle visuals, triangle cones
Rationale: To continue to support the children assuming different roles in fantasy play. To encourage the children to build various castles and structures by using visuals as models. To continue to encourage meaningful building and problem solving.
Skills: Communication, collaboration, problem solving, role-taking, symbolic representation, turn-taking, spatial concepts, fine and large motor skills, cooperation, creative expression

Large Motor:
Outdoor Materials: scoops, shovels, buckets, bug catchers, teeter-totters, tricycles, dishes, bowls, cups, strainers, basket ball hoop, balls
Rationale: To facilitate social interactions through play and problem solving when using the teeter totters. To continue looking for worms, caterpillars, and various insects. To continue role-playing through the use of various kitchen materials available. To encourage the children to begin throwing balls into a target

Skills: turn taking, large motor skills, motor coordination, searching, scanning, muscular endurance, hand eye coordination, balance, cardiovascular endurance, role-taking, fine-motor skills, target practice, throwing and catching

Indoor Materials: monkey bars, rope climb up the bumpy ramp, aim and jump, aim and throw, wall ladder, bridge
Rationale: To support and develop upper body strength and core muscles. To provide challenging activities that foster the children's muscular and cardiovascular endurance. Skills: upper body strength, motor coordination, hand eye coordination, propulsion skills, balance, depth perception, visual perception, lower body strength, turn taking, dynamic balance

Large Group:
Materials: songs and welcome activities led by teacher, discussion of storms and the sounds they make, demonstration of crown making, discussion of plant growth, discussion of recipe book, dismissal into small groups, and circle tape on floor, demonstration of making a grocery list and shopping, rhythm sticks activity
Rationale: To continue to support the children in applying their learning to new and functional situations. To continue to develop and support children's representational artwork. To introduce and support play themes throughout the classroom. To continue to encourage the children to sit on the circle tape, similar to what they will experience in the multiage classrooms.
Skills: Attention span, listening, receptive skills, speaking, taking turns, communication, social skills, literacy, trying new things, impulse control, group membership, collaboration

Weekly Plan for May 14th-18th
Hannah Lead Teaching
Overview:
Because many of our curriculum areas culminated last week, this week we will focus on exploring many new topics that the children have been interested in. We will be introducing new areas such as grocery shopping, wind exploration, and castle play. These areas emerged through the children's conversations and ideas. We will also be continuing to support the children as the transition to the multiage room gets closer. Through visiting the classrooms and playground, we hope to help the children ease their way into the transition so that it is as smooth as possible. Many of the children have also been very interested in picnics. To incorporate their interest, we will begin participating in picnic snacks outside on our playground on a weekly basis depending on the weather.

Expressive Art:
Materials: Art easel, three colors of tempera paint, paintbrushes, paper

Rationale: To continue to allow the children to explore the cause and effect of shading. To provide opportunities for the children the children to investigate what happens when primary and secondary colors are mixed with white.
Skills: cause and effect, creative expression, fine motor skills, investigation, observation

Materials: clear art easel, wooden art easel, tempera paint, paintbrushes, paper
Rationale: To expand on the children's interest in painting on easels. To allow the children to explore the difference between the clear easel and the opaque easel. To encourage the children to compare and contrast between the different types of easels and how they are used.
Skills: cause and effect, creative expression, fine motor skills, investigation, observation, compare and contrast.

Sensory:
Materials: sand table, wet sand, scoops and shovels, various construction trucks (dump trucks, diggers, motor graders)
Rationale: To expand on the children's interest in construction using the sand. To allow the children to build and create various structures using the wet sand and trucks. To continue to foster symbolic representation.
Skills: symbolic representation, creative expression, observation, fine motor skills, cause and effect, collaboration, cooperation, sensory input and exploration

Materials: white play dough, rolling pins, slicers, garlic presses, cutting boards, baking pans, and cupcake pans 

Rationale: To continue to expand the children's interest in baking and cooking by using the play dough to symbolically represent food and tools in the kitchen. 
To encourage the children to create their own recipes using the play dough.
Skills: sensory input and exploration, storytelling, creative symbolic representation, fine motor skills, creative expression and imagination, and turn taking

Science:
Materials: small wind mills, ribbons, various small materials such as feathers, cotton balls, beads, and rollers, air pump, video on computer of wind during a storm
Rationale: To expand on the children's interest in storms and weather. To begin to explore the different aspects of wind. To provide opportunities for the children to create wind and notice the effect it has on different objects. To allow the children to compare and contrast between various materials to see what is easier to blow and what is harder. To provide opportunities for the children to observe wind through placing ribbons near and open window.
Skills: observation, investigation, compare and contrast, cause and effect, collaboration, prediction, conversation, explanation

Materials: light table, various x-rays of different animals
Rationale: To expand on the children's interest in veterinarians. To provide opportunities for the children to begin to explore x-rays, and the different parts of the animals bodies such as bones.
Skills: observation, investigation, collaboration, symbolic representation, explanation, creative expression

Dramatic Play:
Materials: Stuffed animal birds, blankets, fabric, veterinarian uniforms, syringes, medicine bottles, table, bandage wraps, stethoscopes, hair nets, x-rays
Rationale: To continue to expand the children's interests in veterinarians and birds. To continue to encourage children to engage in symbolic play. To continue to explore the idea of taking care of a sick bird through the available materials. To provide opportunities for the children to work together to help the sick birds feel better.
Skills: collaboration, social skills, cooperation, turn taking, communication, symbolic representation, creative expression, symbolic play, fine-motor skills, role-play, observation

Materials: kitchen furniture, food, utensils, mixing bowls, play dough, picnic table, picnic baskets, flowers, picnic blanket
Rationale: To expand on the children's interest in picnics and baking. To continue to make and bake food using play dough as a representational tool. To continue to promote beginning literacy by making recipes and posting children's favorite foods. To further support symbolic play and collaboration. To allow the children to act out what they experience during snack when we have picnics.
Skills: social skills, collaboration, symbolic representation, cooperation, communication, creative expression, role play, early literacy skills, fine motor skills

Materials: grocery baskets, various food items, grocery lists, paper bags
Rationale: To expand on children's interest in grocery shopping. To provide opportunities for children to go grocery shopping and buy various food items to cook with in the kitchen. To encourage the children to make grocery lists of what they need to buy. To promote symbolic representation.
Skills: symbolic representation, collaboration, cooperation, turn-taking, creative expression, early literacy skills, role play, decision making, communication

Materials: tutus and skirts, capes, paper strips and various colorful art materials
Rationale: To expand on the children's interest in castle play. To allow the children to create their own crown using the art materials available. To promote symbolic representation of what it means to live in a castle.
Skills: collaboration, cooperation, role-play, symbolic representation, creative expression, fine motor skills, communication

Math and Manipulatives:
Materials: pegs and peg boards, matching file folder games, beading materials, seriation puzzles
Rationale: To encourage cognitive development through the use of the math manipulatives. To continue to allow the children to practice patterning and grouping, To encourage the children to practice counting. To strengthen the children's fine-motor skills. To provide opportunities for children to match and group objects.
Skills: fine-motor skills, turn taking, patterning, counting, matching, grouping, one-to-one correspondence, problem solving, risk-taking, seriation, persistence, trial and error

Language and Literacy:
Materials: recipes in the kitchen area, grocery lists, paper and pencils available (in kitchen and grocery store), name cards and letters available in art area, new books about topics related to classroom activities
Rationale: To continue to use symbolic representation and imagination by creating their own recipes and grocery lists. To continue to encourage the children to learn the different letters in their name. To encourage the children to use books to expand their understanding of the different classroom topics.
Skills: listening, speaking, observing, spelling, letter identification, conversation, turn taking, symbolic representation, creative expression, fine-motor development, early literacy skills such as comprehension and left-right reading

Music:
Materials: accordions, harp, triangles, tone-bells, cds of classical music
Rationale: To continue to explore and learn about different musical instruments related to classical music. To further encourage the children's use of rhythm and temporal awareness. To allow the children to creatively express themselves through sound.
Skills: sensory input and exploration, hand eye coordination, creative expression, listening, turn taking, auditory discrimination, fine and large motor skills

Blocks:
Materials: Hollow blocks, wooden blocks, foam blocks, planks, castle visuals, triangle cones
Rationale: To continue to support the children assuming different roles in fantasy play. To encourage the children to build various castles and structures by using visuals as models. To continue to encourage meaningful building and problem solving.
Skills: Communication, collaboration, problem solving, role-taking, symbolic representation, turn-taking, spatial concepts, fine and large motor skills, cooperation, creative expression

Large Motor:
Outdoor Materials: scoops, shovels, buckets, bug catchers, teeter-totters, tricycles, dishes, bowls, cups, strainers, basket ball hoop, balls
Rationale: To facilitate social interactions through play and problem solving when using the teeter totters. To continue looking for worms, caterpillars, and various insects. To continue role-playing through the use of various kitchen materials available. To encourage the children to begin throwing balls into a target

Skills: turn taking, large motor skills, motor coordination, searching, scanning, muscular endurance, hand eye coordination, balance, cardiovascular endurance, role-taking, fine-motor skills, target practice, throwing and catching

Indoor Materials: monkey bars, rope climb up the bumpy ramp, aim and jump, aim and throw, wall ladder, bridge
Rationale: To support and develop upper body strength and core muscles. To provide challenging activities that foster the children's muscular and cardiovascular endurance. Skills: upper body strength, motor coordination, hand eye coordination, propulsion skills, balance, depth perception, visual perception, lower body strength, turn taking, dynamic balance

Large Group:
Materials: songs and welcome activities led by teacher, discussion of storms and the sounds they make, demonstration of crown making, discussion of plant growth, discussion of recipe book, dismissal into small groups, and circle tape on floor, demonstration of making a grocery list and shopping, rhythm sticks activity
Rationale: To continue to support the children in applying their learning to new and functional situations. To continue to develop and support children's representational artwork. To introduce and support play themes throughout the classroom. To continue to encourage the children to sit on the circle tape, similar to what they will experience in the multiage classrooms.
Skills: Attention span, listening, receptive skills, speaking, taking turns, communication, social skills, literacy, trying new things, impulse control, group membership, collaboration

3am Weekly Plan 5.7-5.10
Lauren Peick

Overview
This week will mark the culmination of the curriculum areas which include birds, colors, and plants. The children will continue into the utilization level of learning by applying and representing their knowledge in new and functional situations. We will continue to support the children's interest in gardening by creating a raised bed in our playground. In addition to making the raised bed, the children will have the opportunity to begin transferring their bean sprouts into the raised bed. The children will also be planting various types of seeds in order to finalize their understanding about the lifecycle of plants. The teachers will be there to facilitate conversations on how the weather may affect their growth. We will continue to help support the children's transition to the multiage classroom next year by making visits to the classrooms this week. This will help familiarize the children with the environment of the other classrooms.

Expressive Arts:
Materials: Large branch, glue, various materials to make birds nests (chosen by Hannah and children)
Rationale: To continue to explore representational art. To practice rationalizing decisions on the chosen materials. The children will explore using these materials to represent the nests seen on our walks.
Skills: collaboration, cooperation, symbolic representation, cause and effect, creativity, fine motor skills, and rationalizing

Materials: Art easel, tempera paint, paintbrushes, paper
Rationale: To continue to allow the children to explore the cause and effect of shading. The children will continue to have the opportunity to add white to primary and secondary colors and compare the different shades they are able to create.
Skills: cause and effect, creativity, fine motor skills, investigation

Sensory:
Materials: sand table, buckets, measuring cups, shovels
Rationale: To explore sand using a variety of scooping materials.
Skills: observation, cause and effect, fine motor skills, prediction, and investigation

Materials: white play dough, rolling pins, slicers, garlic presses, cutting boards, baking pans, and cupcake pans
Rationale: To continue to foster and support the children's interest in baking and cooking by using the play dough to symbolically represent food and tools in the kitchen.
Skills: sensory input and exploration, storytelling, creative symbolic representation, fine motor skills, creative expression and imagination, and turn taking

Science:
Materials: classroom plants, soybean plants that the children planted, water spray, clipboards, colored pencils, charcoal, and seeds to plant outside
Rationale: To further support the children in applying their previous knowledge of plants to a new, real world situation by planting seeds outside on the play ground. To continue to support their understanding of plant growth through the observation of the soybeans they planted last week. To continue to encourage the children to symbolically represent parts of plants through visual art.
Skills: application, observation, prediction, conversation, cause and effect, explanation, investigation, fine motor skills, symbolic representation, and care taking

Materials: Light table, color gels, window clings
Rationale: To explore and experiment color mixing through layering.
Skills: Experimentation, observation, cause and effect, fine motor skill.

Dramatic Play:
Materials: Stuffed animal birds, blankets, plastic foliage and flowers, eggs, fabric, pipe cleaners, paper towel rolls (binoculars), bandaids, veterinarian uniforms, syringes, medicine bottles, table, bandage wraps
Rationale: To continue to explore and expand the children's interests in birds and their nests. To continue to encourage children to engage in symbolic play as birds. To further participate in building nests for themselves and the birds. To begin to explore the idea of care taking through the use of veterintary materials. Skills: Collaboration, social skills, turn taking, communication, symbolic representation, creative expression, symbolic play, fine-motor skills, role play, and observation

Materials: kitchen furniture, food, utensils, mixing bowls, play dough, picnic table, and picnic basket
Rationale: To continue to make and bake food for each other using play dough as a representational tool to make new types of food. To continue to promote beginning literacy by making recipes and posting children's favorite foods.To further support symbolic play and collaboration.
Skills: social skills, collaboration, symbolic representation, cooperation, communication, creative expression, role play and, literacy

Math and Manipulatives:
Materials: beads, string, pipe cleaners, ribbon, weaving boards
Rationale: To strengthen the children's use of fine motor skills. To practice patterning and counting. To continue to support the children's interest in weaving with ribbons. To further explore the concept of weaving and support their ability to weave different materials.
Skills: fine motor skills, 1 to 1 correspondence, matching, problem solving, observation, risk taking, persistence, seriation, weaving, trial and error, counting

Language and Literacy:
Materials: Clip boards, pencils, a variety of books being displayed in different curriculum areas relating to emerging and current play themes, and letters and name cards (available at the art table), recipes in the kitchen area, markers, paper
Rational: To begin to use symbolic representation and imagination by creating their own recipes To continue to support the children's understanding of literacy through the use of their own recipes and favorite foods. To continue to facilitate the development of the basic component of language. To continue to encourage the children to explore the different letters in their name.
Skills: Listening, speaking, observing, spelling, letter identification, conversation, reading, turn taking, symbolic representation, name recognition, and creativity

Music:
Materials: triangles, rain sticks, egg shakers, button accordians, and xylophones Rationale: To begin experimenting with unique instruments, such as an accordian. To further encourage temporal awareness and rhythm. To continue to allow the children to creatively express themselves through sound. Skills: Sensory input, hand eye coordination, exploring, large and fine motor skills, imagination, creative expression, listening, and auditory discrimination

Blocks:
Materials: Hollow blocks, wooden blocks, foam blocks, planks, firefighter gear (hats, foam "hoses", and spray bottles), fire trucks, cars, firefighter figurines. Rationale: To continue to encourage the children to act out scenarios based on previous experiences, knowledge, and incidental information. To continue to support the children assuming different roles in fantasy play.
Skills: Communication, collaboration, problem solving, role-taking, symbolic representation, turn-taking, spatial concepts, fine motor, cooperation, symbolic play

Large Motor:
Outdoor Materials: scoops, shovels, buckets, bug catchers, magnifying glasses, teeter-totters, tricycles, weaving board, dishes, bowls, cups, and strainers
Rationale: To further facilitate social interactions through play and problem solving when using the teeter totters. To continue looking for worms, caterpillars, and various insects. To continue role-playing through the use of various kitchen materials available. To continue to support the children's interest in weaving with ribbons.
Skills: turn taking, large motor, motor coordination, searching, scanning, muscular endurance, hand eye coordination, balance, cardiovascular endurance, role-taking, and fine-motor skills

Indoor Materials: stepping pyramid, climb and jump, hanging ball, balance beam, monkey bars, slide, rope climb up the bumpy ramp, wall ladder, scooters
Rationale: To further support and develop upper body strength and core muscles. To continue to provide challenging activities that foster the children's muscular and cardiovascular endurance.
Skills: upper body strength, motor coordination, hand eye coordination, propulsion skills, balance, depth perception, visual perception, lower body strength, turn taking, dynamic balance

Large Group:
Materials: songs and welcome activities led by teacher, discussion of nests in trees, demonstration of shading paint colors by adding white, discussion of plant growth, fire stations, recipe books, care-taking for the "injured" birds using materials, and laminated children's faces on floor, dismissal into small groups
Rationale: To further support the children in applying their learning to new and functional situations. To continue to introduce and support play themes throughout the classroom. To continue to encourage the excitment of sitting in a circle by finding their laminated face pictures within the circle and sitting in that spot.
Skills: Attention span, listening, speaking, taking turns, communication, literacy, trying new things, impulse control, group membership, collaboration.

Kelsey Cassidy
Overview:
This week the children will be continuing to develop their understanding of the bird, color, and plant curriculum areas. Moving into the utilization level of learning they will be applying and representing their knowledge in new and functional situations. The children's recent interest in baking and weaving will be supported with new materials in the classroom. We will be continuing to help support the children's transition to the multiage classroom next year. In addition to sitting in a circle during large group, some of the children will start making visits to the multiage classroom this week. This will help familiarize the children with the environment of the other classrooms.

Expressive Arts:
Materials: Large branch, play dough, tempera paint, paintbrushes
Rationale: To explore representational art as well as shading and color matching with the paint. The children will explore using these materials to represent the trees with flowers that we saw on our nature walk. They will mix and shade tempera paint to represent colors of the flowers they saw.
Skills: collaboration, cooperation, symbolic representation, cause and effect, creativity, and fine motor skills

Materials: Art easel, tempera paint, paintbrushes
Rationale: To allow the children to explore the cause and effect of shading. They will have the opportunity to add white to primary and secondary colors and compare the different shades they are able to create.
Skills: cause and effect, creativity, fine motor skills, investigation

Sensory:
Materials: water table, two large water table inserts, measuring cups, small funnels, strainers, basters, and two large blocks of colored ice
Rationale: To continue to develop the children's exploration of color by observing the color from the ice blocks slowly melt into the water surrounding the ice blocks.
Skills: sensory exploration, observation, cause and effect, fine motor skills, prediction, and investigation

Materials: white, red, and green play dough, rolling pins, slicers, garlic presses, cutting boards, baking pans, and cupcake pans
Rationale: To continue to develop their creative thinking using play dough as a representation. To continue to foster and support the children's interest in baking and cooking by using the play dough to symbolically represent food and tools in the kitchen.
Skills: sensory input and exploration, storytelling, creative symbolic representation, fine motor skills, creative expression and imagination, and turn taking

Science:
Materials: classroom plants, soybean plants that the children planted, water spray, clipboards, colored pencils, charcoal, and seeds to plant outside
Rationale: To help support the children in applying their previous knowledge of plants to a new, real world situation by planting seeds outside on the play ground. To continue to support their understanding of plant growth through the observation of the soybeans they planted last week. To continue to encourage the children to symbolically represent parts of plants through visual art.
Skills: application, observation, prediction, conversation, cause and effect, explanation, investigation, fine motor skills, symbolic representation, and care taking

Dramatic Play:
Materials: Stuffed animal birds, blankets, plastic foliage and flowers, eggs, fabric, pipe cleaners, paper towel rolls (binoculars) felt board nest and materials (twigs, grass, eggs, mud, string), video of a robin building a nest (played on the computer), bird nest visuals
Rationale: To continue to explore and expand the children's interests in birds and their nests. To provide opportunities for children to explore how different nests are made. To encourage children to begin to engage in symbolic play as birds. 
To participate in building nests for themselves and the birds. To introduce the idea of going outside to collect natural materials for making bird nests.
Skills: Collaboration, social skills, turn taking, communication, symbolic representation, creative expression, symbolic play, fine-motor skills, role play, observation

Materials: kitchen furniture, food, utensils, mixing bowls, play dough, picnic table, and picnic basket
Rationale: To continue to make and bake food for each other using play dough as a representational tool to make new types of food. To promote beginning literacy by making recipes and posting children's favorite foods.To continue to support symbolic play and collaboration.
Skills: social skills, collaboration, symbolic representation, cooperation, communication, creative expression, role play and, literacy

Math and Manipulatives:
Materials: seriation and number puzzles, shape puzzles, bristle blocks, shape and color sorters, and weaving
Rationale: To match and problem solve in completing different types of puzzles. To explore seriation and numbers/counting. To support matching and sorting geometric shapes. To support the children's interest in weaving with ribbons. To begin to explore the concept of weaving and support their ability to weave different materials.
Skills: fine motor skills, 1 to 1 correspondence, matching, problem solving, observation, risk taking, persistence, seriation, weaving, and trial and error

Language and Literacy:
Materials: Clip boards, pencils, a variety of books being displayed in different curriculum areas relating to emerging and current play themes including spring and firefighting, letters and name cards (available at the art table), and recipes in the kitchen area
Rational: To strengthen the use of books and stories for knowledge and inspiration for play. To support the children's understanding of literacy through the use of their own recipes and favorite foods. To continue to facilitate the development of the basic component of language. To continue to encourage the children to explore the different letters in their name.
Skills: Listening, speaking, observing, spelling, letter identification, conversation, reading, turn taking, symbolic representation, name recognition

Music:
Materials: Bird calls CD, triangles, rain sticks, egg shakers, clappers, and xylophone


Rationale: To continue to create and listen to sounds that remind us of birds and their songs. To begin creating beats and rhythm to the sounds of birdcalls played on the CD. To encourage temporal awareness and rhythm. To allow the children to creatively express themselves through sound.

