Recently in Elizabeth's Weekly Plans F12 Category

Overview:
The spring session is off to a busy beginning, as the children dive into a variety of interests in the classroom. A sudden invasion of Boxelder bugs into our classroom has made our exploration of bugs and bug habitats come alive. This week, we will continue to delve into the things we might need in order to keep the bugs safe and happy while they are visiting from the cold outdoors. Last week, we began our investigation into geometric shapes. The children built awareness of shapes by using a variety of geometric blocks and puzzles. This week, we will continue discussing different shapes and their characteristics during large group, and begin exploring them through print making in the art and clay areas. Finally, the computer continues to be a strong interest to the children, as they have found new games to play. This week, we will encourage the children's turn-taking, social communication, and helping behaviors that we have seen so beautifully practiced already.

Science
*Materials: Books about insects, wasp nest, cockroaches, mealworms, examples of different insects and their homes, bug containers with magnifying glasses, I-pad, small boxes to create Boxelder "habitats."
*Rationale: To allow for continued exploration of insects' homes/habitats- an area of great interest to many children, to encourage children to draw connections between different living things, to use technology and the written word as a source of information, applying the information they have gathered.
•Skills: observation, scientific investigation and inquiry, connection to natural world, applying previous experiences and knowledge, hypothesizing and extrapolating, symbolic representation, using tools to gather information, using books as sources of knowledge, curiosity.

Dramatic Play
•Materials: "Coffee Shop" materials: cups, cup carrier, aprons, hats, pitchers, etc., children's photos of their favorite restaurants, menus, cash register, pretend money.
•Rationale: to emphasize the different establishments present in our own community, to focus on jobs in the community and how to perform them, to allow children to act out familiar experiences and exchanges from their lives.
•Skills: creative role-play, peer interaction, social problem solving, symbolic representation, reflection on previous experiences, collaboration and community building, turn-taking, numeric awareness, and familiarity with print.

Language and Literacy
•Materials: the writing center has a variety of writing utensils, paper, envelopes, staplers, tape, scissors, and computer/word processing program. Name cards, books with alphabetic themes, various computer games.
•Rationale: to foster the children's ongoing interest in the written word, alphabetic principle, and symbolic representation. In addition to a continued interest in writing and reading familiar words, many children show an interest in using the computer for a variety of purposes. Most recently, they have worked together to complete different computer games. This continues to be available as the children continue to practice computer skills as well as turn-taking (a special sign-up board is added so children can monitor turn-taking and grow in their familiarity with their names and the names of others) and collaboration (spontaneous helping behaviors, teamwork, giving advice, engaging in back and forth communication).
•Skills: fine motor, letter recognition, eye-hand coordination, emergent writing and reading, curiosity, symbolic reasoning, peer interaction, technological awareness, keyboarding and mouse skills, planning and sequencing actions, cooperation, verbal communication.

•Materials: the library has a variety of non-fiction and fiction books, many of which emphasize the children's strong interest in fairytales and familiar stories. Books on CD are also available.
•Rationale: to encourage the children's continued interest in sharing stories communally and individually. To emphasize the telling and retelling of familiar tales. Over the first two weeks, a few favorites have emerged. These include Pirate Jam, The Selfish Crocodile, and No David. The children enjoy reading or listening to them, and engage in conversation about the plot of each story.
•Skills: receptive language, phonological awareness, early literacy, listening, community building, expressive language, vocabulary introduction, scientific investigation, prediction, comparing and contrasting.

Blocks
•Materials: large hollow blocks, small multi-shaped unit blocks, books about creating ramps, rain gutters, balls, marbles, bowling pins.
•Rationale: to offer continued building experiences, especially those that focus on motion, stability, creating inclines, etc. This week our ramp exploration will continue as the children apply their knowledge of ramps and try to solve a problem: "how do we get the ramp to turn?"
•Skills: large motor development, expressive creation, symbolic representation, cooperative play, using a variety of media for self expression, problem solving, mathematical reasoning, understanding of cause and effect, awareness of physical properties (momentum, gravity), perseverance, analyzing and synthesizing, showing interest and respect for the creative work of self and others, applying previously acquired knowledge.

Expressive Arts (paint, drawing, clay)
•Materials: paint and differently shaped cookie cutters. At the clay table-a variety of differently shaped tools (potato mashers, meat pounders, etc) that display different geometric patterns or textures.
•Rationale: to allow for continued exploration of painting by introducing a new manner of using paint: printmaking. To build awareness and understanding of geometric properties (e.g. how shapes combine to create new shapes). To allow for the creation of new shapes and textures on the surface of our clay creations.
•Skills: fine motor development (strength, coordination), creativity, symbolic representation, sensory input, color recognition, awareness of patterns, showing interest and respect for the creative work of self and others, self expression using a variety of media and tools, hand-eye coordination, mathematic reasoning, spatial awareness, upper body strength.

Sensory (water table)
• Materials: Water, boats, Styrofoam, rocks.
• Rationale: To allow the children to continue to inquire about sinking and floating. Rocks and other heavy objects are provided so the children can experiment with sinking boats or large pieces of Styrofoam. They will keep track of how many rocks can be put in each boat before it sinks.
• Skills: cause-and-effect, fostering social relationships, using varied science and sensory language, sensory exploration, observational skills, making predictions, counting and number recognition, comparisons, creating theories about scientific properties.

Math and Manipulatives (including the 'Nook')
•Materials:Puzzles, triangle "brain teaser" puzzle, My First Book of Shapes, Sight word boards, Shape puzzles, mosaic builder peg boards, light table with multi-shaped blocks- inspiration pictures of parquetry and mosiacs.
•Rationale: To continue to build on our knowledge of shapes and experiment with different ways to combine shapes to create new images. To emphasize letter shape and matching, to continue to support fine motor development, hand control, and coordination.
•Skills: one-to-one correspondence, synthesis and analysis, fine motor development, hand-eye coordination, part-whole relationships, divergent thinking, awareness of shapes and shape names, comparing, matching, sorting, combining.

Large Motor






~Materials: Rolling slide and stairs, mini-trampoline, rope ladder, mini-peddallo, Bean Bag/Ring Toss, Beach-Ball Toss/Lava pit


~Rationale: To emphasize a variety of upper body strength challenges, including hand-eye coordination, catching, throwing, climbing and endurance. Lower body strength is also highlighted, including balance, pedaling, and jumping. All activities continue to focus on the important social skills of turn-taking, cooperation, and peer negotiation.



~Skills: Cardiovascular endurance, directional awareness, spatial awareness, catching/trapping, reaching, grasping, batting, static & dynamic balance, throwing, jumping, muscular strength and endurance, pedaling.

Snacks:
Monday: Rice cakes and orange slices
Wednesday: Carrot muffins
Thursday: Corn tortilla crisps and black bean salsa

Overview:
Welcome back to the spring session! This week, the classroom provides materials that both support play begun in the winter session and introduce new experiences. The children's interest in bridges and ramps is facilitated in the block area by the addition of marbles, different tubing, and bowling pins. Meanwhile, the art area shifts from a focus on wood sculpture to the stringing of beads, buttons, and other materials. Our ongoing exploration of homes and habitats continues this session, and the science center contains hand's-on experiences related to insect homes. Additionally, the children have an opportunity to reflect on an aspect of their own habitats or communities, as the dramatic play area is set up as a neighborhood coffee shop.

Science
*Materials: Books about insects, wasp nest, cockroaches, mealworms, examples of different insects and their homes.
*Rationale: To emphasize a new type of animal home/habitat, to encourage children to draw connections between different living things.
•Skills: observation, scientific investigation and inquiry, connection to natural world, applying previous experiences and knowledge, hypothesizing and extrapolating, symbolic representation, using tools to gather information, using books as sources of knowledge, curiosity.

Dramatic Play
•Materials: "Coffee Shop" materials: cups, cup carrier, aprons, hats, pitchers, etc.
•Rationale: to emphasize the different establishments present in our own community, to focus on jobs in the community and how to perform them, to allow children to act out familiar experiences and exchanges from their lives.
•Skills: creative role-play, peer interaction, social problem solving, symbolic representation, reflection on previous experiences, collaboration and community building, turn-taking.

Language and Literacy
•Materials: the writing center has a variety of writing utensils, paper, envelopes, staplers, tape, scissors, and computer/word processing program. Name cards, books with alphabetic themes, various computer games.
•Rationale: to foster the children's ongoing interest in the written word, alphabetic principle, and symbolic representation. In addition to a continued interest in writing and reading familiar words, many children show an interest in using the computer for a variety of purposes. Most recently, they have worked together to complete different computer games. This continues to be available as the children continue to practice computer skills as well as turn-taking and collaboration.
•Skills: fine motor, letter recognition, eye-hand coordination, emergent writing and reading, curiosity, symbolic reasoning, peer interaction, technological awareness, keyboarding and mouse skills, planning and sequencing actions, cooperation, verbal communication.

•Materials: the library has a variety of non-fiction and fiction books, many of which emphasize the children's strong interest in fairytales and familiar stories. Books on CD are also available.
•Rationale: to encourage the children's continued interest in sharing stories communally and individually. To emphasize the telling and retelling of familiar tales.
•Skills: receptive language, phonological awareness, early literacy, listening, community building, expressive language, vocabulary introduction, scientific investigation, prediction, comparing and contrasting.

Blocks
•Materials: large hollow blocks, small multi-shaped unit blocks, books about creating ramps, rain gutters, balls, marbles, bowling pins.
•Rationale: to offer continued building experiences, especially those that focus on motion, stability, creating inclines, etc.
•Skills: large motor development, expressive creation, symbolic representation, cooperative play, using a variety of media for self expression, problem solving, mathematical reasoning, understanding of cause and effect, awareness of physical properties (momentum, gravity), connection to the natural world, analyzing and synthesizing, showing interest and respect for the creative work of self and others.

Expressive Arts (paint, drawing, clay)
•Materials: An assortment of beads, metal washers, buttons, wire, string, clay, clay tools, plastic insects.
•Rationale: to explore with hands and tools to promote sensory awareness, increase fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and provide a focus on patterns and pattern-making. To foster social relationships as children observe and work together with their peers.
•Skills: fine motor development (strength, coordination), creativity, symbolic representation, sensory input, color recognition, awareness of patterns, cause and effect, hypothesizing and predicting, showing interest and respect for the creative work of self and others, self expression using a variety of media and tools.

Sensory (water table)
• Materials: Water, items that sink and float.
• Rationale: As we switch from frozen water to liquid water, the children are given more chances to reflect on the properties of water and how other materials react with water.
• Skills: large-/fine-motor strength/ hand strength, cause-and-effect, fostering social relationships, using varied science and sensory language, sensory exploration, observational skills, making predictions.

Math and Manipulatives (including the 'Nook')
•Materials:Puzzles, triangle "brain teaser" puzzle, My First Book of Shapes, Sight word boards, insect seriation stacker, light table with multi-shaped blocks.
•Rationale: To introduce a variety of shapes and shape-related vocabulary into our classroom exploration, to emphasize letter shape and matching, to continue to support fine motor development, hand control, and coordination.
•Skills: one-to-one correspondence, synthesis and analysis, fine motor development, hand-eye coordination, part-whole relationships, awareness of shapes and shape names, comparing, matching, sorting and divergent thinking.

