Peace to You

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. I'm thrilled that the holidays will continue for another week or so with lots of time to continue creating memories. While all the hustle and bustle is fun and exciting, remember that young children are easily overwhelmed - even by fun and excitement. They will need time and space to process all of their new experiences into strong memories. Try to find time for "islands of calm" for children (and for Mommies and Daddies, too). Believe it or not, I'm taking my own advice - our calendar is remarkably clear for the next week.

Our cup runneth over with blessings at the O'Connor house. Wishing the same to you...

From Us To You

Merry, Merry Christmas!

Disappearing Peppermints

Clever Mrs. Magee suggested a festive science experiment - Disappearing Peppermints. Each child put a peppermint in a little cup and Mrs. O'Connor poured water on each one. Right away, the water turned pink. In just a few minutes, little fizzy bubbles began to rise from the peppermints. We left them in the window and when we returned from the playground - surprise! The peppermints had disappeared or "vidolved" as one child said. We were left with red water that smelled soooo good. I think everybody tasted it, too. It was Peppermint Water!

Any scientist knows that it is important to repeat experiments to confirm results. Try it at home!

A Visit to the Church

Today, we had a special visit to the church to hear the nativity story. Mrs. Thompson, who has been part of our school family for many years, likes to come retell this special story. She sat in front of the creche and asked the children questions about the story. She was delighted that the Bunnies knew so much already! The children loved watching Mrs. Thompson place a baby doll in a special manger as she talked about Mary and Joseph and their new little baby boy.

Sorting

Math principles are always around us. For example, last week, the children had fun playing with lots of little dinosaurs. Mrs. Magee told the children that in order for the dinosaurs to "fight" each other, they needed to be separated into groups by color so each person could have one color group.

Here's how it all worked out. Notice the piles of dinosaurs and some extras that didn't seem to fit any other group. Guess what? It's division with remainders!

Now I must confess, this was completely spontaneous on Mrs. Magee's part. She suggested this sorting activity simply to get a sad child engaged in play. Nowhere in my lesson plans did it say that we would work on division. This fantastic opportunity was just a whim!

We plan for many math concepts, but more importantly, we capitalize on the teachable moments.

The Warming Tray Part 2

The warming tray reappeared this week - this time over at the woodworking table. The Bunnies had a great time making ornaments.

The children who make their way over to this activity tend to make MANY ornaments - not just one. I know it sounds odd, but the melty crayons are very soothing.

We've Reached a Good Place

We've officially reached the good place - the place in time within a class when five children can play contently with the same toys, and not even glance up when the adult walks by (with a camera). It's a good place. I'm glad we're here.

You Just Never Know

We've played with this cute park mat many times in the classroom. It's perfect for driving cars and creating zoos. The kids request it!

This week, it turned into a whole other thing!

That's right! Suddenly Mrs. Magee and I noticed a huge blob/parachute on the floor accompanied by wild giggling.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - Three year olds are hilarious!

Gingerbread Playdough

Gingerbread playdough is one of my favorite things in our classroom at Christmas time. It is made by simply adding cinnamon to the flour and salt before mixing in the water when you make your own playdough. The dough turns brown, and it smells sooooo good! As you can see in this photo, the children don't really roll out the dough and press the cookie cutters into it (in spite of the presence of rollers). They do just the opposite! They smash the dough into a cookie cutter and hope for the best. Just like in the picture we get some very thick cookies. Love it!

Looking for a Great Gift?

The View-Master is a hit in our class! This toy has been around for decades and I know why.

Everybody loves it!

Hidden Surprise

Surprise! Our car loving Bunny isn't limited to yellow paper and sparkly pens after all.

Celebrating Christmas

We spent the first week of advent really getting into the spirit of Christmas. We have lots of bunnies who like to draw, so paper and crayons were available to draw our class Christmas tree. We learned the important players in the first Christmas story and had many reenactments with the Fisher Price nativity set. We read Jesus, Me and my Christmas Tree, decorated our tree according to the book, and then we sang and danced! (lyrics below) We also made Christmas cards with stars and tree shapes. More fun to come!!

(to the tune of London Bridges)
Let's clap around the Christmas tree, Christmas tree, Christmas tree.
Let's clap around the Christmas tree; Come along and clap with me.

Then substitute "clap" with other actions such as stomp, march, fly, wave, kick, hop...

Growing by the Minute

Want to see something amazing?

We have a boy in our class who loves (LOVES!) cars. He plays with our millions of cars in the classroom. He brings them from home in his pockets. Fortunately for us, he also draws them. And draws them. And draws them. Always on yellow paper and always with a sparkly pen.