Skills: Sensory input, hand eye coordination, exploring, large and fine motor skills, imagination, creative expression, listening, and auditory discrimination

Blocks: 

Materials: Hollow blocks, wooden blocks, foam blocks, plastic interlocking blocks, planks, firefighter gear (hats, foam "hoses", and spray bottles), fire trucks, cars, firefighter figurines, light table, and translucent Duplos


Rationale: To continue to encourage the children to act out scenarios based on previous experiences, knowledge, and incidental information. To continue to support the children assuming different roles in fantasy play. To encourage meaningful problem solving and building. 

Skills: Communication, collaboration, problem solving, role-taking, symbolic representation, turn-taking, spatial concepts, fine motor, cooperation, symbolic play

Large Motor:
Outdoor Materials: scoops, shovels, buckets, lawn mowers, bug catchers, magnifying glasses, teeter-totters, tricycles, dishes, bowls, cups, and strainers
Rationale: To continue searching for signs of spring. To facilitate social interactions through play and problem solving when using the teeter totters. To continue looking for worms, caterpillars, and various insects. To begin role-playing through the use of lawn mowers and various kitchen materials available.
Skills: turn taking, large motor, motor coordination, searching, scanning, muscular endurance, hand eye coordination, balance, cardiovascular endurance, role-taking, and fine-motor skills

Indoor Materials: stepping pyramid, climb and jump, balance beam, monkey bars, slide, rope climb up the bumpy ramp, wall ladder, scooters
Rationale: To support and develop upper body strength and core muscles. To provide challenging activities that foster the children's muscular and cardiovascular endurance.
Skills: upper body strength, motor coordination, hand eye coordination, propulsion skills, balance, depth perception, visual perception, lower body strength, turn taking, dynamic balance

Large Group:
Materials: songs and welcome activities led by teacher, discussion of flowers on trees, demonstration of shading paint colors by adding white, discussion of plant growth, discussion of recipe book, dismissal into small groups, and circle tape on floor
Rationale: To support the children in applying their learning to new and functional situations. To continue to develop and support children's representational artwork. To introduce and support play themes throughout the classroom. To continue to encourage the children to sit on the circle tape, similar to what they will experience in the multiage classrooms.

Snacks:
Monday: Raspberries, yogurt smoothies, pretzles
Wednesday: Alphabet soup
Friday: Oatmeal crackers and cucumbers

Weekly Plan for April 23rd-27th
Hannah Lead Teaching
Overview:

We will continue to explore the signs of spring, such as birds, colors, and plants. Last week, many of the children spent time exploring the different materials in our classroom. This week, we will focus on involving children in the inquiry level of learning to help support independent thinking and investigation. We will also focus on allowing the children to make connections with what they learn to the real world. In addition, we have been noticing how much the children have been growing in so many ways. Since they are getting older, it will be important to talk about the transition that will happen next year when the children go to the multiage classroom. This week, we will begin to discuss this transition as we implement some simple rules, such as sitting in a circle during large group, which will help familiarize the children with the preschool way of life.

Expressive Arts:
Materials: large branch, tissue paper, string, ribbon, natural materials
Rationale: To continue to explore the signs of spring. To incorporate some of the natural materials of spring into our classroom. To allow the children to express themselves creatively using materials that represents spring.
Skills: collaboration, cooperation, symbolic representation, creativity, and fine-motor skills.

Materials: light table, eye-droppers, Petri-dishes, small jars, water and food coloring
Rationale: To continue to encourage the children to mix different colors together to see what happens. To continue to encourage children to ask questions about color mixing.
Skills: cause and effect, fine motor skills, investigating, questioning, observing, predicting

Sensory:
Materials: water table, two large water table inserts, measuring cups, small funnels, strainers, food coloring, basters, materials that correlate with the colors being presented such as: scoops, fish, boats
Rationale: To maintain the encouragement of color mixing and exploration between primary colors through the use of materials.
Skills: fine motor skills, collaboration, cooperation, predicting, observing, investigating, sensory exploration and input, cause and effect

Materials: green, orange, and purple playdough, rolling pins, slicers, and garlic presses
Rationale: To begin exploring the secondary colors (orange, green, purple). To continue incorporating and molding playdoughs to symbolically represent colorful birds and plants we have been learning about in our classroom. To continue to foster symbolic play and creative thinking. 

Skills: sensory input and exploration, storytelling, creative symbolic representation, fine motor skills, observation, creative expression and imagination, turn-taking, cause and effect

Science:
Materials: Classroom plants, water spray, seeds, sorting trays, clipboards, colored pencils, charcoal
Rationale: To help the children continue to understand the parts of growing plants with visuals and conversation. To allow the children to see the differences between each type of seed. To encourage children to begin sorting and classifying different types of plants and seeds. To continue encouraging the children to symbolically represent parts of a plant through visual art.
Skills: Observation, prediction, conversation, cause and effect, explanation, investigating, fine motor skills, symbolic representation, classifying, grouping, collaboration

Dramatic Play:
Materials: Stuffed animal birds, blankets, plastic foliage and flowers, eggs, fabric, pipe cleaners, paper towel rolls (binoculars) felt board nest and materials (twigs, grass, eggs, mud, string), video of a robin building a nest (played on the computer), bird visuals
Rationale: To continue to explore and expand the children's interests in birds and their nests. To provide opportunities for children to explore how different nests are made. To encourage children to begin to engage in symbolic play as birds. 
To participate in building nests for themselves and the birds.
Skills: Collaboration, social skills, turn-taking, communication, symbolic representation, creative expression, symbolic play, fine-motor skills, role play, observation

Materials: Kitchen furniture, babies, food, mixing bowls, utensils, crib

Rationale: To continue to make and bake food for each other and have collaborative work. To continue to promote symbolic play.

Skills: Social skills, cooperation, communication, collaboration, role play, creative expression, symbolic representation

Materials: molds representing dirt, fake flowers, watering cans, shovels, flower parts felt board (seed, root, stem, petal, pistol), baskets, visuals, vines, vegetables
Rationale: To continue incorporating the idea of gardening. To help the children explore strategies on how to harvest plants. To physically move through the gardening process while guiding the children. To encourage children to pick and harvests flowers and vegetables and use them in other areas of the classroom (such as food for cooking, flowers for vases)
Skills: social skills, cooperation, collaboration, fine motor, role play, creative expression, symbolic representation, observation

Math and Manipulatives:
Materials: Color sorting games, abacus, seriation and number puzzles, spring weather related clothing matching game, matching color-wheel, shape puzzle
Rationale: To continue to support the exploration of colors and weather. To match and problem solve in completing different types of puzzles, to explore seriation and numbers/amounts.
Skills: 1 to 1 correspondence, matching, problem solving, observation, risk taking, persistence, seriation, trial and error, fine-motor skill

Language and Literacy:
Materials: Clip boards, pencils, a variety of books being displayed in different curriculum areas relating to emerging and current play themes including Spring and firefighting, letters and name cards (available at the art table)
Rational: To strengthen the use of books and stories for knowledge and inspiration for play.To continue to facilitate the development of the basic component of language. To continue to encourage the children to explore the different letters in their name. 

Skills: Listening, speaking, observing, spelling, letter identification, conversation, reading, turn taking, symbolic representation, name recognition

Music:
Materials: Bird call CD's, triangles, rainsticks, egg shakers, clappers, xylophone

Rationale: To continue to create and listen to sounds that remind us of birds and their songs. To begin creating beats and rhythm to the sounds of bird calls played on the CD. To encourage temporal awareness and rhythm amongst the children. 
To allow the children to creatively express themselves through sound.
Skills: Sensory input, hand eye coordination, exploring, large and fine motor skills, imagination, creative expression, listening, auditory discrimination

Blocks:
Materials: Hollow blocks, wooden blocks, foam blocks, plastic interlocking blocks, planks, firefighter gear (hats, boots, plastic firefighter clothing, foam "hoses", and spray bottles), fire trucks, cars, firefighter figurines

Rationale: To encourage the children to act out scenarios based on previous experiences, knowledge, and incidental information. To continue to support the children assuming different roles in fantasy play. To encourage meaningful problem solving.
Skills: Communication, collaboration, problem solving, role-taking, symbolic representation, turn-taking, spatial concepts, fine motor, cooperation, symbolic play

Large Motor:
Outdoor materials: Scoops, shovels, buckets, lawn mowers, bug catchers, magnifying glass, baskets, balance beam, tricycles, dishes, bowls, cups, strainers
Rationale: To continue searching for signs of spring. To begin looking for worms and various insects. To begin role-playing through the use of lawn mowers and various kitchen items available. 

Skills: turn taking, large motor, motor coordination, searching, scanning, muscular endurance, hand eye coordination, balance, cardiovascular endurance, role-taking, fine-motor skills

Indoor Materials: Jump-the-gap, basketball, rolling slide, hopscotch, pitch-back, ladders, and monkey bars

Rationale: To arrange the equipment to provide new challenges emphasizing jumping and dynamic movement, throwing and catching, and target practice

Skills: Depth-perception, static and dynamic jumping, throwing/catching, hand-eye coordination, visual-perception, hopping on one foot, upper-arm strength, climbing, coordination, and core-strength

Large Group:
Materials: Songs and welcome activities led by teacher, discussion of birds and their nests, demonstration of eye-dropper color mixing activity, introduction to focus groups, dismissal into small groups, demonstration and discussion of gardening activities, circle tape on the floor
Rationale: To continue to promote exploration of plants, gardening, color, birds, and nests. To introduce and support play themes throughout the classroom. To encourage children to sit on the circle tape similar to what it will be like in the multiage classrooms.
Skills: Attention span, listening, receptive skills, speaking, taking turns, communication, social skills, literacy, trying new things, impulse control, group membership, collaboration

Snack:
Monday: TBD
Wednesday: TBD
Thursday: TBD

Weekly plan 4.16-4.20
(Lauren lead teaching)

Overview:

We will continue to explore the topics of spring and begin merging some of our themes together which include plants/gardening, birds, and colors. In the previous week, we set materials out for the children to gain awareness. This week, we will present these topics at the exploration level, observing and exploring materials and then creating their own personal meaning and understanding. We will begin taking the children on walks more frequently so they are able to expand their learning about the signs of Spring. The new rats continue to be a significant change in our classroom. We will continue to learn how to care for the rats and have opportunities to touch and interact with them. Additionally, as new friendships have been emerging, we will make it our goal to foster these friendships.

Expressive Arts
Materials: Red, blue, yellow, purple, green, orange markers, crayons, paper, tape, world globe, and a map of the University of Minnesota campus
Rational: To continue to explore the primary colors, as well as secondary colors. To encourage cartography by incorporating visual paper maps and the world globe.
Skills: fine motor skills, collaboration, sensory input and exploration, prediction, questioning, cause and effect, creativity, symbolic representation, literacy

Materials: Secondary color finger paints, paper, light table
Rational: To continue to encourage children to explore color mixing using their hands and secondary color paints.
Skills: Observation, prediction, try out, cause and effect, imagination

Sensory
Materials: water, 2nd water table, water table insert, water movement pipes, 2 primary color food colorings, funnels, clear measuring cups, empty small containers, strainers, materials that correlate with the colors being presented such as: scoops, fish, boats
Rationale: To maintain the encouragement of color mixing and exploration between primary colors through the use of materials.
Skills: fine motor skills, collaboration, investigating, questioning, observation, prediction,
sensory exploration, sensory input, cause and effect, problem-solving, persistence

Materials: Red, blue, and yellow playdough, playdough tools such as rolling pins, slicers, and garlic presses
Rationale: To begin incorporating and molding primary color doughs to symbolically represent colorful birds and plants we have been learning about in school. To begin finding ways to mix colors to get the desired color dough for their play. To continue to foster symbolic play and creative thinking.
Skills: awareness of change of seasons and colors, sensory input, storytelling, creative symbolic representation, fine motor skills, observation, creative expression and imagination, turn-taking

Science
Materials: Classroom plants that will allow children to see the roots, water spray, seeds, clipboards, pencils, chalk pencils
Rationale: To help the children continue to understand the parts of growing plants with visuals and conversation. To allow the children to examine each part of a plant individually. To allow the children to see the differences between each types of seed. To begin encouraging the children to symbolically represent parts of a flower through drawing.
Skills: Observation, prediction, conversation, cause and effect, explanation, investigating, fine motor skills, symbolic representation

Dramatic Play
Materials: Stuffed animal birds, blankets, plastic foliage and flowers, eggs, music
Rationale: To continue to explore and expand the children's interests in the emerging signs of spring, including birds and their nests. To provide the children opportunities to collaborate on building homes for the birds. To allow children to explore the different types of sounds birds make through musical instruments, CD's, and stuffed birds.
Skills: Collaboration, turn-taking, communication, auditory discrimination, symbolic representation, creative expression, listening

Materials: Kitchen furniture, babies, food, mixing bowls, utensils, crib
Rationale: To carry forward opportunities to make and bake food for each other and have collaborative work. To continue to promote pretend play.
Skills: Social skills, cooperation, communication, collaboration, role play, creative expression, symbolic representation

Materials: molds representing dirt, fake flowers, watering cans, shovels, books, flower parts felt board (seed, root, stem, petal, pistol), baskets, visuals
Rationale: To begin incorporating the idea of gardening. To help the children explore strategies on how to harvest plants. To physically move through the gardening process while guiding the children with books and felt board materials.
Skills: social skills, cooperation, fine motor, role play, creative expression, symbolic representation, observing

Math and Manipulative
Materials: Color sorting games, abacus, puzzles related to classroom themes, spring weather related clothing matching game, matching color-wheel
Rationale: To continue to support awareness of colors and weather. To match and problem solve in completing a puzzle
Skills: 1 to 1 correspondence, matching, cause and effect, problem solving, observation, risk taking, persistence

Language and Literacy
Materials: Clip boards, pencils, maps, a variety of books being displayed in different curriculum areas relating to emerging and current play themes including Spring and firefighting
Rational: To lengthen the use of books and stories for new knowledge and inspiration for play, while continuing to facilitate the development of the basic component of language. To promote numerical representation through the use of the maps, pencils, and paper.
Skills: Listening, speaking, observing, spelling, numeric identification, conversation, reading, turn taking, symbolic representation

Music
Materials: Bird call CD's, triangles, rainsticks, egg shakers, clappers, xylophone
Rationale: To continue to create and listen to sounds that remind us of spring, specifically bird calls. To begin creating beats and rhythm to the sounds of bird calls played on the CD.
Skills: Sensory input, hand eye coordination, exploring, large motor, fine motor, imagination, creativity

Blocks
Materials: Hollow blocks, wooden blocks, foam blocks, plastic interlocking blocks, planks, firefighter gear (hats, boots, plastic firefighter clothing, foam "hoses", and spray bottles)
Rationale: To encourage the children to act out scenarios based on previous experiences, knowledge, and incidental information. To support the children assuming different roles in fantasy play. To incorporate the firefighter gear to make sense out of the duties of a firefighter.
Skills: Communication, role-taking, symbolic representation, turn-taking, spatial concepts, fine motor, collaboration, cooperation

Large Motor
Outdoor materials: Scoops, shovels, buckets, large trucks, bug catchers, magnifying glass, baskets, balance beam, lawn mowers
Rationale: To continue searching for signs of spring. To support large motor skills by providing a variety of equipment. To begin role playing through the use of lawn mowers.
Skills: Sharing, turn taking, large motor, motor coordination, searching, scanning, muscular endurance, hand eye coordination

Indoor Materials: Jump-the-gap, basketball, rolling slide, hopscotch, pitch-back, ladders, and monkey bars
Rationale: To arrange the equipment to provide new challenges emphasizing jumping and dynamic movement, throwing and catching, and target practice
Skills: Depth-perception, static and dynamic jumping, throwing/catching, hand-eye coordination, visual-perception, hopping on one foot, upper-arm strength, climbing, coordination, and core-strength

Large Group
Materials: Songs and welcome activities led by teacher, discussion of Spring and caretaking methods for the rats, demonstration of activity, introduction of curriculum areas
Rationale: To continue to promote awareness of plants, gardening, color, and birds. To introduce and support play themes throughout the classroom.
Skills: Attention span, listening, receptive skills, speaking, taking turns, communication, social skills, literacy, trying new things

Snacks
Monday: Apples and Milk
Wednesday: Yogurt and granola
Thursday: Sunbutter and graham crackers

Overview:
Ayuko, Lauren, Kelsey, Hannah, Co-teaching

There will be a few new curriculum topics focusing on plants/gardening, birds, and colors, which all encompass around the concept of Spring. We will be introducing these topics at the awareness level, observing and finding out what they already know about the subject and what they want to know further. The children will begin taking trips in small groups around the school premisis to observe the signs of spring. The new rats have been a significant addition to our classroom. The children will continue to learn how to care for the rats and have opportunities to touch and interact with them.

Expressive Arts:
Materials: Primary color finger paints, paper, light table.
Rationale: To encourage children to explore color mixing using their hands and primary color paints
Skills: Observation, prediction, try out, cause and effect, imagination.

Materials: plant stamps, stamp pads, red, blue, and yellow markers, paper, scissors, tape
Rational: To identify and explore the primary colors. To encourage color mixing through the use of materials.
Skills: fine motor skills, collaboration, sensory input and exploration, prediction,
questioning, cause and effect

Sensory:
Materials: water, 2nd water table, water table insert, water movement pipes, food
coloring, funnels, clear measuring cups, materials that correlate with the color(s) such
as: scoops,fish, boats
Rationale: Primary colors will be introduced one day at a time to promote awareness of
each color. By the end of the week, two colors will be presented together to encourage
color mixing and exploration.
Skills: fine motor skills, collaboration, investigating, questioning, observation, prediction,
sensory exploration, sensory input, cause and effect, problem-solving

Materials: Red, blue, and yellow playdough, playdough tools, natural materials, woodland animals
Rationale: To incorporate primary color doughs to support making homes, food, and environment. To begin finding ways to mix colors to get the desired color dough for their play. To continue to foster symbolic play and creative thinking.
Skills: vocabulary (woodland animals, hibernation, waking, lair, primary colors), awareness of change of seasons and colors, sensory input, storytelling, and creative symbolic representation.

Science:
Materials: New classroom plants that will allow children to see the roots, water spray, flower parts felt board (root, stem, petal, pistol)
Rationale: To help them better understand the parts of growing plants with visuals and through conversation. To continue to make connections between the changing of the season and plants beginning to grow.
Skills: Observation, prediction, conversation, cause and effect, and explanation.

Materials: Circular tops, windmill circular rotation, lazy susan.
Rationale: To further explore circular motion and the concept of constant motion and spinning after observing circular motion in the gears and lazy susan.
Skills: Observation, experimentation, cause and effect, collaboration, questioning.

