Moments in Learning

Environment Planning October 22

We hope you enjoy reading about our new plans!

Today some of the children visited the table with the photos of the yard and drew on them.  Some even cut the photos.  The teacher asked them questions such as:

“What do you like to do in the yard?”

“Would you like to draw something that you want to put in the yard?”

“Do you have ideas for our yard space?”

The children colored on the photos and some even cut the photos.  Did the children cut the photos to isolate one part of the photo or did they just want to practice cutting?  Did the children add color to the photos because they were in black and white?  If the photos were in color and the drawing tools were black, would they focus more on adding specific elements to the yard photos?

Here are some photos of their drawings:

As a part of our structures project, the children have been exploring our outdoor yard space.  We are going to invite them to think about the yard and draw what they would like to see in the yard over pictures we provided for them.  There are four photos: one for each section of the yard.  We have a play structure sand area, a grass area, a large sand/water area, and a concrete patio area.  We cannot wait to see what the children design.

What would you like to see in the yard for the children?  What did you enjoy doing in your childhood?  Do children still enjoy the same experiences that you did?

Dear Families:

We have been making some observations about our daily routine in the classroom and are ready to try something new.  After observing the children and the timing of things in our classroom, we are planning to start the following:

8:45am: We all gather for a morning song and determine where to play (indoors or outdoors)

9:00am-10:00am: Indoor/outdoor free choice, small group opportunities, clean/care for environment

10:00am-10:25am: Snack

10:25am-10:40am: Large group gathering/meeting (possibly a book or project-related work)

10:40am-11:30am: Indoor/outdoor free choice, small group opportunities, clean/care for environment

11:00am: Small group in the art studio

11:30am-11:45am: Music/movement large group

We do not want to fully change the schedule until we try this out to see how it goes.  We noticed that the children at the end of the day are more focused and ready for a large group gathering.  Therefore, if we keep our morning meeting short (and right at 8:45 to maximize our main programming time), we can have a more extensive gathering mid-day.

We can’t wait to see how this goes!  Let us know if you have any questions!

-The Teachers of Room 4-

Teacher Planning Document 10-21-13

Here are our plans for next week.  We are focusing on planning parties for October 29 and 30 for our classroom.  We want to have the children come up with decoration ideas and the such.

We will also be learning a bit about police officers so that we can have some questions to ask the police officer when he visits on the 28th and 29th.

The dinosaur song and dinosaur races will be fun, too!  There are a lot of new and exciting things happening in our classroom.