Monday
Quite a few Catbirds have been taking on challenging puzzles - an activity that develops all kinds of important skills, from fine motor coordination to perspective taking, as well as attention to detail and making visual connections. We often work with friends as they work through these challenges to get a sense of their thought processes and ask them questions that might push them to another level.
Building activities tap into some of the same skills, as well as others like spatial awareness, geometric concepts and fleible problem solving.
Friends take pride in what they build and we often take pictures to put in their books.
We are continuing to work on eye hand coordination through a variety of games and challenges.
In this one, we are asking friends to pass balls from one hand to another and around the circle at increasing speed and with growing numbers of balls circulating.
Storytime!
Art class with Johanna
Working with clay. Today we made fossils by pressing different objects into rolled out clay.
Tuesday
We had a very fancy wedding today.
Another puzzle challenge.
Spanish class
Identifying Spanish words with giant fly swatters
Wednesday
More building with different materials
Music class. We are learning new songs and movements in preparation for the Winter Program
New books from the library.
Today's challenge was using our sense of touch to identify objects.
For this first time, each object was shown to the class before it was put into the Touchy Feely container. Each object was also pictured on a card.
Each Catbird reached in and found an object, then guessed what it was. This was easy for some friends and difficult for others. Everyone was given a couple of chances. If they couldn't get it, we worked with them one on one with fewer objects until they started to get the hang of it. This activity challenges a different part of their brains.
We borrowed some new puzzles to keep the challenge going.
Thursday
IN PE, the Catbirds working on throwing, catching, and bouncing, as well as kicking a ball through a hoop.
Snack name caller is a favorite Catbird job.
Friends have been working on names of bones inside of a matching game. When they turn over the card with a name on it, the Smartboard reads the word outloud and then they look for the picture. This activity taps into past learning as well as short term memory, and encourages them to recognize written words. Its also fun and they enjoy helping one another.
We had a great parent read aloud, "Dragons Love Tacos."
Friday
Today was a very busy day with few pictures (mostly because the teachers were both fully occupied, which makes it hard to stop for photos.). We reviewed Catbirds' ideas for their houses and discussed what kinds of materials they would need. Then they were given play money and set loose in our house supply store.
No comments:
Post a Comment