Dramatic Play:
Materials: stuffed animal birds, blankets, plastic foliage and flowers, eggs
Rationale: To continue and expand the children's interests in the emerging signs of spring, including birds and their nests. To provide the children opportunities to collaborate on building homes for the birds. To allow children to explore the different types of sounds birds make.
Skills: collaboration, turn-taking, communication, auditory discrimination, symbolic representation, creative expression, listening

Materials: Kitchen furniture, babies, food, mixing bowls, utensils, crib, car seats, construction tools.
Rationale: To integrate a few forms of dramatic play in the loft/kitchen area, such as fixing furniture in the house or kitchen with the tools. To provide opportunities to make and bake food for each other.
Skills: Social skills, cooperation, communication, collaboration, role play, creative expression, symbolic representation

Math and Manipulative:
Materials: Color sorting games, abacus, number puzzle, puzzles related to classroom themes, and spring weather related clothing matching game.
Rationale: To promote awareness of colors and weather. To introduce number concepts with manipulatives and numeral stencils. To match and problem solve in completing a puzzle.
Skills: 1 to 1 correspondence, matching, cause and effect, problem solving, observation, risk taking, persistence.

Language and Literacy
Materials: Alphabet stencils, name Stencils, a variety of books being displayed in different curriculum areas as well as the reading nook relating to emerging and current play themes including Spring, babies, food, construction, turtles
Rationale: To promote the use of books and stories as resources for new knowledge and inspiration for play, while continuing to facilitate the development of the basic components of language.
Skills: phonological awareness, listening, speaking, spelling, alphabetical awareness, conversation, reading, turn taking

Music:
Materials: song cards, triangles, tone bells, CD, rainsticks.
Rationale: To create and listen to sounds that remind us of spring. To craete a variety of sounds that are made of metal. To begin creating beats and rhythm to the songs we sing.
Skills: sensory input, hand eye coordination, exploring, large motor, fine motor

Blocks:
Materials: Hollow blocks, wooden blocks, foam blocks, plastic interlocking blocks, planks, ramps, wheels
Rationale: To support the emerging interest of circular motion by rolling round materials down the ramps. To continue supporting the children in creating structures as well as working together to create collaborative buildings.
Skills: Fine motor, large motor, spatial concepts, symbolic representation, construction skills, creativity, collaboration, communication, cooperation

Large Motor:
Outdoor materials: Scoops, shovels, buckets, bug catchers, trikes, magnifying glass, baskets
Rationale: To begin searching for signs of spring. To support large motor skills by providing a variety of equipment.
Skills: sharing, turn taking, propulsion skills, large motor, motor coordination, searching, scanning, muscular endurance, hand eye coordination

Indoor Materials: Jump-the-gap, basketball, rolling slide, hopscotch, pitch-back, ladders, and monkey bars.
Rationale: To arrange the equipment to provide new challenges emphasizing jumping and dynamic movement, throwing and catching, and target practice.
Skills: Depth-perception, static and dynamic jumping, throwing/catching, hand-eye coordination, visual-perception, hopping on one foot, upper-arm strength, climbing, coordination, and core-strength.

Large Group:
Materials: Songs and welcome activities led by teacher, discussion of Spring and caretaking methods for the rats, demonstration of activity, and introduction of curriculum areas. 

Rationale: To promote awareness of plants, gardening, color, and birds. To introduce and support play themes throughout the classroom
Skills: Attention span, listening, receptive skills, speaking, taking turns, communication, social skills, literacy, trying new things

Snacks
Monday: Oranges and Whole wheat crackers
Wednesday: Cheerios and milk
Thursday: (Cooking) muffins and milk

Overview:
As the weather is getting warmer, the children are beginning to take notice of budding flowers, leaves on trees, and plants in our playground. They have also been observing and looking for some bugs. The curriculum areas will continue to be focused around the concept of Spring, connecting children with plants and emerging insects from the natural world. We will also be taking advantage of our playground, trying to spend more time outdoors to further study these themes. We will also begin preparing for the rats to come into the classroom by discussing the necessary means to care for them. In addition to these emerging themes, we will also be extending some of the current curriculum areas to further their investigation.

Expressive Arts:
3am: **Materials: Light table, water color cakes, water, brushes, white paper.
Rationale: To explore a different medium of watercolor with the effect of the light from the light table.
Skills: Fine motor skills, creative thinking and expression, sensory input and exploration, trying out new things

**Materials: Markers, lazy susan, round paper, scissors, a variety of masking tapes, crayons, name and letter stencils.
Rationale: To support emergent writing and the children's interest in writing their own names. To encourage team-work in learning how to use the lazy susan and using it to create a design with markers. To support fine motor skill in cutting tape into small pieces and decorating the paper with tape.
Skills: fine motor skills, collaboration, creative thinking and expression.

Sensory:
**Materials: 2nd water table, Water, funnels, water movement pipes, scoops, cups, strainers.
Rationale: To further explore and observe the movement of water by adding a 2nd, lower, water table and experiment with how water transfers from one place to another.
Skills: Observation, conversation, collaboration, investigating, questioning, prediction, sensory exploration, sensory input, cause and effect, problem-solving

**Materials: Red and brown playdough, playdough tools, natural materials, woodland animals
Rationale: To continue to foster symbolic play and creative thinking by making animal homes, food, and environment using natural materials. To provide the raw material for exploration of the themes of animal habitats as Winter ends and Spring begins.
Skills: vocabulary (woodland animals, hibernation, waking, lair), awareness of change of seasons, sensory input, storytelling, and creative symbolic representation.

Science:
**Materials: Circular tops, windmill circular rotation.
Rationale: To further explore circular motion and the concept of constant motion and spinning after observing circular motion in the gears and lazy susan.
Skills: Observation, experimentation, cause and effect, collaboration, questioning.

**Materials: A few classroom plants and water spray.
Rationale: To continue to observe and care for by watering the plants and better understand the life cycle of plants. To take responsibility caring for living things.
Skills: Observation, prediction, conversation, cause and effect, investigation

Dramatic Play:
**Materials: Kitchen furniture, babies, food, mixing bowls, utensils, crib, car seats.
Rationale: To provide opportunities to make and bake food for each other and have collaborative work.
Skills: Social skills, cooperation, communication, collaboration, role play, creative expression, symbolic representation

**Materials: Construction hats, construction vests, tools, cement trucks, cars, tape, marker, pegs and hammer, classmate pictures, wheels.
Rationale: To support the emerging interest of circular motion by rolling round materials down the ramps. To continue and expand the children's interest in "fixing" things in different areas of the classroom. To support literacy by creating signs that are related to construction and their play.
Skills: Social skills, collaboration, cooperation, communication, fine motor, creative expression, role play, symbolic representation

Math and Manipulative:
**Materials: Color sorting games, puzzles related to classroom themes, and gears
Rationale: To promote awareness in cause and effect relationships by connecting the gears together. To match and problem solve in completing a puzzle.
Skills: 1 to 1 correspondence, matching, cause and effect, problem solving, observation, risk taking, persistence. 


Language and Literacy

**Materials: Alphabet stencils, name Stencils, a variety of books being displayed in different curriculum areas as well as the reading nook relating to emerging and current play themes including Spring, babies, food, construction, turtles

Rationale: To promote the use of books and stories as resources for new knowledge and inspiration for play, while continuing to facilitate the development of the basic components of language.

Skills: phonological awareness, listening, speaking, spelling, alphabetical awareness, conversation, reading, turn taking


Music:

**Materials: song cards, triangles, tone bells, symbols, drums.
Rationale: To create and listen to a variety of sounds that are made of metal. To begin creating beats and rhythm to the songs we sing.
Skills: sensory input, hand eye coordination, exploring, large motor, fine motor

Blocks:
**Materials: Hollow blocks, wooden blocks, foam blocks, plastic interlocking blocks

Rationale: To continue supporting the children in creating structures as well as working together to create collaborative buildings.
Skills: Fine motor, large motor, spatial concepts, symbolic representation, construction skills, creativity, collaboration, communication, cooperation

Large Motor:
**Outdoor materials: Scoops, shovels, buckets, bug catchers, trikes, magnifying glass, baskets
Rationale: To begin searching for signs of spring. To support large motor skills by providing a variety of equipment.
Skills: sharing, turn taking, propulsion skills, large motor, motor coordination, searching, scanning, muscular endurance, hand eye coordination

**Indoor Materials: Jump-the-gap, basketball, rolling slide, hopscotch, pitch-back, ladders, and monkey bars.
Rationale: To arrange the equipment to provide new challenges emphasizing jumping and dynamic movement, throwing and catching, and target practice.
Skills: Depth-perception, static and dynamic jumping, throwing/catching, hand-eye coordination, visual-perception, hopping on one foot, upper-arm strength, climbing, coordination, and core-strength.

Large Group:
**Materials: Songs and welcome activities led by teacher, discussion of Spring and caretaking methods for the rats, demonstration of activity, and introduction of curriculum areas. 

Rationale: To promote discussions about their new interests such as budding plants and insects that are emerging from the ground. To introduce and support play themes throughout the classroom
Skills: Attention span, listening, receptive skills, speaking, taking turns, communication, social skills, literacy, trying new things

Snack:
Monday:cantaloupe and graham crackers
Wednesday:sliced cucumbers and pretzels
Thursday:oranges and triscuits

Ayuko Lead Teaching
Overview:
Spring has arrived! Our goals for the next couple of weeks are to settle back into a routine with the children after Spring break and build relationships with the new student teachers. Some curriculum areas will be focused around the concept of spring, connecting children with plants, natural materials, and emerging insects. The construction theme will provide some continuity with the last session.

Expressive Arts:
In the art area this week, we will continue to make our classroom gift for the Spring Soiree.
**Materials: Light table, liquid water color paints, brushes, white paper.
Rationale: To continue to explore watercolor with the effect of the light from the light table.
Skills: Fine motor skills, creative thinking and expression, sensory input and exploration, trying out new things

**Materials: Markers, lazy susan, round paper, scissors, a variety of masking tapes, crayons.
Rationale: To encourage team-work in learning how to use the lazy susan and using it to create a design with markers. To support fine motor skill in cutting tape into small pieces and decorating the paper with tape.
Skills: fine motor skills, collaboration, creative thinking and expression.

Sensory:
**Materials: Playdough, playdough tools, natural materials, woodland animals
Rationale: To foster symbolic play and creative thinking by making animal homes, food, and environment using natural materials. To provide the raw material for exploration of the themes of animal habitats as Winter ends and Spring begins.
Skills: vocabulary (woodland animals, hibernation, waking, lair), awareness of change of seasons, sensory input, storytelling, and creative symbolic representation.

**Materials: Water, funnels, water movement pipes, scoops, cups, strainers.
Rationale: To provide the opportunity to explore water movement and how water could transfer from one place to another.
Skills: Observation, conversation, collaboration, investigating, questioning, prediction, sensory exploration, sensory input, cause and effect, problem-solving

Science:
**Materials: A few classroom plants.
Rationale: To observe and care for by watering them and better understand the life cycle of plants. To take responsibility caring for living things.
Skills: Observation, prediction, conversation, cause and effect, investigation

Dramatic Play:
**Materials: Kitchen furniture, babies, food, crib, car seats.
Rationale: To provide a simple open ended setting for children and new student teachers to communicate, make food, and "eat" together. 

Skills: Social skills, cooperation, communication, collaboration, role play, creative expression, symbolic representation


**Materials: Construction hats, construction vests, tools, cement trucks, cars, tape, marker, pegs and hammer.
Rationale: To continue and expand the children's interest in "fixing" things in different areas of the classroom. To support literacy by creating signs that are related to construction, such as "Danger" or "Warning."
Skills: Social skills, collaboration, cooperation, communication, fine motor, creative expression, role play, symbolic representation

Math and Manipulative:
**Materials: puzzles related to classroom themes and gears
Rationale: To promote awareness in cause and effect relationships by connecting the gears together. To match and problem solve in completing a puzzle.
Skills: 1 to 1 correspondence, matching, cause and effect, problem solving, observation, risk taking, persistence. 


Language and Literacy

**Materials: Alphabet stencils, name Stencils, a variety of books being displayed in different curriculum areas as well as the reading nook relating to emerging and current play themes including Spring, babies, food, construction, turtles

Rationale: To promote the use of books and stories as resources for new knowledge and inspiration for play, while continuing to facilitate the development of the basic components of language.

Skills: phonological awareness, listening, speaking, spelling, alphabetical awareness, conversation, reading, turn taking


Music:

**Materials: Triangles, tone bells, symbols, drums.
Rationale: To create and listen to a variety of sounds that are made of metal.
Skills: sensory input, hand eye coordination, exploring, large motor, fine motor

Blocks:
**Materials: Hollow blocks, wooden blocks, foam blocks, plastic interlocking blocks

Rationale: To continue supporting the children in creating structures as well as working together to create collaborative buildings.
Skills: Fine motor, large motor, spatial concepts, symbolic representation, construction skills, creativity, collaboration, communication, cooperation

Large Motor:
**Outdoor materials: Scoops, shovels, buckets, bug catchers, trikes, magnifying glass, baskets
Rationale: To begin searching for signs of spring. To support large motor skills by providing a variety of equipment.
Skills: sharing, turn taking, propulsion skills, large motor, motor coordination, searching, scanning, muscular endurance, hand eye coordination

**Indoor Materials: Gym - equipments will be arranged to promote a variety of large motor skills including muscular and cardiovascular endurance, motor planning, upper and lower body strength, and balance.

Large Group:
**Materials: Songs and welcome activities led by teacher, discussion of Spring and possibility of adopting a rat for the classroom, demonstration of activity, and introduction of curriculum areas. 

Rationale: To promote awareness of signs of Spring - Questions will be asked: how can we tell that it is spring? To introduce and support play themes throughout the classroom
Skills: Attention span, listening, receptive skills, speaking, taking turns, communication, social skills, literacy, trying new things

Snack:
Monday:Rice cakes and milk
Wednesday:Apple slices and milk
Thursday:Oranges and animal crackers

Sarah Sandquist
Overview:
The children have developed friendships with their peers and teachers. To keep promoting the growth and collaboration of their friendship, we will continue to support their interactions by acknowledging and addressing their curiosity of each other, such as the similarities and the differences in their physical aspects. We will also highlight the physical changes they have seen in each other through their height and face by using their baby pictures and continue to discuss how the children have changed since they were born. Teachers will facilitate conversations about growth and change. The children have shown a lot of interest in their birth pictures and often compare themselves to their picture as a baby. To show another concrete example of their change, we would like for you to email Ayuko the height of your child at birth. The height chart will be updated with their heights when they were born. We will encourage them to compare them with their current heights to see how much they have grown.

Expressive Arts:
Materials: Light table, liquid water color paints, brushes, white paper.
Rationale: To expand the children's creative thinking by adding a new element: light. To begin to develop the children's representational thoughts through art.
Skills: Fine motor skills, creative thinking and expression, symbolic representation, sensory input and exploration, trying out new things

Materials: Paper, markers, letter and number stamps, ink pads.
Rationale: To continue to support the children's emerging awareness in number and letters. To help to promote the awareness of self and comparison to classmates and teachers hand sizes.
Skills: fine motor skills, creative thinking and expression, symbolic representation, literacy skills.

Sensory:
Materials: Baking soda, vinegar
Rationale: To expand on the children's sense of touch by mixing different mediums that are considered soft. To observe the chemical reaction between baking soda and vinegar.

Skill: sensory exploration, sensory input, investigating, exploring, questioning, creating, exploring new materials, cause and effect

Materials: Water, ice, arctic animals, fish, nets, cups, basters, funnels, spray bottles, mittens
Rationale: To provide the children with the opportunity to explore animals that live in cold habitats and promote their exploration of how these animals are able to live in cold climates. To provide an opportunity for the children to apply their knowledge of how animals stay warm to themselves and how they can stay warm and protect themselves from the cold. To expand on their exploration of ice by providing them with the opportunity to explore what happens to ice when it is brought inside where it's warm, and when it comes into contact with water.

Skills: Observation, conversation, collaboration, investigating, questioning, prediction, sensory exploration, sensory input, cause and effect, problem-solving

Science:

Materials: Miniature skeleton, bones, matching bone and picture cards.
Rationale: To provide the children an opportunity to make connections about what is inside their body and what it might look like. To give the children the opportunity to explore the skeletal system and expand their knowledge about their bodies
Skills: Sensory input, exploring real life materials, asking questions, conversation, investigation, matching

Dramatic Play:

Materials: Kitchen furniture, dinner items, fruit, vegetables, desert items, coffee and tea, dishware, menus, tables and chairs, highchairs, credit card machine, aprons
Rationale: To promote the children's interactions by creating a restaurant. To expand on real life experiences children may have of going to a restaurant. To expand on the emerging interest in literacy by including menus, recipes, and recipe books.
Skills: Social skills, cooperation, communication, collaboration, role play, creative expression, symbolic representation


Materials: Different sized babies, clothes, bibs, diaper, baby food containers, bottles, beds, books about expecting moms, about being a older sibling, and about growth. (in the cave)
Rationale: To expand the children's interest of caring for babies by feeding the babies and changing their clothing. Continue to promote the children's interest about growth and comparison between the children and their peers.
Skills: Social skills, care taking, role-play, symbolic representation, collaboration,
communication


Materials: Construction hats, hammers, screwdrivers, saws, wrenches and construction tape, construction vests, various sized trucks, boxes, nuts and bolts, masking tape
Rationale: To continue the children's emerging interest of fixing things by providing them with a variety of tools, nuts and bolts. To continue the children's interest in building structures and expanding their interest by allowing them to express themselves through constructing and mending boxes with tape and bolts.
Skills: Social skills, collaboration, cooperation, communication, creative expression, role play, symbolic representation

Math and Manipulative:

Materials: Number stamps, counting bears, number puzzles, pegs and boards, alphabet puzzle

Rationale: To promote numeral and alphabetical awareness and counting.
Skills: Number recognition, 1 to 1 correspondence, matching, pairing, counting. 


Materials: Face puzzle with current pictures
Rationale: To continue to encourage the children to notice differences and changes about themselves and their classmates over time. To continue to promote the recognition and matching of other children's faces. 

Skills: Self-awareness, awareness of others, fine motor skills, matching, comparing and contrasting, 1 to 1 correspondence, turn taking, problem solving.

Language and Literacy


Materials: Letter stamps and paper, alphabet puzzle, name tracing cards.
Rationale: To continue supporting the children's emerging interest in letters and their names. To develop the children's awareness of their names, and their ability to write the letters of their name.
Skills: Fine motor, phonological awareness, alphabetical awareness, reading, conversation, trying new things 


Materials: A variety of books being displayed in different curriculum areas as well as the reading nook relating to emerging and current play themes including babies, food, construction, turtles

Rationale: To promote the use of books and stories as resources for new knowledge and inspiration for play, while continuing to facilitate the development of the basic components of language.

Skills: application of prior knowledge and experiences, phonological awareness, listening, speaking, alphabetical awareness, conversation, reading, turn taking


Music:


Materials: Drums, tone bells, rain sticks, maracas, an array of cd's featuring different instruments

Rationale: To listen to recorded music while playing their own instruments. To create their own beats and rhythm of music. To encourage the children to express themselves through dance and movement
Skills: listening to rhythm, following rhythm, creativity, sensory input, exploring, large motor, fine motor

Materials: Variety of colored construction paper, markers, empty can containers, empty film containers, beads, coins, buttons, beans and seeds.
Rationale: For the children to create their own drums, maracas, and rain sticks by using the materials that are available.
Skills: creative thinking and expression, fine motor skills, comparing and contrasting, symbolic representation, sensory input, sensory exploration

Blocks:

Materials: Hollow blocks, wooden blocks, foam blocks, plastic interlocking blocks

Rationale: To continue to support the children's interest in fixing buildings. To continue supporting the children in creating tall structures as well as working together to create collaborative buildings 

Skills: Fine motor, large motor, spatial concepts, symbolic representation, construction skills, creativity, collaboration, communication, cooperation

Large Motor:

Outdoor materials: Sleds, scoops, pails, shovels, molds, dump trucks, cups, bowls.
Rationale: To enhance the team work skills by providing the sleds. To provide opportunities for collaborative play and turn taking. To strengthen the children's creative skills by providing the shovels, molds and buckets in an open ended environment.
Skills: sharing, turn taking, propulsion skills, balance skills, large motor, motor coordination, muscular endurance, hand eye coordination

Indoor Materials: Gym - soccer balls and net, balance beam, rope swing, climbing structure, stairs and balance beam. 

Rationale: To provide opportunities to enhance grasping abilities, upper body strength, motor coordination and timing, depth perception, as well as propulsion skills. Balance beams in the gym will allow children to practice balance, climbing, and their risk taking abilities. 

