Careers- What Will You Be? Part 2

One school friend expressed an interest in being an illustrator when she grew up, so we have explored a few different art techniques outside of the normal paint and brush variety!

One school day we had different kinds of vehicles (police car, ice cream truck, and a taxi) in paint,  The children "drove" through the paint and then observed the parallel lines that the tires made on their canvases.




The Art Area is always open for any kinds of art that children want to make.  On this particular day, they had created an obstacle course and wanted to have gold medals for finishing.  Ms. Harmony suggested that they make medals in the Art Area.

Friend "B" loves to make creations in the Art Area that feature her favorite color blue and that show off her snazzy cutting skills!

Today we talked about the idea that an artist or an illustrator doesn't have to make fantastic amazing drawings to be "good."  What makes an artist amazing is having creativity.  We used materials in a new way by combing paint.

 Following the inspiration of Henre Tullet in his book Press Here, we used just dots on the art easel.

After reading the book, the kids agreed that the dots were great art and were excited to do it themselves at the art easel during Work Time.

Careers- What will you be?

Old stuff rocks.  It does!  Look what the school friends have been doing with obsolete technology: old modems, flip phones, random cords, computer fans, keyboards, and more.  They set up their own office space, "built" computers, made connections, sent out "bills," and made follow-up calls requesting payments!  Toddler "K's" dad was the inspiration for these new parts and doo-dads in the Toy and Puzzle Area.  Some people grow up to fix computers, or help people make connections with phones, computers, and the Internet.  

Friend "S" said that she wants to be a baker when she grows up.  To explore this career a little bit, we baked blueberry muffins for Small Group and then ate them at Snack Time later!

Some friends didn't mind doing the eggs and other friends did NOT want to get their hands slimy!  We split up the jobs: pouring in water and oil, cracking eggs, adding muffin mix, and putting muffin liners in the tray.  They were super yummy!

Pre-literacy- it's about what you hear

Sometimes people get so caught up in letter recognition that they forget that a big part of learning to read is being able to hear.  There is a lot of "hearing" that has to happen before children can decode (sound out) new words:

• hearing words as words in a sentence instead of one continuous series of spoken sounds
• hearing syllables in a word
• hearing parts of a word like beginning sounds or rhyming (ending sounds)
• and hearing the smallest unit of a word, a phoneme (cat has 3 phonemes: /c/ /a/ and /t/)

This is why so many "pre-literacy" activities in preschool focus on sound and rhythm with or without attaching sounds to letters.  During Circle Time at Harmony's House, we used rhythm sticks to beat out syllables in our names, words from the Valentine's book we just read, and any words the children could think of.  We learned that all of our current students have "2-beat" names (two syllables)!  

As an extension activity, the teacher makes a beat with her rhythm sticks and challenges the students to copy the beat.  While the children are having fun tapping the sticks together, they are developing important hearing skills that they will use later when learning to read.  Happy tapping!

Fun Photos

This is just a quick post to share pictures from last week!  We had so much fun doing pipettes and paint on the art easel, balancing Valentine ice cubes, decorating sugar cookies, swirling shaving cream, playing house with baby dolls, and exchanging Valentines.  :)

Book Fair!

Harmony's House is having its very first Book Fair through Usborne Books and More!  This is super exciting because the world needs more books, more readers, and more happiness!  When family and friends purchase books, puzzles, and activities through this Book Fair, Harmony's House gets free books too for the classroom.  Every bit helps, so even purchasing one book is terrific!

https://b8611.myubam.com/1214986

Drinks Anyone? More Fun with Circles!

Yesterday we shared a post about the school friends using these "circles" (spools, cups, and cake rounds) to make penguin houses and ice fortresses.  Today the circles were used as carrying trays for our drinks!  The school friends mixed up different kinds of "juice" with shapes and gems, and carried them around serving drinks.  Super tasty!

Friend "K" made herself a throne on the sofa and ordered drinks!  If they were not to her liking she sent them back!

The circles made a great roof for this Robot House also!  But then it became a cake platter for the million-layer rainbow cake!

Fantastic imaginations and socio-dramatic play.  :D  Excellent work school friends!

Frosty Fun with Circles

Sometimes random things that aren't really toys, make for great fun.  A basket of "white circles" appeared on the shelf this week in the Toy and Puzzle Area.  The "white circles" were cups, empty spools of varying sizes, and 10" cake rounds.

The children chose to use them like ice and snow to make penguin houses.

Here is a multi-level iceberg!  Very clever!

Icy fortress anyone?

The open-ended nature of these random "white circles" led to an explosion of creativity in the classroom.  Indeed, as so well expressed in the Mandate for Playful Learning in Preschool, "Play builds knowledge by offering countless opportunities for sustained attention, problem solving, symbolic representation... memory development, and hypothesis testing" (Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, K., Michnick, R., Berk, L., Singer, D., 2008).