Oh! Please Take Me Fishing!

Last week, I noticed the kiddos were beginning to get restless with the bakery that was set up in Dramatic Play. I called a group meeting and asked them to help me decide what we should turn the area into next. I flipped through the pages of a book full of dramatic play ideas and they stopped when they found one they liked. They were all very excited about turning the center into a fishing spot!

We decided we'd need some water, some fish, and a few fishing poles, and we got busy working. First we made the river.

Then we made some fish! Here's Maddie carefully tracing our template fish:

The afternoon class helped make some trees to make the center look like a real fishing spot.

Once all of the scenery was complete, the kiddos went fishing! They've been having a blast with this!

Watch Autumn as she tries to catch a fish!

I added a few camping supplies, too, like a pretend fire, a roasting stick, and some marshmallows and hot dogs. Mrs. Twedt was super, super generous and got us a very nice tent to add to the center too! (Thank her for all of her support whenever you see her. She is truly a blessing to all of us!) Now, it's a full-on outdoor center. It's so fun!

Eli and Ellie camp through the "night" snug as a bug in our new tent!

Building Our Own Bodies

We have been hard at work learning about our bodies. It has been fun to watch the children pick up on the different organs and what they do. I'm hoping to combine all of this knowledge into a group project in which the children create a body out of recycled materials. We did some brainstorming today to come up with what the body should have and how to make each organ/body part. Here's our list:

I sent home a note with the afternoon class (I'll send one with the morning class tomorrow. I forgot to write it up during the morning class. Oops!) asking families to send in any materials they might find useful. I can't wait to see what the children bring to add to our body. Thank you ahead of time for all of your donations. I'm hoping to start our construction tomorrow.

The kiddos' favorite way to explore the body is in our clinic in the dramatic play center. They have been exploring many different social roles in this center including doctor, nurse, parent, patient, and receptionist. The babies have come in handy these last couple of days, and the children have been acting as parents to sick children. It cracks me up how caring they can be as they act as parents, and how mean (giving multiple shots and performing surgeries) they can be as they act as doctors. I even had one child who "took out the heart and the bones" today.

(sometimes I join in too)

The children have been absolutely in love with the parachute these last couple of weeks. I've been introducing new games throughout our gross motor time, and the kiddos have been having a blast. Their favorite activity of all is called Air Conditioner. Two children go under the parachute, lay down, and close their eyes. The rest of the kids move the parachute up and down to fan the children off. This is the activity we do to cool down at the end of our gross motor time, and the kiddos have started asking to do it whenever they feel hot.

The zoo building is still happening in full force. Each zoo is different than the day before, and I love to watch the creativity and imagination happening throughout that process. The afternoon class especially has been dedicated to this process. They even have their favorite animals, which they have named, and they work very hard to make the houses for those animals better than ever. Here's an example from today:

I'm really excited to start building our bodies! It should be a great chance for the children to show what they know!

Skeletons and Obstacle Courses

So, as I mentioned in the newsletter and briefly in the last post, we are working on a study of the human body right now. The kids have been really getting into it so far! This week was our exploration week, so I borrowed a skeleton and a couple of models from the high school for the children to look at. They had so much to say about them, and they wanted to examine every part of them. I even had to get a step stool for them at one point, so they could examine the skeleton's head. 

We talked a bit about bones and organs this week too. We tried to put together our own skeleton using a felt board, which led to many great conversations about how our bodies are put together and how many bones we might have. We also played around with where our organs are found in our bodies. My favorite guess was that our lungs are in our legs!

Since we are talking about our bodies, I designed an obstacle course for the children to run through in order to explore the different ways our bodies can move. They started out on a balance beam:

did a couple somersaults:

crawled through a tunnel:

hopped over some hoops:

and took a ride on a scooter:

The kiddos had a great time with this, and I'm sure this will be something I'll pull out again for them.

I'm looking forward to our Valentine's Day party on Tuesday. Your child brought home a class list on Thursday, so if you decide to send valentines with your child you can use this list to address them.

I forgot to mention in our newsletter that we will not have school on Monday, February 20 following the LMCS school calendar!

Have a great weekend!