Skills: Depth perception, grasping, visual perception, risk taking, motor coordination and timing, propulsion skills, construction skills, dynamic balance and coordination, upper and lower body strength, and climbing.

Large Group:
Materials: Songs and welcome activities led by teacher, felt story telling, demonstration of activity, and introduction of curriculum areas. 

Rationale: To continue to build the classroom routine. To promote the children's awareness of each other's names and encourage interaction. To introduce and support play themes throughout the classroom
Skills: Attention span, hand-eye coordination, listening, receptive skills, speaking, patience, taking turns, communication, social skills, literacy, trying new things

Snacks:
Monday:Pretzles and Raisins
Wednesday: Rice pudding
Thursday: Granola bars

Sarah Sandquist
Overview:
The children have developed friendships with their peers and teachers. To keep promoting the growth and collaboration of their friendship, we will continue to support their interactions by acknowledging and addressing their curiosity of each other, such as the similarities and the differences in their physical aspects. We will also highlight the physical changes they have seen in each other through their height and face by using their baby pictures and continue to discuss how the children have changed since they were born. Teachers will facilitate conversations about growth and change. The children have shown a lot of interest in their birth pictures and often compare themselves to their picture as a baby. To show another concrete example of their change, we would like for you to email Ayuko the height of your child at birth. The height chart will be updated with their heights when they were born. We will encourage them to compare them with their current heights to see how much they have grown.

Expressive Arts:
Materials: Light table, liquid water color paints, brushes, white paper.
Rationale: To expand the children's creative thinking by adding a new element: light. To begin to develop the children's representational thoughts through art.
Skills: Fine motor skills, creative thinking and expression, symbolic representation, sensory input and exploration, trying out new things

Materials: Paper, markers, letter and number stamps, ink pads.
Rationale: To continue to support the children's emerging awareness in number and letters. To help to promote the awareness of self and comparison to classmates and teachers hand sizes.
Skills: fine motor skills, creative thinking and expression, symbolic representation, literacy skills.

Sensory:
Materials: Baking soda, vinegar
Rationale: To expand on the children's sense of touch by mixing different mediums that are considered soft. To observe the chemical reaction between baking soda and vinegar.

Skill: sensory exploration, sensory input, investigating, exploring, questioning, creating, exploring new materials, cause and effect

Materials: Water, ice, arctic animals, fish, nets, cups, basters, funnels, spray bottles, mittens
Rationale: To provide the children with the opportunity to explore animals that live in cold habitats and promote their exploration of how these animals are able to live in cold climates. To provide an opportunity for the children to apply their knowledge of how animals stay warm to themselves and how they can stay warm and protect themselves from the cold. To expand on their exploration of ice by providing them with the opportunity to explore what happens to ice when it is brought inside where it's warm, and when it comes into contact with water.

Skills: Observation, conversation, collaboration, investigating, questioning, prediction, sensory exploration, sensory input, cause and effect, problem-solving

Science:

Materials: Miniature skeleton, bones, matching bone and picture cards.
Rationale: To provide the children an opportunity to make connections about what is inside their body and what it might look like. To give the children the opportunity to explore the skeletal system and expand their knowledge about their bodies
Skills: Sensory input, exploring real life materials, asking questions, conversation, investigation, matching

Dramatic Play:

Materials: Kitchen furniture, dinner items, fruit, vegetables, desert items, coffee and tea, dishware, menus, tables and chairs, highchairs, credit card machine, aprons
Rationale: To promote the children's interactions by creating a restaurant. To expand on real life experiences children may have of going to a restaurant. To expand on the emerging interest in literacy by including menus, recipes, and recipe books.
Skills: Social skills, cooperation, communication, collaboration, role play, creative expression, symbolic representation


Materials: Different sized babies, clothes, bibs, diaper, baby food containers, bottles, beds, books about expecting moms, about being a older sibling, and about growth. (in the cave)
Rationale: To expand the children's interest of caring for babies by feeding the babies and changing their clothing. Continue to promote the children's interest about growth and comparison between the children and their peers.
Skills: Social skills, care taking, role-play, symbolic representation, collaboration,
communication


Materials: Construction hats, hammers, screwdrivers, saws, wrenches and construction tape, construction vests, various sized trucks, boxes, nuts and bolts, masking tape
Rationale: To continue the children's emerging interest of fixing things by providing them with a variety of tools, nuts and bolts. To continue the children's interest in building structures and expanding their interest by allowing them to express themselves through constructing and mending boxes with tape and bolts.
Skills: Social skills, collaboration, cooperation, communication, creative expression, role play, symbolic representation

Math and Manipulative:

Materials: Number stamps, counting bears, number puzzles, pegs and boards, alphabet puzzle

Rationale: To promote numeral and alphabetical awareness and counting.
Skills: Number recognition, 1 to 1 correspondence, matching, pairing, counting. 


Materials: Face puzzle with current pictures
Rationale: To continue to encourage the children to notice differences and changes about themselves and their classmates over time. To continue to promote the recognition and matching of other children's faces. 

Skills: Self-awareness, awareness of others, fine motor skills, matching, comparing and contrasting, 1 to 1 correspondence, turn taking, problem solving.

Language and Literacy


Materials: Letter stamps and paper, alphabet puzzle, name tracing cards.
Rationale: To continue supporting the children's emerging interest in letters and their names. To develop the children's awareness of their names, and their ability to write the letters of their name.
Skills: Fine motor, phonological awareness, alphabetical awareness, reading, conversation, trying new things 


Materials: A variety of books being displayed in different curriculum areas as well as the reading nook relating to emerging and current play themes including babies, food, construction, turtles

Rationale: To promote the use of books and stories as resources for new knowledge and inspiration for play, while continuing to facilitate the development of the basic components of language.

Skills: application of prior knowledge and experiences, phonological awareness, listening, speaking, alphabetical awareness, conversation, reading, turn taking


Music:


Materials: Drums, tone bells, rain sticks, maracas, an array of cd's featuring different instruments

Rationale: To listen to recorded music while playing their own instruments. To create their own beats and rhythm of music. To encourage the children to express themselves through dance and movement
Skills: listening to rhythm, following rhythm, creativity, sensory input, exploring, large motor, fine motor

Materials: Variety of colored construction paper, markers, empty can containers, empty film containers, beads, coins, buttons, beans and seeds.
Rationale: For the children to create their own drums, maracas, and rain sticks by using the materials that are available.
Skills: creative thinking and expression, fine motor skills, comparing and contrasting, symbolic representation, sensory input, sensory exploration

Blocks:

Materials: Hollow blocks, wooden blocks, foam blocks, plastic interlocking blocks

Rationale: To continue to support the children's interest in fixing buildings. To continue supporting the children in creating tall structures as well as working together to create collaborative buildings 

Skills: Fine motor, large motor, spatial concepts, symbolic representation, construction skills, creativity, collaboration, communication, cooperation

Large Motor:

Outdoor materials: Sleds, scoops, pails, shovels, molds, dump trucks, cups, bowls.
Rationale: To enhance the team work skills by providing the sleds. To provide opportunities for collaborative play and turn taking. To strengthen the children's creative skills by providing the shovels, molds and buckets in an open ended environment.
Skills: sharing, turn taking, propulsion skills, balance skills, large motor, motor coordination, muscular endurance, hand eye coordination

Indoor Materials: Gym - soccer balls and net, balance beam, rope swing, climbing structure, stairs and balance beam. 

Rationale: To provide opportunities to enhance grasping abilities, upper body strength, motor coordination and timing, depth perception, as well as propulsion skills. Balance beams in the gym will allow children to practice balance, climbing, and their risk taking abilities. 

Skills: Depth perception, grasping, visual perception, risk taking, motor coordination and timing, propulsion skills, construction skills, dynamic balance and coordination, upper and lower body strength, and climbing.

Large Group:
Materials: Songs and welcome activities led by teacher, felt story telling, demonstration of activity, and introduction of curriculum areas. 

Rationale: To continue to build the classroom routine. To promote the children's awareness of each other's names and encourage interaction. To introduce and support play themes throughout the classroom
Skills: Attention span, hand-eye coordination, listening, receptive skills, speaking, patience, taking turns, communication, social skills, literacy, trying new things

Snacks:
Tuesday:Pretzles and Raisins
Friday: Granola bars

Ashley Lead Teaching
2/20-2/24
Overview:
The dramatic play area has been a key in strengthening the children's relationships by promoting collaboration and communication amongst them. To continue to support these interactions, we will create a restaurant which will support an atmosphere for collaborative play. The restaurant will feature foods from different ethnicities, materials for waiters/waitresses, and the experience with using a credit card machine to pay. Other dramatic play areas will be arranged to collaborate with the restaurant theme so the children could weave ideas while eating, visiting, or working at the restaurant.
Expressive Arts:
**Materials: Easel, teal construction paper, liquid water color paints, paintbrushes
Rationale: To continue supporting the children's interest in painting by using the liquid water colors. To provide the children with a different sized paintbrush and colored paper that provides contrast.
Skills: Fine motor skills, creative thinking and expression, symbolic representation, sensory input, trying out new things, sensory exploration

**Materials: Paper, markers, scissors, collage materials, letter and number stamps.
Rationale: To help to promote the awareness of self and comparison to classmates and teachers hand sizes. To continue to support their interest in letters and numbers. To provide the children with symbolic representations of letters and numbers.
Skills: fine motor skills, creative thinking and expression, symbolic representation, collage-making, literacy, self awareness, comparing and contrasting
Sensory:
**Materials: flour, corn starch, cornmeal, water
Rationale: To expand on the children's sense of touch by mixing different mediums that are considered soft.
Skill: sensory exploration, sensory input, investigating, exploring, questioning, creating, exploring new materials, cause and effect
**Materials: Water, ice, arctic animals, fish, nets, cups, basters, funnels, spray bottles
Rationale: To continue supporting the children's interest in water. To provide the children with the opportunity to explore animals that live in cold habitats. To expand on their exploration of ice by providing them with the opportunity to explore what happens to ice when it is brought inside where it's warm, and when it comes into contact with water.
Skills: Observation, conversation, collaboration, investigating, questioning, prediction, sensory exploration, sensory input, cause and effect
Science:
**Materials: Light table, x-rays, bones, white paper over the x-rays, height charts, baby pictures
Rationale: To continue the exploration of their bodies and compare bone sizes of different people or animals. To continue to promote the communication of growth amongst the children by comparing baby pictures to how they look now. To allow the children to trace over the x-rays
Skills: Sensory input, exploring real life materials, asking questions, conversation, investigation

Dramatic Play:
**Materials: Kitchen furniture, dinner items, fruit, vegetables, desert items, coffee and tea, dishware, menus, tables and chairs, highchairs, credit card machine
Rationale: To expand on the children's interactions by creating a restaurant. To expand on real life experiences children may have of going to a restaurant. To expand on the emerging interest in literacy by including menus, recipes, and recipe books.
Skills: Social skills, cooperation, communication, collaboration, role play, creative expression, symbolic representation
**Materials: Different sized babies, baby clothes, bibs, diaper, spoons, baby food containers, spoons, bottles, strollers
Rationale: To expand the children's interest of caring for babies by feeding the babies and changing their clothing. To foster children's thinking about growth and changes with our bodies.
Skills: Social skills, care taking, role-play, symbolic representation, collaboration, communication
**Materials: Construction hats, hammers, screwdrivers, saws, wrenches and construction tape, construction vests, various sized trucks
Rationale: To continue the children's emerging interest of fixing things by providing them with a variety of tools. To continue the children's interest in building structures.
Skills: Social skills, collaboration, cooperation, communication, creative expression, role play, symbolic representation
Math and Manipulative:
**Materials: Number stamps, counting bears, number puzzles, pegs and boards, foot puzzle with numbers on toes, alphabet puzzle
Rationale: To promote numeral and alphabetical awareness and counting.
Skills: Number recognition, 1 to 1 correspondence, matching, pairing, counting.
**Materials: Face puzzle with current pictures,
Rationale: To continue to encourage the children to notice differences and changes about themselves and their classmates over time. To continue to promote the recognition and matching of other children's faces.
Skills: Self-awareness, awareness of others, fine motor skills, matching, comparing and contrasting, 1 to 1 correspondence, turn taking, problem solving.
Language and Literacy
**Materials: Letter stamps and paper, alphabet puzzle
Rationale: To continue supporting the children's emerging interest in letters and their names.
Skills: Fine motor, phonological awareness, alphabetical awareness, reading, conversation, trying new things
**Materials: A variety of books being displayed in different curriculum areas as well as the reading nook relating to emerging and current play themes including babies, food, construction, turtles
Rationale: To promote the use of books and stories as resources for new knowledge and inspiration for play, while continuing to facilitate the development of the basic components of language.
Skills: application of prior knowledge and experiences, phonological awareness, listening, speaking, alphabetical awareness, conversation, reading, turn taking
Music:
**Materials: Drums, tone bells, rain sticks, maracas, an array of cd's featuring different instruments
Rationale: To listen to recorded music while playing their own instruments. To create their own beats and rhythm of music
Skills: listening to rhythm, following rhythm, creativity, sensory input, exploring, large motor, fine motor,
Blocks:
**Materials: Hollow blocks, wooden blocks, foam blocks, plastic interlocking blocks
Rationale: To continue to support the children's interest in fixing buildings. To continue supporting the children in creating tall structures.
Skills: Fine motor, large motor, spatial concepts, symbolic representation, construction skills, creativity, collaboration, communication, cooperation
Large Motor:
**Outdoor materials: tricycles, traffic signs along the track, gas pump, hopscotch, scoops, pails, construction truck, basketball hoop with balls
Rationale: To enhance the propulsion skills by providing the tricycles. To provide opportunities for the children to increase their knowledge of symbol and representational systems. To provide opportunities for collaborative play and turn taking.
Skills: sharing, turn taking, propulsion skills, balance skills, large motor, motor coordination, muscular endurance, hand eye coordination
**Indoor Materials: Gym - soccer balls and net, balance beam, rope swing, climbing structure, stairs and balance beam.
Rationale: To provide opportunities to enhance grasping abilities, upper body strength, motor coordination and timing, depth perception, as well as propulsion skills. Balance beams in the gym will allow children to practice balance, climbing, and their risk taking abilities.
Skills: Depth perception, grasping, visual perception, risk taking, motor coordination and timing, propulsion skills, construction skills, dynamic balance and coordination, upper and lower body strength, and climbing.

Large Group:
**Materials: Songs and welcome games led by teacher, felt story telling, demonstration of activity, and introduction of curriculum areas.
Rationale: To continue to build the classroom routine. To promote the children's awareness of each other's names and encourage interaction. To introduce and support play themes throughout the classroom.
Skills: Attention span, hand-eye coordination, listening, receptive skills, speaking, patience, taking turns, communication, social skills, literacy, trying new things

Snack
Monday: Grapefruit and graham crackers
Wednesday: Mini triscuit and milk
Thursday: Hummus and celery

February 13th - 17th
Kristina Lead Teaching

Overview:
As the children have continued to interact with and strengthen their relationships with their peers and the teachers, the dramatic play areas of the classroom have become an important space for supporting their interest in communicating and collaborating with one another. The children have started expanding on their play in the coffee shop by assuming the roles of server and customer, and by incorporating a drive-thru window into their play. To support these emerging interests we will create a drive-thru window in the loft and add headsets and steering wheels to the area. To support the children's continued interest in the construction scene happening outside of the school, we will feature construction worker equipment in the block area. Many of the children have also shown an interest in exploring water, so we will be adding the water table to the classroom. Penguins, polar bears, and seals, along with ice, will also be added to the water table to expand on the children's animal play that has been happening in the play dough area. They will be invited to think about animals that live in cold habitats, as well as explore what happens to ice when it is put in water.

Expressive Arts:
**Materials: Easel, white paper, liquid water color paints
Rationale: To support the children's interest in painting by providing them with a new type of paint. To provide an opportunity for the children to express themselves creatively.
Skills: Fine motor skills, creative thinking and expression, symbolic representation, sensory input, trying out new things, sensory exploration
**Materials: Paper, markers, scissors, hand tracing model
Rationale: To help to promote the awareness of self and comparison to classmates and teachers hand sizes.
Skills: Self-awareness, fine motor skills, comparing and contrasting,
**Materials: Glue, scissors, markers, crayons, tissue paper, yarn, collage materials, letters

Rationale: To provide the children with a new adhesive for attaching materials together. To continue supporting the children's emerging interest in letters.
Skills: fine motor skills, creative thinking and expression, symbolic representation, collage-making, literacy

Sensory:
**Materials: Clay (hard and soft), hammers, water, animal figurines
Rationale: To expand on the children's sense of touch using different materials that are soft and hard. For the children to experience how a hard material can turn into a soft material.
Skill: sensory exploration, sensory input, investigating, exploring, questioning, creating, exploring new materials, cause and effect
**Materials: Water, ice, nets, cups, basters, funnels, arctic animals and fish figurines
Rationale: To support the children's interest in water. To expand the children's exploration of animals and what they do during the winter by looking at animals that live in cold habitats. To expand on their exploration of ice by providing them with the opportunity to explore what happens to ice when it is placed in water.
Skills: Observation, conversation, collaboration, investigating, questioning, prediction, sensory exploration, sensory input, cause and effect

Science:
**Materials: Light table, x-rays, bones, measuring tape
Rationale: To promote awareness and exploration of their bodies and compare bone sizes of different people or animals. To continue their exploration of light and dark and the effects of light through the x-rays.
Skills: Sensory input, exploring real life materials, asking questions, conversation, investigation
**Materials: Colored ice cubes hidden throughout the playground

Rationale: To engage the children in searching for and collecting materials outside. To support the children's continued exploration of ice.

Skills: Observation, conversation, experimentation, cause and effect, predicting, sharing ideas, sensory input, scientific thinking

Dramatic Play:
**Materials: Kitchen furniture, coffee pots, tea boxes, coffee creamer jug, coffee cups, lids, stirrers, cups, plates, utensils, baked goods, milk containers, fruit, headsets, note pads and writing utensils, recipes, coffee shop slideshow on the computer, steering wheels
Rationale: To provide the children with the opportunity to symbolically represent an experience they may have in their life. To expand on the children's interest in creating a drive-thru window for their coffee shop. To expand on the emerging interest in literacy by including recipes and materials for writing down orders.
Skills: Social skills, cooperation, communication, collaboration, role play, creative expression, symbolic representation
**Materials: Different sized babies, baby clothes, bibs, high chair, diaper, spoons, baby food containers, spoons, bottles, table and chairs for children, children's baby pictures
Rationale: To expand the children's interest of caring for babies by exploring how babies eat and how to feed them. To foster children's thinking about growth and changes with our bodies. Parents, please send a picture of your child (preferably 4x6 hard copy or email) as a baby with them to school as we would like to help promote their awareness of growth by showing them how much they have changed since they were babies.
Skills: Social skills, care taking, role-play, symbolic representation, collaboration, communication
**Materials: Construction hats, tool belts, hammers and construction tape, construction vests, various sized trucks
Rationale: To continue supporting the children's interest in the construction scene across the street by providing them with the opportunity to act out what they have been observing.
Skills: Social skills, collaboration, cooperation, communication, creative expression, role play, symbolic representation

Math and Manipulative:
**Materials: Face puzzle with current pictures
Rationale: To promote the recognition and matching of other children's faces. To encourage the children to notice differences and changes about themselves and their classmates over time.
Skills: Self-awareness, awareness of others, fine motor skills, matching, comparing and contrasting, 1 to 1 correspondence, turn taking, problem solving

**Materials: Pegs and peg boards, pattern blocks, puzzles, stacking shape blocks manipulative
Rationale: To promote the children's fine motor and cognitive development. To provide the children with opportunities to match, group, and order objects. To promote the awareness of patterns.
Skills: Fine motor, matching, comparing and contrasting, 1 to 1 correspondence, turn taking, problem solving, grouping, sorting, counting, comparing
Language and Literacy:
**Materials: Letter stencils, paper, pencils
Rationale: To support the children's emerging interest in letters and their names. To support the children's letter recognition by providing them with materials they can use to identify and trace letters.
Skills: Fine motor, phonological awareness, alphabetical awareness, reading, conversation, trying new things
**Materials: A variety of books being displayed in different curriculum areas as well as the reading nook relating to emerging and current play themes, including winter, music, babies, food, bodies, and construction
Rationale: To promote the use of books and stories as resources for new knowledge and inspiration for play, while continuing to facilitate the development of the basic components of language.
Skills: Listening, speaking, phonological awareness, alphabetical awareness, conversation, application of prior knowledge and experiences, reading, turn taking

Music:
**Materials: Drums, tone bells, rain sticks, CD's that focus on drums, tone bells, and rain sticks
Rationale: For the children to hear the recorded sounds of instruments that they are using within the classroom.
Skills: Sensory input, sensory exploration, investing, questioning, creating, exploring, large motor, fine motor, exploring instruments, listening to rhythms, following rhythms
Blocks:
**Materials: Hollow blocks, wooden blocks, foam blocks, plastic interlocking blocks
Rationale: To support the children's interest in building structures. To encourage children to act out what they have observed happening in the construction scene across the street.
Skills: Fine motor, large motor, spatial concepts, symbolic representation, construction skills, creativity, creativity, collaboration, communication, cooperation
Large Motor:
**Materials Indoors: Trikes, wall ladder, climbing and sliding equipment, race track, mats
**Materials Outdoors: Yellow scooter cars, road signs, shovels, buckets, sand molds, construction trucks, balance beam, balls, colored ice cubes, cups, bowls, strainers
Rationale: To provide the children with opportunities to practice their propulsion and balance skills. To extend the construction play outside into the sand. To continue providing the children with opportunities to search for and collect "jewels" made of ice.
Skills: Large motor, balance, turn-taking, motor coordination, propulsion skills, hand-eye coordination, visual discrimination, muscular endurance, environmental print - literacy

Large Group:
**Materials: Songs and welcome games led by teacher, reading books related to classroom themes, such as animals, letters, and growth, and talking about different areas of the classroom, including the coffee shop, the construction area, the water table, and the bones.
Rationale: To continue to build the classroom routine. To promote the children's awareness of each other's names and encourage interaction. To introduce and support play themes throughout the classroom.
Skills: Attention span, hand-eye coordination, listening, receptive skills, speaking, patience, taking turns, communication, social skills, literacy, trying new things

Lead teacher: Sarah Sandquist
Overview:
The children have developed friendships with their peers as well as teachers. They are starting to notice each other's similarities and differences, such as their hair color, length, and height. We will begin supporting the children's curiosity and understanding of their bodies and body parts by learning about bones and exploring what happens to our bones when we grow. This week we will re-introduce the height chart and update it by placing their pictures so they can recognize their heights and compare them to their classmates. We will also introduce X-rays and bones into the light table area. Children will be prompted to compare different sizes of bones using measuring tape and we will discuss what growth means. Literacy development has also become an interest in our class. Many children have been interested in identifying the first letter of their name in the hidden letter game we played last week. We will continue to support literacy development by adding stencils and dry erase markers to the art area as well as providing a variety of materials around the curriculum areas to write, draw, read and spell.