Large Motor (gym)
• Materials: A-Frame balance beam, hopscotch, basketball hoop with balls, climbing wall, tumbling blocks with rope, stairs and slide.
• Rationale: Many of the children continue to be interested in balancing.To support the children's interest in balancing as well as offer an large motor experience the A-Frame balance beam is added to the gym. The hopscotch,tunnel, basketball hoop with balls, climbing wall, tumbling blocks with rope, and slide help build children's upper body and core strength, encourage socialization and cooperation, support exploration of what the can do with their bodies and simulate outdoor activities (playing hopscotch and dribbling basketballs).
• Skills: Dynamic balance and static balance/standing on one foot (A-Frame Balance Beam), propulsion skills/throwing (basketball hoop with balls), receptive skills/catching and trapping (basketball hoop with balls), climbing (bumpy slide, tumbling blocks, climbing wall),
turn-taking (all), motor planning (bumpy slide, tumbling blocks, wall climber), directional awareness (all),core muscle strength (bumpy slide, tumbling blocks, climbing wall), upper body strength (tumbling blocks with rope, basketball hoop with balls)body awareness (balance beam, tumbling blocks, tunnel), reaching (wall climber, tumbling blocks with rope), jumping (wall climber, hopscotch), turning (wall climber, balance beam), spatial awareness (climbing wall, balance beam,basketball hoop with balls, tunnel), landing (climbing wall, hopscotch)

Snacks:
Monday: Applesauce and granola
Wednesday: Bananas and rice Cakes
Thursday: Frozen peas and pretzels

Overview:
As we move into our final weeks of class before spring break, the classroom continues to be busy with creative play. The children's strong interest in arctic and antarctic animals continues, and has emerged in the creation of polar habitats in our science area. Additionally, an interest in sledding and penguin sliding has led to building ramps in the block area, as the children find the best ways to make different things slide down large block ramps. The art area provides a different opportunity for creative building, as wood sculptures began last week. This week they will continue, and already built sculptures will be painted. Finally, as our classroom explorations of winter and numbers wrap up, there will be plenty of chances to reflect on the things we have learned about numerals, counting, winter, and staying warm, in addition to discussion of our next season-Spring! Although there are only a few days left of our winter session, the teachers are committed to supporting all of the amazing learning that continues to take place each day.

Science
*Materials: White legos and lego boards, pictures and books of Arctic animals (seals, penguins, orca whales etc) as well as Arctic homes.
*Rationale: To continue to apply our knowledge about animal homes, especially those in arctic areas, materials are provided that will allow the children to represent what they have learned about polar habitats and climates.
•Skills: observation, scientific investigation and inquiry, connection to natural world, applying previous experiences and knowledge, hypothesizing and extrapolating, symbolic representation, using tools to gather information, using books as sources of knowledge, curiosity.

Dramatic Play
•Materials: housekeeping materials (furniture, dishes, food) and dress-up fabric and shoes; one cave is set as bedrooms with "beds," baby dolls, and baby-care items while the other cave is set up as a polar habitat (stuffed toys of orcas, polar bears, penguins, seals), home life props that contain numbers.
•Rationale: to allow for the continued exploration of children's interests, both concrete and abstract. To provide opportunities for cooperative dramatic play and social interaction. To provide examples of numbers in everyday life (calendar, phones, etc)
•Skills: creative role-play, peer interaction, social problem solving, symbolic representation, reflection on previous experiences, collaboration and community building, storytelling, connection to the natural world, using books as resources, and early literacy skills.

Language and Literacy
•Materials: the writing center has a variety of writing utensils, paper, envelopes, staplers, tape, scissors, and computer/word processing program. Name cards, books with alphabetic themes and a mailbox are available to the writing center to support letter writing and letter recognition.
•Rationale: to foster the children's ongoing interest in the written word, alphabetic principle, and symbolic representation. The children continue to show interest in writing their own words, copying written words, and engaging in pretend writing. The computer remains available for word processing and computer literacy experiences.
•Skills: fine motor, letter recognition, eye-hand coordination, emergent writing and reading, curiosity, symbolic reasoning, peer interaction, technological awareness, keyboarding and mouse skills, planning and sequencing actions.

•Materials: the library has a variety of non-fiction and fiction books, many of which discuss different aspects of winter (snow, cold, winter clothes, etc), reflect the children's interests (penguins, orcas, etc) and have numeral themes (Five Little Monkeys).
•Rationale: to encourage the children's continued interest in sharing stories communally and individually. To demonstrate how to use books as sources of information. To have the opportunity to reflect on changes to the children's immediate environment (i.e. the winter season). To expand the children's exploration of polar animals and Arctic habitats books about penguins and whales are offered.
•Skills: receptive language, phonological awareness, early literacy, listening, community building, expressive language, vocabulary introduction, scientific investigation.

Blocks
•Materials: large hollow blocks, small multi-shaped unit blocks, pictures of polar animals, animal figurines (polar bears, seals, orcas), felt, wax paper, blue, white and gray pieces of cloth, books about creating ramps, balls.
•Rationale: to offer continued building experiences, to allow the children to reflect on and interpret a number of different experiences involving buildings, transportation, etc. To encourage and expand both dramatic play and exploration with how to best make penguins slide, arctic animal materials continue to be available. To foster ongoing exploration of ramp building, and engagement in experimentation with momentum (balls, ramp books).
•Skills: large motor development, expressive creation, symbolic representation, cooperative play, indoor/outdoor connection, using a variety of media for self expression, problem solving, mathematical reasoning, understanding of cause and effect, awareness of physical properties (momentum, gravity), connection to the natural world, analyzing and synthesizing, showing interest and respect for the creative work of self and others.

Expressive Arts (paint, drawing, clay)
•Materials: An assortment of different wooden pieces of different sizes and shapes, wood glue, clay, clay tools, toothpicks, small beads, fairy house book.
•Rationale: to explore with hands and tools to promote sensory awareness, increase fine motor skills, and foster social relationships as children observe and work together with their peers.
To provide a building experience and support creative expression a selection of wooden pieces are added to the art table. Paint is also offered this week to allow for continued engagement with the same work of art over several days. To support 3-D sculpture and continued imaginative expression, toothpicks, straws, and small beads are added to the clay table. The Fairy House and Castle book continue to be available to support divergent thinking and extend imaginative house building in both clay and wood.
•Skills: fine motor development (strength, coordination), creativity, symbolic representation, sensory input, color recognition, cause and effect, hypothesizing and predicting, showing interest and respect for the creative work of self and others, establishing a connection as a member of a community, peer interactions, self expression using a variety of media and tools.

Sensory (water table)
• Materials: ice, snow, salt, water, animal figurines (penguins, orcas, and seals), buckets, and shovels, spray bottles with colored water.
• Rationale: To encourage further discussion about the properties of ice and snow, both will continue to be offered at the sensory table. To support the exploration of Artic animal life and homes, animal figurines are provided. To continue interest in color mixing, water bottles are added for changing the color of the snow.
• Skills: large-/fine-motor strength/ hand strength, cause-and-effect, fostering social relationships, using varied science and sensory language, sensory exploration, observational skills, symbolic representation, acting out previous experiences, comparing amounts.

Math and Manipulatives (including the 'Nook')
•Materials:Counting and stacking unifix cubes with trays, numeral recognition games, counting games, part-whole fruit puzzles, number bingo, Styrofoam blocks and Lightbright pegs, and K'NEX.
•Rationale: To continue our exploration and discussion of numbers puzzles and unifix cubes are provided at the math table. To support investigation of part whole relationships fruit puzzles are offered. The pincer grasp and hand strength are emphasized as children use small Lightbright pegs to press into Styrofoam blocks. Number Bingo allows children to use their knowledge of numerals to play a familiar game.
To extend our exploration of construction building and support divergent thinking, K'NEX are added to the Nook. Pictures of airports, and airplanes will continue to be displayed as well as the addition of race car pictures to inspire group discussion, building and play.
•Skills: one-to-one correspondence, synthesis and analysis, fine motor development, hand-eye coordination, part-whole relationships, quantification, counting, numeric awareness, comparison, matching, sorting and divergent thinking.

Large Motor (gym)
• Materials: A-Frame balance beam, hopscotch, basketball hoop with balls, climbing wall, tumbling blocks with rope, stairs and slide.
• Rationale: Many of the children continue to be interested in balancing.To support the children's interest in balancing as well as offer an large motor experience the A-Frame balance beam is added to the gym. The hopscotch,tunnel, basketball hoop with balls, climbing wall, tumbling blocks with rope, and slide help build children's upper body and core strength, encourage socialization and cooperation, support exploration of what the can do with their bodies and simulate outdoor activities (playing hopscotch and dribbling basketballs).
• Skills: Dynamic balance and static balance/standing on one foot (A-Frame Balance Beam), propulsion skills/throwing (basketball hoop with balls), receptive skills/catching and trapping (basketball hoop with balls), climbing (bumpy slide, tumbling blocks, climbing wall),
turn-taking (all), motor planning (bumpy slide, tumbling blocks, wall climber), directional awareness (all),core muscle strength (bumpy slide, tumbling blocks, climbing wall), upper body strength (tumbling blocks with rope, basketball hoop with balls)body awareness (balance beam, tumbling blocks, tunnel), reaching (wall climber, tumbling blocks with rope), jumping (wall climber, hopscotch), turning (wall climber, balance beam), spatial awareness (climbing wall, balance beam,basketball hoop with balls, tunnel), landing (climbing wall, hopscotch)

(Outdoors)
Sledding, tunnel building, snowman creation, tag, soccer, ice sliding: All of these activities continue to fascinate and challenge the children physically and creatively on the playground each day. As the weather begins to warm, the teachers draw attention to many different ways in which the frozen playground transforms each day.

Snacks:
Monday: Class-made soft pretzels
Wednesday: Oven fries
Thursday: Graham Crackers

Overview:
Time is flying by and March is just around the corner! The children continue to be interested in artic animals (especially penguins, orcas, seals and bears) and the homes they live in. To support their interest in polar animals the 'hibernation' materials are replaced with icy home building materials at the science table. Many children have been interested in using small tools to manipulate the clay and create homes for fantasy characters such as trolls and goblins. Beads and a fairy house book are added to support creative expression at the clay table. At the art table, we transitioned from finger paint to wood construction to support creative expression and symbolic representation using 3-D materials. In the Nook, K'NEX are added to extend our exploration of building and support divergent thinking. Our small group exploration of 'Water', 'Numbers' and 'Storytelling' will continue this week!

Science
*Materials: White legos, blue trays, ice, water, salt, pictures and books of Arctic animals (seals, penguins, orca whales etc) as well as Arctic homes.
*Rationale: To continue our ongoing exploration of homes and habitats, and to focus the children's attention on artic weather and animals, materials are provided that will allow the children to hypothesize about what animals do in the cold snowy weather and where they might live. To continue our discussion of animals living in polar climates materials are provided to support construction of icy and watery animal homes.
•Skills: observation, scientific investigation and inquiry, connection to natural world, applying previous experiences and knowledge, hypothesizing and extrapolating, symbolic representation, making comparisons, perspective taking (considering how animals survive in the cold climates), using tools gather information, and developing curiosity.

Dramatic Play
•Materials: housekeeping materials (furniture, dishes, food) and dress-up fabric and shoes; one cave is set as bedrooms with "beds," baby dolls, and baby-care items while the other cave is set up as a Bear Cave (bear costumes, teddy bears, books about hibernation and bears, pillows), animal costumes
•Rationale: to allow for the continued exploration of home-life, family-life, and previous experiences while children use their creativity, imagination, and social interaction skills. To juxtapose human needs (home-life props) with animal needs (hibernation cave) and allow for a variety of dramatic play experiences. Various animal costumes continue to be available to extend animal dramatic play (lions, cougars, polar bears).
•Skills: creative role-play, peer interaction, social problem solving, symbolic representation, reflection on previous experiences, collaboration and community building, storytelling, connection to the natural world, using books as resources, and early literacy skills.

Language and Literacy
•Materials: the writing center has a variety of writing utensils, paper, envelopes, staplers, tape, scissors, and computer/word processing program. Name cards, books with alphabetic themes and a mailbox are available to the writing center to support letter writing and letter recognition.
•Rationale: to foster experiences with the alphabetic principle. We will continue to support the children's creativity with written and verbal language by giving them opportunities to dictate their stories and letters. Microsoft Word continues to be available to encourage letter recognition, emergent writing and typing skills. Alphabetic themed books are added to encourage emergent reading skills.
•Skills: fine motor, letter recognition, emergent writing and reading, curiosity, symbolic reasoning, peer interaction, technological awareness, planning and sequencing actions.

