Somewhere along the line it has been categorized as either play or academic.  They are not mutually exclusive.  The first step is defining for yourself what you mean by play and what you mean by academic.  The next step is finding out how the school you are considering defines play and academics.  What you should see are opportunities for choice, movement, and use of found objects.   There is something to be said about the child that is more interested in playing with the box rather than the toy itself.  It is also important to look beyond the obvious.  Sure, you may see a classroom with no play kitchen.  Does that mean there is no dramatic play?  Not if they have the chance to prepare snack and use real kitchen items.  Are there boxes, bowls and tables that could be used for the kitchen as well as the construction site?

Activities should be appropriate for the children’s level of development.  Academics may be defined as reading, math, science but there are many ways for children to learn that through play.  It is the old “Drill and kill” or long periods of sitting with the teacher delivering information to the children.  I just observed 2 schools last week and one school delivered a lesson for reading where the teacher was behind the table and a few children on the other side of the table as they recited words out of a workbook.  The other school had a lesson on geography where the teacher was on the floor with the children with pictures, a globe, a map and some cultural artifacts.  Which do you think was more developmentally appropriate?  There should be multiple opportunities of learning within every activity to engage the individual learners of the group.

As I said, this topic has a lot of depth and breadth.  Be sure to add us to your feed so you can keep up with this topic and many others.  Check back at our site for the clip of this morning’s news segment.  Thoughts, comments and questions are always welcome.

Our small group activity also involved practicing hand eye coordination with the basket toss game. 

For large group, we incorporated some dramatic play with our big book "Frogs"  – kids pretended to be frogs, jumped, etc. then went from egg, to tadpole, to frog.  They love interpreting the books with their bodies.

Our letter of the week is "P" – kids glued pears to "P", read "The Pig’s Picnic", brainstormed entire page of words that start with the letter "P" like pig, park, penguin, pizza, etc.

Most Thursdays and Fridays we have the opportunity for parents/guardians to come in during circle time to read the class a story.  They usually read one of their child’s favorite books or choose one from the classroom.   Marnie, Jack’s mom, came to read – kids loved it!  She read a Thomas the Train Christmas themed book and "My Woodland Wish", which she gave as a gift for the kids to enjoy at school.

On Friday, we had a wonderful field trip with the Nature Consortium. The children had a fantastic time planting trees and naming them after one another.  They also went on a nature walk and learned about "natural" and "unnatural" things in the forest.

Check out our photos: 

http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/20470303_JW5j76#1620560384_hM8hBG9

During small group this week, we did an adding and subtracting activity.  Children used bears and small animals. Activity included blocks to use as boats and fabric as water. Children counted animals getting on board and off the boat. i.e. 2 zebras and 2 dolphins, 2 dolphins went swimming we had 2 zebras. We used elephants, zebras, dolphins and penguins.  Then they used bears and counted them and placed them in plastic cups.  They also counted while playing hopscotch.

(Photos coming soon)

Large group:

One of our class favorites is  Old Mcdonald had a farm.  As they followed images from the book, the children pretended to be animals, danced around and made animal sounds one by one and in groups. We also placed spiders on webs and danced to Halloween songs.

(photos coming soon)

Project:

Our letter of the week is  A and they glued apples and brainstormed some of the following words: airplane, artist, alligator, anteater.  We read "The Adventures of Abby Alligator"

Our Halloween decorations this week included gluing buttons on bats.

(photos soon)

On Thursday and Friday we do our small group and circle time entirely in Spanish.  They  colored/drew with markers using the primary colors; yellow, red and blue.  They learned new art vocabulary in both English and Spanish.  Be sure to ask them about it.

We are off to a great start and I couldn’t be more proud of how Ms. Claudia has executed this year.  The children are engaged and everyone has transitioned nicely. 

Small group:

Sorting little foam and plastic pieces by color sorting rings by color.        

Large Group:

Game similar to Simon Says. Children had to use their listening ears to follow spoken  direction instead of repeating what the teacher was doing in front of them.

Played with instruments. We used sticks, they had to count to 3 and then play sticks 3 times.      

We also formed a band and played around the classroom and danced.

Enrichment:  Aikido with Ms. Pam we learned about personal space and how to fall, back to the basics.

Enrichment: Music with Ms. Kathleen

Project: Learned letter M on Monday and Thursday. Glued blue moons to paper.

Used scissors on Friday, practice how to give someone scissors.

Books:

I’m Gonna Like Me: Letting Off a Little Self-Estee" Jamie Lee Curtis

“Harry, The Dirty Dog”

Other exciting activities this week

On Tuesday we visited the library. Thursday and Friday we had show and tell.

