Dear Mamas and Papas,
We began this week by painting our wood sculptures. Everyone chose
silver, gold, or copper. We looked at a penny and a nickel to compare
our copper and silver paint to the metals. We added a few sparkles and
called it a day. That was Monday.
On Tuesday, we made a map mural using the wheels of our toy cars and
adding black and white paint. We worked in two groups driving around
and around and around to create an oval road map. During circle, we
looked at all the road signs that go to our train set to identify each
sign. Everyone knew the red octagon sign. The rest we had to figure
out.
We made a map of the classroom. We used a piece of paper the same
shape as our room. The children identified the biggest items in the
room and placement of them on the map. We added the carpet, tables,
chairs, bookshelves, bench, and easel. We then added the people (us).
We drew a line indicating directions for each person to go to the
bathroom to wash hands. After we all washed hands, we ate our snacks.
We added our train set to the classroom. Everyone has been creating
different train tracks each day. We read There’s A Train Going By My
Window, and How Little Lori Visited Times Square. We looked at
pictures in the books, comparing subway cars and freight trains. The
children told us everything they knew about the differences: one is
mostly underground, one is electric and the other runs on coal, one
has smoke, one carries passengers only, and another freight and cargo.
We know a lot about trains!
While half the children posed in yoga class with Lori, the other half
drew maps. We read Can You Read A Map? and practiced drawing on the
carpet with our fingers. We recalled the travels of two different
characters in books, and drew their routes using our fingers. Then we
drew maps on paper using crayons. They are hanging in the classroom.
Friday we had an obstacle course in the big room. Before going in, we
made a map of the course. Everyone took a doll from the dollhouse to
carry along the route, and at the end placed them atop our Old First
Church we made a few weeks ago. We went around the course more times
than we could count. The children went over, under, through, up, down,
crawled, walked, and balanced.
Next week we have our trip to the bagel shop. Yum!
Have a warm weekend,
Therese