•Materials: the library has a variety of non-fiction and fiction books, many of which discuss different aspects of winter (snow, cold, winter clothes, etc), reflect the children's interests (penguins, orcas, etc) and have numeral themes (Five Little Monkeys).
•Rationale: to encourage the children's continued interest in sharing stories communally and individually. To demonstrate how to use books as sources of information. To have the opportunity to reflect on changes to the children's immediate environment (i.e. the winter season). To expand the children's exploration of polar animals and Arctic habitats books about penguins and whales are offered.
•Skills: receptive language, phonological awareness, early literacy, listening, community building, expressive language, vocabulary introduction, scientific investigation.

Blocks
•Materials: large hollow blocks, small multi-shaped unit blocks, pictures of polar animals, animal figurines (polar bears, seals, orcas), felt, wax paper, blue, white and gray pieces of cloth.
•Rationale: to offer continued building experiences, to allow the children to reflect on and interpret a number of different experiences involving buildings, transportation, etc. To encourage and expand the slipping and sliding of penguins down snow slopes and imaginative play with arctic animals, wax paper, water and snow colored pieces of cloth are added. To support some children's interest in castle building the book Castle is offered.
•Skills: large motor development, expressive creation, symbolic representation, cooperative play, indoor/outdoor connection, using a variety of media for self expression, problem solving, mathematical reasoning,connection to the natural world, analyzing and synthesizing, showing interest and respect for the creative work of self and others.

Expressive Arts (paint, drawing, clay)
•Materials: An assortment of different wooden pieces of different sizes and shapes, wood glue, clay, clay tools, toothpicks, small beads, fairy house book.
•Rationale: to explore with hands and tools to promote sensory awareness, increase fine motor skills, and foster social relationships as children observe and work together with their peers.
To provide a building experience and support creative expression a selection of wooden pieces are added. Many of the children are interested in using small tools to manipulate the clay. To support 3-D sculpture and continued imaginative expression, toothpicks, straws, and small beads are added to the clay table. Some children are interested in fantasy characters such goblins and trolls and to support this interest a fairy house book is offered.
•Skills: fine motor development (strength, coordination), creativity, symbolic representation, sensory input, color recognition, cause and effect, hypothesizing and predicting, showing interest and respect for the creative work of self and others, establishing a connection as a member of a community, peer interactions, self expression using a variety of media and tools.

Sensory (water table)
• Materials: ice, snow, salt, water, animal figurines (penguins, orcas, and seals), buckets, and shovels.
• Rationale: To encourage further discussion about the properties of ice and snow, both will continue to be offered at the sensory table. To support the exploration of Artic animal life and homes, animal figurines are provided.
• Skills: large-/fine-motor strength, cause-and-effect, fostering social relationships, using varied science and sensory language, sensory exploration, observational skills, symbolic representation, acting out previous experiences, comparing amounts.

Math and Manipulatives (including the 'Nook')
•Materials:Counting and stacking unifix cubes with trays, numeral recognition games, counting games, part-whole fruit puzzles, and K'NEX.
•Rationale: To continue our exploration and discussion of numbers puzzles and unifix cubes are provided at the math table. To support investigation of part whole relationships fruit puzzles are offered.
To extend our exploration of construction building and support divergent thinking, K'NEX are added to the Nook. Pictures of airports, and airplanes will continue to be displayed as well as the addition of race car pictures to inspire group discussion, building and play.
•Skills: one-to-one correspondence, synthesis and analysis, fine motor development, hand-eye coordination, part-whole relationships, quantification, counting, numeric awareness, comparison, matching, sorting and divergent thinking.

Large Motor (gym)
• Materials: A-Frame balance beam, hopscotch, basketball hoop with balls, climbing wall, tumbling blocks with rope, stairs and slide.
• Rationale: Many of the children continue to be interested in balancing.To support the children's interest in balancing as well as offer an large motor experience the A-Frame balance beam is added to the gym. The hopscotch,tunnel, basketball hoop with balls, climbing wall, tumbling blocks with rope, and slide help build children's upper body and core strength, encourage socialization and cooperation, support exploration of what the can do with their bodies and simulate outdoor activities (playing hopscotch and dribbling basketballs).
• Skills: Dynamic balance and static balance/standing on one foot (A-Frame Balance Beam), propulsion skills/throwing (basketball hoop with balls), receptive skills/catching and trapping (basketball hoop with balls), climbing (bumpy slide, tumbling blocks, climbing wall),
turn-taking (all), motor planning (bumpy slide, tumbling blocks, wall climber), directional awareness (all),core muscle strength (bumpy slide, tumbling blocks, climbing wall), upper body strength (tumbling blocks with rope, basketball hoop with balls)body awareness (balance beam, tumbling blocks, tunnel), reaching (wall climber, tumbling blocks with rope), jumping (wall climber, hopscotch), turning (wall climber, balance beam), spatial awareness (climbing wall, balance beam,basketball hoop with balls, tunnel), landing (climbing wall, hopscotch)

(Outdoors)
As we still have plenty of snow on the playground we will continue to provide sleds, shovels and snowshoes for playing in the snow! As always, we will monitor the weather and ice conditions daily to ensure the safety of the children on the sledding hill. The time spent on the playground is a balance of structured and unstructured activities. Last week, Sheila helped the children make a tunnel in the snow for the children to burrow in. The soccer balls were taken out and some children enjoyed kicking the ball through the snow tunnel. Hopefully with the abundance of snow we can continue building tunnels and other snow creations.

Snacks:
Monday: Clementines and pretzels
Wednesday: Blueberry muffins
Thursday: Whole wheat bagels and non dairy butter

Overview:
Last week we started our small groups (Numbers, Storytelling and Water) and continued our exploration of numbers and winter life! Many of the children continue to be interested in cold weather and animals, more specifically arctic animals. There were many penguins waddling down and sliding on their stomachs down the sledding hill this week! To support their interest in penguins, and polar bears we have added wax paper, and grayish-white materials in the block area to represent the homes of animals in cold climates. The dressing puzzles received a lot of attention so we added self-dressing materials to the math table to extend our discussion of keeping warm in the winter. Finger painting last week was highly engaging for many of the children. We added materials (sand, salt, and shaving cream) to the finger paint to encourage the exploration of textures and sensory awareness. Finally, in the Nook we transitioned from Legos to Mobilos to offer a new experience in building.

Science
*Materials: Woodland animal stuffed animals, tree, books about wintertime and hibernation, fur pelts, pictures of various animals with fur/wool, shoe box, batting, sticks, large seeds, acorns, computer for checking daily temperature and live web-cam feed of bear den.
*Rationale: to continue our ongoing exploration of homes and habitats, and to focus the children's attention on local weather and animals, materials are provided that will allow the children to hypothesize about what animals do in the winter and where they might live.To encourage discussion among the children about hibernation and how animals stay warm in the winter a live online feed of a bear hibernating in it's den will be streamed on the computer. Pictures of animals with different types of skin (fur/wool/hair) have been added to the science table to further children's thinking about how fur keeps animals warm. To encourage further discussion about the weather we will be checking the temperature daily and recording it on newsprint paper.
•Skills: observation, scientific investigation and inquiry, connection to natural world, applying previous experiences and knowledge, hypothesizing and extrapolating, symbolic representation, making comparisons, perspective taking (considering how animals survive in the wintertime), using tools gather information, and developing curiosity.

Dramatic Play
•Materials: housekeeping materials (furniture, dishes, food) and dress-up fabric and shoes; one cave is set as bedrooms with "beds," baby dolls, and baby-care items while the other cave is set up as a Bear Cave (bear costumes, teddy bears, books about hibernation and bears, pillows), animal costumes
•Rationale: to allow for the continued exploration of home-life, family-life, and previous experiences while children use their creativity, imagination, and social interaction skills. To juxtapose human needs (home-life props) with animal needs (hibernation cave) and allow for a variety of dramatic play experiences. Various animal costumes continue to be available to extend animal dramatic play (lions, cougars, polar bears).
•Skills: creative role-play, peer interaction, social problem solving, symbolic representation, reflection on previous experiences, collaboration and community building, storytelling, connection to the natural world, using books as resources, and early literacy skills.

Language and Literacy
•Materials: the writing center has a variety of writing utensils, paper, envelopes, staplers, tape, scissors, and computer/word processing program. Name cards and a mailbox are available to the writing center to support letter writing.
•Rationale: to foster experiences with the alphabetic principle. We will continue to support the children's creativity with written and verbal language by giving them opportunities to dictate their stories and letters. To support the children's interest in making signs, paper, markers and tape are added to facilitate emergent reading and writing skills. Microsoft Word is provided to encourage letter recognition and emergent writing and typing skills.
•Skills: fine motor, letter recognition, emergent writing, curiosity, symbolic reasoning, peer interaction, reflection on community jobs, technological awareness, planning and sequencing actions.

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

Blocks
•Materials: large hollow blocks, small multi-shaped unit blocks, animal figurines (polar bears, seals, orcas), felt, wax paper, blue, white and gray pieces of cloth.
•Rationale: to offer continued building experiences, to allow the children to reflect on and interpret a number of different experiences involving buildings, transportation, etc. To encourage and expand the slipping and sliding of penguins down snow slopes and imaginative play with arctic animal we added wax paper, as well as water and snow colored pieces of cloth.
•Skills: large motor development, expressive creation, symbolic representation, cooperative play, indoor/outdoor connection, using a variety of media for self expression, problem solving, mathematical reasoning,connection to the natural world and showing interest and respect for the creative work of self and others.

Expressive Arts (paint, drawing, clay)
•Materials: markers, primary color paint for mixing, large paper for painting, scissors, butcher paper, finger paints, sand, cornstarch, salt, shaving cream, clay, wooden clay tools, toothpicks, straws, wire.
•Rationale: to explore with hands and tools to promote sensory awareness, increase fine motor skills, and foster social relationships as children observe and work together with their peers. The children continue to be highly interested in using their hands to mix colors.To continue the exploration of group color mixing, blue, white, yellow, and red finger paint will continue to be available at the art table. To support sensory exploration with different textures sand, cornstarch and shaving cream are added to the finger paint.Many of the children are interested in using tools to manipulate the clay. To support 3-D sculpture, and to encourage self-expression, toothpicks and straws are added to the clay table.
•Skills: fine motor development (strength, coordination), creativity, symbolic representation, sensory input, color recognition, cause and effect, hypothesizing and predicting, showing interest and respect for the creative work of self and others, establishing a connection as a member of a community, peer interactions, self expression using a variety of media and tools.

Sensory (water table)
• Materials: ice, snow, salt, sand, water, acorns, molds, scoops, buckets, and small shovels.
• Rationale: To encourage further discussion about the properties of ice and snow, both will continue to be offered at the sensory table. Elizabeth conducted an ice melting experiment with the children last week to investigate what matter melts ice the fastest. To support exploration and discussion of melting ice, salt, sand, water, and acorns are made available at the sensory table.
• Skills: large-/fine-motor strength, cause-and-effect, fostering social relationships, using varied science and sensory language, sensory exploration, observational skills, symbolic representation, acting out previous experiences, comparing amounts, and performing multiple steps, planning and carrying out a plan.

Math and Manipulatives (including the 'Nook')
•Materials:Counting and stacking cubes, numeral recognition games, dressing and number puzzles,number matching games, Duplos, threading shoelace cards, self-dressing materials, mitten numeral recognition game, Mobilos, pictures of airplanes and airports.
•Rationale: To continue our exploration of numbers and winter dressing materials are provided at the math table. To support self-dressing and fine motor skills materials with buttons, zippers and fasteners are offered. To encourage investigation of counting, numeral awareness, and sequencing we have added a mitten numeral recognition game and a number matching puzzle.
In the Nook we have switched from Legos to Mobilos to further exploration of construction building and divergent thinking. Pictures of airports, and airplanes will continue to be displayed as well as the addition of race car pictures to inspire group discussion, building and play.
•Skills: one-to-one correspondence, synthesis and analysis, fine motor development, hand-eye coordination, part-whole relationships, quantification, counting, numeric awareness, comparison, matching, sorting and divergent thinking.