Expressive Arts:
Materials: Easel, white paper, dark colors with sparkle added, sponge brushes.
Rationale: To create contrast between the dark paint and the light paper while experimenting with new tools. . To promote creative expression and symbolic representation.
Skills: Fine motor skills, creative thinking and expression, symbolic representation

Materials: Paper, markers, scissors, hand tracing model.
Rationale: To help to promote the awareness of self and comparison to classmates and teachers hand sizes.
Skills: Self-awareness, fine motor skills, comparing and contrasting,

Materials: chalk, crayons, markers, scissors, tape, tissue paper. yarn, collage materials.

Rationale: To continue to foster creativity by experimenting with different materials. Strengthen their cutting skills by providing them with tape, yarn and tissue paper to cut with.
Skills: fine motor skills, creative thinking and expression, symbolic representation,

Sensory:
Materials: Natural-colored & brown playdoh, rolling pins, cheese slicers, animal figurines, animal molds, twigs, and other natural materials

Rationale: To provide the children with opportunities to continue exploring their interest in what animals do during the winter using a variety of natural materials and two colors of playdoh. To promote further exploration of the play the children have been engaging in, including building animal homes and forests, making coats for the animals to keep them warm, and having animals getting stuck in the snow.
Skills: Sensory input, fine motor, observation, creative expression, manual dexterity, cause and effect, trying out new things, symbolic representation, problem solving

Materials: Sand, construction trucks, scoops, pitchers, tongs, water
Rationale: To explore sand at a new consistency with a variety of tools. To expand their knowledge of the construction that is happening across the street.
Skills: collaborating, observation, investigating, questioning, prediction, sensory exploration, sensory input

Materials: snow, ice, trays
Rationale: To compare between soft and hard materials that involve the winter weather by asking the children questions relating to the sense of touch: How does it feel? Why are they both cold? Why does the snow melt faster than ice? Why is ice slippery? Is snow slippery?
Skills: sensory input, exploring, creating, sensory exploration, investigating, questioning, exploring real life materials, cause and effect
Science:
Materials: Light table, x-rays, bones, measuring tape
Rationale: To promote awareness and exploration of their bodies and compare bone sizes of different people or animals. To continue their exploration of light and dark and the effects of light through the x-rays.
Skills: Sensory input, exploring real life materials, asking questions, conversation, investigation

Materials: Ice with fish frozen inside, tools, magnifying glasses

Rationale: To continue providing the children with the opportunity to explore the properties of ice. To provide the children with the opportunity to experiment with how to manipulate ice to remove objects that have been frozen inside

Skills: Observation, conversation, experimentation, cause and effect, sharing ideas, sensory input, scientific thinking, problem solving, fine motor skills

Materials: Colored ice cubes hidden throughout the playground

Rationale: To engage the children in searching for and collecting materials outside. To support the children's continued exploration of ice.

Skills: Observation, conversation, experimentation, cause and effect, predicting, sharing ideas, sensory input, scientific thinking

Dramatic Play:
Materials: coffee beans, tea bags, kitchen furniture, coffee pots, tea boxes, coffee creamer jug, coffee cups, lids, stirrers, cups, plates, utensils, baked goods, milk containers, fruit
Rationale: To expand the children's play in the coffee shop by incorporating different smells that would normally be found at the coffee shop. To provide the children the opportunity to symbolically represent an experience they may have in their life.
Skills: social skills, cooperation, communication, collaboration, role play

Materials: Different sized babies, baby clothes, bibs, high chair, diaper, spoons, baby food containers, spoons, bottles, table and chairs for children
Rationale: To expand the children's interest of caring for babies by exploring how babies eat and how to feed them. To foster children's thinking about growth and changes with our bodies.
Skills: Social skills, care taking, role-play, symbolic representation, collaboration, communication

Materials: Construction hats, tool belts, hammers and construction tape, construction vests, various sized trucks
Rationale: To give the children the opportunity to apply their knowledge of construction into a dramatic play scene. To promote the children's role-playing of scenarios that they see across the street in the construction zone.
Skills: Social skills, collaboration, cooperation, communication, creative expression, role play, symbolic representation

Math and Manipulative:
Materials: Face puzzle with current pictures, manipulatives such as shape blocks to stack, number matching activities, sewing, pegboards, and puzzles
Rational: The children will recognize the current pictures of their classmates and match them to the pictures taken at the beginning of the year. To encourage children to notice differences and changes about themselves and their classmates over time. To promote fine motor development, hand eye coordination, shape and color differentiation. To promote the emerging awareness for patterns.
Skills: Self-awareness, awareness of others, fine motor skills, matching, comparing and contrasting, 1 to 1 correspondence, turn taking, problem solving, grouping, sorting

Language and Literacy:
Materials: Letter stencils, paper, pencils
Rationale: To enhance the children's letter recognition by providing them with materials to trace letters. To promote language and literacy by opportunities to experiment with letters and word formation.
Skills: Phonological awareness, alphabetical awareness, reading, conversation, trying new things.

Music:
Materials: drums, tone bells, rainmakers, a variety of mallets, display of songs
Rationale: For the children to think of different instruments that are similar to the instruments displayed by comparing them in sound.
Skills: sensory exploration, sensory input, fine and large motor, observing, questioning, creating

Blocks:
Materials: Hollow blocks, wooden blocks

Rationale: To encourage children to build on their accumulating knowledge of what is going on across the street in the construction site. To increase their knowledge of height and comparison skills.
Skills: fine and large motor skills, spatial concepts, symbolic representation, construction skills, creativity, trying out new ideas, creativity, collaboration, communication, cooperation

Large Motor:
Materials Indoors: trikes, wall ladder, climbing and sliding equipment, race track, bean bags
Materials outdoors: sleds, shovels, molding buckets, buckets, ice with food coloring, cups, bowls, strainer, construction trucks, balls
Rationale: To provide opportunities to practice propulsion and balance skills during winter time. To provide children with materials to enhance their exploration of winter weather. To create a scavenger hunt using "jewels" made out of ice and food coloring to expand on outdoor play.
Skills: Balance, turn taking, motor coordination, propulsion skills, hand-eye coordination, visual discrimination, muscular endurance.

Large Group:
Materials: Songs and welcome games led by teacher, reading "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom," a rhyming story about letters, modeling of activities
Rationale: To continue to build the classroom routine, strengthen their knowledge of each other's names. To expand their phonemic awareness and letter recognition.
Skills: attention span, hand-eye coordination, listening, receptive skills, speaking, patience, taking turns, communication and social skills.

Snacks:
Monday: Muffins and popsicles
Wednesday: Bananas and graham crackers
Thursday: Oranges and Rice cakes (possibly birthday snack)

Lesson plan
Ashley lead teaching

Overview
As the children continue to form relationships we will work on cooperation and collaboration while building on the children's play. We will continue to raise the awareness of each other and our growth by extending the face recognition game. The children will be able to compare their recent picture of each other to the pictures that were taken of them in the beginning of the school year. We have learned that many children accompany their parents to different coffee shops throughout the twin cities. This area will continue to be highlighted in the classroom to foster their skills on collaboration. Now that we have snow and ice, we are going to be highlighting these materials in the classroom, emphasizing on the sense of touch by comparing and contrasting between soft and hard materials.

Expressive Arts
**Materials: Easel, white paper, dark colors, sponge brushes
Rationale: To provide the children with materials that creates a contrast with light and dark colors. To explore how different types of painting tools work.
Skills: creativity, symbolic representation, artistic expression, fine motor skills
**Materials: chalk, crayons, markers, scissors, tape, tissue paper. yarn, collage materials.
Rationale: To enhance the children's creativity by allowing them to experiment with different materials. To provide the children the opportunity to continue their interest with cutting by providing them with tape, yarn and tissue paper. Encourage children to express their ideas using the different writing and drawing materials.
Skills: Persistence, symbolic representation, fine motor skills, creativity, artistic expression
**Materials: paper, markers
Rationale: By tracing the child's hand or footprint this activity will promote the awareness of self, as well as the children's classmates. This activity will also encourage children to notice differences about their classmates over time as well as comparing and contrasting between sizes of hands and feet.
Skills: Self-awareness, awareness of others, fine motor skills, comparison, conversation, observation
**Materials: Playdoh, rolling pins, cheese slicers, animal figurines, animal molds, twigs
Rationale: To continue exploring objects that leave impressions, prints, and tracks. To promote the use of a different medium for the continued exploration of what animals do during the winter, including building animal homes, making coats for the animals to keep them warm, and animals getting stuck in the snow.
Skills: Sensory input, fine motor, observation, creative expression, manual dexterity, cause and effect, trying out new things, symbolic representation, problem solving

Sensory
**Materials: Sand, dump trucks, funnels, scoops, pitchers, tongs, water
Rationale: To expand on the children's ideas of adding water and expanding on their interest of using different materials in the sand table. To continue to expand on the construction that is happening across from the school.
Skills: investigating, questioning, collaborating, observation, turn taking, imitation, prediction, sensory exploration, sensory input

Science
**Materials: light table, white paper, markers, translucent duplo blocks, flashlights
Rationale: To continue to promote exploration of light and color and to experiment with what happens when the colors and lights are combined. To continue with exploration of light and dark. To continue to promote creative exploration through children experimenting with the effects of light.
Skills: fine motor skills, speaking, communication, word formation, trying new things
**Materials: snow, ice, trays
Rationale: To expand on the sense of touch using different soft and hard materials while incorporating what is happening in the environment.
Skills: sensory input, exploring, creating, sensory exploration, investigating, questioning, exploring real life materials, cause and effect
**Materials: Ice with fish frozen inside, tools, and magnifying glasses
Rationale: To provide opportunities for the children to explore the properties of ice and what happens to it when it is left inside or manipulated with tools. To promote problem solving and experimentation with materials.
Skills: Observation, conversation, experimentation, cause and effect, sharing ideas, sensory input, scientific thinking, problem solving, fine motor skills
**Materials: Ice on the playground, shovels, mallets, tools, colored ice cubes
Rationale: To promote the observation and manipulation of ice with a variety of tools. To engage the children in searching for and collecting materials outside.
Skills: Observation, conversation, experimentation, cause and effect, predicting, sharing ideas, sensory input, scientific thinking

Dramatic Play
** Materials: foam blocks, wooden blocks, construction trucks
Rationale: To expand on the construction that is occurring across the street from the school by having the children use the blocks and trucks to reenact what they have seen.
Skills: building skills, large and fine motor skills, role play, social skills, creativity, collaboration, communication, observation, symbolic representation
**Materials: Babies that are different sizes and ethnicities, baby clothes, bottles, blankets, high chair, cribs, changing table, books
Rationale: To expand on the children's interest of care taking by using symbolic play in representing their experiences and curiosities about babies. To have the children continue thinking about growth in babies and in turn, ourselves. To discover how we grow and what makes us bigger.
Skills: self help skills, social skills, role play, symbolic representation, collaboration, communication
**Materials: kitchen furniture, coffee pots, tea boxes, coffee creamer jug, coffee cups, lids, stirrers, cups, plates, utensils, baked goods, milk containers, fruit
Rationale: To expand on the children's interest of going to the coffee shop, baking food,serving food for themselves and classmates. Providing the children with an opportunity to symbolically represent their experiences.
Skills: social skills, collaboration, cooperation, communication, creative expression, role play, symbolic representation
**Materials: wooden trains, chairs, table, blocks
Rationale: To expand on role play scenarios that encourage children to collaborate with one another, such as creating a train using the chairs. Providing the children with an opportunity to expand on their interests in trains by allowing exploration.
Skills: social skills, fine and large motor skills, communication, collaboration, cooperation, role play, symbolic representation

Math and Manipulative
**Materials: Updated Face puzzle
Rationale: Children will match new pictures of their classmates to the older class picture. This will promote the awareness of self, as well as the children's classmates. To encourage children to notice differences about their classmates over time.
Skills: Self-awareness, awareness of others, fine motor skills, matching, comparing and contrasting.

Art Table
Materials: Paper, markers
Rational: By tracing the child's hand or footprint this activity will promote the awareness of self, as well as the children's classmates. This activity will also encourage children to notice differences about their classmates over time as well as comparing and contrasting between sizes of hands and feet.
Skills: Self-awareness, awareness of others, fine motor skills, comparison.

Language and Literacy
**Materials: letter stencils, paper, crayons, markers
Rationale: To enhance the children's language and literacy skills by providing them with opportunities to expand on the interest of letter recognition. To provide the opportunity of creative expression and communication using tracing and word formation.
Skills: Alphabetical awareness, fine motor skills, speaking, communication, word formation, trying new things
**Materials: A variety of books displayed in different curriculum areas throughout the classroom and also in the reading nook. The variety of books includes animals, winter, trains, and babies.
Rationale: To expand on the current play themes by providing the children with current knowledge and new knowledge of the play themes. To create awareness for the children of what is going on in their environment.
Skills: phonological awareness, alphabetical awareness, reading, application of prior knowledge and experiences, speaking, listening, conversation, turn taking
**Materials: letters
Rationale: To play I Spy with the children to search for the first letter of their first name
Skills: alphabetical awareness, communication, trying to things, application of prior knowledge, listening, understanding rules

Blocks
**Materials: Hollow blocks, wooden blocks
Rationale: To encourage children to build a construction site, homes, train tracks, and tunnels
Skills: fine and large motor skills, spatial concepts, symbolic representation, construction skills, creativity, trying out new ideas, creativity, collaboration, communication, cooperation

Large Motor Skills
**Materials Indoors: trikes, wall ladder, climbing and sliding equipment, race track
**Materials outdoors: sleds, shovels, molding buckets, buckets, ice with food coloring
Rationale: To provide opportunities to practice propulsion and balance skills during winter time. To provide children with materials to enhance their exploration of winter weather. To create a scavenger hunt using "jewels" made out of ice and food coloring to expand on outdoor play.
Skills: Balance, turn taking, motor coordination, propulsion skills, hand-eye coordination, visual discrimination, muscular endurance.

Large Group
**Materials: songs and rhymes led by teacher, read: The Snowy Day, introducing the Snow Flake song
Rationale: To introduce a new song and book to children to focus on what has been happening in the environment.
Skills: attention span, respect for one another, following directions, sharing ideas, attending and orientating

Music
**Materials: drums, tone bells, rainmakers, a variety of mallets, display of songs
Rationale: To expand on the children's use of instruments and songs by having a display of instruments and a variety of different songs options for children to sing. Also, to encourage the children to create their own songs.
Skills: sensory exploration, sensory input, fine and large motor, observing, questioning, creating

January 23rd - 27th
Kristina Lead Teaching
Overview:
As the children continue building new relationships and strengthening existing ones with the teachers and their peers, our focus will be on fostering these relationships while building on the play the children have been engaging in throughout the classroom. Face recognition games and student figurines will continue to be highlighted to promote awareness of each other and encourage the children to interact with one another in their play. With the colder temperatures keeping us inside over the course of the last week, the children have begun thinking about winter weather and what happens when it gets cold. To encourage further exploration of what happens during the winter we will continue featuring winter animals in the dramatic play area and encourage the children to observe and experiment with ice on the playground. Along with the cold weather we have noticed that many of the children have runny noses and coughs, so we will also be focusing on basic hygiene to promote ways the children can keep themselves healthy while at school.

