Loving Literacy

 

During February, Ms. Harmony hosted the first ever book fair through Usborne Books for Harmony's House.  We raised $250 of free money for books!  This is one of the children's all-time FAVORITE books: There's a Mouse about the House!  This poor mouse has been loved to pieces, literally.  He's about to split into two pieces.  What makes this book so fun for the kids is that he slips between the pages to move the story along.  The mouse runs through cereal boxes, through cracks in the floor, up the clock, and even into a nightgown!  He narrowly escapes the cat in his search for cheese.  Not only is the story silly and engaging, but the children love the challenge of pushing and pulling the mouse through the little slits in each page.  If you want engaging, skill-building, thought-provoking, and FUN books... Usborne Books is your company!

What's with the "Names?"

For new readers of the blog, this post is an explanation of the "names" Ms. Harmony uses when she writes about the school happenings.

The school friends, and even Ms. Harmony, have a symbol called a "letter link" that corresponds to each person.  Simply, a letter link (from High Scope curriculum) matches both the letter and phonemic sound of the first letter in the child's name.  Having a letter link and using them frequently when we talk to our friends at school provide the students many many opportunities to hear matching beginning sounds in words, which is an important pre-literacy skill to have.  It also provides them opportunities to see a bolded letter with a symbol, which helps the children learn to read each other's names and remember words that start with specific letters.

When Ms. Harmony blogs about the school friends, she refers to them as "Friend Bread," or "Friend Sandwich," based on the child's letter link.  (In older blog posts, they might simply be named "Friend B" or "Friend S," but there are now more children who have the same beginning letter so Ms. Harmony uses the letter link rather than just the letter.)  This preserves the child's anonymity to the public, but allows the parents to identify their own child's words and work.

Ms. Harmony has two children that are also mentioned in blog posts.  To differentiate her own personal children from the school friends, her daughters are named Toddler "K" and Baby "E."

Writing a Plan

Some followers have recently read about how students at Harmony's House make plans prior to play.  One of the other planning methods included "writing a plan."  The children of Harmony's House range in age from two to five.  How does a child, who likely cannot spell or even know many letters, "write a plan?"  Can they?  Yes.  Here's how we do it!

An important pre literacy skill is to be able to hear separate words in a sentence.  So, although most of the students in preschool cannot write words with letters, they do have the fine motor ability to draw a line.  They practice hearing and writing by drawing one line per word as they say it.  In the plan featured above, the child (age 5) wrote one line for "Toy and Puzzle Area."  She then listened to her own words and wrote the first letter that she could hear: 'T' 'a' 'P' and 'A.'"  When she returned to her plan at Recall Time, she added a picture of herself doing the plan in the Toy and Puzzle Area.

Below is a plan written by another school friend (age 3).  He wrote, "Art Area."  Because he cannot write letters yet, he simply drew the lines to represent each word.  Then he added a picture of himself with a paint brush.  When he returned to this picture at Recall Time, he described the colors he used and how they mixed together.  He also detailed his painting method of doing quick sweeps with the brush called "scribble scrabble!  scribble scrabble!"

Here is a sample of another child's plan (age 4):  she drew lines to represent "work with balloons" and Ms. Harmony wrote the words beneath the lines.  She drew the balloons that she wanted to play with.  When she came back to her plan at Recall Time, she colored the balloons, added letters to the "words" that she wrote, and talked about what she did with her friends.

Did she follow her plan?  Absolutely!  And she wrote about it too!

Rainforests and Jungles

During March, the students at Harmony's House have been studying the rainforest and jungle habitats of the world.  These are some of the ways we worked with the theme:

Kapok Tree connections:  During Circle Time, we read this fascinating book about animals from the Amazon Rainforest.  They in turn, speak to a man who has fallen asleep on the job, and beg him not to cut down their tree.  They emphasize how they get their food, homes, and family from this tree.  If he cuts the tree down, they will lose everything.  Indeed, the tree is about connections.  Each child then chose to be a certain animal from the story.  We used string to connect them to Ms. Harmony who represented the tree.  The man in the story did not cut down the tree, but we cut the strings in our activity to see the impact it had on the animals.  The children were startled when the ties were cut and they were left standing all alone, not connected to the tree or any of their school friends.  What a powerful experience!

Explore Table:  The rainforest trees and plants grow in layers with different animals occupying each area.  In the Explore Table, the children used tree blocks, foam platforms, and a variety of jungle animals to make tree houses, shelters, dens, etc. for the animals.

Small Group Taste Testing:  We sampled different fruits from tropical regions and charted who liked which kinds of fruits.  We tasted mangos, pineapples, avocado, and bananas.  The children frequently said, "I didn't know this was from the jungle!"  "Oh I love pineapple!"