Large Motor (gym)
• Materials: A-Frame balance beam, hopscotch, basketball hoop with balls, climbing wall, tumbling blocks with rope, stairs and slide.
• Rationale: This week was our turn to set up the gym. Many of the children have been interested in balancing on the long blocks of wood in the block area.To support the children's interest in balancing as well as offer an large motor experience the A-Frame balance beam has been added to the gym. The hopscotch,tunnel, basketball hoop with balls, climbing wall, tumbling blocks with rope, and slide help build children's upper body and core strength, encourage socialization and cooperation, support exploration of what the can do with their bodies and simulate outdoor activities (playing hopscotch and dribbling basketballs).
• Skills: Dynamic balance and static balance/standing on one foot (A-Frame Balance Beam), propulsion skills/throwing (basketball hoop with balls), receptive skills/catching and trapping (basketball hoop with balls), climbing (bumpy slide, tumbling blocks, climbing wall),
turn-taking (all), motor planning (bumpy slide, tumbling blocks, wall climber), directional awareness (all),core muscle strength (bumpy slide, tumbling blocks, climbing wall), upper body strength (tumbling blocks with rope, basketball hoop with balls)body awareness (balance beam, tumbling blocks, tunnel), reaching (wall climber, tumbling blocks with rope), jumping (wall climber, hopscotch), turning (wall climber, balance beam), spatial awareness (climbing wall, balance beam,basketball hoop with balls, tunnel), landing (climbing wall, hopscotch)

(Outdoors)
As we still have snow on the playground we will continue to provide sleds, shovels and snowshoes for playing in the snow! As always, we will monitor the weather and ice conditions daily to ensure the safety of the children on the sledding hill. The time on the playground continues to be a balance of both unstructured and structure large motor activities. Much of the animal pretend play has carried over to outside time. There have been many cougars and bears prowling around the playground and penguins sliding down sledding hill lately.Some of the children have been experimenting with adding snow to slides to see how fast they can zoom down the slide. Hopefully the 'warm' weather continues so we can enjoy playing and experimenting with the snow!

Snacks:
Monday: Animal crackers and Raisins
Wednesday: Carrots and Triscuts
Thursday: Cheerios and Milk

Overview:
Last week we started our small groups (Numbers, Storytelling and Water) and continued our exploration of numbers and winter life! Many of the children continue to be interested in cold weather and animals, more specifically arctic animals. There were many penguins waddling down and sliding on their stomachs down the sledding hill this week! To support their interest in penguins, and polar bears we have added wax paper, and grayish-white materials in the block area to represent the homes of animals in cold climates. The dressing puzzles received a lot of attention so we added self-dressing materials to the math table to extend our discussion of keeping warm in the winter. Finger painting last week was highly engaging for many of the children. We added materials (sand, salt, and shaving cream) to the finger paint to encourage the exploration of textures and sensory awareness. Finally, in the Nook we transitioned from Legos to Mobilos to offer a new experience in building.

Science
*Materials: Woodland animal stuffed animals, tree, books about wintertime and hibernation, fur pelts, pictures of various animals with fur/wool, shoe box, batting, sticks, large seeds, acorns, computer for checking daily temperature and live web-cam feed of bear den.
*Rationale: to continue our ongoing exploration of homes and habitats, and to focus the children's attention on local weather and animals, materials are provided that will allow the children to hypothesize about what animals do in the winter and where they might live.To encourage discussion among the children about hibernation and how animals stay warm in the winter a live online feed of a bear hibernating in it's den will be streamed on the computer. Pictures of animals with different types of skin (fur/wool/hair) have been added to the science table to further children's thinking about how fur keeps animals warm. To encourage further discussion about the weather we will be checking the temperature daily and recording it on newsprint paper.
•Skills: observation, scientific investigation and inquiry, connection to natural world, applying previous experiences and knowledge, hypothesizing and extrapolating, symbolic representation, making comparisons, perspective taking (considering how animals survive in the wintertime), using tools gather information, and developing curiosity.

Dramatic Play
•Materials: housekeeping materials (furniture, dishes, food) and dress-up fabric and shoes; one cave is set as bedrooms with "beds," baby dolls, and baby-care items while the other cave is set up as a Bear Cave (bear costumes, teddy bears, books about hibernation and bears, pillows), animal costumes
•Rationale: to allow for the continued exploration of home-life, family-life, and previous experiences while children use their creativity, imagination, and social interaction skills. To juxtapose human needs (home-life props) with animal needs (hibernation cave) and allow for a variety of dramatic play experiences. Various animal costumes continue to be available to extend animal dramatic play (lions, cougars, polar bears).
•Skills: creative role-play, peer interaction, social problem solving, symbolic representation, reflection on previous experiences, collaboration and community building, storytelling, connection to the natural world, using books as resources, and early literacy skills.

Language and Literacy
•Materials: the writing center has a variety of writing utensils, paper, envelopes, staplers, tape, scissors, and computer/word processing program. Name cards and a mailbox are available to the writing center to support letter writing.
•Rationale: to foster experiences with the alphabetic principle. We will continue to support the children's creativity with written and verbal language by giving them opportunities to dictate their stories and letters. To support the children's interest in making signs, paper, markers and tape are added to facilitate emergent reading and writing skills. Microsoft Word is provided to encourage letter recognition and emergent writing and typing skills.
•Skills: fine motor, letter recognition, emergent writing, curiosity, symbolic reasoning, peer interaction, reflection on community jobs, technological awareness, planning and sequencing actions.

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

Blocks
•Materials: large hollow blocks, small multi-shaped unit blocks, animal figurines (polar bears, seals, orcas), felt, wax paper, blue, white and gray pieces of cloth.
•Rationale: to offer continued building experiences, to allow the children to reflect on and interpret a number of different experiences involving buildings, transportation, etc. To encourage and expand the slipping and sliding of penguins down snow slopes and imaginative play with arctic animal we added wax paper, as well as water and snow colored pieces of cloth.
•Skills: large motor development, expressive creation, symbolic representation, cooperative play, indoor/outdoor connection, using a variety of media for self expression, problem solving, mathematical reasoning,connection to the natural world and showing interest and respect for the creative work of self and others.

Expressive Arts (paint, drawing, clay)
•Materials: markers, primary color paint for mixing, large paper for painting, scissors, butcher paper, finger paints, sand, cornstarch, salt, shaving cream, clay, wooden clay tools, toothpicks, straws, wire.
•Rationale: to explore with hands and tools to promote sensory awareness, increase fine motor skills, and foster social relationships as children observe and work together with their peers. The children continue to be highly interested in using their hands to mix colors.To continue the exploration of group color mixing, blue, white, yellow, and red finger paint will continue to be available at the art table. To support sensory exploration with different textures sand, cornstarch and shaving cream are added to the finger paint.Many of the children are interested in using tools to manipulate the clay. To support 3-D sculpture, and to encourage self-expression, toothpicks and straws are added to the clay table.
•Skills: fine motor development (strength, coordination), creativity, symbolic representation, sensory input, color recognition, cause and effect, hypothesizing and predicting, showing interest and respect for the creative work of self and others, establishing a connection as a member of a community, peer interactions, self expression using a variety of media and tools.

Sensory (water table)
• Materials: ice, snow, salt, sand, water, acorns, molds, scoops, buckets, and small shovels.
• Rationale: To encourage further discussion about the properties of ice and snow, both will continue to be offered at the sensory table. Elizabeth conducted an ice melting experiment with the children last week to investigate what matter melts ice the fastest. To support exploration and discussion of melting ice, salt, sand, water, and acorns are made available at the sensory table.
• Skills: large-/fine-motor strength, cause-and-effect, fostering social relationships, using varied science and sensory language, sensory exploration, observational skills, symbolic representation, acting out previous experiences, comparing amounts, and performing multiple steps, planning and carrying out a plan.

Math and Manipulatives (including the 'Nook')
•Materials:Counting and stacking cubes, numeral recognition games, dressing and number puzzles,number matching games, Duplos, threading shoelace cards, self-dressing materials, mitten numeral recognition game, Mobilos, pictures of airplanes and airports.
•Rationale: To continue our exploration of numbers and winter dressing materials are provided at the math table. To support self-dressing and fine motor skills materials with buttons, zippers and fasteners are offered. To encourage investigation of counting, numeral awareness, and sequencing we have added a mitten numeral recognition game and a number matching puzzle.
In the Nook we have switched from Legos to Mobilos to further exploration of construction building and divergent thinking. Pictures of airports, and airplanes will continue to be displayed as well as the addition of race car pictures to inspire group discussion, building and play.
•Skills: one-to-one correspondence, synthesis and analysis, fine motor development, hand-eye coordination, part-whole relationships, quantification, counting, numeric awareness, comparison, matching, sorting and divergent thinking.

Large Motor (gym)
• Materials: A-Frame balance beam, hopscotch, basketball hoop with balls, climbing wall, tumbling blocks with rope, stairs and slide.
• Rationale: This week was our turn to set up the gym. Many of the children have been interested in balancing on the long blocks of wood in the block area.To support the children's interest in balancing as well as offer an large motor experience the A-Frame balance beam has been added to the gym. The hopscotch,tunnel, basketball hoop with balls, climbing wall, tumbling blocks with rope, and slide help build children's upper body and core strength, encourage socialization and cooperation, support exploration of what the can do with their bodies and simulate outdoor activities (playing hopscotch and dribbling basketballs).
• Skills: Dynamic balance and static balance/standing on one foot (A-Frame Balance Beam), propulsion skills/throwing (basketball hoop with balls), receptive skills/catching and trapping (basketball hoop with balls), climbing (bumpy slide, tumbling blocks, climbing wall),
turn-taking (all), motor planning (bumpy slide, tumbling blocks, wall climber), directional awareness (all),core muscle strength (bumpy slide, tumbling blocks, climbing wall), upper body strength (tumbling blocks with rope, basketball hoop with balls)body awareness (balance beam, tumbling blocks, tunnel), reaching (wall climber, tumbling blocks with rope), jumping (wall climber, hopscotch), turning (wall climber, balance beam), spatial awareness (climbing wall, balance beam,basketball hoop with balls, tunnel), landing (climbing wall, hopscotch)

(Outdoors)
As we still have snow on the playground we will continue to provide sleds, shovels and snowshoes for playing in the snow! As always, we will monitor the weather and ice conditions daily to ensure the safety of the children on the sledding hill. The time on the playground continues to be a balance of both unstructured and structure large motor activities. Much of the animal pretend play has carried over to outside time. There have been many cougars and bears prowling around the playground and penguins sliding down sledding hill lately.Some of the children have been experimenting with adding snow to slides to see how fast they can zoom down the slide. Hopefully the 'warm' weather continues so we can enjoy playing and experimenting with the snow!

Snacks:
Monday: Animal crackers and Raisins
Wednesday: Carrots and Triscuts
Thursday: Cheerios and Milk

Overview: The winter session is off to a fast start and it's hard to believe we are already entering the first week of February! We have made several changes to the classroom this week to support the children's continued interest in bears. As the children have begun to discuss how humans stay warm in the winter, fur is added to the science center to encourage discussion about how animals keep warm. We extend this theme into the block area by adding white covering to some of the hollow blocks to simulate snow covered bear caves. We continue our exploration of numbers and counting this week. Several number puzzles are added to the math center and books about counting are added to the classroom library. We are also continuing on with our color mixing exploration by introducing two new colors to the art area: red and yellow! Finally, this week we will begin small groups for this session. The children begin active exploration of Numbers, Storytelling, and Water this Wednesday and Thursday.

