The last few weeks we have become even more confident in the classroom and have been extending many past ideas, using our imaginations and social skills to play with our friends! We have loved all of the nice weather and have been especially excited to get new fish!
Dramatic Play
The dramatic play area transformed into a doctor's office and we have had so much fun pretending to be doctors and patients! We loved dressing up with the lab coats and using the stethoscopes to hear our heartbeats. We gave lots of check-ups to ourselves, our friends, Teacher Rebecca, the dolls, and even the dinosaurs! We talked about all the different tools and how real doctors use them on us!
Block Area
We had new people figures to play with, including a doctor and a nurse, and the doll house became a hospital as well as a home for the dinosaurs! We are acting out different scenes and using our imaginations to make the characters come to life! We continue to enjoy the trains, finding new ways to build and incorporate the other materials in the area.
They were acting out with the puppets and animals, telling a story about their home, and the footprints and river on the carpet.
Nature Area
We been enjoying exploring our nature materials some more, practicing sorting by type as well as shape. Aria liked to line up the long shells and Joe was inspecting them for cracks. The magnifying glassed have made there way to many areas of the room, to see what else they can "make bigger!"
Quiet Area
We have continued to love reading books and playing in the tee-pee with each other and all of the animals. Aria and Joe had some time together taking turns reading different stories to their puppies in the big white chair. We also have loved holding, rocking, and feeding the baby dolls.
Art/ Literacy
We explored our interest in animals with a sensory activity with shaving cream and the safari animals. We talked about the thick and soapy foam and how the animals disappeared in it until we wiped them off. After wanting the animals "clean" we added water to the foam to make it thinner and easier to clean them off. We explored how the consistency changed when we added more water! We also had fun with the play dough, bringing the doctor kit tools over to use the scissors and knifes with it!
Gross Motor
The addition of the mattress to jump on has been so fun and open-ended, and we have used it for many different forms of play. We also have continued to love running around and dancing with the scarves.
Cognitive Area
We have found so many different things to build with the magna-tiles and have needed to pull out more because of how elaborate our structures are becoming! Joe liked building a home for the dinosaurs and Aria and Bo joined in, while Alexander brought the dinosaur puppet to oversee! We all liked witching the dinosaurs fall into the towers to their house.
Music Area
The drums have still be lots of fun and we continue to try new ways of making different sounds. We especially love to play them at the same time with a friend! When the music plays, we always want to use the scarves!
Outside
We spent lots of time outside it the hot weather. We did an outdoor art project painting with ice cubes! It was so much fun to watch them slowly melt and see how the paint changed! We started painting with the cubes but quickly learned that using our hands to spear it around and make handprints was even more fun! We still love filling and dumping the trucks in the sandbox, practicing taking turns with them. On another hot day we added water to the mud kitchen and enjoyed splashing it and filling the pots. Aria found that adding some mulch and sage leaves smelled good and was fun to stir around. The tricycles, chalkboard and slides have continued to be exciting and we have discovered we can swing together for even more fun! Aria and Alexander discovered that walking through the creek bed is a bit challenging and they enjoyed walking over and jumping off the bridge. Our peas keep growing and we have found a few more ripe strawberries to eat!