This first photo is from late September. When we asked him to tell us about his drawing, he told us it was a car. That's how we initially learned of love of cars. Of course in this drawing it isn't obvious to the eyes of an adult what he intended. We took his word for it.

The second photo is from early October. It's clearly a car. It has wheels, a roof, exhaust, and he drew it in profile. Cool!
The third photo is from mid November. Now we have two vehicles and terrain. He has differentiated the features of the trucks - one being "big" and one being "old".

This last photo is from this week - early December. Not only is there a detailed car with headlights, but there's a witch driving the car!! He wrote some letter B's for the first letter of his name. (The alphabet on the side is a model written by an adult.) He's progressed from simple shapes to representation drawings in composition in just three months.

Absolutely amazing!!!

I can't wait for him to sit down with his yellow paper and sparkly pens in January.

Truthfully all of the children make progress just like this darling Bunny, but they don't always demonstrate it on paper for us to admire and document. He's just happened to make it very easy for us all to see how much a three year old changes over time.

Advent

Happy New Year! Today is the beginning of the liturgical year in the church. Advent is the first season. At school we will talk about advent and the story of Jesus' birth. This week, we're going to read a book called Jesus, Me and My Christmas Tree. It explains what we put on our Christmas trees and what each item symbolizes. We're going to decorate a small tree in class to act out the book. It's simple and delightful!

I'm Thankful For...

...the privilege of watching children grow, learn, share, create and play. Happy Thanksgiving!

Hello, Veggie Man

How cute is this?!

One of the ways we explored the Stone Soup story was to paint with vegetables - corn, green beans, a potato, and celery. We even had little stones the children could glue on the gray paper pots. The children really enjoyed this activity, but Aaron particularly had a big smile of pride when he finished his art. He made us smile, too!

The Sincerest Form of Flattery

"Look, I can take pictures just like you, Mrs. O'Connor."

Is this a sign? Perhaps I photograph the children a little too much - but frankly, I didn't know that was possible. They are so adorable that I just can't help it!

Thirsty?

We observed some thirsty celery in a very simple science experiment.

We put concentrated water colors in two different containers - one red and one blue. We added the celery and closed the tops. I put the experiment on the science table in the window and we noticed small changes in very little time.
By Tuesday morning, we noticed big changes. Check out our blue celery!

Delicious!

There was lots of food preparation going on today at the playdough table - everything from cookies to turkey. It must be all that talking we've done about Thanksgiving. Audrey and I made pies. Yum!

Stone Soup

Today we became chefs. On the menu: Stone Soup.

Last week we read the story Stone Soup. Today we assembled the ingredients. Just like in the story, each person brought an ingredient from home to share. Mrs. Magee found a giant pot for us!

The children took turns putting their ingredients in the pot. Our actions were "opening", "pouring" and "stirring".

The girls discovered that it is really hard to stir and the spoon was very noisy in the pot when there were only veggies. They didn't like the scratchy squeaky sound (and neither did Mrs. O'Connor). Gabriel added broth and everything was better.

There was much stirring - oh so much stirring!

Then even MORE veggies went in the pot. We could already see and smell that this was going to be super soup!

And, oh yes, we put a stone in it. It's the main ingredient after all.

No worries, Parents. William scrubbed it with soap and water before he put it in the pot. It was the cleanest stone ever.

The very best part of all was that EACH CHILD tried the soup and all but one LIKED it! That's got to be a record. Mrs. Magee and Mrs. O'Connor were so pleased and proud.

Just like the book teaches - sharing what we have really does make us happy inside!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Using Our Senses

The sensory table is a VERY popular spot in the room. Because it is a small area and because we tend to have items that can easily travel beyond the boundaries, we limit this fun place to just two Bunnies at a time. Believe me, there is always a Bunny waiting for a turn.

Sometimes the children explore science concepts like sink and float.

Sometimes they just rub their hands in odd things like hundreds of plastic caps.Sometimes they handle food items like dried beans and rice and use cups or cooking utensils to fill and empty containers. (These two Bunnies weren't smiling for the camera, but I promise they were having fun!)

Fall Phone Conferences

This week I will begin calling families for a brief phone conference. The purpose is to simply touch base. I'll share some class observations and parents can share observations from home and/or ask questions. It's a great way to get a glimpse of how a child is managing life in a large group!

Woodworking

Woodworking is so much more than hammering and sawing. For preschoolers, it is an everchanging experience with materials that may be unfamiliar.

Woodworking is parts and pieces that can become a whole...
It is transporting items from one place to another using a tool...