Science
*Materials: Woodland animal stuffed animals, tree, books about wintertime and hibernation, fur pelts, shoe box, batting, sticks, large seeds, acorns, computer or themometer for checking daily temperature
*Rationale: to continue our ongoing exploration of homes and habitats, and to focus the children's attention on local weather and animals, materials are provided that will allow the children to hypothesize about what animals do in the winter and where they might live. At large group, Megan discussed how we use clothes to stay warm. To encourage discussion among the children about how animals stay warm in the winter we will be adding fur pelts to the science table. We added a box to the science area for the children to create a bear den for hibernating. To encourage further discussion about the weather we will be checking the temperature daily and recording it on newsprint paper.
•Skills: observation, scientific investigation and inquiry, connection to natural world, applying previous experiences and knowledge, hypothesizing and extrapolating, symbolic representation, making comparisons, perspective taking (considering how animals survive in the wintertime), using tools gather information, and developing curiosity.

Dramatic Play
•Materials: housekeeping materials (furniture, dishes, food) and dress-up fabric and shoes; one cave is set as bedrooms with "beds," baby dolls, and baby-care items while the other cave is set up as a Bear Cave (bear costumes, teddy bears, books about hibernation and bears, pillows), animal costumes
•Rationale: to allow for the continued exploration of home-life, family-life, and previous experiences while children use their creativity, imagination, and social interaction skills. To juxtapose human needs (home-life props) with animal needs (hibernation cave) and allow for a variety of dramatic play experiences. The children have expanded their animal play to include role playing as bears, cougars, and penguins. To encourage this animal related play we are adding animal costumes for the children to use in their play.
•Skills: creative role-play, peer interaction, social problem solving, symbolic representation, reflection on previous experiences, collaboration and community building, storytelling, connection to the natural world, using books as resources, and early literacy skills.

Language and Literacy
•Materials: the writing center has a variety of writing utensils, paper, envelopes, staplers, tape, scissors, and computer/word processing program. Name cards and a mailbox are available to the writing center to support letter writing. A Letter to Amy by Ezra Jack Keats
•Rationale: to foster experiences with the alphabetic principle. We will continue to support the children's creativity with written and verbal language by giving them opportunities to dictate their stories and letters. A Letter to Amy by Ezra Jack Keats has been added to the writing center to serve as inspiration for the children as they continue to explore letter writing.
•Skills: fine motor, letter recognition, emergent writing, curiosity, symbolic reasoning, peer interaction, reflection on community jobs, planning and sequencing actions.

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

Blocks
•Materials: large hollow blocks, small multi-shaped unit blocks, animal figurines, felt, white covered blocks
•Rationale: to offer continued building experiences, to allow the children to reflect on and interpret a number of different experiences involving buildings, transportation, etc. To encourage and expand upon the construction of bear dens we added white covered blocks to simulate a snow covered cave.
•Skills: large motor development, expressive creation, symbolic representation, cooperative play, indoor/outdoor connection, using a variety of media for self expression, problem solving, mathematical reasoning, and showing interest and respect for the creative work of self and others.

Expressive Arts (paint, drawing, clay)
•Materials: markers, primary color paint for mixing, large paper for painting, scissors, butcher paper/ clay, wooden clay tools, wire.
•Rationale: to explore with hands and tools to promote sensory awareness, increase fine motor skills, and foster social relationships as children observe and work together with their peers. To continue the exploration of color mixing, blue, white and black paint will be continue to be available at the art table. As the children continue their investigation of color mixing, red and yellow paint will be added to the art table for the children to discover new colors. Many of the children are interested in using their hands to mix colors. To facilitate these hands-on, group color mixing experiences, large sheets of butcher paper are being added to the art area. Clay continues to be offered for the children to engage in representational art and sensory activities.
•Skills: fine motor development (strength, coordination), creativity, symbolic representation, sensory input, color recognition, cause and effect, hypothesizing and predicting, showing interest and respect for the creative work of self and others, establishing a connection as a member of a community, peer interactions, self expression using a variety of media and tools.

Sensory (water table)
• Materials: ice, snow, salt, sand, water, molds, scoops, buckets, and small shovels.
• Rationale: To encourage further discussion about the properties of ice and snow, both will continue to be offered at the sensory table. Salt and sand are offered to allow the children to discuss and explore different methods of melting ice. Water is also made available to the children as they have shown an interest in turning snow into slush.
• Skills: large-/fine-motor strength, cause-and-effect, fostering social relationships, using varied science and sensory language, sensory exploration, symbolic representation, acting out previous experiences, comparing amounts, and performing multiple steps, planning and carrying out a plan.

Math and Manipulatives (including the 'Nook')
•Materials: Puzzles, counting and stacking cubes, numeral recognition games, bear dressing puzzle, number puzzles and books, number Duplos, small lego set (including people, wheels, trees), pictures of airplanes and airports.
•Rationale: Our exploration of numbers continues and this is reflected in the materials available in the math center. The children continue to show an interest in counting and stacking cubes. To encourage further discussion about counting we have added more number and counting puzzles. In the Nook we continue to offer legos for the children to engage in construction experiences. Pictures of airports and airplanes have inspired further discussion among the children. The pictures will continue to be displayed to serve as a conversation starter and an inspiration for building.
•Skills: one-to-one correspondence, sythesis and analysis, fine motor development, hand-eye coordination, part-whole relationships, quantification, counting, numeric awareness, comparison, matching and sorting.

Large Motor (gym)
• Materials: Pedalo, bumpy slide, rolling hill, rope swing, climbing wall
• Rationale: The Pedalo, rope swings, and rolling hills were all exciting additions to our gym and the children have given a lot of attention to these new pieces of equipment. These activities, as well as the climbing wall and bumpy slide, continue to be offered in the gym this week. These activities build the children's core strength, encourage socialization and cooperation, support exploration of what they can do with their bodies, and makes up for some of the things that we can't do outside during the winter time (such as rolling down a grassy hill).
• Skills: Pushing with feet/propulsion (Pedalo), pedaling (Pedalo), standing/balancing (Pedalo), grasping (Pedalo, climbing wall, rope swing), climbing (bumpy slide, rolling hill, climbing wall), turn-taking (all), motor planning (bumpy slide, rope swing, wall climber), directional awareness (all), core muscle strength (bumpy slide, rope swing, climbing wall), body awareness (bumpy slide), rolling (rolling hill), pumping/swinging (rope swings), reaching (wall climber), jumping (wall climber), turning (wall climber), spatial awareness (climbing wall, rolling hill), landing (climbing wall)

(Outdoors)
Over the past two weeks we have received a great deal of snow and hope to re-open the sledding hill this week! We will monitor the weather and ice conditions daily to ensure the safety of the children on the sledding hill. As always, the time on the playground is a balance of both unstructured and structure large motor activities. The children continue to show an interest in shoveling and building with the snow on the playground. This past week, many of the children worked together to build snowmen as well as other snow structures. Classroom discussions and explorations continue to extend to the playground as the children discuss the qualities of snow and ice. Our color mixing activities also extended to the playground this week when Sheila led the children in an exciting snow dyeing activity. With rising temperatures in the coming week's forecast we hope to spend more time on the playground to encourage further exploration of snow and ice.

Snacks:
Monday: Kale Chips and Carrots
Wednesday: Warm, Dairy-Free Cocoa and Rice Chex
Thursday: Corn Salsa and Fresh Baked Tortilla Chips

Overview: It is hard to believe we are already moving into the 4th week of our Winter session, but it has definitely gotten off to a "roaring" start. In some instances quite literally, as the children's interest in animal habitats has transitioned into "bear-themed" dramatic play. This week, we will continue to support this play by introducing books and songs related to hibernation in our classroom's science center and during large group. Polar bear figurines and differently shaped ice pieces are also made available in our classroom sensory table to allow for symbolic representation and further exploration of how animals find shelter during the long, cold winter. Also this week, numbers and numerals come to the forefront. In addition to new number games in the math and manipulative areas, the children will be encouraged to engage in a number of counting activities during large group. Finally, our exploration of the color blue continues, as famous works of art, including several from Picasso's 'blue period,' are displayed in the art area. The children will also be encouraged to match blues they find in the classroom, on their clothes, and in the sky outdoors. It will be a busy week full of exploration and inquiry as the children find new opportunities to investigate their many interests in new ways.

Science
*Materials: Woodland animal stuffed animals, Tree, books about wintertime and hibernation, animal guessing game
*Rationale: to continue our ongoing exploration of homes and habitats, and to focus the children's attention on local weather and animals, materials are provided that will allow the children to hypothesize about what animals do in the winter and where they might live. As the children continue to show an interest in bears, stuffed bears have been added to the science center to encourage further thinking about bear habitats, hibernation, and winter survival.
•Skills: observation, scientific investigation and inquiry, connection to natural world, applying previous experiences and knowledge, hypothesizing and extrapolating, symbolic representation, making comparisons, and developing curiosity.

Dramatic Play
•Materials: housekeeping materials (furniture, dishes, food) and dress-up fabric and shoes; one cave is set as bedrooms with "beds," baby dolls, and baby-care items while the other cave is set up as a Bear Cave (bear costumes, teddy bears, books about hibernation and bears, pillows).
•Rationale: to allow for the continued exploration of home-life, family-life, and previous experiences while children use their creativity, imagination, and social interaction skills. To juxtapose human needs (home-life props) with animal needs (hibernation cave) and allow for a variety of dramatic play experiences. The children continue to integrate the dramatic play experiences by using the kitchen to prepare "bear food." Last week the children pretended to be bears, using the dress up fabric, which remains available, to represent their fur.
•Skills: creative role-play, peer interaction, social problem solving, symbolic representation, reflection on previous experiences, collaboration and community building, storytelling, connection to the natural world, using books as resources, and early literacy skills.

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

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

Blocks
•Materials: large hollow blocks, small multi-shaped unit blocks, animal figurines, felt.
•Rationale: to offer continued building experiences, to allow the children to reflect on and interpret a number of different experiences involving buildings, transportation, etc. White felt has been added to the area to allow the children to incorporate snow into the construction. Polar bear figurines have also been added to offer the children more bear choices and extend their bear related play.
•Skills: large motor development, expressive creation, symbolic representation, cooperative play, indoor/outdoor connection, using a variety of media for self expression, problem solving, mathematical reasoning, and showing interest and respect for the creative work of self and others.

Expressive Arts (paint, drawing, clay)
•Materials: markers, primary color paint for mixing, Prints of paintings using the color blue, different blue objects, large paper for painting, scissors/ clay, wooden clay tools, wire.
•Rationale: to explore with hands and tools to promote sensory awareness, increase fine motor skills, and foster social relationships as children observe and work together with their peers. To continue the exploration of color mixing, blue, white and black paint will be still be available at the art table. As the children investigate mixing blue with black and white paint to create different tones and hues, different shades of blue will be displayed in the art area for the children to practice matching. The clay is also once again available for the children to use for creative expression and sensory input.
•Skills: fine motor development (strength, coordination), creativity, symbolic representation, sensory input, color recognition, cause and effect, hypothesizing and predicting, showing interest and respect for the creative work of self and others, establishing a connection as a member of a community, peer interactions, self expression using a variety of media and tools.

Sensory (water table)
• Materials: ice, sand, water, molds, scoops, buckets, and small shovels.
• Rationale: To explore what is happening outside of our classroom, ice is made available in the sensory table. Children can explore the properties of ice and use their senses to observe the many ways they can change the material. To support the children's interest in ice (based on what they have explored on the playground boat, playground and sidewalks) water, shovels and sand are offered.
• Skills: large-/fine-motor strength, cause-and-effect, fostering social relationships, using varied science and sensory language, sensory exploration, symbolic representation, acting out previous experiences, comparing amounts, and performing multiple steps, planning and carrying out a plan.