Expressive Arts
**Materials: Easel, white paper, pastel paint colors, large brushes
Rationale: To promote creativity and artistic representation of what is happening in the environment by providing colors that represent ice and snow.
Skills: Fine motor, creativity, artistic expression, symbolic representation, observation, trying out new things

**Materials: Scissors, chalk, string, ribbon, scotch tape, markers, crayons, letter stencils
Rationale: To continue promoting the use of a variety of different materials to create collages. To support the children's interest in cutting and taping materials. To encourage the children to express their thoughts and ideas through drawing and writing.
Skills: Fine motor, creativity, artistic expression, persistence, symbolic representation

**Materials: Playdoh, rolling pins, cheese slicers, impression tools, animal figurines
Rationale: To continue experimenting with a variety of new tools. To promote awareness of objects that leave impressions, prints, and tracks. To support the children's interest in thinking about winter and the cold weather, such as making coats for the animals to keep them warm and acting out animals getting stuck in the snow.
Skills: Sensory input, fine motor, observation, creative expression, manual dexterity, cause and effect, trying out new things, symbolic representation

Sensory
**Materials: Shaving Cream, food coloring or watercolors
Rationale: To expand on the children's exploration of shaving cream we will add colors that are in the paint area that represent the winter time. Blue and Pink coloring will be added to create a soft pastel color of each for the children to connect painting at the easel with finger painting using different types of materials.
Skills: sensory exploration, sensory input, investigating, exploring, questioning, creating, exploring new materials, cause and effect
**Materials: Small wooden blocks
Rationale: To engage the children in sensory exploration of materials that are hard. To provide hard materials that contrast with the softness of the shaving cream. To provide opportunities for the children to begin noticing the differences between soft and hard materials.
Skills: Sensory exploration, sensory input, prediction, exploring, exploring new materials, contrasting, noticing similarities and differences

**Materials: Sand, dump trucks, rakes, rocks, funnels, rollers, shovels
Rationale: To continue exploring and making sense out of the construction scene happening outside of the classroom.
Skills: Sensory exploration, sensory input, observation, imitation, prediction, fine motor, investigating, questioning, collaboration, turn-taking

Science
**Materials: Light table, translucent duplo blocks, flashlights, white paper, markers
Rationale: To promote continued exploration of light, colors, and what happens when colors and/or light are combined. To provide opportunities for creative expression using the effects of light. To promote exploration of the concepts of light and dark.
Skills: Observation, prediction, fine motor, creativity, artistic expression, comparison, collaboration

**Materials: Ice on the playground, shovels, mallets
Rationale: To engage in observing and manipulating ice to explore what it is made out of and what happens to it in different conditions.
Skills: Observation, conversation, experimentation, cause and effect, predicting, sharing ideas, sensory input, scientific thinking

Dramatic Play
**Materials: Unit blocks, foam blocks, arch blocks, animal figures, baskets, twigs, fabric, animal furs and costumes
Rationale: To continue promoting awareness and exploration of where animals live and what they do during the winter.
Skills: Symbolic representation, communication, creativity, collaboration, large and fine motor, observation, construction skills (building), role play, social skills

**Materials: Household kitchen furniture, plates, cups, fruit, baked goods, coffee cups, tea boxes, coffee pots
Rationale: A coffee shop has been created to expand on the children's interest in making and serving food for themselves and others. To provide opportunities for the children to symbolically represent their experiences. Parents, please let us know if you and your children visit any coffee shops together and which ones they may be familiar with.
Skills: Role play, symbolic representation, communication, collaboration, creative expression, cooperation, social skills

**Materials: Babies of different sizes, baby clothes, blankets, bottles, cribs, changing table, high chair
Rationale: To expand on the children's interest in taking care of babies by providing them with opportunities to symbolically represent their experiences with and curiosity about babies. To get the children thinking about what happens when you grow and get bigger.
Skills: Role play, symbolic representation, communication, collaboration, social skills, self-help skills

**Materials: Wooden trains, chairs, blocks
Rationale: To promote the creation of role play scenarios that encourage groups of children to collaborate with one another, such as going on a train ride using chairs. To continue providing opportunities for the children to explore their interests in trains and what one does when traveling.
Skills: Role play, symbolic representation, communication, collaboration, creative expression, social skills, large and fine motor

Math and Manipulatives
**Materials: Picture face puzzle
Rationale: To promote the awareness of self, as well as the children's classmates. To encourage children to notice similarities and differences about their classmates over time.
Skills: Self-awareness, awareness of others, fine motor skills, matching

**Materials: Sewing cards, number counting manipulative, pegs and peg boards, puzzles
Rationale: To support awareness of numbers and counting. To provide materials that support hand-eye coordination and fine motor control. To support problem-solving and understanding of part to whole relationships in putting together a puzzle.
Skills: Fine motor control, hand-eye coordination, persistence, counting, comparison

Language and Literacy
**Materials: A variety of books being displayed in different curriculum areas as well as the reading nook relating to emerging and current play themes, including winter, music, babies, food, and trains.
Rationale: To promote the use of books and stories as resources for new knowledge and inspiration for play, while continuing to facilitate the development of the basic components of language.
Skills: Listening, speaking, phonological awareness, alphabetical awareness, conversation, application of prior knowledge and experiences, reading, turn taking

**Materials: Letter stencils, paper, crayons, markers
Rationale: To support the children's interest in letters. To provide opportunities for communication and creative expression through drawing and writing.
Skills: Fine motor, observation, communication, speaking, alphabetical awareness, creative expression, persistence, trying new things

Blocks
**Materials: Blocks with the children's pictures on them
Rational: To promote children's dramatic play in the block area by using the picture blocks as figurines that symbolize their classmates and teachers. To promote the awareness of self, as well as the children's classmates. To encourage children to notice similarities and differences about their classmates over time.
Skills: Self-awareness, awareness of others, fine motor skills

**Materials: Hollow blocks, unit blocks
Rationale: To encourage the use of blocks to build airports, houses, train tracks, and bridges to support the story lines of traveling, construction, and hibernation.
Skills: Creativity, symbolic representation, large and fine motor, spatial concepts, construction skills (building), cooperation, collaboration, trying out new ideas

Large Motor
**Materials: Indoors: Pedalo, bumpy slide, A-Frame ladders and bridge, wall ladders, mats
Rationale: To support the development of large motor skills such as coordination, propulsion, balance, jumping, running, and climbing.
Skills: Upper and lower body strength, endurance, balance, coordination, creativity, turn-taking, spatial awareness, physical fitness

**Materials: Outdoors: Buckets, shovels, ice, mallets, dump trucks, food, dishes, sleds
Rationale: To promote the observation, exploration, and manipulation of ice using different tools. To provide the children with opportunities to extend their construction and restaurant play into another setting. To provide opportunities for the children to explore the natural environment and the snow.
Skills: Fine and large motor, body manipulation, physical fitness, role play, sensory input and exploration, hand-eye coordination, cause and effect, observation, experimentation

Large Group
**Materials: Songs and rhymes led by teacher (gather, name, and topic songs and rhymes), reading Bear Snores On, a rhyming story about a hibernating bear, dance and instrument activities, and modeling of activities.
Rationale: To sing songs that are familiar to the children as they continue to get used to the school routine again. To introduce and promote awareness of the new materials and model activities.
Skills: Attention span, attending and orienting, respect for one another, following directions, sharing ideas

Music
** Materials: drums, rainmakers, scrapers, different size and shape mallets, other objects
Rationale: Allow children to explore the materials through manipulation and have them create their own music. To promote exploration of sound, volume, rhythm and social interaction. To expand on the children's exploration in the music area we will provide the children with different types of mallets that create different sounds when hit on the drums. The children will also think of different objects they could use to create different sounds.
Skills: sensory input, sensory exploration, investing, questioning, creating, exploring, large motor, fine motor, exploring instruments

Snacks
Monday: Oranges and Pretzels
Wednesday: Trail mix and milk
Thursday: Animal crackers and milk

January 16th-20th
All teachers Co-Teaching

Overview:
As the children and new teachers settle in, our focus will be on building new relationships and strengthening existing ones. Face recognition games and student figurines will be highlighted to promote awareness of each other. The children will be encouraged to begin noticing similarities and differences amongst each other. We will also be focusing on collaboration and cooperation as the children work together. Themes of transportation and construction will continue to be highlighted to allow children to deepen and develop current play themes. Winter weather and winter animals will be featured in the dramatic play area and in large group discussions to bring awareness of the surrounding environment.

Expressive Arts
**Materials: Easel, black paper, white and pastel paint colors.
Rationale: To promote creative expression while providing colors that represent snow. To create a contrast between light paint and dark background.
Skills: Fine motor, try out new things, symbolic representation, creativity, artistic expression.

**Materials: Scissors, chalk, string, ribbons, scotch tape, markers, crayons.
Rationale: To promote collage making by cutting and taping the materials. To provide opportunities to draw and write their thoughts and ideas.
Skills: Fine motor, persistence, artistic expression, symbolic representation, creativity.

**Materials: Playdoh, rolling pins, cheese slicers, impression tools.
Rationale: To experiment with a variety of new tools. To try out materials for cause and effect relationship.
Skills: Sensory input, fine motor, turn taking, creative expression, manual dexterity, observation, cause and effect, try out, creativity.

Sensory
**Materials: shaving cream
Rationale: To provide the children with an opportunity to use their sense of touch by exploring materials that are soft.
Skills: sensory exploration, sensory input, investigating, exploring, questioning, creating, exploring new materials

**Materials: ice on the playground
Rationale: To observe, feel, manipulate, and begin wondering about what ice is made out of and what happens to it in different conditions.
Skills: observation, discussion, experimentation, cause and effect, predicting, sharing ideas, sensory input

**Materials: Sand, dump trucks, rakes, cups, rocks, shells, funnels, rollers.
Rationale: To make sense out of the construction/destruction scenery outside the classroom in Norris Hall. To support interest in digging and excavating hidden "treasures."
Skills: Sensory input, turn-taking, observation, imitation, prediction, trying out new ideas, fine motor

Science
**Materials: Light table, translucent duplo blocks, flashlights, color gels and Petri dishes.
Rationale: To provide opportunity to build with small translucent manipulatives to see the effects of color combination through light. To provide the opportunity to explore colors and mixing them by combining the materials together. To provide experimentation with light and dark.
Skills: Observation, prediction, fine motor, symbolic representation, comparison, try out

**Materials: Sensory touch materials.
Rationale: To learn and use the sense of touch. To compare two materials and learn new vocabulary such as soft, rough, smooth, bumpy.
Skills: Ideas, discussion, observation, sensory input

Dramatic Play
**Materials: unit blocks, foam blocks, arch blocks, animal figures, baskets, twigs, fabric
Rationale: To promote an awareness of where animals live and what they do during the winter.
Skills: symbolic representation, communication, creativity, collaboration, large and fine motor, observation, construction skills (building)

**Materials: Household kitchen furniture, plates, bowls, cups, food, babies, baby clothes, blankets, bottles, and crib.
Rationale: To continue to provide opportunities to symbolically represent the children's experiences or curiosity of taking care of babies, making, and serving food for themselves and others.
Skills: Role play, symbolic representation, communication, collaboration, creative expression, cooperation, social skills.


**Materials: Wooden trains, chairs, airplanes, cars, maps, small pictures of airplanes to stick on the map.
Rationale: To create role playing scenarios that includes groups of children to collaborate together, such as going on a train ride or an airplane ride using chairs. To continue to provide an opportunity to reenact some of the travel experiences the children may have had over winter break.
Skills: Role play, symbolic representation, communication, collaboration, creative expression, cooperation, social skills


Math and Manipulatives 

**Materials: Picture Face puzzle
Rationale: To promote the awareness of self, as well as the children's classmates. To encourage children to notice similarities and differences about their classmates over time.
Skills: Self-awareness, awareness of others, fine motor skills, matching.

**Materials: sewing blocks, problem solving stacker, number counting manipulative, puzzles
Rationale: To support awareness of numbers and counting. To provide materials that support hand-eye coordination and fine motor control. To understand part to whole relationships in putting together a puzzle.
Skills: Counting, comparison, persistence, fine motor control, hand-eye coordination

Language and Literacy 

**Materials: A variety of books being displayed in different curriculum areas as well as the reading nook.

Rationale: To promote finding and applying new information in books to their knowledge and play, while continuing to facilitate the development of the basic components of language. 

Skills: Listening, speaking, reading, phonological awareness, alphabetical awareness, heuristic language, give and ask for information, turn taking. 


Blocks 

**Materials: Blocks with the children's pictures on them
Rational: To promote children's dramatic play in the block area by using the picture blocks as figurines that symbolize their classmates and teachers. To promote the awareness of self, as well as the children's classmates. To encourage children to notice similarities and differences about their classmates over time.
Skills: Self-awareness, awareness of others, fine motor skills

**Materials: Hollow blocks and unit blocks.
Rationale: To encourage block building to make airports, houses, train tracks, and bridges, to support the story lines of traveling and hibernation.
Skills: Cooperation, collaboration, creativity, symbolic representation, large and fine motor, spatial concepts, construction skills (building), try out new ideas

Large Motor 

**Materials: Indoors: Pedalo, bumpy slide, A-Frame ladders and bridge, monkey bars, and wall ladders.
Rationale: To provide and promote opportunities to support propulsion skills and motor coordination skills.
Skills: Upper and lower body strength, endurance, balance, coordination, creativity, turn-taking

**Materials: Outdoors: Buckets, shovels, rocking boat, ice, mallets, yellow scooter cars
Rationale: To provide children opportunities for social interaction and to collaborate in rocking a boat together. To facilitate activities that promote usage of ice.
Skills: Fine and large motor, body manipulation, physical fitness, hand-eye coordination, cause and effect, turn-taking

Large group 

**Materials: Songs and rhymes led by teacher (gather, name, and topic songs and rhymes), reading "Eeny Miney Mouse," a rhyming story, dance and instrument activities, modeling of activities
Rationale: To introduce the children to the new student teachers. To sings songs that are familiar to them as they get used to the school routine again.
Skills: Attention span, attending and orienting, respect for one another, following directions.

Music 

** Materials: drums, rainmakers, scrappers
Rationale: Allow children to explore the materials through manipulation and have them create their own music. To promote exploration of sound, volume, rhythm and social interaction.
Skills: sensory input, sensory exploration, investing, questioning, creating, exploring, large motor, fine motor, exploring instruments

January 4th -13th
Ayuko Lead Teaching

Overview:
As we welcome the children and families back from the long winter break, we plan to keep things simple to allow easy interactions with our new student teacher team. We are assuming that some children may have had travel experiences during break so we will have trains, planes, cars, and maps available to capitalize on the memories. Familiar items will continue to be available so that the children could seek comfort when they come back to the classroom. Learning the basic steps of dressing for the winter outdoors (snowpants and boots and the rest) will be a big focus of our early days together.

Expressive Arts
**Materials: Easel, black paper, white and pastel paint colors.
Rationale: To promote creative expression while providing colors that represent snow. To create a contrast between light paint and dark background.
Skills: Fine motor, try out new things, symbolic representation, creativity, artistic expression.

**Materials: Playdoh, rolling pins, cheese slicers, impression tools.
Rationale: To experiment with a variety of new tools. To try out materials for cause and effect relationship.
Skills: Sensory input, fine motor, turn taking, creative expression, manual dexterity, observation, cause and effect, try out, creativity.

Sensory
**Materials: Sand, dump trucks, rakes, cups, rocks.
Rationale: To make sense out of and act out the construction/destruction scenery outside the classroom in Norris Hall. To support interest in digging and excavating hidden "treasures."
Skills: Sensory input, turn-taking, observation, imitation, prediction, trying out new ideas, fine motor

Science
**Materials: Light table, primary color gels, Petri dishes, flashlights.
Rationale: To provide the opportunity to explore colors and mixing them by combining the materials together. To provide experimentation with light and dark.
Skills: Observation, prediction, fine motor, comparison, try out

**Materials: Sensory touch materials.
Rationale: To learn and use the sense of touch. To compare two materials and learn new vocabulary such as soft, rough, smooth, bumpy.
Skills: Ideas, discussion, observation, sensory input

**Materials: Snow and Ice in the playground.
Rationale: To compare, observe, mold, feel, and begin wondering the difference between snow and ice and what it is made out of. To begin thinking about what type of animals enjoy the cold.
Skills: Ideas, discussion, experimenting, observation, try out ideas, cause and effect, predicting.

Dramatic Play
**Materials: Household kitchen furniture, plates, bowls, cups, food, babies, baby clothes, blankets, bottles, and crib.
Rationale: To provide an opportunity to symbolically represent the children's experiences or curiosity of taking care of babies, making, and serving food for themselves and others.
Skills: Role play, symbolic representation, communication, collaboration, creative expression, cooperation, social skills.


**Materials: Wooden trains, airplanes, cars, maps, small pictures of airplanes to stick on the map.
Rationale: To provide an opportunity to reenact some of the travel experiences the children may have had over winter break.
Skills: Role play, symbolic representation, communication, collaboration, creative expression, cooperation, social skills


Math and Manipulatives 

**Materials: beading, peg and peg boards, problem solving stacker, puzzles
Rationale: To support awareness of numbers and counting. To provide materials that support hand-eye coordination and fine motor control. To understand part to whole relationships in putting together a puzzle.
Skills: Counting, comparison, persistence, fine motor control, hand-eye coordination

Language and Literacy 

**Materials: A variety of books being displayed in different curriculum areas as well as the reading nook.

Rationale: To promote finding and applying new information in books to their knowledge and play, while continuing to facilitate the development of the basic components of language. 

Skills: Listening, speaking, reading, phonological awareness, alphabetical awareness, heuristic language, give and ask for information, turn taking. 


Blocks 

**Materials: Hollow blocks and unit blocks.
Rationale: To encourage block building and make airports, houses, garage, train tracks, and bridges, to support the story lines of traveling.
Skills: Cooperation, collaboration, creativity, symbolic representation, large and fine motor, spatial concepts, construction skills (building), try out new ideas

Large Motor 

**Materials: Indoors: basic gym set up for the first week.
Rationale: To provide and promote opportunities to engage in activities that enhance and challenge their physical skills.
Skills: Upper and lower body strength, endurance, balance, coordination, symbolic representation, creativity, turn-taking

**Materials: Outdoors: Buckets, shovels, balance beam, ice (and hopefully snow), yellow scooter cars
Rationale: To provide children opportunities to engage in activities that challenge their physical skills including a focus on balancing coordination skills. To facilitate activities that promote usage of snow and ice.
Skills: Fine and large motor, body manipulation, physical fitness, hand-eye coordination, cause and effect, turn-taking

Large group 

**Materials: Songs and rhymes led by teacher (gather, name, and topic songs and rhymes), reading "Eeny Miney Mouse," a rhyming story, dance and instrument activities, modeling of activities
Rationale: To introduce the children to the new student teachers. To sings songs that are familiar to them as they get used to the school routine again.
Skills: Attention span, attending and orienting, respect for one another, following directions.

Music 

**Materials: Drums, shakers, and clappers. 

Rationale: To promote exploration of sound, volume, rhythm and social interaction. To promote social interaction by encouraging the children to play instruments both in large group and during free play
Skills: Creative expression and movement, mathematical concepts (beats and patterns), imitation, call and answer, communication.

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

Large Motor


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


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


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


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


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


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

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

Rasamee Lead Teaching

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

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

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

Sensory 

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

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

Dramatic Play

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

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

Math and Manipulatives

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

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

Blocks

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

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

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

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

Large group

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

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

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

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

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

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

Katie Lead Teaching

Overview: The children are comfortable in our daily routines and continue to engage in increasingly complex interactions with their peers and teachers. We will continue intentional dismissal and our small groups to encourage friendships and participation in specific learning areas. The children remain interested in the fire fighter theme in the block area. Some children have begun putting on fire fighter hats and using spray bottles to put out "fires" in the classroom, while others have started building fire trucks with blocks. The children have also taken great interest in the hospital area of the classroom. They are using the bandages, stethoscopes, x-rays, and bottles of pretend medicine to take care of the babies and each other. This dramatic play has sparked an interest in bodies for the children. Another interest that continues to develop in the classroom is dancing. Families have started bringing in CDs of familiar and favorite songs to share with the class. The children enjoy singing along and dancing to them using instruments and scarves from the music area in our classroom. As we have brought closure to certain areas and themes that have been present in the classroom for several weeks, we will be introducing new ideas and materials based on the children's emerging interests.

Expressive Arts 

**Materials:Purple, blue and white paint, black or blue paper, and foam rollers with different patterns. 

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

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

Sensory 

**Materials: Water, small bottles of soap, hand mixers, containers, funnels, scoops, basters
Rationale: To explore how water changes when you add an element such as soap.To experiment with the amount of soap they need to create a basin full of bubbles. The children have been exploring the water table with premade bubbles. This week, the children can explore the process of how to make bubbles by squeezing soap into the water themselves and using whisks, hands, or other tools to create bubbles.
Skills: Observation, fine and large motor skills, muscular endurance, scientific thinking, and problem solving
**Materials: Colored play dough, play dough tools (letter-shaped cookie cutters, muffin trays, garlic presses, rolling pins, pizza cutters, mixing bowls, and wooden spoons), Visuals of people baking pies, pizzas, cupcakes, and muffins at eye level near the play dough table, pretend oven
Rationale: To explore different colored play dough and how it mixes together. To create patterns, designs, or collages using the different colors of dough. To promote ideas of baking, cooking, and eating a larger variety of foods with the different colors and the visuals. To further incorporate literacy into children's play by introducing letter-shaped cookie cutters.
Skills: Symbolic representation, fine motor skills, sensory exploration, observation, creative expression and imagination, letter recognition, social skills (i.e. turn taking and collaboration)

Science 

**Materials: Magnet sticks, letter boards, horseshoe magnets, materials that repel or attract to the magnets
Rationale: To explore magnetic properties and why magnets repel or attract other magnets and why magnets do not attract certain materials. To encourage logical thinking through the exploration of magnets and the reflection and interpretation of experiences. To encourage children to use communication skills to hypothesize and share ideas about magnetic concepts.
Skills: Observation, scientific and higher level thinking, curiosity, reasoning, and problem solving

Dramatic Play

**Materials: "bear cave," with stuffed animal bears and materials the children collected from nature, various animal fur, posted images of bears, questions about bears, and books focusing on bears and hibernation.

Rationale: To continue to provide a cozy area to foster an animal story line for dramatic play. To continue to promote pretend and symbolic play and support social interaction among students and teachers. To support literacy and language development, and to promote emergent reading skills such as acting out a story from pictures. To create an opportunity to learn about bears, emphasizing a bear's need to adapt its lifestyle according to the season changes. To continue to build off the children's emerging interest in bears' habitats, feeding habits, and physical characteristics.

