Reggio Project: San Jose Sharks!

The San Jose Sharks have emerged as a project for Purple Room to investigate. Children, parents and teachers have been discussing the season start and if you see their calendar it has a hockey stick on the day it started. The idea came from a couple of the children who have been into hockey for a long time, but the others in the class have really gotten involved recently!

This week they made a table-top hockey game and have made a matching game with all the players and their numbers.








Besides putting all the players' names and numbers they have decided to educate us on the scores of games...:)
The goal of the board will also to be a great matching game for children.
Yesterday few kids brought their goalie helmets for sharing. Let's see where this project takes us!
A few other picture from this week and last week ..




Children did body tracing; ask them about it. They have also started a "how tall " chart.












Bowling.....




Making igloos by gluing with brushes..




Parachute play..
Enjoy this beautiful sunny day, and don't forget to ask them about their fire drill.
Richa

Fine Motor Skills

Fine motor skills need to be developed for all our children. Working with floam, playdough, sand, clay and other sensorial materials is so important for our kids to develop their muscle strength and dexterity. As we learn to roll, stretch, cut, shape into balls and long forms, we are developing our hand arches, wrist extensions, finger/thumb opposition, etc.






These fine motor abilities make writing, cutting, gluing, lacing and eating easy. However, each child has their own ability level, some of them are still deciding which hand to use and some are cutting with their hands upside-down and not with a dominant hand. Multiple-age classroom are great because the older kids are modeling cutting and writing skills for our kids.






Opening bottle tops and gluing require muscles to be strong and developed. Using the glue brush also hones fine motor control.



Lacing is again a fine motor skill our kids are developing. They are all on a different developmental level. For some, just getting the string through the hole is a triumph. For others, the activity becomes a chance to practice up-down patterning, planning ahead to reach all the holes before running out of string, or making a deliberate design with the string.



It is amazing to see the hand control for painting and counting, even though J.'s left hand is busy holding a drill. :)

There is no doubt that writing is a developmental process and each child is at his own stage.
However three basic things before kindergarten that they should develop:
1. Palmar arching (ability to cup their hands)
2. Using the index finger and thumb to hold an item, using ring and middle fingers to stabilize the hand, especially while writing.
3. Making a round shape with thumb and index finger (an open web space).


Here, a young 2-year-old is being mentored by a 4-year-old.



Brothers dress alike and look alike but are very different developmentally.






Writing with pipe cleaners, yeah! I can do it.

Some other pictures from last week and this week


























All these activities have a developmental and school-readiness purpose, but are always based on the children's interests. If you ask them what they are doing, they won't say, "Improving my fine motor skills." They'll tell you they're making a picture of their family, building a dinosaur, or playing with gak. Learning through play -- that's Reggio in action! Enjoy!

January 15th , Purple room

Last two weeks in the Purple Room....

Writing is a developmental task-- learning to hold the pencil, making marks on paper, going from left to right and top to bottom are all tasks which we do unconsciously, but which our children have to learn before they can write. Our children are still experimenting  how much pressure to apply with their fingers when writing with crayons, pencils , markers, glue or paint.  They are also discovering that different pressure is needed when writing on copy paper, construction paper, cardboard and even fabric. They learn these skills by experimenting, instruction and watching their peers and teachers role model.

Wikki Stix (flexible colored wax sticks) were hard for children to curve and fit to letter shapes. They had to learn to use sometimes more than one stick to make a letter. Chenille wires (pipe cleaners) were a little bit easier for them to curve, however sticking them on paper was difficult until someone pulled out the clear tape. Besides fine motor skills, children also problem solve when learning to write. All the play dough, sand and clay work, cutting, painting, and other art and sensory activities have helped our kids strengthen their fine motor skills.

Math concepts these past two weeks have involved special work with pattern blocks. The children are learning to classify and sort the colors and shapes, and each child is working on their own developmental level. Some are working with one color, some are sorting colors and some are making intricate designs with different shapes. 

The Montessori size cylinders also intrigued the children and they all wanted to try them. This is a great material to understand size discrimination and estimating. Counting with dots was a big satisfaction too.

Thank you parents for volunteering:)

Enjoy!! Don’t forget to check Flickr, where you'll find loads and loads of pictures!

Teacher Richa's first blog with lots of help from Jennifer........

Last week in the Purple Room, the kids were counting at the math station and practicing one-to-one correspondence. It is a foundational skill on which other math skills will be building later. It is a skill that needs repetition and abstract thinking, since it is not just rote learning and recitation.

They each had a mat with numbers from 1 to 9 and were to count out the counters to put on each square. Some of the older kids are starting to get that concept and the younger ones are just getting ready. They have to still learn that 2 is less than 5 and should have fewer counters than 5. The three children at the table in this picture are at very different developmental stages...

Learning to spell………..

In this picture, A. is  learning to spell, trying to spell out her sister's name. She started by sounding out the name and got the first 3 letters of her sister’s name…Yeah!

At the same time, some of the younger kids are exploring these letters too. They weren't ready to sound out words. Instead, they linked letters together and asked the teachers to read the made-up word. This, too, is a step in learning basic phonics and word-building concepts.

Reggio-inspired programs incorporate exploration everywhere, even into phonics and learning to spell. Hooray for Purple room :)

- Teacher Richa