Math and Manipulatives (including the 'Nook')
•Materials: Puzzles, counting and stacking cubes, numeral recognition games, bear dressing puzzle, number Duplos, small lego set (including people, wheels, trees)
•Rationale: As we continue exploring numbers, the children will have more chances to use both the skill of counting as well as increased familiarity with the numerals that represent amounts. A variety of materials that encourage fine motor development and counting and matching with numerals are available, as well as puzzles that highlight continued investigation of part-whole relationships. Additionally, bear dressing cards are offered to support the children's emerging interest in dressing activities, and offers experience with matching, comparing, and sorting. Finally, exploration in the Lego nook continues as the children engage in collaboration while building a variety of different structures. Pictures of airports are added to provide further inspiration for their favorite building theme.
•Skills: one-to-one correspondence, fine motor development, hand-eye coordination, part-whole relationships, quantification, counting, numeric awareness, comparison, matching and sorting.

Large Motor (gym)
• Materials: Pedalo, bumpy slide, rolling hill, rope swing, climbing wall
• Rationale: The children have done well easing back into the routines of school and have seemed to enjoy the familiar equipment we had set up in the gym. In order to sustain their interest in large muscle activities and to foster new skills, we have changed out some the structures and activities. The children will still have the opportunity to use old favorites: the bumpy slide and the climbing wall. In addition, we have brought out the Pedalo, created rope swings, and built a rolling hill with the gym mats. These activities build the children's core strength, encourage socialization and cooperation, support exploration of what they can do with their bodies, and makes up for some of the things that we can't do outside during the winter time (such as rolling down a grassy hill).
• Skills: Pushing with feet/propulsion (Pedalo), pedaling (Pedalo), standing/balancing (Pedalo), grasping (Pedalo, climbing wall, rope swing), climbing (bumpy slide, rolling hill, climbing wall), turn-taking (Pedalo, bumpy slide, rolling hill, climbing wall), motor planning (bumpy slide, rope swing, wall climber), directional awareness (all), core muscle strength (bumpy slide, rope swing, climbing wall), body awareness (bumpy slide), rolling (rolling hill), pumping/swinging (rope swings), reaching (wall climber), jumping (wall climber), turning (wall climber), spatial awareness (climbing wall, rolling hill), landing (climbing wall)

(Outdoors)
We opened our sledding two weeks ago and hope for more snow so that the children can continue to use the sleds! We will monitor the weather and ice conditions daily to ensure the safety of the children on the sledding hill. As before, our time in the playground is dedicated to both unstructured and structured large motor activities as well as scientific explorations and experiments. Many of the children have been shoveling and building with the snow, asking questions about and exploring ice and melting, and discovering how the winter weather affects the structures on the playground. We have been happy to see that they are making fascinating connections between the snow in the classroom and the snow on the playground!

Snacks:
Monday: No School
Wednesday: Oatmeal and raisins
Thursday: Birthday Snack and cucumber/carrot sticks

Overview: The children have enthusiastically transitioned back to school, and are adjusting to both our new routine and new teachers. In order to support the children during this time of transition and ensure we provide a predictable and supportive learning environment, limited changes are made this week. Our outdoor environment continues to offer shoveling and sledding (weather permitting) as the children adjust to beginning their days on the playground. Indoors, minor changes are made to certain areas of the classroom to extend the rich play developed during the first week of school. For example, smaller and differently shaped molds are provided in the sensory snow table to facilitate deeper exploration of snow castle and snow villiage building. Additionally, new blue objects and images are added to the art area to provide an interesting challenge to the color mixing station as the children try to match different shades of blue. Most importantly, however, we will maintain a consistent and supportive learning experience and continue to emphasize a joyful and caring community of learners.

Science
*Materials: Woodland animal stuffed animals, Tree, books about wintertime and hibernation, animal guessing game
*Rationale: to continue our ongoing exploration of homes and habitats, and to focus the children's attention on local weather and animals, materials are provided that will allow the children to hypothesize about what animals do in the winter and where they might live. An animal guessing game was provided during large group last week, and is offered in the science center this week so the children can build awareness of local wildlife and practice identifying animals based upon different features (noses, color, ears, feet/hoofs)
•Skills: observation, scientific investigation and inquiry, connection to natural world, applying previous experiences and knowledge, hypothesizing and extrapolating, symbolic representation, making comparisons, and developing curiosity.

Dramatic Play
•Materials: housekeeping materials (furniture, dishes, food) and dress-up fabric and shoes; one cave is set as bedrooms with "beds," baby dolls, and baby-care items, Bear Cave (bear costumes, teddy bears, books about hibernation and bears, pillows).
•Rationale: to allow for the continued exploration of home-life and family-life while children use their creativity, imagination, and social interaction skills. To juxtapose human needs (home-life props) with animal needs (hibernation cave) and allow for a variety of dramatic play experiences. The first week of school, the children blended the two dramatic play experiences by cooking food to take into the bear cave or bringing bears into their home to feed and care for. The book Bear Snores On will be read during large group to build awareness of hibernation as well as offer suggestions for increased role-play in the dramatic play area.
•Skills: creative role-play, peer interaction, social problem solving, symbolic representation, reflection on previous experiences, collaboration and community building, storytelling, connection to the natural world, using books as resources, and early literacy skills.

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

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

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

Expressive Arts (paint, drawing, clay)
•Materials: markers, primary color paint for mixing, Prints of paintings using the color blue, different blue objects, large paper for painting, scissors/ clay, wooden clay tools, wire.
•Rationale: to explore with hands and tools to promote sensory awareness, increase fine motor skills, and foster social relationships as children observe and work together with their peers. As the winter session begins, paint is made available at the art table so the children can begin exploring the mixing of one color (blue) with white and black to create different tones and hues. To provide inspiration and challeng, different shades of blue are displayed in the art area for the children to practice matching. The clay is also once again available for the children to use for creative expression and sensory input.
•Skills: fine motor development (strength, coordination), creativity, symbolic representation, sensory input, color recognition, cause and effect, hypothesizing and predicting, showing interest and respect for the creative work of self and others, establishing a connection as a member of a community, peer interactions, self expression using a variety of media and tools.

Sensory (water table)
• Materials: snow, molds, scoops, buckets, small shovels, images of different types of snow castles and buildings.
• Rationale: To bring a little bit of outside into our classroom, snow is made available in the sensory table. Children can explore the properties of snow and use their senses to observe the many ways they can change the material. To support the children's interest in building snow structures (based upon what they have already explored with sand in the sensory table and on the playground) different molds are offered.
• Skills: large-/fine-motor strength, cause-and-effect, fostering social relationships, sensory exploration, symbolic representation, acting out previous experiences, comparing amounts, and performing multiple steps, planning and carying out a plan.

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

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

Snacks:
Monday: Clementines and Rice Chex
Wednesday: Snow Cones and Pretzels
Thursdsay: Black Bean Quesadilla's (Dairy free)

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

Science
*Materials: Woodland animal stuffed animals, Tree, books about wintertime and hibernation,
*Rationale: to continue our ongoing exploration of homes and habitats, and to focus the children's attention on local weather and animals, materials are provided that will allow the children to hypothesize about what animals do in the winter and where they might live.
•Skills: observation, scientific investigation and inquiry, connection to natural world, applying previous experiences and knowledge, hypothesizing, symbolic representation, making comparisons, and developing curiosity.

Dramatic Play
•Materials: housekeeping materials (furniture, dishes, food) and dress-up fabric and shoes; one cave is set as bedrooms with "beds," baby dolls, and baby-care items, Bear Cave (bear costumes, teddy bears, books about hibernation and bears, pillows).
•Rationale: to allow for the continued exploration of home-life and family-life while children use their creativity, imagination, and social interaction skills. To juxtapose human needs (home-life props) with animal needs (hibernation cave) and allow for a variety of dramatic play experiences.
•Skills: creative role-play, peer interaction, social problem solving, symbolic representation, reflection on previous experiences, collaboration and community building, storytelling, connection to the natural world, using books as resources, and early literacy skills.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Science (Including the Nook)
•Materials: a story board with different clothing and picture that depict of types of weather, nest building materials, and pictures of different types of homes and habitats. In the Nook: duplos blocks and photos of duplos structures.
•Rationale: to support children's curiosity of the natural world around us and to encourage the investigation of nature. To extend the children's interest in creating nests, the children continue to have the chance to build a nest along with the morning class. A large stick frame has been added to the science table where the children from both classes have been adding various materials to create a large nest. The children will be encouraged to look at the weather story board to continue building awareness of the change in weather that is happening outside. The children have showed continued interest in building and construction. To further support this interest, Duplo building blocks along with photos of Duplo buildings will be included in the nook.
•Skills: observation, scientific investigation and inquiry, outdoor/indoor connection, hypothesizing, symbolic representation, peer interactions, and developing curiosity.

Dramatic Play
•Materials: housekeeping materials (furniture, dishes, food) and dress-up fabric and shoes; one cave is set as bedrooms with "beds," baby dolls, and baby-care items, wetlands creatures, blue fabric, pieces of wood, pictures of different types of kitchens (including some from children's homes), and cookbooks.
•Rationale: to allow for the expression of family life and to encourage social interaction while playing with familiar props to help create home-school connections. Glow-in-the-dark stars will be added to the cave with the dolls to help simulate night time to support the children investigation of caretaking roles when putting their dolls to sleep. In the other cave the children the wet land habitat has been a big hit. The children have been cooking food for the frogs and discussing what they would eat. To help foster relationships between peers as they cooperate and play together in shared story-lines. We continue to provide open-ended "loose-parts" such as corks to extend imaginative cooking experiences. Additional loose-parts will be added while some of the representational food items will be removed to support open-ended exploration of food.
•Skills: creative role-play, peer interaction, social problem solving, symbolic representation, and early literacy skills.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Special Announcements:

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

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

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

Science (Including the Nook)
•Materials: a story board with different clothing and picture that depict of types of weather, nest building materials, and pictures of different types of homes and habitats. In the Nook: popsicle sticks, styrofoam squares, hay, lego pieces, plastic animals, and the three little pigs books.
•Rationale: to support children's curiosity of the natural world around us and to encourage the investigation of nature. We will continue to observe and discuss the ideas of homes and what various types of homes animals live in. To extend the children's interest in creating nests, the children be encourage to build a nest along with the morning class. A large stick frame will be added to the science table where the children from both classes are encouraged to add various materials to create a large nest. The children will be encouraged to look at the weather story board to continue building awareness of the change in weather that is happening outside. In the Nook, a story basket will be added to the nook area this week. The children will be provided an opportunity to explore the story of the three little pigs through symbolic and dramatic play. There will be different building materials in the basket for the children to recreate the three pigs' homes; such as lego blocks, straw, and popsicle sticks. The children will be encouraged to investigate the various types of building materials in the story of the three little pigs and develop their own ideas about how to build the different homes for the characters.
•Skills: observation, scientific investigation and inquiry, outdoor/indoor connection, hypothesizing, symbolic representation, peer interactions, and developing curiosity.

Dramatic Play
•Materials: housekeeping materials (furniture, dishes, food) and dress-up fabric and shoes; one cave is set as bedrooms with "beds," baby dolls, and baby-care items, glow-in-the-dark-stars, wetlands creatures, blue fabric, pieces of wood, pictures of different types of kitchens (including some from children's homes), and cookbooks.
•Rationale: to allow for the expression of family life and to encourage social interaction while playing with familiar props to help create home-school connections. Glow-in-the-dark stars will be added to the cave with the dolls to help simulate night time to support the children investigation of caretaking roles when putting their dolls to sleep. In the other cave we have added materials for the children to create a wet land habitat. The children will be encourage to explore through their play what creatures live in wetlands and what materials are needed to create their habitat. To help foster relationships between peers as they cooperate and play together in shared story-lines. Cookbooks will be provided for the children to create new recipes to cook together. We continue to provide open-ended "loose-parts" such as corks are added to extend imaginative cooking experiences.
•Skills: creative role-play, peer interaction, social problem solving, symbolic representation, and early literacy skills.

