Homes and Families

 

Families are the biggest part of our small friends' worlds, especially now when so many are quarantined, churches are closed, and activities are postponed.  But even when it's not Covid season, family members are the most influential people for a child during the early years.  Children learn the unique culture of their individual family, that they belong to something bigger than self, and that they are loved.

We have been bringing home and family play to the classroom with our Calico Critter homes and vehicles.  A lot of these plans replicate family activities or traditions, like Friend "Koala's" family picnic at the beach!

The children often have very specific ideas about how to arrange furniture, what to include in the house, and which critters they want to make into a family.

It has been so cozy and fun to listen to the children talk about their own families and create new stories for the critter families.  We will continue to build on the ideas of self and family in the upcoming weeks because these children are so important... to their families, Harmony's House, and the world!

Create and Learn!

Our school friends have been expressing their creativity in so many ways!  It's amazing to see them build their brains in SOOO many wonderful ways!  One subject we talked about was "shades."  We started with blue paint, and then explored what happened when we added black and/or white paint to the blue.  We talked about how the blue would get darker, or lighter, but didn't change into a different color really.  Dark blue and light blue are shades of blue.  Each masterpiece of blue shades was truly a masterpiece!

 

We used balls and ramps to create different tracks.  It was so fun and educational to explore what happened when we changed the angle of the ramp by raising or lowering the end of the ramps.  The balls speed would change and we found natural ways to talk about force, gravity, height, and distance.

     

But sometimes the ramps made dog homes too.  :) Because open ended materials are useful that way!  Why not?

Our Explore Table has been filled with fuzzy sticks, dry noodles, and colanders.  We navigated fuzzy sticks through the holes, in and out, to make silly hats!

Friend "Alarm Clock" wondered why sometimes you could see the fuzzy sticks and sometimes you couldn't.  We noticed that if we threaded the fuzzy sticks from the outside of the bowl, versus the inside, the fuzzy stick would poke out the way she wanted.

Play offers so many opportunities for young children to talk about "big" ideas from art and physics, and practice "big" skills like threading and weaving.  It's no wonder that play is one of the fastest ways to learn new information and skills for children!