Skills: Role play, creative expression and thinking, sensory input, cooperation, turn taking, communication, symbolic representation, and social skills (i.e. listening, speaking, phonological awareness, vocabulary)
**Materials: Baby dolls, baby items (clothes, bottles, rattles, blankets, food, high-chairs), bandages, doctor outfits, syringes, reflex hammers, medicine bottles, x-rays, and stethoscopes
Rationale: To create a hospital to continue to promote an interest in care-taking skills when babies or children are sick or hurt. To provide doctor outfits for the children to act out scenarios and take on realistic dramatic play roles. To support pretend play and encourage children to use their imaginations and invention skills to create abstract scenarios and situations. 

Skills: Communication, social skills, role-playing, symbolic representation, cooperative play, empathy, and turn taking

**Materials: Hollow blocks, ramps, fire trucks, hose, fire hats, fire fighter outfits, truck wheels, steering wheels, spray bottles, and paper flames for the children to extinguish
Rationale: To continue to support and encourage pretend and symbolic play about firefighter scenarios. To foster social interaction and cooperative play among peers by sharing the materials. To support the children's interests in fire fighters and fire trucks that have continued to develop after the fire drill last week.
Skills: Communication, cooperation, turn taking, role-playing, symbolic representation, and social skills.

Math and Manipulatives

**Materials: Fine motor manipulatives such as numbered peg boards, seriated peg boards, and puzzles.
Rationale: To promote fine motor development, awareness of shape and color, and hand-eye coordination for spatial awareness. To promote an emerging awareness for patterns, relationships, and geometry.
Skills: Hand-eye coordination, turn taking, fine motor control and skills, language and literacy, classification, seriation, shape and color identification
Language and Literacy
** Materials: A variety of books relating to emerging and current play themes including doctors, firefighters, winter, animals, and school; letter-shaped cookie cutters at the play dough table; Felt story boards during large group meeting.
Rationale: To continue to support the children's interest in reading. To develop listening skills and to make predictions and personal connections with the stories. To provide a quiet and relaxing learning alternative during free play that simultaneously supports literacy development, language, creativity, and imaginative thinking. To promote awareness of letters.
Skills: Listening, receptive abilities, speaking, phonological awareness, recognition, language and literacy development

Blocks

**Materials: foam blocks, hollow and cardboard blocks, planks, and pictures of children building with blocks.

Rationale: To continue to support mathematical skills, social interaction, and collaborative building projects. To be incorporated into building homes for the babies, houses for animals, and roads, cars, and garages for the fire trucks.
Skills: Communication, collaboration, large motor, expressive creativity, mathematical and scientific concepts, fine motor.

Large Motor

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

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

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

Large group

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

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

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



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

**Materials: CD player with CD's (Please feel free to lend us any of your child's favorite CDs to use in the classroom), computer program to play music, piano keyboards, drums, tambourines, bells, and shakers.
Rationale: To promote the exploration of sound, volume, rhythm. To introduce the children to new instruments and use collaborative play to create music. To provide opportunities for children to independently choose from three or four familiar songs using a computer program.

Skills: Turn-taking, fine motor development, gross motor movement and coordination, collaboration, noticing patterns, sounds, and beats.

Lesson Plan

3AM 10/31-11/4

Jamie Lead Teaching

Overview: The children are comfortable in our daily routines, and continue to engage in increasingly complex interactions with their peers and teachers. We will continue intentional dismissal and our small groups to encourage friendships and participation in specific learning areas. We had a fire drill last week and want to build off the awareness of the event by integrating firefighting materials into the dramatic play area of the classroom. Several children have also recently been to the doctor for checkups and we want to build on that emerging play theme by creating a hospital in the classroom where the children can care for babies or each other. The children are familiarizing themselves with the materials and areas in the classroom, and we want to strive towards reinventing and refining areas to keep interests, creativity, and ideas fresh.
Expressive Arts 

**Materials: Red, yellow, green and brown paint, white paper, and small and large brushes. 

Rationale: To continue emphasizing fall nature colors while using the art easel to mix colors and explore design elements. The children continue to experiment with brush stroke, paint application, and pattern making. 

Skills: Fine motor skills, creative thinking and expression, symbolic representation, object manipulation, and observation
**Materials: Scissors, Cutting Sheets, Stickers, Markers, Crayons
Rationale: The children have expressed an interest in cutting objects such as string and construction paper. Cutting sheets will be provided for the children to learn how to manipulate and handle scissors. The sheets will be intentionally divided into sections to encourage the children to be mindful of where they are cutting and decorating.
Skills: Fine motor skills, one to one correspondence, turn taking, collaboration, hand-eye coordination, and creative expression
Sensory 

**Materials: Water, bubbles, hand mixers, containers, funnels, scoops, basters
Rationale: To explore how water is affected when you add another element like soap. The children can use their motor skills to whisk or shake objects long enough to make bubbles. The children can experiment with the amount of soap in relation to the amount of bubbles.
Skills: Observation, fine and large motor skills, muscular endurance, scientific thinking, and problem solving
**Materials: Colored play dough, play dough tools (cookie cutters, muffin trays, garlic presses, rolling pins, pizza cutters, mixing bowls, and wooden spoons), Visuals of people baking pies, pizzas, cupcakes, and muffins at eye level near the play dough table, pretend oven
Rationale: To explore different colored play dough and how it mixes together. To create patterns, designs, or collages using the different colors of dough. To promote ideas of baking, cooking, and eating a larger variety of foods with the different colors and the visuals.
Skills: Symbolic representation, fine motor skills, sensory exploration, observation, creative expression and imagination, social skills (i.e. turn taking and collaboration)
**Materials: Mini rain sticks/shakers 

Rationale: To continue to promote experimentation with producing and creating sound using object manipulation. To challenge children's thinking while creating a satisfying trial and error game with teachers and peers.

Skills: Observation, trial and error, and sensory input
Science 

**Materials: Magnet sticks, letter boards, horseshoe magnets, materials that repel or attract to the magnets
Rationale: To explore magnetic properties and explore how some magnets repel or attract to one another. To encourage mathematical and logical thinking skills by using exploration, reflection, and, interpretation. To encourage children to use their communication skills to hypothesize and share their ideas about magnetic concepts.
Skills: Observation, scientific and higher level thinking, curiosity, reasoning, and problem solving
Dramatic Play

**Materials: "bear cave," with stuffed animal bears and materials the children collected from nature, various animal fur, posted images of bears, questions about bears, and books focusing on bears and hibernation.

Rationale: To continue to provide a cozy area to foster an animal story line for dramatic play. To continue to promote pretend and symbolic play and support social interaction among students and teachers. To support literacy and language development, and to promote emergent reading skills such as acting out a story from pictures. To create an opportunity to learn about bears, emphasizing a bear's need to adapt its lifestyle according to the season changes. To continue to build off the children's emerging interest in bears' habitats, feeding habits, and physical characteristics.

Skills: Role play, creative expression and thinking, sensory input, cooperation, turn taking, and communication, symbolic representation, and social skills; listening, speaking, phonological awareness, vocabulary
**Materials: Baby dolls, baby items (clothes, bottles, rattles, blankets, food, high-chairs), bandages, doctor outfits, syringes, reflex hammers, medicine bottles, x-rays, and stethoscopes
Rationale: Create a hospital to continue to promote an interest in care-taking skills when babies are sick or hurt. Provide doctor outfits for the children to act out scenarios and take on realistic dramatic play roles. To support pretend play and encourage children to use their imagination and invention skills to create abstract scenarios and situations. 

Skills: Communication, social skills, role-playing, symbolic representation, cooperative play, empathy, and turn taking

**Materials: Various dress-up clothes, hollow blocks, ramps, fire trucks, hose, fire hats, fire fighter outfits, truck wheels, steering wheels, and spray bottles
Rationale: To continue to support and encourage pretend and symbolic play about firefighter scenarios. To foster social interaction and cooperative play among peers by sharing the materials. To support the children's interest in fire fighters and fire trucks that has developed because of the fire drill last week.
Skills: Communication, cooperation, turn taking, role-playing, symbolic representation, and social skills.
Math and Manipulatives

**Materials: Fine motor manipulatives such as block stacks, animal stackers, and puzzles.
Rationale: To promote fine motor development, shape and color differentiation, and hand-eye coordination for spatial awareness. To promote an emerging awareness for patterns, relationships, and geometry.
Skills: hand-eye coordination, turn taking, fine motor control and skills, language and literacy, classification, shape and color identification
**Materials: A variety of books relating to emerging and current play themes including doctors, firefighters, fall, animals, and school.
Rationale: To continue to support the children's interest in reading. To develop listening skills and to make predictions and personal connections with the stories. To provide a quiet and relaxing alternative yet beneficial learning option during free play. 

Skills: Listening, receptive abilities, speaking, phonological awareness, recognition, language and literacy development
Blocks

**Materials: foam blocks, hollow and cardboard blocks, planks, and pictures of children building with blocks.

Rationale: To continue to support mathematical skills, social interaction, and collaborative building projects. To be incorporated into building homes for the babies, houses for animals, and roads, cars, and garages for the fire trucks.
Skills: Communication, collaboration, large motor, expressive creativity, mathematical and scientific concepts, fine motor.
Large Motor

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

Rationale: To support basic skills such as walking, climbing, balance, coordination, and upper and lower body development. To promote skills such as throwing, catching, or bouncing. To promote social skills such as turn taking, cooperation, and collaboration.

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

**Materials: Name songs, themed songs, books, fingerplay. 

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

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


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

**Materials: CD player with CD's (Please feel free to lend us any of your child's favorite CDs to use in the classroom) piano keyboards, drums, tambourines, bells, and shakers.
Rationale: To promote the exploration of sound, volume, rhythm and social interaction. To introduce the children to new instruments and use collaborative play to create music.

Skills: Turn-taking, fine motor development, collaboration, hearing development of patterns, sounds, and beats.
Snacks
:
Monday: Milk and cereal
Wednesday:Oranges and Saltines
Thursday: Alphabet soup

Lesson Plan
3AM 10.24-10.27
Rasamee Lead Teaching

Overview: The children are now comfortable with our daily routines. As they continue to develop friendships, we will support these interactions through small groups and intentional dismissal, where we will divide the children into specific areas in the classroom during free play. With the recent cold weather, we have emphasized that it is important to stay warm, especially when playing outside. We will provide winter accessories, such as hats and mittens for the children to practice self-help skills.

Expressive Arts
**Materials: Red, yellow, green and brown paint, white paper, and brushes.
Rationale: To continue exploring fall colors in nature. To continue to explore color mixing and design elements including brush stroke, paint application, and pattern making.
Skills: Fine motor skills, creative expression, symbolic representation, object manipulation, observation

**Materials: Leaves, branch sticks, string, yarn, pom-poms, ribbon, tinsel, feathers and glue
Rationale: To continue to explore natural materials including branches, leaves, and colors of the fall season. The children will continue decorating the branch using materials inspired by the fall colors that we have been using in the classroom.
Skills: Fine motor skills, creative expression, object manipulation, cooperation, turn-taking, social negotiation, brainstorming, problem-solving, and classification

Sensory
**Materials: Water, food coloring, basters, trays, ice cube trays, and a variety of containers.
Rationale: To explore, compare, and mix colors. To enhance creativity in another form of media.
Skills: Observation, familiarity with materials, math skills (volume and spatial relations), comparison, prediction, and fine motor.

**Materials: Play dough, play dough tools (cookie cutters, muffin trays, garlic presses, rolling pins, pizza cutters, mixing bowls, and wooden spoons), Visuals of people baking pies, pizzas, cupcakes, and muffins at eye level near the play dough table, pretend oven, mixing ingredients such as salt and corn meal, recipe charts. (Feel free to send in an email to Ayuko about what your child likes to make and/or eat)
Rationale: To enhance children's imaginary play. To promote ideas of baking and eating. To imitate steps of the real baking process by adding salt and cornmeal.
Skills: Symbolic representation, Fine motor skills, Familiarity with play dough and its properties, Observation, Creative expression and imagination, Social skills (i.e. turn taking)

**Materials: Mini rain sticks/shakers.
Rationale: To promote experimentation with sound and how to produce sound. To challenge children's thinking while creating a satisfying trial and error game with teachers and peers.
Skills: observation, trial and error, and sensory input.

Science
**Materials: Gourds and squash that vary in color, size, shape, and texture, magnifying glasses, crab apples, other fruits and vegetables brought in by children and families, and a pumpkin and squash cut in half.
Rationale: To continue to explore the food items at the science center. To observe the insides of a squash and pumpkin. To promote ideas of baking with pumpkin and squash.
Skills: Observation, Comparison, Classification, Expressive language, Scientific and higher level thinking, Reasoning, and Problem Solving

Dramatic Play
**Materials: "bear cave," with stuffed animal bears and materials the children collected from nature, various animal fur, posted images of bears and questions about bears, and books focusing on bears and hibernation.
Rationale: Continue to provide a space/cozy area to foster an animal story line. To continue to promote pretend and symbolic play and support social interaction among students and teachers. To support literacy and language development and to promote emergent reading skills such as dictating a story from pictures. To create an opportunity to learn about bears, emphasizing a bear's need to adapt its lifestyle according to the season changes.
Skills: Role play, creative expression, sensory input, cooperation, turn taking, and communication, symbolic representation, and social skills; listening, speaking, phonological awareness, vocabulary expansion on the subject matter.

**Materials: Baby dolls, baby items (clothes, bottles, rattles, blankets), stuffed animals (puppies and bunnies) strollers, bibs, Gerber baby food, spoons, high chairs, bandages and stethoscopes.
Rationale: To continue interest in caring for babies and pets. To explore and incorporate baby and dog food into pretend play. To apply care-taking skills when babies are sick or hurt.
Skills: Communication, social skills, role play, symbolic representation, cooperative play, empathy, and turn taking

**Materials: Bowls, tongs, cardboard graham crackers, pipe cleaner pretzels, basket and napkins
Rationale: Continue to promote fine motor skills of using tongs and taking a napkin. To encourage independence during snack time
Skills: Self-help skills, taking turns, fine motor skills, and independence

**Materials: various dress-up clothes, hollow blocks, ramps, fire trucks, hose, fire hats, fire fighter outfits
Rationale: To continue to support and encourage pretend play, symbolic play, foster social interaction and cooperative play. To support the children's interest in fire fighters and fire trucks that has developed during free play on the playground.
Skills: Communication, cooperation, turn taking, role play, symbolic representation, and social skills.

Math and Manipulatives
**Materials: Fine motor manipulatives such as zippers and peg boards, hats and mittens
Rationale: To promote fine motor development, shape and color differentiation and hand-eye coordination for spatial awareness. To practice self-help skills, especially when it's getting colder outside
Skills: hand-eye coordination, turn taking, fine motor control, self-help skills
Language and Literacy

**Materials: A variety of books relating to fall, animals, and self-help skills
Rationale: To support the children's interest in reading,. To develop listening skills and to make predictions and connections with the stories.
Skills: Listening, receptive abilities, self-help, speaking, phonological awareness, recognition, fine motor

Blocks
**Materials: foam blocks, hollow and cardboard blocks, planks, and pictures of children building with blocks.
Rationale: To continue to support mathematical skills, social interaction, and collaborative building. To be incorporated into buildings, homes for the babies, roads and garages for the fire trucks and houses for the fire fighters
Skills: Communication, collaboration, large motor, expressive creation, mathematical and scientific concepts, fine motor.

Large Motor
**Materials: Indoors - A Frame ladder, balance beam, slide, jumping station, monkey bars, donut hole, balance mat. Outside - rakes for raking leaves, wheel barrows, bull dozers, trikes, and tools for digging and molding sand.
Rationale: To support basic skills such as walking, climbing, balance, coordination, and upper and lower body development and promote social interaction and role play.
Skills: Perceptual Motor Skills (spatial, temporal, directional, and body awareness) and physical fitness (cardio vascular endurance, muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, and agility).

Large group
**Materials: Name songs, self help songs, books, fingerplay.
Rationale: To begin a routine, familiarize the children with each other's names, and promote a beginning sense of group, community, and collaboration.
Skills: fine motor development, hand eye coordination, listening, speaking, patience, taking turns, communication, and social skills.

Music - Music will be apparent throughout the day to support transitions and encourage participation.
**Materials: Piano, drums, tambourines, bells, and shakers.
Rationale: To promote exploration of sound, volume, rhythm and social interaction. To introduce the children to new instruments.
Skills: turn taking, fine motor development, and mathematical concepts such as beats and patterns.

Snacks
TBD

3AM Weekly Lesson Plan
10.17-10.19
Katie Lead Teaching

Overview: The children are becoming increasingly comfortable with our daily classroom routine. They are beginning to notice one another and develop relationships. We will continue to support these social interactions as they get to know each other while sharing a common space. The children are continuing to explore the Fall season through its colors, falling leaves, and harvest vegetables. Using all of the vegetables families are bringing in to share, we will help children make connections between these foods and cooking through various baking and cooking projects.

Expressive Arts
**Materials: Red, yellow, and green paint, white paper, and brushes.
Rationale: To continue exploring fall colors in nature. More leaf visuals will continue to be attached to the art easel to promote inspiration. To explore color mixing and design elements including brush stroke, paint application, and pattern making.
Skills: Fine motor skills, creative expression, symbolic representation, object manipulation, observation

**Materials: Branches, leaves, sticks, string, yarn, pom-poms, ribbon, tinsel and glue
Rationale: To continue to explore natural materials including branches, leaves, and colors. The children found a branch on the playground that we brought into the classroom. Throughout the week, the children will be decorating the branch using materials inspired by the fall colors that we have been using in the classroom.
Skills: Fine motor skills, creative expression, object manipulation, cooperation, turn-taking, social negotiation, brainstorming, problem-solving, and classification

Sensory
**Materials: Water, yellow and red food coloring, basters, ice cube trays, and a variety of containers.
Rationale: To explore what happens when the yellow and red water are mixed together. To continue supporting the use of the baster for manual dexterity and transferring water.
Skills: Observation, familiarity with materials, math skills (volume and spatial relations), comparison, prediction, and fine motor.

**Materials: Play dough, play dough tools (cookie cutters, muffin trays, garlic presses, rolling pins, pizza cutters, mixing bowls, wooden spoons), Visuals of people baking pies, pizzas, cupcakes, and muffins at eye level near the play dough table, pretend oven, mixing ingredients like Salt and Oregano.
Rationale:To enhance children's imaginary play. To promote ideas of baking and eating. To imitate steps of the real baking process by adding salt and herbs.
Skills: Symbolic representation, Fine motor skills, Familiarity with play dough and its properties, Observation, Creative expression and imagination, Social skills (i.e. turn taking)

**Materials: Mini rain sticks/shakers.
Rationale: To promote experimentation with sound and how to produce sound. To challenge children's thinking while creating a satisfying trial and error game with teachers and peers.
Skills: observation, trial and error, and sensory input.

Science
**Materials: turtles, feeding, natural materials, terrarium
Rationale: To continue to investigate the turtles and begin supporting the children to hold them. Questioning - are the shell hard or soft? Why is the shell hard? What does it do?
Skills: Observation, ideas, try out.

**Materials: Gourds and squash that vary in color, size, shape, and texture, Tomatoes that vary in color, size, and shape, Ears of corn of various colors, Magnifying glasses, Crab apples, A halved squash, tomato, and crab apple, other fruits and vegetables brought in by children and families, and a Pumpkin with the top cut open.
Rationale: To continue to explore the food items at the science center. To observe the insides of a tomato, crab apple, and squash, and pumpkin. To investigate similarities and differences of each vegetable.
Skills: Observation, Comparison, Classification, Expressive language, Scientific and higher level thinking, Reasoning, and Problem Solving

Dramatic Play
**Materials: "bear cave," with stuffed animal bears and materials the children collected from nature, various animal fur, posted images of bears and questions about bears, and books focusing on bears and hibernation.
Rationale: To provide a space/cozy area to foster an animal story line. To promote pretend and symbolic play and support social interaction among students and teachers. To support literacy and language development and to promote emergent reading skills such as dictating a story from pictures. To create an opportunity to learn about bears, emphasizing a bear's need to adapt its lifestyle according to the season changes.
Skills: Role play, creative expression, sensory input, cooperation, turn taking, and communication, symbolic representation, and social skills; listening, speaking, phonological awareness, vocabulary expansion on the subject matter.

