San Diego Zoo

What’s been happening at Harmony’s House?  Not much!  Ms. Harmony and Baby “K” are on vacation with family in San Diego!  We are meeting cousins, aunts, and uncles for the first time!  Visiting grandparents is a necessity. But don’t worry, we’ll all be back soon and get right into more fun preschool adventures!

Let the Light Shine In

One reason I love working in the Toy and Puzzle Area is because there is so much natural light!  I deliberately planned to have Magnetiles and Rainbow Blocks here during the summer months to enhance the play with light.  Check out the structures our friends have created!  Next I will provide opportunities to work with shadows, and the effect of distance of light sources on objects.

Crabby Words

We used these fun manipulatives to do a fine motor and literacy activity.  I explained that a letter all by itself was just a letter, but when letters connect they build words.  I challenged my school friends to connect the crab letters to build words, and silly words were okay to make!

First the children had to figure out how to use the pincers to connect the crabs.  Outside of the challenge to connect these critters, the children talked about what letters they had in their baskets.  We talked about the difference between spelling a word (naming the letters), and sounding out a word (saying the letter sounds).  Both children actively touched each letter and moved their fingers going left to right as they "read" the words.  Depending on the child's developmental level, the child focused on either naming the letters, or producing letter sounds.  I helped the students blend the letter sounds together to "read" the silly word.  I also pointed out how if they change the order of letters, they change the order of sounds in the word.

Soon the children realized that the more letters you connect, the bigger the word created.  They each took personal satisfaction in connecting ALL the crabs in their basket to make the biggest silly word possible!  Nice work school friends!

Playing Pirates! Argh!

We have found ways to play with pirates and treasure for the last two weeks.  It has been a total blast!

One place we worked was in the Explore Table.  The table was filled with sand.  There were ships, pirate finger puppets, gems, and treasure chests to work with.  

 The children sorted jewels by color, looked at amounts (what fit in the treasure chests and ships), talked about the parts of the ship like the sails, mast, and crows nest, and produced some excellent pirate dialogue!

We worked with pirate ships and Little People in the Block Area.  It was fun to discover the compartments on the ships for sleeping, keeping a look out, shooting the cannon, and walking the plank!

In Small Group, we decorated treasure chests with gold ribbon, coins, and jewels.  We figured out that the glue did not hold the ribbon very well, so we learned how to use the tape dispenser.  We also figured out how to make glue dots the right size so the glue doesn't fall off the jewels.  It was tricky!

Finally, we worked with the pirate idea in Circle Time.  We read a book about becoming a pirate, and one in which Grandma was kidnapped by pirates!

One of our games included wearing pirate scarves and responding with appropriate facial expressions in the mirror to different pirate scenarios!

 

Some scenarios required us to show brave, happy, excited, disappointed, or secretive faces.

 Once the Explore Table was changed out to have water and ocean animals, the pirates, treasure chests, and jewels moved to the Alone Table.  Friend "K" made the skeleton pirate steal treasure and hide it from the other pirates!

Our last Circle Time activity was to find our treasure that Boss Pirate Bart stole and hid!  We had to follow these five clues:

Our last clue was outside on the tree!  We had to use the shovels to dig up our treasure!

 

 At last the treasure was ours!  We got a shark, spotting scope, sunglasses, gold doubloons, and jewels!  Friend "K" said, "Treasure of my very own!  Wow!"

Jewels and Shapes

 

For Small Group, we took beautiful "ocean jewels" and placed them on the lines of shape cards.  It was amazing to see how much the children enjoyed lining up the jewels.  Above, Friend "K" chose "the one with six sides" and was so proud of her work when she closed up the shape.  After doing the lines, she then continued to add jewels to the inside of the shape until the entire surface area was covered.  

Because I had heard both children name the common shapes (triangle, rectangle, and square) in their block play, I specifically chose flash cards that had more unusual shapes for the children to select from.  Although the common shapes were also offered, they chose to work with the new shapes: parallelogram, pentagon, hexagon, trapezoid, and rhombus.

They will likely need to see, hear, and say these shapes many more times before committing them to memory, but it did provoke interesting discussion at the table.  We talked about counting the sides of the shapes.  Friend "K" looked at the space enclosed by the lines, which is what a shape is.  We described the shapes, like a "parallelogram looks like the rectangle got pushed over," and the "trapezoid looks like the rectangle got squished at the top."  We also observed the size of the shapes and number of sides in correlation to how many jewels they would need to cover all the lines.  Larger shapes like the hexagon required more jewels than the small rhombus.  It was fascinating to see the children really engage with these manipulatives and talk about geometry in depth at the ages of 3 and 4!

Ocean Inspirations

We have been working with the idea of "Ocean" in so many ways, especially in the Art Area.  Ms. Harmony loves her "Melissa and Doug" art easel because it allows two children room to paint side by side.  I love it when the school friends say, "Come paint with me!  You can be on this side!"  And two by two, they work with blue, green, and white to make ocean waves, drops, seaweed, and good conversation.  :)  It is wonderful to see how the conversation, artistic strokes, and preschool humor influences each friend in turn as they work on their paintings.

They were literally jumping up and down laughing while they painted these.  :)

Check out these masterpieces!

You can see amazing things up close you know.  

 Today we added jelly fish creatures to our Ocean Scene.

This is how we did it: we used a plain paper plate cut in half to be the hood part.  Then we mixed a small amount of white school glue with water.  Next we painted bits of tissue paper onto the plate and let it dry.  Once it was dry, we taped bits of curling ribbon on the bottom to be the stinging tentacles.

 

Recall Time

"It's Recall Time!  It's Recall Time!  It's Recall Time right now!  Where did you work?  Where did you work?  Where did you work and how?"

During Recall Time, the friends choose one plan that they remember working on and really enjoying. We also use this time of day to remember problems we encountered, and how they were solved.  We can also remember the process of how we accomplished something, like setting up tracks, doing art, or building a structure.  We practice listening to our friends before responding or asking questions.

This part of the day works our mental muscles to remember details, practice language, and social skills.  Sometimes we also draw pictures of what we worked on as well to practice visual representation.

Last week, these are the plans that our school friends chose to remember and draw.  Friend "H" worked really hard to line up wooden ramps and send balls down the tracks.  He especially likes to include the tubes for the balls to make tunnels.

 

Friend "K" chose to recall her Block Area plan where she found the princesses and furniture she wanted to use and arranged it in the castle.  Some of the furniture pieces did not fit in the rooms she wanted and so she had to rearrange things or choose different furniture to accomplish her plan.  During Recall, she was able to remember all of the princesses that she chose for the castle.