Dramatic Play
Wee-ooo! Wee-oo! In the past few weeks, our grocery store has transformed into a busy fire station! We firefighters have been working hard as a team to put out any fires or emergencies that occur. For each mission, we make sure we wear our fire-proof jackets and boots and bring our hoses and megaphones. So far, we have received calls to save houses, pizza parlors, schools that catch on fire as well as animals that cannot get down from high places. We have been successful each time!
Quiet Area
We have enjoyed reading books by ourselves and with our teachers and friends. Some of our favorites include “Firefighters A to Z,” “A Day at the Fire Station,” and the Piggy and Gerald series by Mo Williems.
Nature Area
We have been very interested in the microscopes and have been looking through them in hopes of being able to see objects in greater detail. Though we weren’t able to see the seashells through the microscope, we’ve viewed pumpkin seeds and blood. Much to our surprise, the pumpkin seeds and blood did not look anything like what we see with our naked eye! We have also had fun looking through the animal encyclopedia book and seeing all the different types of insects and ocean animals. One of the things we especially found intriguing was the page featuring images of bacteria and seeing what gets us sick sometimes.
Art/Literacy
At Mano’s, we have had lots of fun creating caterpillars of all different lengths, colors, and features by using pompoms, paint, and feathers. With Halloween coming up, we also decorated mini pumpkins, turning some into happy pumpkins and some into scary ones. Back at City Sprouts, we have been exploring with different colors and mediums to make doodles. We also had a blast using our fingers to piece together the “Magic Noodles” to make worms, caterpillars, shapes, letters, and swords. We enjoy trading our Magic Noodle creations with our friends.
Outside
In our time outside, we have created beds using the green mats and invited our friends over for a sleepover. Sometimes, we like to pretend the mats our tortillas and we wrap our friends inside to create yummy burritos. Another huge highlight of our outdoor play is Monster Friday! We love running away from daddy monsters and playing Hide and Go Seek. Friends have turned into monsters too! We also had an adventure to the fire station, where we saw fire trucks and fire engines. We even got to see the oxygen tanks and masks that firefighters use, as well as other equipment like saws. Our trip to the fire station has inspired a lot of our play. We like to connect the pipes together to pretend they are hoses as we spray away anything and everything that catches on fire and build a fire station using the blocks.
Music Area
In our recent music classes, we have really enjoyed scarf dancing and singing along with Teacher Charity. Some of our favorites are the mud song, jam jam jam, and the welcome song. We also like using the rhythm sticks to do movements as we sing along with Charity in the treehouse song. Don’t be surprised if you hear us chanting, “We need mud, mud, mud!”
Cognitive Area
We have been having lots of fun building airplanes, rockets, and cars with the bristle blocks. We like to take our creations with us around the classroom to show our peers. We also really like counting the fruit and opening the doors on the board to see what animal is hiding behind it and how many of them there are.
Gross Motor
With our energetic bodies, we love climbing up and down the ladder and sliding down to the mattress, where we jump up and down and pretend to be monkeys. We also love rolling around with our friends on the mattress too! Every Friday, we have been practicing different yoga poses, including frog pose, spider pose, airplane pose, tree pose, and boat pose. One of our favorite poses is the down-dog pose!
Block Area
We love placing blocks on our freight loaders and wheeling them up, being careful so as not to drop them! We also enjoy arranging the blocks next to each other to create roads that our toy cars can travel on, as well as using the blocks to create towers as tall as we can without them collapsing. When we’re not in the fire truck housed in the dramatic play area, we like driving the smaller fire trucks around and working together to save the dollhouse whenever it catches on fire. We are always sure to sound, “Wee-ooo, Wee-ooo, Wee-o,” when we’re on the way and we always make sure to stretch out the ladders on our trucks so that we can reach up high.