Dramatic Play
We have been hard at work at our school construction site! We are very intrigued with the construction workers that we see outside of school and have wondered what their job consists of. Now we know! We love trying to name all of the different tools, but there are so many, sometimes we forget. Our favorite is the measuring tape! We have seen workers use them in our backyard when installing the grass. We try to see how long we can stretch it out and enjoy finding different objects to measure. We’re sure to put up caution tape so that others know we’re busy building. The tools have worked our fine motor skills, as we try to pinch, pull, twist, and hammer. We love building alone or with friends!
Quiet Area
We love books! We continue to enjoy browsing through the animal encyclopedia and reading “Pigs Make Me Sneeze,” our all-time favorite. We’ve also been enjoying “The Little Snowplow,” “Lights of Winter,” and “Making a Difference.”
Music Area
Our weekly jam sessions with Teacher Charity have been a blast! We love singing the welcome song to each of our friends and teachers and stomping our feet to the beat. We’ve been singing songs about light and dancing to some new favorites titled “Get Your Booty Out of Bed” and “Party.” We also revisit some of our favorites too, including the mud song, the we love everyone song, and the building a treehouse song.
Art Area
With Christmas approaching, we’ve been working hard to paint and decorate our star ornaments with different sequins and glitter. It’s also been lots of fun painting on canvas for friends’ birthdays as well as drawing pictures to take home to show our family. At Mano’s, we’ve painted our own Christmas trees and added “ornaments” on them using strips of paper from magazines.
We also loved going to the MOMA with Teacher Edurne and seeing so many different forms of art! We were amazed at the gigantic sculptures of spiders and mosaics. We were intrigued at how we were unable to see the portrait of the person when we were close to the mosaic but then able to see the picture when we stood from afar! Another highlight of this adventure was walking through a huge metal structure and dancing when we got to the middle of it!
Gross Motor Area
We have found new ways to play with the ladder frame. As much as we love sliding down and jumping on the mattress, we love pretending underneath is either a train or a bed. Sometimes we like to bring our animals or babies along for the ride. It is mighty comfortable!
In yoga class, Teacher Jesse has taught us some Christmas poses. We pretended to be Santa’s reindeer, which made us feel very silly! We also tried making “snow angels”, which we wish we could do in actual snow! We love being able to stretch our bodies in new ways and have the chance to get our wiggles out.
Cognitive Area
The magna tiles never get old. We enjoy playing with them everyday! Building trains and houses will always be a classic, but we have come up with new ways to build as well. We love making storage spots, or “garages”, to store things inside of. We have fit animals, people, and even a whole toolbox inside! It is interesting to see how we are able to build around such objects. We have also tried creating mazes for our friends to walk through. We can make different patterns to switch things up. It also fun to see how high we can stack them. It’s so fun to be able to creatively build with our friends.
Outside
We continue to find new ways to build with the pipes and blocks. This month we have been very excited about creating a racetrack with the pipes and toys. We try to make different obstacles that our cars have to get through. With the blocks, we have used them as bridges to cross the river or the “hot lava”. We also use them to create a big pile, or a “camp fire”. We love gathering as many things as possible so that way we can stay extra warm. It’s so fun to pretend camp with our friends. Playing outside has really taught us about teamwork. We have learned the saying “teamwork makes the dream work!” We do enjoy playing alone, but when we communicate and share with our friends, it makes our play so much more fun! We love chasing each other, pushing each other on the swing, building and cooking together. We really can see that when we work together we are able to accomplish so much more.