Language and Literacy
•Materials: the writing center has a variety of writing utensils, paper, envelopes, staplers, tape, scissors, a rhyming words puzzle, and computer/word processing program.
•Rationale: to foster experiences with the alphabetic principle. We will continue to support the children creativity with written and verbal language by giving them opportunities to dictate their stories and letters. A rhyming words puzzle will be added to the area this week. The puzzle will help foster a growing interest in words and letter recognition.
•Skills: fine motor, pre-writing, letter recognition, and symbolic reasoning.
•Materials: the library has books on a variety of topics new and familiar to the children.
•Rationale: to encourage cozy reading time with friends and teachers. Family visitors continue to join us in the reading center to facilitate group reading experiences and foster joy in reading.
•Skills: receptive language, phonological awareness, early literacy, listening, community building

Blocks
•Materials: large hollow blocks, small multi-shaped unit blocks, wooden doll house, furniture, peg people, wooden cars, pictures of house items, large pieces of cloth, castle blocks/small wooden figurines, carpet squares, keys, computer key boards, pictures of the children's structures they have built, and books related to homes and buildings.
•Rationale: to support children's creativity and problem solving skills while they continue to work together and use symbolic reasoning. To help support the children's interest in building various types of homes, we will continue to provide materials that depict to build houses and common household items. The children have also displayed interest in building planes and spaceships in the block area, so computer keyboards are added to the area to help enhance the children's play along this theme. As there have been many different interesting structures the children have built since the school year started, we will provide a book with pictures of their past creations to support the children's reflection and creativity in the block area.
•Skills: large motor development, expressive creation, symbolic representation, cooperative play, problem solving, mathematical, and showing interest and respect for the creative work of self and others.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Overview: The children have shown continued interest in exploring the concepts of homes and weather. Our primary focus for this week is to strengthen a sense of classroom community and help support budding friendships. To further the exploration of weather and homes larger boxes will be provided at the collage table to offer an opportunity for the children to create homes together. Additionally, to further the children's interest in building animal homes, mud will be added to the science center. Building homes and other structures has been an overarching theme at the block center, to support these interests keys have been added for unlocking doors and the driving of block vehicles. This coming week we will take advantage of the changing weather and focus on using our senses to experience the fall changes.

Science (Including the Nook)
•Materials: a story board with different clothing and picture that depict of types of weather, and nest building materials. Pictures of different types of homes and habitats. In the Nook: rocks, branches, wood, fabric, stuffed animals, and a cardboard tree. Green paper will also be provided to add leaves to the tree.
•Rationale: to support children's curiosity of the natural world around us and to encourage the investigation of nature. We will continue to observe and discuss the ideas of homes and what various types of homes animals live in. Nest building materials will still be out for the children to explore different ways of constructing nests. Materials to make mud to construct the nest will also be provided. The children will be encouraged to look at the weather story board to continue building awareness of the change in weather that is happening outside. In the Nook, a woodland scene has been created to enrich the children's interest in animal homes and habitats. Paper and scissors will be available to create leaves for the tree constructed last week in the nook.
•Skills: observation, scientific investigation and inquiry, outdoor/indoor connection, hypothesizing, and developing curiosity.

Dramatic Play
•Materials: housekeeping materials (furniture, dishes, food) and dress-up fabric and shoes; one cave is set as bedrooms with "beds," baby dolls, and baby-care items, another cave contains stuffed dogs and cats and animal care items, pictures of different types of kitchens (including some from children's homes) Combs will be added this week for the baby dolls as well as open ended materials like fruit pits will be provided to support symbolic play.
•Rationale: to allow for the expression of family life and to encourage social interaction while playing with familiar props. To create home-school connections. To help foster relationships between peers as they cooperate and play together in shared story-lines. Cooking, caring for babies and pets, and other types of imagination continue to be a strong component of the dramatic play area. Open-ended "loose-parts" such as apricot pits and corks are added to extend imaginative cooking experiences.
•Skills: creative role-play, peer interaction, social problem solving, symbolic representation

Language and Literacy
•Materials: the writing center has a variety of writing utensils, paper, envelopes, staplers, tape, scissors, computer/word processing program.
•Rationale: to foster experiences with the alphabetic principle. This week we will continue to give the children opportunities to help the children dictate their stories and letters.
•Skills: fine motor, pre-writing, letter recognition, symbolic reasoning.
•Materials: the library has books that might be familiar to the children on topics about homes, weather, school, families, and friendship.
•Rationale: to encourage cozy reading time with friends and teachers. New books will be added to the library to provide information on new topics of weather and homes.
•Skills: receptive language, phonological awareness, early literacy, listening, community building

Blocks
•Materials: large hollow blocks, small multi-shaped unit blocks, wooden doll house, furniture, peg people, wooden cars, pictures of house items, large pieces of cloth, castle blocks/small wooden figurines, carpet squares, and books related to homes and buildings. Keys will be provided to help support imaginative and symbolic play.
•Rationale: to support children's creativity and problem solving skills while they continue to work together and use symbolic reasoning. This week we will be continuing to support the children's interest in building houses by providing more materials. Materials such as larger pieces of cloth and images that depict household items as well as keys. We will also provide carpet squares to extend the discussions of what materials are need to build homes.
•Skills: large motor development, expressive creation, symbolic representation, cooperative play, problem solving, mathematical, using books as resources.

Expressive Arts (paint, collage, clay)
•Materials: primary colors (blue, red, yellow) at the easel, large paper for painting, materials for collage, ( large boxes, fabric, bottle tops, extra parts) clay, plastic woodland animals, markers, crayons, colored pencils, scissors.
•Rationale: to explore with hands and tools to promote sensory awareness, increase fine motor skills, and foster social relationships as children observe and work together with their peers. Some of the children have been experimenting using their hands and fingers to paint at the art easel. Larger paper continues to be available in this area so the children will have more space to paint with large body movements. The interest in animal homes has been deeply explored at the clay table. Additionally, small boxes will be switched out for large boxes to promote group home making at the collage table, emphasizing cooperative creativity and collaboration during art exploration.
•Skills: fine motor development (strength, coordination), creativity, symbolic representation, sensory input, color recognition, indoor/outdoor connection, home/school connection, community building.

Sensory (water table)
• Materials: water, large containers, measuring cups, soap, and funnels; smaller containers and eye droppers.
• Rationale: We will continue providing the water table where the children can begin to explore the physical properties of water, specifically the movement of water, by scooping, dumping, pouring, filling, squeezing and dropping.
• Skills: large-/fine-motor strength, eye-to-hand coordination, math conceptions related to counting/measurement/comparing-contrasting, cause-and-effect, fostering social relationships, sensory exploration, creative expression

Math and Manipulatives
•Materials: weather and building puzzles, seriation stacker, cookie shape matching game, weather bingo, magnet brick building, counting pegs and numbered peg-boards, Things in My Home Game, measuring activity, and fine motor bird feeding game.
•Rationale: to encourage children to work with open-ended materials where they can develop more complex skills and work together in a group. A magnet house-building game provides an open ended activity where the children can explore constructing a house using smaller materials. Also the weather bingo game will be available for another week to further the children's discussions various weather conditions with their peers and continue to focus on matching and grouping skills. To promote fine motor skills, tweezers and small materials will be added to help support a connection between birds and what how they eat.
•Skills: color recognition, shape recognition, seriating (i.e. stacking highest to lowest), one-to-one correspondence, counting, fine motor development, geometrical awareness, hand-eye coordination, part-whole relationships, matching and sorting.

Large Motor
• Materials: Indoors- A-Frame ladder with balance beam, monkey bars, slide, donut, wooden boat, large balance beams, and wall ladder.
• Rationale: To support social interaction and cooperation, support upper and lower body muscle and strength endurance, and work on skills such as balance, jumping, climbing, and coordination,
• Skills: Dynamic balance (jumping, landing), Static Balance (standing, standing on one foot, twisting, stretching, bending), climbing up and down, physical fitness, propulsion skills, spatial awareness, turn taking, and social awareness.

Special Announcements:
*Bethany will be lead teaching this week.
*Small groups will meet for the third week: Be sure to check out the documentation for the Music, Weather, and Homes small groups.
*New parent-volunteer opportunities included on classroom website
* Picture day will be November 7

Overview: As week 6 begins, the children are still showing interests in homes and discussing the changes happening outside. We continue provide opportunities for the children to explore and discuss what materials are needed to create homes and castles. The children are showing an increasing interest in various types of animal homes. New items have been added to the classroom to extend their conversations and play with animal homes, such as a hollow tree in the nook area and animal figurines at the clay table. Building different buildings (homes, castles, towers) still seems to be a favorite task in the block area, so we will continue providing a variety of materials that could be found in a home. With the weather increasingly changing, we will provide more opportunities for the children to discussion and develop theories of why these changes are occurring. These opportunities will be provided in the math, science, and during large group. This week we will also continue meeting in our small groups.

Science (Including the Nook)
•Materials: a story board with different clothing and picture that depict of types of weather, and nest building materials. Pictures of different types of homes and habitats. In the Nook: rocks, branches, wood, fabric, stuffed animals, and a cardboard tree.
•Rationale: to support children's curiosity of the natural world around us and to encourage the investigation of nature. We will continue to observe and discuss the ideas of homes and what various types of homes animals live in. Nest building materials will still be out for the children to explore different ways of constructing nests. There will be signs and several materials to help the children create the nests. The children will be encouraged to look at the weather story board to continue building awareness of the change in weather that is happening outside. In the Nook, a woodland scene has been created to enrich the children's interest in animal homes and habitats. Last week the children discussed what types of animals could live in trees. To extend the tree habitat conservation, we will add a cardboard cutout tree for the children to explore different parts of trees animals might choose to inhabit.
•Skills: observation, scientific investigation and inquiry, outdoor/indoor connection, hypothesizing, and developing curiosity.

Dramatic Play
•Materials: housekeeping materials (furniture, dishes, food) and dress-up fabric and shoes; one cave is set as bedrooms with "beds," baby dolls, and baby-care items, another cave contains stuffed dogs and cats and animal care items, pictures of different types of kitchens (including some from children's homes)
•Rationale: to allow for the expression of family life and to encourage social interaction while playing with familiar props. To create home-school connections. To help foster relationships between peers as they cooperate and play together in shared story-lines. Cooking, caring for babies and pets, and other types of imagination continue to be a strong component of the dramatic play area.
•Skills: creative role-play, peer interaction, social problem solving, symbolic representation

Language and Literacy
•Materials: the writing center has a variety of writing utensils, paper, envelopes, staplers, tape, scissors, computer/word processing program.
•Rationale: to foster experiences with the alphabetic principle. This week we will continue to give the children opportunities to help the children dictate their stories and letters.
•Skills: fine motor, pre-writing, letter recognition, symbolic reasoning.
•Materials: the library has books that might be familiar to the children on topics about homes, weather, school, families, and friendship.
•Rationale: to encourage cozy reading time with friends and teachers. New books will be added to the library to provide information on new topics of weather and homes. Parent volunteers will begin visiting the reading couch this week to provide even more opportunities for listening to new and favorite stories.
•Skills: receptive language, phonological awareness, early literacy, listening, community building

Blocks
•Materials: large hollow blocks, small multi-shaped unit blocks, wooden doll house, furniture, peg people, wooden cars, pictures of house items, large pieces of cloth, castle blocks/small wooden figurines, carpet squares, and books related to homes and buildings.
•Rationale: to support children's creativity and problem solving skills while they continue to work together and use symbolic reasoning. This week we will be continuing to support the children's interest in building houses by providing more materials. Materials such as larger pieces of cloth and images that depict household items. We will also provide carpet squares to extend the discussions of what materials are need to build homes. The children have expressed interest in building castles during the previous weeks. Smaller castle blocks and figurines will also be added to the area to enrich the castle play.
•Skills: large motor development, expressive creation, symbolic representation, cooperative play, problem solving, mathematical, using books as resources.

