It's A Team Effort!

Purple Room's interest in the San Jose Sharks hockey team has easily transitioned into an interest in Sports in general. After the Niners Superbowl loss on Sunday, children had entered school the next day communicating to one another how the Niners had lost the Superbowl. They even had showed empathy toward them losing by apologizing to both their peers and Teachers about it.
We discussed the variety of sports that people play and pointed out the similarities and differences between the sports. The word Teamwork had been brought to our attention. The class talked about how sports players use teamwork in their games. Teamwork could be applied to our classroom, such as how we work together during clean up time just like players work together to have a successful game. The Purple Room is a team. We have to help each other, respect everyone, look out for one another in order to have a successful day.



Children even brought in shares to help explain the point and importance of sports gear for players.



Soccer games have been a huge hit during our outside play. Rules have even been communicated and established between the children before beginning games.

Besides our exciting exploration of sports, Purple Room has also had activities focused on our letter of the week.












For instance, we made Jell-O for the letter "J" week. We got to try the flavors orange and apple. We even put some fresh peaches in the mix!







We got to celebrate our friends 4th birthday with pizza and juice! What a party!



We were very creative with our classroom toys by discovering new ways to use them. Such as making a comfy chair for our pig friend....


...or creating a drum set using our play kitchen pots and pans.






We even got to enjoy our yummy snacks on a nice sunny day. It was a great way to end a day!

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

Reggio Emilia at Creative Minds

Dear Parents,
As the new year approaches and we look ahead to another group of children graduating and going to kindergarten this summer, a recent topic of conversation among our preschool teachers has been: How can we make sure that our Reggio curriculum is appropriate for both younger preschoolers and older children preparing for kindergarten? How can we make sure our play-based program is preparing them for academic kindergarten? Also, how can we communicate the significance of what our children are doing when there sometimes is no tangible "take-home" from an activity?




In talking to kindergarten teachers, we've found that the most important "kindergarten prep" is actually the social-emotional development at least as much as the academic readiness. Our children really shine in this area. Our program places a strong emphasis on respect, community, and communication, all of which help build the self-esteem and confidence in relationships that facilitate future learning both in and out of school. In addition, our activities throughout the day are designed to incorporate letter awareness, writing skills, math concepts, and other academic elements, all in a play-based context. 3- and 4-year-old children learn best when they can integrate multiple sensory experiences, move their bodies, get creative, and work together. Worksheets and rigid academics can come later.




One important thing to keep in mind is that a Reggio program is focused on "process over product," meaning that children's experiences are more important to us than the tangible end result. An art project may not come out looking like anything recognizable, but it doesn't have to. The child had the fine motor experience of drawing, or of sculpting the clay, and had the opportunity to express themselves through that medium. A young child's writing may not be legible yet, but they are learning to hold a pencil, to write from left to right, to see writing as a way of recording language and ideas, etc. It will become more legible as they get older and have more practice.




The other important thing to remember about a Reggio program is that play-based learning is what's most appropriate for children at this age. A 4-year-old is not half of an 8-year-old. They are a 4-year-old. Their brain is actually different than that of an older child, so the best way to help them learn is to gear our expectations and activities to their current level, not just give them a watered-down version of what we would expect of an older child. The children who have come up through our program show the value of this play-based learning. For example, just last week, Teacher Aimee was reading a book called "I Like Me!" to the class at circle time. Later in the day, we saw three children reading it fluently to each other. These three children were all 4-year-olds who have been in our program for some time. The "learn-by-doing" approach of the Reggio program planted the seeds, and when they were ready, they took off on their own. The same pattern can be seen in the children's ever-blossoming skills in math, construction, art, fine motor, language, and social interactions.




There are many approaches to early childhood education. We are passionate about the Reggio philosophy because of its tremendous power to help the whole child develop in a vibrant, balanced way according to their own needs and interests. Through the Reggio emphasis on respect, creativity, and child-directed learning, our goal is for our children to enter kindergarten feeling excited to learn and confident in their abilities. This positive approach to school will serve them throughout their lives. Thank you for being a part of our community!