Dramatic Play
Everyone's interest in the stuffed animals, as well as the books about animals inspired this area to become a zoo! We enjoyed dressing up as zoo keepers, playing with all of the different animals and talking about what sounds they make and where they live! The masks were a fun way to pretend to be different animals and make their noises. We acted out the "Goodnight Gorilla" book, unlocking and locking the cages for the animals. The keys were used in many areas of the room and we loved calling our friends and family on the walkie-talkies. Aria inspired everyone to go swimming in the pool with the water animals and Joe extended her idea saying the other animals needed to drink the water! Then they all decided the animals needed baths and brought them all in.
Block Area
The construction trucks continue to inspire lots of play, we especially have enjoyed acting out different roles and using the trucks in both parallel and cooperative play! Bo and Reza have been practicing balance and stacking with the wooden blocks, trying to be very careful to place blocks on top without knocking it over! Bo enjoyed finding the doll furniture that has doors and finding little pieces to fit inside.
Quiet Area
We continue to love reading, together and to ourselves, and applying the ideas in the stories to our play.
Art/Literacy
We celebrated Joe's birthday by collaborating to make a special canvas with the colors he picked. We enjoyed helping each other fill the canvas and mixing the colors with both our brushes and hands! We enjoyed coloring with the markers and crayons, and adding stickers to make "mail" for our friends and family members. We practiced our fine motor skills with the scissors, cutting up the paper into very small pieces! Bo discovered that when he put the pieces over his nose, he made a funny sound! Reza enjoyed squeezing the scissors together really hard.
Gross Motor
We tested many different objects in the tunnel, seeing what rolls well and what doesn't. Bo and Reza discovered that they could fit inside the cubbies and enjoyed climbing in them and playing peek-a-boo.
Cognitive Area
A maze puzzle was added and we loved trying to use the magnet tool to move the different color balls through the maze! We especially liked working together and each using a different color. The new gears were also lots of fun to build and watch turn. We tried connecting them in many different ways and discovered that sometimes they move together and other times they stop each other and won't turn!
Music Area
The new pianos have been so much fun to play together. We came up with many different songs and experimented with playing fast and slow and how that changes what the music sounds like. We enjoyed dancing with the scarves to each other's music. After playing our pianos, when we listened to music we tried to find the songs that also have piano playing in them!
Outside
After getting to explore our pretend zoo, we decided to go on an adventure to the real zoo! We were so excited to see all of the different animals. On the way we stopped at a big construction site and watched the workers and the huge crane lift lumber all the way to the top. We sang lots of our favorite animal songs on the way. Once we got into the zoo, we went through the cave/tunnels and learned about echos. We enjoyed yelling and then hearing "someone" talk back! We made our way to the giraffes and got to see them all eating! We talked about how big and tall they were and watched the baby giraffe play. We saw the gorillas and tried to figure out who was the mama, dada, and baby. There were so many of them that Aria said one was the uncle and Joe named one the godfather! We saw lots of the other monkeys playing and thought their structures look like a fun playground that we want to go to! We saw the lions and tigers sleeping and got to see the penguins eat. It was very interesting to see how they eat the big fish in one gulp! We heard all the lemurs making lots of noise and watched them jump around in the trees. Finally we got all our energy out at the playground and had so much fun playing "follow the leader!" We climbed up, around and went down the slide over and over again!
In our backyard, we enjoyed the addition of sand rollers in our sand pit. They made lots of different tracks and we loved making "roads" for each other to cross and for the dump trucks to roll across. Reza tested it on the bench, and found it made a loud sound. Joe and Alexander tried to see if they would work in the grass. We drew lots of pictures on the chalkboard and went on a spider hunt, trying to catch them in buckets. We built lots of different structures with the blocks, Aria was making a spider house. Joe and Bo tasted some of our delicious strawberries!
