So I have been a bit behind on my blog posting. After weeks of stressing over the posts I need to finish I will combine the last month and go weekly again. It is so exciting to see the children learning and excited to come to school. We have been creating a nice community here since January and are very excited about two new students that joined us in February. The kids are working harmoniously together which is fabulous to see. We have been working on our daily routine. They are doing a fantastic job.
Miss Anna has been working on different projects with the kids. They have been cutting, pasting, learning about their letters and colors. Check out the kids work using the first letter of their name.
We added new unit blocks and dramatic play people to our block area and they have been a big hit. There is a lot of pretending with the people and building with our blocks. We see a lot of building and then knocking structures over but as you can imagine two year olds are very much into cause and effect.
Our home area is also growing. We have added blankets and accessories as well as a couple more dolls that are anatomically correct. Many of our students are working on potty training so we added a potty to our home area. The children love experimenting with the dolls on the potty. We also added some new kitchenware. We have some porcelain plates and bowls as well as a tea set and new utensils. The children LOVE playing in our kitchen especially with the yogurt containers which they either stack or line up on the table. We can’t have too many of these.
Our greeting time is going really well. All the children now come to circle and sit on the rug. Greeting time has been so much fun because we are really seeing the children participate during circle – singing songs, counting the days of the month, meditating, learning the days of the week. We also started our weather graph this month. They love our welcome song and name song. I have some children asking to do circle several times a day.
Welcome Song (tune of Happy Birthday)
We welcome you here
We welcome you here
We welcome everybody
We welcome you here
Name song(tune of Bingo)
There is a boy/girl that we all love
And ________ is his/her name.
n-a-m-e
And ________is his/her name.
We like to clap when we sing this song.
By going over our calendar, we are learning our numbers, patterns, the month, dates, year and days of the week. We also talk about what days are today, yesterday and tomorrow. A favorite of both the kids and myself seems to be the meditation/planning. We take our timer (sand hour glass made from plastic bottles) and quietly watch and listen to the sand fall. The kids can inhale through their nose and exhale through their mouth while thinking about their plan. Which area do they plan to work? What will they do? Who will they do it with?
Some books we have read over the past weeks are Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney, If You Give a Pig a Pancake by Laura Numeroff, I Like Me! by Nancy Carlson and some Curious George stories. Some of the music we have been listening to is by Raffi, Hap Palmer, The Wiggles and Caspar Babypants. I was introduced to Caspar Babypants from a friend of mine. Their friend is in the band and you can see them play locally as well.
Looking forward to seeing what new things the children will be interested in learning.