Started Spanish classes Thursday and Friday. We talked about colors and numbers.

Anecdotes:

During snack time, while the table was empty Genevieve handed out dinosaurs, one per person. I think she was trying to feed everyone She also placed plastic pieces in a line.

Ella told us a wonderful story during circle time about how she put seeds in the ground with her grandpa. How she watered them until it grew into a very big plant that she picked a cucumber from

Large group

One of the ways for both children and adults to calm their minds and bodies as well as become more focused is to do Yoga.  It is important for children to take time during their day to still their minds and bodies.  Last year we did a little meditation that focused on their breathing right before they made their plan for work time.  This year we are incorporating yoga.  Some moves they learned – to be a waterfall, mountain, frog and spider.

Danced and followed friends moves and become statues when the music stopped.

Children wore their tales and danced.

Project activities:

Letter C; cotton balls. Painted their faces like cats. Talked about words that star with C.     

Blue squares activity: glue squares counting from 1 to 7.  Learned about sizes, numbers going from small to large.

Puzzle activity: organized blocks by size.        

-used bubbles to help kids feel more comfortable

-books during circle time "Hooray for Fish" "Dogs Don’t Wear Sneakers" "Dinosaurumpus!" "That’s What Friends Do"

Circle time

We have incorporated stretching time and Spanish calendar with a new days of the week song in Spanish.

Books of the week:    "A Fine Fine School" by Sharon Creech and  "Ladybug Girl and Bumble Bee Boy" by Jacky Davis.

Anecdotes:

As children are trying to navigate their place in the classroom, some are experimenting with figuring out what control they have over their space.  After Selah realized she wasn’t with the bigger group, she picked up her paper and scissors and squeezed herself in next to Iliana.  As Iliana realized Selah was encroaching in her space, Iliana moves Selah’s paper and scissors to the other table as to direct her over there.  We love this problem-solving and seeing children create their own reality.

Although we recognize that males and females are different, we maintain a gender neutral classroom for the children.  It is interesting to hear some of the observations around gender that enter the classroom at age 3.  Gabriel commented during clean up time that cleaning up the blocks was for boys only.

The activities this week focused on counting and movement skills.    

Our project this week was to make small balls of paper and glue them onto paper.     

For our large group activity, we sang “This Old Man” and played with bean bags outside.

We have new toys and games this year, so we worked on learning how to treat our new belongings, clean up our classroom and share our space. Our children have been great at making our new students feel welcome. Olivia sang “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” to Selah to help her stop crying and Savannah is already best friends with Tallulah. This is going to be a wonderful year!

We have a wonderful group of children and we’re looking forward to another amazing year at The Cove.

Salmon Song:

Little salmon

little salmon

swim so fast

swim so fast

swimming in and out

swimming all around

can’t catch you

can’t catch you

Spanish Song:

Los pollitos dicen pio pio pio

cuando tienen hambre

cuando tienen frio

la gallina busca

el maiz y el trigo

y les da alimentos

y les presta abrigo

The Little Stuff

It’s the little stuff, that can make you feel,
kind of thankful, deep in side
Just the little stuff, like a hand you hold,
when you, cross a street, that’s wide.
When a persons there, and their listening,
to the things you did, and found.
Or their coming home, and they lift you up,
and they twirl you, round and round.

It’s the little stuff, like a snuggling place,
when theirs thunder, that’s too loud
Just the little stuff, like a friendly face,
when you’re squished, inside a crowd
such a tiny thing, but a shiny thing,
cause it make your heart, just sing
it’s the little stuff, it’s the little stuff,
and the little stuff, is everything.

Thanks to all the parents for participating and for all your help during the salmon release, we couldn’t have done it without you!  For more pictures of the release, be sure to check out the Flickr account.

For our small group activities we worked on counting exercises by using teddy bears and cups. As you might have noticed already we are learning to count both in Spanish and English, its great! With our older group, we worked on shape matching activities and used forms to create new “things” i.e. a circle became a clock or a plate.

We also used colored tape as new source for “drawing”. Our children really enjoy this exercise and used the material to create wonderful art work.

For large group we had a really good time using instrumental music to travel into an imaginary world. We pretended to fly among clouds and rainbows and it was great to explore our children’s imagination. We also visited a farm and rode horses

This week week we had Show and Tell and Emma’s mom visited for story time. It was great to see some familiar toys that our children love to bring back and share with everyone and also some new special things like Ella’s rabbit, Chris’s sunglasses, Hunter’s Mariner’s hat and Gabriel’s drumsticks. Thank you parents for supporting this fun activity.  It’s always a big success with all of our kids.