The year is coming to an end soon with the start of winter and Christmas coming, and our classroom continues to enjoy every moment of it! We have learned to work hard through every moment, be there for each other, be independent, be thoughtful, and be giving. Their giving nature has earned them so many thank-you's making then feel so proud, and now they agree how magical the word 'thank-you' is!
We have been very involved with our construction building process and have been putting a lot of thought as to the structures and buildings we see around us. They have been constantly talking about their ideas and we thought to capture them as a rough drawn model first.
Blue prints...
We introduced them to cardboard boxes and volcanic cones, and brainstormed ideas of how they could put their blue print ideas into action!
Keeping their ideas in mind, they have been involved in executing them everyday.
Some of the buildings they designed are as follows...
Skyline...
Drawing doors, windows and people on boxes...
Making a city...
It was neat to see them come up with a pattern in building with the rectangular boxes. They were so good with balancing and even walking carefully around the area to prevent it from falling down...they also added bubble wrap pretending it be be a ladder that could help during fire rescues!
A closer look of the intricate pattern they made their building with...two boxes this way and two boxes the other way..
S wore her handy dandy Home Depot apron that is used for wood working and said "The stuff that I need for building is inside. There are people who will live in this building!"
S Building a cone castle with some help and direction and learning a lot about balance, falls, holding it from the top to place it the right way, and rebuilding...
Other building activities...
Building with castle blocks where some friends tried hard to follow the instruction manual...while some just put their thoughts together and made their own versions...
Building 3-D structures with foam and toothpicks...
Some used toothpicks to connect the foam circles at each end and continued to build that way....while some used more toothpicks.. great to see such unique styles!
L said she was building a home...
D was trying to connect as much as she could...
L making a vehicle for Spider-Man :)
While K used more toothpicks as birthday candles for her white snowy frosted cake!!
Turkeys!
Thank you, families, for working as a team to put the turkey project together and turning it in just in time for us to share about it...
Children shared about the three things they are thankful for and for some who could not read, promptly asked help from teachers. It was great to hear and read about their ideas of being thankful!
S proudly sharing about her family turkey project experience...
We had a fun conversation soon after. They were all talking about the turkey feast and how they will get the turkey from the store and cook it and more. Here I asked them a question:
"Oh, what if turkeys were not sold at stores and we had to catch the turkey and later we had to cook it?"
Some ideas from friends - (it is great to see how they generalize their catching scheme with catching a turkey...) "You can put glue on your finger and catch it cause it will get glued because glue is strong", "You can catch it with a net or throw a big blanket over it." One friend said, "Take the picture, that way you will catch it in the picture, and cook the picture hahahahahahah!", or "You can catch it with a bait on a fishing rod."
Aren't those some cool and practical ideas?
Other weekly activities...
S working with numbers slowly and carefully...
L challenging herself with counting as well clustering them by color...
Practicing writing numbers and letters with sensory - shaving cream!
Getting prepared for winter!
Making winter scenes out of transparent CD covers...
Working toward a winter scene on a canvas...painting the base white...
Adding blue sky...
We did some Picasso style art where we worked and practiced our lines and after a few trial and errors, decided that we were ready to work on the final card stock now!
They did an awesome job remembering their lines, showing some amazing fine motor skills. Later they used pastel colors to fill their different geometrical shapes that were formed by their drawn lines.
Magnetic exploration on the galvanized sheet...
Making Native American and Pilgrim puppets!
Letter T...
We made letter T collages using tapes and toilet paper ...
D choosing the tapes she was planning to collage her letter T with...
D ended up making a face and golden hair with the open ended materials provided!
A made a symmetrical collage...
Making 'T'ortillas!!!
Thank you to S' mom for offering her precious time to teach our children how to make tortillas from scratch using great tools. In the end, the children were so happy and said that they look just the same as the grocery store ones :)
In the end, we found just the right book to explain what we did during our tortilla making process. All the children were so intrigued!
Almost every day that week we had an early morning 'T'angerine party where we put all our five senses to work!
Overall, every day is a day of surprises, a day of being thankful and blessed for what we have, and a day to live at its best!
Keep seeing you'll around!
Hugs,
Teacher Rashida