**Materials: Baby dolls, baby items (clothes, bottles, rattles, blankets), stuffed animals (puppies and bunnies) strollers, bibs, baby food jars, spoons, and high chairs.
Rationale: To continue interest in caring for babies and pets. To explore and incorporate baby and dog food into pretend play.
Skills: Communication, social skills, role play, symbolic representation, cooperative play, empathy, and turn taking

**Materials: Bowls, tongs, cardboard graham crackers, pipe cleaner pretzels, basket and napkins
Rationale: To promote fine motor skills of using tongs and taking a napkin. To encourage independence during snack time.
Skills: Self-help skills, taking turns, fine motor skills, and independence

**Materials: various dress-up clothes, and street signs, hollow blocks, ramps, fire trucks and cars.
Rationale: To support pretend play, symbolic play, foster social interaction and cooperative play. To support the children's interest in fire trucks that has developed during free play on the playground.
Skills: Communication, cooperation, turn taking, role play, symbolic representation, and social skills.

Math and Manipulatives
**Materials: Face matching game, natural material sorting activity, puzzles, fine motor manipulatives such as zippers, and peg boards
Rationale: To promote fine motor development, facial recognition, shape and color differentiation, and hand-eye coordination for spatial awareness.
Skills: visual discrimination, turn taking, fine motor control.

Language and Literacy
**Materials: Signs, questions, storylines, and related books posted in various curriculum areas and a variety of books on the book shelf. Books relating to fall (hibernation, leaves, etc).
Rationale: To continue to support their development in beginning role play, experience the basic components of language systems, and support understanding the changes of the season.
Skills: Listening, speaking, phonological awareness, observation, vocabulary expansion.

Blocks
**Materials: foam blocks, hollow and cardboard blocks, planks, and pictures of children building with blocks.
Rationale: To support mathematical skills, social interaction, and collaborative building. To be incorporated into buildings, homes for the babies, or roads for the vehicles located nearby.
Skills: Communication, collaboration, large motor, expressive creation, mathematical and scientific concepts.

Large Motor
**Materials: Indoors - A Frame ladder, balance beam, slide, jumping station, monkey bars, donut hole, balance mat. Outside - rakes for raking leaves, wheel barrows, trikes, and tools for digging and molding sand.
Rationale: To support basic skills such as walking, climbing, balance, coordination, and upper and lower body development and promote social interaction and role play.
Skills: Perceptual Motor Skills (spatial, temporal, directional, and body awareness) and physical fitness (cardio vascular endurance, muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, and agility).

Large group
**Materials: Name songs, fall songs, books, fingerplay.
Rationale: To begin a routine, familiarize the children with each other's names, and promote a beginning sense of group, community, and collaboration.
Skills: fine motor development, hand eye coordination, listening, speaking, patience, taking turns, communication, and social skills.

Music - Music will be apparent throughout the day to support transitions and encourage participation.
**Materials: Piano, drums, tone blocks, tambourines, and shakers.
Rationale: To promote exploration of sound, volume, rhythm and social interaction. To introduce the children to new instruments.
Skills: turn taking, fine motor development, and mathematical concepts such as beats and patterns.

Snacks:
Monday - Rice Cakes and Milk
Wednesday - Apples and Saltines

Lesson Plan-Ayuko's 3AM Classroom
Week of October 10th
Ayuko Lead Teaching

Overview: As children settle into the routine of the classroom, we continue to support them through the transitions and help them become aware of themselves and each other through positive interactions and problem solving. We will continue to explore what is happening outside, such as focusing on the changing foliage, and begin to wonder how the change of the season is affecting the behavior of animals in our environment. We will encourage and spur social interactions between children, as they learn how to share a common space and materials.

Expressive Arts
**Materials: Red, yellow, and green paint. White paper and brushes.
Rationale: To explore the changing fall colors in their surrounding environment. More leaf visuals will be attached to the art easel to promote inspiration. To explore mixing of all colors as well as different design elements including brush stroke, paint application, and pattern making.
Skills: Fine motor skills, creative expression, symbolic representation, object manipulation, observation

**Materials: Branches, leaves, sticks, string, yarn, pom-poms, ribbon, beads, buttons, and glue
Rationale: To explore natural materials including branches, leaves, and colors. A branch will be brought into the classroom and the children will get the opportunity to decorate it with different materials sorted by color.
Skills: Fine motor skills, creative expression, object manipulation, cooperation, turn-taking, social negotiation, brainstorming, problem-solving, and classification

Sensory
**Materials: Water, yellow and blue food coloring, basters, ice cube trays, and a variety of containers.
Rationale: To explore what happens when the yellow and blue water are mixed together. To continue supporting the use of the baster for manual dexterity and transferring water.
Skills: Observation, familiarity with materials, math skills (volume and spatial relations), comparison, prediction, and fine motor.

**Materials: Cinnamon-scented play dough, Play dough tools (cookie cutters, muffin trays, garlic presses, rolling pins, pizza cutters, mixing bowls, wooden spoons), Visuals of people baking pies, pizzas, cupcakes, and muffins at eye level near the play dough table, Pretend oven, mixing ingredients like Salt and Oregano.
Rationale:To enhance children's imaginary play. To give the play dough a more realistic scent by adding cinnamon. To promote ideas of baking and eating.
Skills: Symbolic representation, Fine motor skills, Familiarity with play dough and its properties, Observation, Creative expression and imagination, Social skills (i.e. turn taking)

**Materials: Mini rain sticks/shakers.
Rationale: To promote experimentation with sound and how to produce sound. To challenge children's thinking while creating a satisfying trial and effect game with teachers and peers.
Skills: observation, trial and error, and sensory input.

Science
**Materials: turtles, feeding, natural materials, terrarium
Rationale: To begin investigating the turtles and holding them. Questioning - are the shell hard or soft? Why is the shell hard? What does it do?
Skills: Observation, ideas, try out.

**Materials: Gourds and squash that vary in color, size, shape, and texture, Tomatoes that vary in color, size, and shape, Ears of corn of various colors, Magnifying glasses, Crab apples, A halved squash, tomato, and crab apple, other fruits and vegetables.
Rationale: To continue to explore the food items at the science center. To observe the insides of a tomato, crab apple, and squash. To investigate similarities and differences of each vegetable.
Skills: Observation, Comparison, Classification, Expressive language, Scientific and higher level thinking, reason, and problem solve

Dramatic Play
**Materials: "bear cave," with stuffed animal bears and materials the children collected from nature, various animal fur, posted questions and books focusing on bears and hibernation.
Rationale: To provide a space/cozy area to foster an animal story line. To promote pretend and symbolic play and support social interaction among students and teachers. To support their development in language, literacy, and promote emergent reading such as dictating a story from the pictures. To create an opportunity to learn about bears, emphasizing the animal's lifestyle to the changes in season.
Skills: Role play, creative expression, sensory input, cooperation, turn taking, and communication, symbolic representation, and social skills; listening, speaking, phonological awareness, vocabulary expansion on the subject matter.

**Materials: Baby dolls, baby items (clothes, bottles, rattles, blankets), stuffed animals (puppies and bunnies) strollers, bibs, baby food jars, spoons, and high chairs.
Rationale: To continue interest in caring for babies and pets. To explore and incorporate baby and dog food into pretend play.
Skills: Communication, social skills, role play, symbolic representation, cooperative plays, empathy, and turn taking
Materials: Bowls, tongs, cardboard graham crackers, pipe cleaner pretzels, basket and napkins
Rationale: To promote fine motor skills of using tongs and taking a napkin. To encourage independence during snack time.
Skills: Self-help skills, taking turns, fine motor skills, and independence

**Materials: various dress-up clothes, and moving trucks, street signs, hollow blocks, ramps, and cars.
Rationale: To support pretend play, symbolic play, foster social interaction and cooperative play.
Skills: Communication, cooperation, turn taking, role play, symbolic representation, and social skills.

Math and Manipulatives
**Materials: Face matching game, seriating manipulatives, natural material sorting activity, and puzzles.
Rationale: To promote fine motor development, facial recognition, shape and color differentiation, and hand-eye coordination for spatial awareness.
Skills: visual discrimination, turn taking, fine motor control.

Language and Literacy
**Materials: Signs, questions, storylines, and related books posted in various curriculum areas and a variety of books on the book shelf. Books relating to fall (hibernation, leaves, etc).
Rationale: To support their development in beginning role play, experience the basic components of language systems, and support understanding the changes of the season.
Skills: Listening, speaking, phonological awareness, observation, vocabulary expansion.

Blocks
**Materials: foam blocks, hollow and cardboard blocks, planks, and pictures of children building with blocks.
Rationale: To support mathematical skills, social interaction, and collaborative building. To be incorporated into buildings, homes for the babies, or roads for the vehicles located nearby.
Skills: Communication, collaboration, large motor, expressive creation, mathematical and scientific concepts.

Large Motor
**Materials: Indoors - A Frame ladder, slide, jumping station, monkey bars, donut hole, balance mat. Outside - rakes for raking leaves, wheel barrows, wooden wagon, and tools for digging and molding sand.
Rationale: To support basic skills such as walking, climbing, balance, coordination, and upper and lower body development and promote social interaction and role play.
Skills: Perceptual Motor Skills (spatial, temporal, directional, and body awareness) and physical fitness (cardio vascular endurance, muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, and agility).

Large group
**Materials: Name songs, fall songs, books, fingerplay.
Rationale: To begin a routine, familiarize the children with each other's names, and promote a beginning sense of group, community, and collaboration.
Skills: fine motor development, hand eye coordination, listening, speaking, patience, taking turns, communication, and social skills.

Music - Music will be apparent throughout the day to support transitions and encourage participation.
**Materials: Piano, drums, tone blocks, and shakers.
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 - Animal crackers & milk
Wednesday - Apples & saltines
Thursday - Class cooking, tomato sauce and pasta

Lesson Plan-Ayuko's 3AM Classroom
Week of October 3rd
Ayuko Lead Teaching

Overview: The children are slowly learning the routines of the classroom and are increasingly comfortable separating from their parents in the morning. We will continue to focus on building relationships among children and teachers by getting to know each others' names and finding a common thread through all forms of play. There will be few activities that incorporate the children's photos and names to encourage interaction among them and help us create a sense of community in the classroom. The play areas continue to be arranged to promote these goals and encourage the development of positive relationships with classmates and teachers.

Expressive Arts
**Materials: Scissors, crayons, markers, stickers.
Rationale: To promote fine motor skills of cutting and snipping.
Skills: fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, persistence, creative expression.

**Materials: Red and yellow paint, paint brushes, white paper, leaf visuals.
Rationale: To explore the changing colors in their surrounding environment. Leaf visuals will be attached to the art easel to provide representation, imagery, and inspiration. To explore mixing of the two colors as well as different design elements including brush stroke, paint application, and pattern making.
Skills: Fine motor skills, creative expression, imagination, problem solving, curiosity, decision making, sensory input, observation, and comparison.

**Materials: Cinnamon-scented play dough, play dough tools (cookie cutters, muffin trays, garlic presses, rolling pins, pizza cutters, mixing bowls, wooden spoons),visuals of people baking pies, pizzas, cupcakes, and muffins at eye level near the play dough table, and pretend oven
Rationale: To promote ideas of baking and eating. To add materials specific to baking and enhance children's imaginary play. To give the play dough a more realistic scent by adding cinnamon.
Skills: Symbolic representation, Fine motor skills, familiarity with play dough and its properties, Observation, Creative expression, imagination, Social skills, turn taking

Sensory
**Materials: Blue water, basters, and a variety of containers
Rationale: To promote experimentation with cause and effect and how the children can use the basters in the water. To explore what happens when colored water is added to clear water.
Skills: Observation, familiarity with materials, math skills (volume and spatial relations), comparison, prediction, and fine motor.

**Materials: Four noise sticks.
Rational: To promote experimentation with sound and how to produce sound. To challenge children's thinking while creating a satisfying trial and effect game with teachers and peers.
Skills: Physical coordination, observation, and sensory input.

Science
**Materials: Our Turtles, Tuck and Rainbow. Magnifying glasses.
Rationale: To observe the turtles in the terrarium using magnifying glasses. To continue discussing how to care for these pets as a class: What do they eat? How do we hold them? How do they clean themselves?
Skills: Observation, prediction, ideas, try out, and comparison.

** Materials: Gourds and squash that vary in color, size, shape, and texture, Tomatoes that vary in color, size, and shape, Various colors of maize, Magnifying glasses, Visuals of gourds, tomatoes, and squash
Rationale: To continue interest and curiosity in tomatoes after discovering both ripe and unripe tomatoes in the garden on the playground. To spur interest in fall season and harvest items, such as gourds and pumpkins. To explore the different colors, sizes, shapes, and textures we see in different varieties.
Skills:Observation skills, Comparison skills, Classification skills, Expressive language skills, Scientific and higher level thinking skills, reason, and problem solve

Dramatic Play
**Materials: Animal smocks and scarves.
Rationale: To encourage creative expression and role play. To explore and discuss different textures of fabric.
Skills: Sensory input, creative expression, and role play.

**Materials: Baby dolls, baby items (clothes, bottles, rattles), pets (puppies and bunnies), dog food tray, dog food, and visuals of pets and babies.
Rationale: To stimulate pretend play with familiar household pets. To encourage social interaction between peers and teachers. To provide opportunities to learn about caring for another living animal. To support cooperative play.
Skills: Communication, social skills, role play, symbolic representation, and cooperative play.

**Materials: Familiar household kitchen items, furniture, plastic food, gourds, tongs, puffballs, and bowl.
Rationale: To support pretend play, symbolic play, foster social interaction and cooperative play. To simulate snack time experience and practice using tongs to grab snack.
Skills: Communication, cooperation, turn taking, role play, symbolic representation, Fine motor skills and independence

**Materials: Wooden cars, dump trucks, and street signs.
Rationale: To support pretend play, symbolic play, foster social interaction and cooperative play.
Skills: Communication, cooperation, turn taking, role play, symbolic representation, and social skills.

Math and Manipulatives
**Materials: Face matching games, seriation and color stackers, and puzzles.
Rationale: To promote fine motor development, facial recognition, shape and color differentiation, and hand-eye coordination for spatial awareness.
Skills: visual discrimination, turn taking, fine motor control.

**Materials: Leaves of multiple varieties and colors, color coded sheets of construction paper.
Rationale: To observe the differences and similarities between the leaves. To sort the leaves by color and discuss some of their identifying features.
Skills: Problem solving, collaboration, color recognition, sorting, grouping, following directions, mathematical thinking, reasoning.

**Materials: Baskets with color lining, visual color representation, written color name.
Rationale: To provide opportunitites to lean how to clean up and help sort items in the classroom. To learn color recognition and classification skills and provide direct instruction and visual aids.
Skills: Color Recognition, Grouping, Sorting, Self help skills, problem solving, reasoning.

Language and Literacy
**Materials: Signs, questions, storylines, and related books posted in various curriculum areas and a variety of books on the book shelf. Books relating to caretaking and vehicles.
Rationale: To support their development in beginning role play, experience the basic components of language systems, and support understanding the changes of the season.
Skills: Listening, speaking, phonological awareness, observation, vocabulary expansion.

Blocks
**Materials: Hollow and cardboard blocks and pictures of children building with blocks.
Rationale: To support mathematical skills, social interaction, and collaborative building. To be incorporated into buildings or roads for the vehicles located nearby.
Skills: Communication, collaboration, large motor, expressive creation, mathematical and scientific concepts.

Large Motor
**Materials: Indoors - Climbing equipments, A-Frame Ladder, slide, and jumping donut. Outside - Natural materials such as grass, plants, and trees, wooden house, picnic table, slide, rakes for raking leaves, wheel barrows, and tools for digging and molding sand.
Rationale: To support basic skills such as jumping, climbing, balance, coordination, and upper and lower body development and promote social interaction and role play.
Skills: Perceptual Motor Skills (spatial, temporal, directional, and body awareness) and physical fitness (cardio vascular endurance, muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, and agility).

Large group
Materials: name songs, fall songs, books, fingerplay, discussion about taking care of self - hand washing.
Rationale: To begin a routine, familiarize the children with each other's names, and promote a beginning sense of group, community, and collaboration.
Skills: fine motor development, hand eye coordination, listening, speaking, patience, taking turns, communication, and social skills.

Music - Music will be apparent throughout the day to support transitions and encourage participation.
Materials: Piano, drums, tone blocks, and shakers.
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: Graham crackers and milk.
Wednesday: Apple sauce and milk.
Thursday: Birthday snack, pretzels and milk.

Lesson Plan-Ayuko's 3AM Classroom
Weeks of 9/20 and 9/26
Ayuko Lead Teaching

Overview: The first couple of weeks we will focus on helping the children say goodbye to their families and adjusting them to the school environment. As the children explore and investigate the classroom, we hope they begin to think positively of the teachers and school. Slowly we will begin to learn the routines of the classroom and give children the support they need to make transitions through the morning. The play areas are arranged to promote these goals and encourage the development of positive relationships with classmates and teachers.

Expressive Arts
Materials: Wooden paint brushes, paper, and primary color paints Rationale: To explore brush strokes and color mixing.
Skills: Fine motor control, observation, and hand-eye coordination.
Materials: Paper, markers, stickers, and scissors.
Rationale: To explore the properties of a variety of art materials.
Skills: Fine motor control and hand-eye coordination.
Materials: Playdough and a variety of molding tools.
Rationale: To produce an outlet for creative expression and promote social interaction.
Skills: Fine motor development (squeezing, poking, and pinching), observation, generating ideas, and sensory input.

Sensory
Materials: Water, measuring cups, funnels, large and small jars.
Rationale: To encourage a practice of pouring and filling and develop the concept of empty and full, less and more, and in and out. To encourage social awareness as children notice what those across from them are doing with the same materials
Skills: Observation, math skills (volume and spatial relations), comparison, prediction, and fine motor.
Materials: Three noise sticks.
Rational: To promote experimentation with sound and how to produce sound. To challenge children's thinking while creating a satisfying trial and effect game with teachers and peers.
Skills: Physical coordination, observation, and sensory input.

Science
Materials: Our Turtles, Tuck and Rainbow. Magnifying glasses.
Rationale: To observe the turtles in the terrarium using magnifying glasses. To begin discussing the idea of caring for these pets as a class: What care does it entail?
Skills: Observation, prediction, comparison, classification.
Materials: Natural materials such as seed pods, pine cones, and leaves, magnifying glasses.
Rationale: To observe and feel the texture of the natural materials that are found in the children's everyday lives. To become aware of the similarities and differences of the materials.
Skills: Observation, exploration, record, try out, and comparison.

Dramatic Play
Materials: Familiar household kitchen, baby items, multiethnic babies, various dress-up clothes, and dump trucks and cars.
Rationale: To support pretend play, symbolic play, foster social interaction and cooperative play.
Skills: Communication, cooperation, turn taking, role play, symbolic representation, and social skills.
Materials: Scarves, sheer sheets, pillow, and books.
Rationale: To promote social interaction, peek-a-boo games, and provide a room/cozy area to read and relax.
Skills: Social skills, turn taking, and communication.
Materials: Stuffed household pets: dogs and rabbits.
Rationale: To stimulate pretend play with familiar animals they know or have at home. To promote social interaction among the children and teachers.
Skills: Social skills, cooperation, communication, turn taking, and role play.

Math and Manipulatives
Materials: Shape sorters, seriation and color stackers, and puzzles.
Rationale: To promote fine motor development, shape and color differentiation, and hand-eye coordination for spatial awareness.
Skills: visual discrimination, turn taking, fine motor control.

Language and Literacy
Materials: Signs, questions, and related books posted in various curriculum areas and a variety of books on the book shelf.
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.
Skills: Listening, speaking, phonological awareness, 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 located nearby.
Skills: Communication, collaboration, large motor, expressive creation, mathematical and scientific concepts.

Large Motor
Materials: Indoors - Climbing equipments, stairs, slide, and Trampoline. Outside - Natural materials such as grass, plants, and trees, wooden house, picnic table, slide, and tools for digging and molding sand.
Rationale: To support basic skills such as jumping, climbing, balance, coordination, and upper and lower body development and promote social interaction and role play.
Skills: Perceptual Motor Skills (spatial, temporal, directional, and body awareness) and physical fitness (cardio vascular endurance, muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, and agility).

Large group
Materials: name songs, books, fingerplay.
Rationale: To begin a routine, familiarize the children with each other's names, and promote a beginning sense of group, community, and collaboration.
Skills: fine motor development, hand eye coordination, listening, speaking, patience, taking turns, communication, and social skills.

Music - Music will be apparent throughout the day to support transitions and encourage participation.
Materials: Piano
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:
Wednesday 9/22 and Thursday 9/23 - graham crackers, milk, and water.
Monday 9/26, Wednesday 9/28, Thursday, 9/29: TBD