Balloon Painting in the Art Area:  This discovery happened quite by accident.  On a "home day," (non-school day), Ms. Harmony and Kyra were working with paint when a balloon got tossed/rolled into some paint.  We decided to go with the flow and see if balloons make good tools for painting.  We discovered that the balloons made really interesting prints that mimicked leaf venation in large leaves!  We decided to share this discovery with the school friends when they came the next day to school.

Small Group Build-A-Bug:  More bugs and insects live in the jungles than anywhere else in the world.  For this activity, we first looked at a variety of books with bugs and insects.  We talked about features that we saw using vocabulary such as "antennae," "legs," "compound eyes," "wings," and "stingers."  Then we used precut shapes to assemble our own jungle bugs!  Everyone's turned out completely unique.  Finally, Ms. Harmony labeled the bug body parts according to the child's explanation.

Greeting Time Summary:  Ms. Harmony asked the the children what they knew about the equator.  This drawing is made from the children's words:

Friend "Bread" said, "The equator is the line in the middle."  We drew a globe and the imaginary line that divides the globe in half.

Friend "Kangaroo" said, "There are lots of trees and flowers there."

Each child named an animal that they could think of that lives in the jungle habitat: jaguars, snakes, parrots, sloths, and monkeys.

Friend "Sunflower" described the weather at the equator as "warm and sunny."

Friend "Kangaroo" added that jungles also had a lot of rain because plants need lots of water to grow.

And there you have it... just a few ways we learned about the rainforests and jungles of the world!  <3

Open Enrollment for Fall 2019

It's only March, but it's time to start thinking about whether preschool is right for your child!  Browse the blog, forward questions to Ms. Harmony, and let's talk about getting your child a spot here!

Half day preschool is not for everyone, but for some parents, it's a great fit.

• Are you a stay at home mom wishing for more social opportunities for your child?  
• Do you home school, but would love to have two mornings "off" while your child is taught elsewhere?  
• Do you have a new baby that would benefit from more one-on-one time with mom, but your older child needs more attention during this life transition as well?  
• Maybe you would just like to have a few mornings to go shopping or clean house by yourself.

Harmony's House might be a solution for your family.  Ms. Harmony offers a two-day, half-day preschool opportunity for children ages 30 months through five years.  She works from her home with no more than five enrolled children to maximize supervision, individualized learning, and healthy social development.  Use the tabs at the top of this blog page to read more about Ms. Harmony's program and experience.  With only five available spots, it's important to act quickly to contact Ms. Harmony, submit paperwork, and reserve your child's place.

harmonyhutson@gmail.com

Enroll now to reserve a spot!

Art Show!

     

The Art Area is always open during Work Time at Harmony's House.  Some children won't choose to do art for themselves though, and so an art activity is periodically planned for Small Group so that everyone has regular opportunities to explore with paint, play-doh, glue, glitter, and more.  Art is about developing creativity and so much more!  The children pictured here in this photo document can be seen having a tremendous amount of focus and motor control.  They are also choosing how they want to use the materials which is a form of self-expression.  They also learn about cause and effect, science principles of color mixing, better/best material for the purpose, etc.  What a way to build the brain!

Leprechaun Houses:  we worked for a week to decorate these boxes and turn them into leprechaun houses for the purpose of catching a leprechaun!

Rainforest paintings:

Snakes from the Rainforest:

Work Time creations:

Friend "Sandwich" wanted to glue eyeballs, chose a paper plate, and put them on.  He decided it looked like an owl!  He was excited about that!  Ms. Harmony showed him that there were feathers in the Art Area, and suggested that he might like to glue some feathers on his "owl."  The orange feather is the bird's wings, and the pink feather is his nose.

Friend Sunflower loves to roll out, poke sequins in, and then dry play doh.  She has made a few art sculptures like this one.

Friend Bread LOVES blue.  Loves it!  Her art method was to cut a white plate, draw on it with blue markers, string blue beads on blue fuzzy sticks, tape blue streamers onto the plate, and finally roll out blue play-doh to dry on top.  She enjoys quite the complicated process in her art making!

Babies of Harmony's House, part 2

This was a big weekend for the babies of Harmony's House!  Previously, Baby "K" got promoted to Toddler "K" when she became a big sister.  This weekend, Toddler "K" turned two and Baby "E" turned four months!

Here's some highlights:

Toddler "K" loves Dora and Deigo, so the entire house was transformed into a Central American jungle complete with animal rescuing!

Adult, toddler, and even school friends came to play and celebrate.

Baby "E" tried pears for the first time, grew to be 24 inches tall, and weighs a little more than 12 pounds!