Expressive Arts (paint, collage, clay)
•Materials: primary colors (blue, red, yellow) at the easel, large paper for painting, materials for collage, (boxes, fabric, bottle tops, extra parts) clay, plastic woodland animals, markers, crayons, colored pencils, scissors.
•Rationale: to explore with hands and tools to promote sensory awareness, increase fine motor skills, and foster social relationships as children observe and work together with their peers. Some of the children have been experimenting using their hands and fingers to paint at the art easel. Larger paper will be added to the area so the children will have more space to paint with large body movements. The interest in animal homes has been deeply explored at the clay table. This week we are adding small woodland animals to enrich the animal homes building. Small boxes continue to be available for home making at the collage table.
•Skills: fine motor development (strength, coordination), creativity, symbolic representation, sensory input, color recognition, indoor/outdoor connection, home/school connection.

Sensory (water table)
• Materials: water, large containers, measuring cups, soap, and funnels.
• Rationale: We will continue providing the water table where the children can begin to explore the physical properties of water by scooping, dumping, pouring, and filling.
• Skills: large-/fine-motor strength, eye-to-hand coordination, math conceptions related to counting/measurement/comparing-contrasting, cause-and-effect, fostering social relationships, sensory exploration, creative expression

Math and Manipulatives
•Materials: weather and building puzzles, seriation stacker, cookie shape matching game, weather bingo, magnet brick building, counting pegs and numbered peg-boards, Things in My Home Game.
•Rationale: to encourage children to work with open-ended materials where they can develop more complex skills and work together in a group. This week we will also add a magnet house building game to provide an open ended activity where the children can explore constructing a house using smaller materials. Also a weather bingo game will be introduced to encourage the children to discuss various weather conditions with their peers and continue to focus on matching and grouping skills.
•Skills: color recognition, shape recognition, seriating (i.e. stacking highest to lowest), one-to-one correspondence, counting, fine motor development, geometrical awareness, hand-eye coordination, part-whole relationships, matching and sorting.

Large Motor
• Materials: Indoors- A-Frame ladder with balance beam, monkey bars, slide, donut, wooden boat, large balance beams, and wall ladder.
• Rationale: To support social interaction and cooperation, support upper and lower body muscle and strength endurance, and work on skills such as balance, jumping, climbing, and coordination,
• Skills: Dynamic balance (jumping, landing), Static Balance (standing, standing on one foot, twisting, stretching, bending), climbing up and down, physical fitness, propulsion skills, spatial awareness, turn taking, and social awareness.

Special Announcements:
*Sara will be lead teaching this week.
*Small groups will meet for the second week: Be sure to check out the documentation for the Music, Weather, and Homes small groups.

Snacks This Week:
Monday: Rice Cakes and Milk
Wednesday: Sunbutter and graham cracker sandwiches
Thursday: Toast and Pumpkin butter

Overview: As we enter the fourth week of school, our classroom is abuzz with activity as the children delve more deeply into a variety of interests and topics. Castle and home building continues to appear in many areas of the classroom, including the clay table and the block area. People and animal homes have captured the children's imagination, aided by the real nests present in the Science area, and the woodland animals figurines available in the nook area. For this reason, a "homes" curriculum is implemented this week, emphasizing our own homes and the similarities and differences between the places people dwell. Additionally, a curricular exploration of "weather" also begins this week, just in time for the natural weather changes occurring all around us. This will focus mainly around the weather the children see and experience each day, and how it impacts our lives (i.e. dressing differently, staying indoors, using special gear, etc). This exploration will be highlighted in our Science area as well as during our large group discussions. This week is sure to be filled with curiosity and exploration!

Science
•Materials: cockroaches, beetles, mealworms, rats, magnifying glasses, a story board with different clothing and picture that depict of types of weather, variety of birds' nests. Pictures of different types of homes and habitats.

•Rationale: to support children's curiosity of the natural world around us and to encourage the investigation of nature. We will continue to observe and discuss the ideas of homes and what various types of homes animals live in. The story board was added to the area to help build awareness of the change in weather that is starting to happen. The story board will also to help create awareness of the various types of clothing people use during certain weather conditions.
•Skills: observation, scientific investigation and inquiry, outdoor/indoor connection, hypothesizing, developing curiosity.

Dramatic Play
•Materials: housekeeping materials (furniture, dishes, food) and dress-up fabric and shoes; one cave is set as bedrooms with "beds," baby dolls, and baby-care items, another cave contains stuffed dogs and cats and animal care items, pictures of different types of kitchens (including some from children's homes)

•Rationale: to allow for the expression of family life and to encourage social interaction while playing with familiar props. To create home-school connections. To help foster relationships between peers as they cooperate and play together in shared story-lines. New baby clothes will be added to the area to help the children recognize how the weather can affect not only their environment outside but also daily choices they make when choosing what clothes to wear.
•Skills: creative role-play, peer interaction, social problem solving, symbolic representation

Language and Literacy
•Materials: the writing center has a variety of writing utensils, paper, envelopes, staplers, tape, scissors, computer/word processing program.
•Rationale: to foster experiences with the alphabetic principle. This week we will continue to give the children opportunities to help the children dictate their stories and letters.
•Skills: fine motor, pre-writing, letter recognition, symbolic reasoning.
•Materials: the library has books that might be familiar to the children on topics about homes, weather, school, families, and friendship.
•Rationale: to encourage cozy reading time with friends and teachers. New books will be added to the library to provide information on new topics of weather and homes.
•Skills: receptive language, phonological awareness, early literacy, listening, community building

Blocks
•Materials: large hollow blocks, small multi-shaped unit blocks, wooden doll house, furniture, peg people, wooden cars, pictures of house items, large pieces of cloth, books related to homes and buildings.
•Rationale: to support children's creativity and problem solving skills, to develop mathematical skills/awareness of geometry, and to allow for opportunities for social interaction as children collaborate and build together, to support imaginative and creative exploration. This week we will be continuing to support the children's interest in building houses by providing more materials. Materials such as: larger pieces of cloth and image that depict household items.
•Skills: large motor development, expressive creation, symbolic representation, cooperative play, problem solving, mathematical, using books as resources.

Expressive Arts (paint, collage, clay)
•Materials: primary colors (blue, red, yellow) at the easel, materials for collage, (boxes, fabric, bottle tops, extra parts) clay, markers, crayons, colored pencils, scissors
•Rationale: to explore with hands and tools to promote sensory awareness, increase fine motor skills, and foster social relationships as children observe and work together with their peers. To offer materials that can extend children's interests in building nests and other animal homes. Small boxes are added to expand home making at the collage table-extending home building that has occurred in other areas of the classroom (sand table, blocks, clay)
•Skills: fine motor development (strength, coordination), creativity, symbolic representation, sensory input, color recognition, indoor/outdoor connection, home/school connection.

Sensory (sand, scoops, funnels, containers)
•Materials: sand with shovels, funnels, and miscellaneous containers for scooping and pouring, "castle" molds, seashells, popsicle sticks and paper.
•Rationale: to cooperatively work together while exploring a familiar sensory experience. To extend imaginative play involving castle building, sticks are added this week to encourage flag making, a strong interest expressed by several children.
•Skills: large and fine motor development, hand-eye coordination, knowledge of conservation, cooperative play, symbolic representation, observation skills, social relationships building, sharing materials, cause and effect relationships.

Math and Manipulatives
•Materials: weather and building puzzles, seriation stacker, cookie shape matching game, wooden building set, geometrical shapes peg board, counting pegs and numbered peg-boards, Things in My Home Game.
•Rationale: to encourage children to work with open-ended materials where they can develop more complex skills and work together in a group. New puzzles and a new game have been added to this area. The game focuses on different rooms and items in a home, and allows children to explore differences and similarities between homes while practicing sorting and matching skills.
•Skills: color recognition, shape recognition, seriating (i.e. stacking highest to lowest), one-to-one correspondence, counting, fine motor development, geometrical awareness, hand-eye coordination, part-whole relationships, matching and sorting.

Large Motor
• Materials: Indoors- A-Frame ladder with balance beam, monkey bars, slide, donut, wooden boat, large balance beams, and wall ladder.
• Rationale: To support social interaction and cooperation, support upper and lower body muscle and strength endurance, and work on skills such as balance, jumping, climbing, and coordination,
• Skills: Dynamic balance (jumping, landing), Static Balance (standing, standing on one foot, twisting, stretching, bending), climbing up and down, physical fitness, propulsion skills, spatial awareness, turn taking, and social awareness.

Special Announcements:
* Our student teachers (Sara and Bethany) will begin taking more responsibility in our classroom this week, including leading large group on Wednesday and Thursday.
*1st PAC of the school year will be this Monday, from 7-8:30pm.

Snacks This Week:

Monday: Carrots and Pretzels
Wednesday: Cooking Project (Lettuce wraps)
Thursday: Fall Harvest Granola Bars

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

Expressive Arts (paint, collage, clay)

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

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

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

Sensory (sand, scoops, funnels, containers)

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

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

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

Science

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

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

Dramatic Play

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

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

Math and Manipulatives

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

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

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

Language and Literacy

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

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

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

Blocks

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

•Rationale: to support children's creativity and problem solving skills, to develop mathematical skills/awareness of geometry, and to allow for opportunities for social interaction as children collaborate and build together, to support imaginative and creative exploration. To provide a place to explore the creation of homes while offering sources of information to inform home building.

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

Large Motor

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

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

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

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

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

Special Interest

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

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

Snack

Tuesday: Raisins and Pretzels

Wednesday: Pumpkin Soup

Thursday: Toasted Pumpkin Seeds and Apple Slices

Overview: As the school year begins, we will offer simple and familiar materials to encourage exploration of the classroom environment as well as facilitate connections between individuals. The teachers will focus on helping the children build relationships with one another and establish new friendships. We also arranged the classroom to support the exploration of our overarching theme of homes and habitats. This topic will hopefully provide the children with an opportunity to delve deeply into a meaningful topic and extend their thinking as the year unfolds. Our classroom is arranged to stimulate investigating as well as promote a sense of familiarity, comfort, and joy.


Expressive Arts (paint, collage, clay)

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

•Rationale: to explore with hands and tools to promote sensory awareness, increase fine motor skills, and foster social relationships as children observe and work together with their peers

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


Sensory (sand, scoops, funnels, containers)

•Materials: sand with shovels, funnels, and miscellaneous containers for scooping and pouring

•Rationale: to cooperatively work together while exploring a familiar sensory experience

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

Science

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

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

Dramatic Play

•Materials: housekeeping materials (furniture, dishes, food) and dress-up fabric and shoes; one cave is set as bedrooms with "beds," baby dolls, and baby-care items, another cave contains stuffed dogs and cats and animal care items.
•Rationale: to allow for the expression of family life and to encourage social interaction while playing with familiar props

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


Math and Manipulatives

•Materials: puzzles, seriation stacker, chain links, cookie shape matching game, wooden building set, geometrical shapes peg board.

•Rationale: to encourage children to work with open-ended materials where they can develop more complex skills and work together in a group

•Skills: color recognition, shape recognition, seriating (i.e. stacking highest to lowest), one-to-one correspondence, counting, fine motor development, geometrical awareness.

Language and Literacy

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

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

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


Blocks

•Materials: large hollow blocks, small multi-shaped unit blocks, wooden doll house, furniture, peg people, wooden cars

•Rationale: to support children's creativity and problem solving skills, to develop mathematical skills/awareness of geometry, and to allow for opportunities for social interaction as children collaborate and build together, to support imaginative and creative exploration.

•Skills: large motor development, expressive creation, symbolic representation, cooperative play, problem solving, mathematical


Large Motor

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

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

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

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

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


Special Interest

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


Snack


Wednesday: School-made graham crackers and apple slices

Thursday: School-made graham crackers and apple slices