It is taking ordinary objects typically only found in the hands of adults and creating something new - together.

Giving children woodworking experiences allows them to sample the work usually done by grown-ups. They LOVE it!

I Love Books!

One last reminder for the school book fair on Monday evening. I hear there are some fabulous silent auction baskets - some early Christmas shopping perhaps. See you there!

The Old Fashioned Way

Sometimes parents wonder what their children are learning while they are at school. When children bring home commercially produced worksheets, it's easy to tell what concepts they are being taught at school. At School for Little Children, we firmly believe that young children learn best through their senses and that if we give them experiences they will learn what they need to know. Worksheets do not provide experiences or information through the senses. Instead we give the children TIME and MATERIALS. They are the creators of their own experiences.

Imagine. If we had given the children worksheets, would we have gotten this...
or this??

We do it the old fashioned way. Children learn through play.

Election Day

Can 3 year olds learn about elections?

Absolutely!

One of the wonderful four year old teachers set up a voting booth on the playground and we took full advantage. Our hotly contested election was to see which animal we liked better - elephants or giraffes. The children voted by rubber stamping their favorite animal on a paper "ballot" and folded it up. When we returned to the classroom, we counted the votes and the results are in:

Elephants win - 9 to 6.

Pine Cone Rolling

Today at school the children did pine cone rolling in art. There were long white strips of paper stretched out horizontally on the table, four pine cones and four colors of paint.

Like this.

The children had to roll the pine cone in paint, pick it up and transfer it to the paper and roll it on the paper. OOOO! Just imagine all the sensory information the children received from touching the cool, gooey paint and from rolling those little prickly pine cones.

Also each artist got lots of practice rolling from left to right and crossing the midline of their bodies. It's not just art - it's art with purpose!

Friends

At the beginning of the year, the children tend to mostly interact in parallel play. That means that they often choose the same materials, but they actually utilize the materials alone without collaboration. One reason is that three year olds are just learning how to play collaboratively, but another reason is that they simply don't know each other yet. It takes a long time to make a friend. Now that they've had a couple of months together Mrs. Magee and I are starting to see more duos and trios at play. So delightful!

Class Creations

Playdough is awesome. It is such a simple material and with a child's imagination, it can become anything! Today Lexi made a necklace of stars. We counted them as she made them and we discovered there were 15 (not counting the center "jewel" she added later). Also someone made a person with a star bellybutton. I didn't see who made it and no one fessed up. It shall remain a mystery.

Homemade playdough is extremely simple to make and the playdough is far more pliable than the store bought kind. I'd be happy to share the recipe - just ask!

Pumpkins

We keep Halloween very low key at School for Little Children. We know that Halloween can be a very overwhelming and frightening holiday for young children. In the Bunny Rabbit class, we focus on pumpkins. This week the children had opportunities to hammer nails into a real pumpkin as a woodworking activity, play with whisks and funnels in orange soapy water, build with pretend bones, decorate paper pumpkins, measure our pumpkin and measure ourselves.

If I had to list all the math and science concepts represented by these activities, it would take me all day - there are so many!

Hard Lesson

It's an annual event. We have to have this hard lesson at some point early in the year, but I never know when it will be.

"What's the lesson?", you ask. The lesson is: if you clear the shelf of ALL the blocks, you will also put them all back. Turns out that putting blocks back isn't very fun and it takes FOREVER - especially since each block has a certain (labeled) place on the shelves.

You can imagine that it doesn't take long to learn from these natural consequences. I predict we won't see this again. We've had conversations now about taking two blocks off the shelf at a time - one for each hand. If more are needed, then get two more and continue until the structure is finished.

By the way, this lesson works well at home, too.

And The Winner Is...

Thanks to all of you who visited our Look and See event this week at school. I hope you got a feel for the amazing learning that is happening in every classroom - for every child - every day.

I understand there were door prizes. The winner of one of the prizes is...Sarah's Mommy! Lucky you!

The Warming Tray

Recently we introduced a new form of art expression to the Bunnies - the warming tray. This has been a well loved practice for the children at SLC for years, but it was new to me when I arrived years ago and new to Mrs. Magee this year! We take those old fashioned electric warming trays, wrap them in several layers of newspaper and plug them in. They heat up and get warm, but not hot enough to burn fingers. We provide pieces of thin, slick paper and crayons with the paper peeled off. When the children color on the paper, the heat melts the crayons and the effect is a smooth ribbon of wax that glides across the paper with ease. You can see from the samples above that the colors and patterns are vibrant. The children enjoyed it, and we will have warming trays out many more times during the year.