We enjoyed celebrating Halloween together in our costumes! It was fun to see what everyone was dressed up as and talk about our characters. Everyday we are learning so much and creating great friendships. Our play is evolving to include more dynamic ideas and our language is growing to help us work together in the space!
Dramatic Play
Our love for the small construction trucks inspired this area to become a construction site! We role played being construction workers, wearing the vests, hats and tool belts and did "work" together. The hammer and nail toys were lots of fun! We found many different uses for the tools, bringing them to "fix" lots of things! The cones were lots of fun, helping us make roads and lines. Bo liked unstacking and stacking them again. Joe used them in the sensory table to help pick up the material and Alexander thought they could be used on hair and noses! Aria used the tape measure as a leash for the dog stuffed animals and Joe put his animals in his tool belt!
Block Area
More construction trucks, both big and small, were added to support our desire to do "work." The road rug inspired us to work on the houses with the tools and the trucks and talk about all the different buildings and roads. We pretended that some of them were our houses and school. We made block towers to knock down with our hands and with the trucks, and we enjoyed making different structures with the foam blocks.
Nature Area
We've explored our growing nature collection, enjoying talking about shape size, and feel. Alexander figured out that the pliers could pick things like pine cones up. Bo and Reza discovered that the pointy shells fit into the screw holes on the shelves.
Art/Literacy
On Halloween, we enjoyed tracing pumpkins and adding stickers to them. We continue to love the sketch pads, making lots of pictures and watching them disappear again! In the first week, our sensory table was filled with a fine motor activity with pincher tools and farm animals in shredded paper. We had fun hiding the animals and uncovering them again, as well as matching the mommy and baby animals together and scooping them into cups. In the second week, it was filled with bugs, scooping scissors, labeled cups, and oatmeal to extend our interest in bugs and collections. We added the small construction trucks to help scoop the oatmeal, uncover and cover the bugs, and lift them into the different cups.
Gross Motor
We continue to find new ways to incorporate the scarves, including making "costumes" and capes to run around in! Bo and Reza enjoyed playing follow the leader under and around the sensory table.
Cognitive Area
We have continued to enjoy the hammer toys, furthering our construction interest. The puzzles are also fun to work on together and talk about the pieces and what sounds they make.
Outside
We went on an adventure to see real construction trucks and workers in action! It was so much fun to hear the sounds and see what the trucks could do! We were excited to come back afterwards and demonstrate on our own trucks too. In our yard, after all of the rain, we saw that our mud kitchen was filled with water! We added more things to the sinks to make soups and other foods. Joe added leaves and said they were fishies swimming around! We've enjoyed looking for spiders outside and watching them run away and hide. We found an earth worm after the rain and loved watching it find its way back into the wet dirt. The swing is lots of fun, and we have figured out how to spin each other on it too! We continue to use the hula hoops for lots of different play, and attempting to spin them around our hips. We also like to talk to each other between the crack in the slide when one of our friends is hanging our under them!
