Dear Parents,
We began our week closing our eyes and looking in our mind's eye at the outside of our homes. We pictured what it looks like and asked, “What shapes do you see?” The class saw squares for windows, triangles and pyramids on rooftops, circles on doorknobs, rectangles on bricks, and so much more. We read My House, and My Nursery School. We made our own homes using paper shapes of rectangles, squares, triangles, and circles. We cemented them together using glue.
We went out to play in the yard, and some friends looked for shapes on the outside of Old First Nursery. They found squares, circles, triangles, and rectangles!
During circle we talked about who lives at our house. Everyone named their family members. Pets were included. While half the class did yoga with Amanda, we each got paper cutouts of our family members and used markers to decorate them. We talked about the sizes small, medium, and large when looking at our families. We asked the class “What can you tell us about your family?” The answers ranged from eating and playing games together, to ice skating and liking our family because they have backs. We glued our families into our paper home sweet homes.
We read Families, We’re Different , We’re The Same, The New Baby, Animal Homes, and Stellaluna. We’re reading about different kinds of families but also about what’s the same.
There has been lots of digging and building in the sandbox. Some children said they were building a skyscraper. “What’s a skyscraper?” someone asked. “When it’s so tall it scrapes the sky.” We all looked up. Others said they were building a home. Two of us said we would live there when it was finished, while others munched on pies and cakes made of delicious sand.
On Friday we all took turns using the Amazing Apple Peeler. It slices, it peels, and it cores the apples! All at the same time. We ate the peels for snacks, and one apple. We put the other apple slices into the oven to dehydrate, for the entire day. The children guessed what would happen to them in the oven. They wondered if their shape might change, or their color. We wondered if the smell would change. Someone guessed they would get harder. We compared our old orange peels we’ve been saving for many weeks to a fresh orange peel. They had changed in color and texture.
We have also been observing our pumpkin since Halloween. We put it in the yard in October and have been watching the changes as it rots and decomposes. The class said, “It’s smaller and browner!” The children have noticed our tree too. Friday someone said, “All the leaves are gone!”
Have a weekend!
Therese