First Day of Snow

Today is officially the first day of Snow!!! In the morning the children got experience it first hand.

When observing the children, they noticed that the snow was sticky enough to make a snowball. This child had a great idea to make a snow man. ( with some help from a teacher)

" The snow is sticky"

"It's stuck on my mitten"

The children searched in the snow to find some branches for arms.

"There is leaves on the snowman."

With help from my friends we were able to make a Huge snowman.

 

Snow is a very valuable experience for children. It exposes them to

-how the weather changes

-feel the cool snow on their hands

-create and use snow in a variety of ways ie. snowman snow balls etc

- develop a child's large muscle and fine motor

-and build a child wonderment and creativity

By: Miss Santillan

Lace it up

As we came in from outside all the children got ready for lunch . I sent the kids into the classroom and  I noticed one child was left in the hallway. This child  was sitting on the floor tying up her shoes laces. I carefully watched and observed.



It was quite neat to see her fine motor skills work. She was meticulous, ensuring the ends were both even. Then she looped the two together the laces and pulled.This child is only 4 years old and I was so amazed to see that she could tie her shoes.

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I was so impressed that I asked her if she could lace up my rain boots. She laced up the boots in no time.

 

 

Then just before going home I walked by the science area. I noticed the same  little girl putting bows into another child's hair. She was using the same technique as she did with her shoes.  

"LOOK I put a bow in her hair!!"

This child emerged her lace tying skills onto  another technique. Bringing her knowledge of making  bows into hair tying.

Written By: Miss Santillan

Barrel of Monkey's Nature Style

The staff just recently finished off a new toy for our classroom. Barrel of monkey's nature style!

"Look you hang them on the hooks like this."

"This is so cool they can hang all the way down to the floor."

" How are we gonna reach the top hooks? Maybe we can stand on a block to reach them."

"Let's see how many long chains we can make."

Children can work independently or with peers. Some discussing how to hang the tree cookies. Others making loops with the chains from branch to branch.

Eye-hand coordination and fine motor skills help to place the hooks in just the right places.

The children take time to line up the hooks to form a chain.

"We need the tree cookies with the hooks on the top and the bottom for this chain."

"Here I found some little baby ones for the tree."

"This is so cool. It's like a home made Christmas tree. A piece of art!"

"Can we hang them wherever we want?"

"Let's make some long and short chains."

 As the day goes on children come and go adding tree cookies and removing others to form new chains. Allowing the children to change the play.

Written by Mrs Balharry 

Draft - The Car Track Challenge

We don't often bring out the matchbox cars in Flex, but when we do, the children very quickly draft their favorites and begin racing across the rug at top speed. I asked the children if they had ever built a race track, and pretty soon they decided that sounded like a fun idea. We used our giant wood blocks of all sizes to build a track that the cars would descend down.

The children wanted a ramp over a gap; we realized that to keep the car moving, it would have to continue downward. They noticed that to keep the track stable, we had to place more heavy blocks against the track.

A competition to see whose cars could make it all the way down (on its wheels of course) and through the gate at the end began. It was very tricky, and some of the kids dropped 2 or 3 cars at the same time to increase their odds.

They learned that it was important for the car to be let go of from just the right spot, and of course, that one could find "even faster cars" to use.

Though the children may not understand concepts of gravity and velocity the way adults do, an activity like this gives children a chance to experiment with speed, angles, and trial and error play in a way that makes sense to them, through toys that are usually just pushed around (or dramatically smashed).


// Mr. McIntyre-Brandt