May I Take Your Order?
4/20/2019
This week in the Beginners class kicked off our new investigation, Gardening. Gardening has so many benefits for our young learners.
In addition to the flower shop we also have a planting bin in our garden shop. The kids have had a great time pretending to plant seeds and other plants. We have many different tools in the planting bin so the kids can get used to using the tools before we plant our real seeds to watch them grow. To end our week we were able to attend the PNA science party. The Beginners were able to try fun and engaging STEM activities that were facilitated by many people from our community. Here are a few more pictures of our youngest learners exploring this week.
Squiggly Stories and a Herd of Sheep
4/12/2019
Emergent writing “means that children begin to understand that writing is a form of communication and their marks on paper convey a message” (Mayer, 2007). The Beginners are our youngest learners at PNA. This week we read the book A Squiggly Story by Andrew Larsen and Mike Lowery. The Beginners were very excited to create their own stories and share their book with their classmates. They are all so proud to have their books in our class library now. It was a great to see the kids realize that even though they are not writing words on their own yet that they can write a story by making marks on a paper. The learning didn’t stop in the classroom. The students were so excited about writing they were writing during our outdoor playtime as well. An awesome component of PNA is our Fine Arts program that is offered to each student including our youngest students. This week was the culmination of months of practice for our Early Childhood through 2nd grade spring show with Ms. Katie, our Performing Arts Teacher. Our Beginners played the role of Little Bo Peep’s sheep. Our students participated in many rehearsals this week including an invite dress rehearsal for our older schoolmates as our audience and then our big show for our families. Participation in the arts allows our students to grow their self-esteem and self-confidence and learn to overcome anxieties. It was amazing to see our Beginners perform in front of a large audience. Here are a few more pictures of our busy week here at PNA.
Ramps, Balls and Blocks
4/6/2019
This week in the Beginner class we studied ramps and balls. The students had a great time experimenting with the angle of the ramp to speed up and slow down the ball. One of our Beginners had a neat ramp toy that he brought from home to share with the class. It was awesome watching him be a leader and practice his public speaking and presenting skills. The other students had many questions about the ramp. We made beautiful pictures using our art trays as ramps with marbles. The students were able to see how the angle of the ramp would speed up or slow down their marble. At the end of the week we each made our own puffball to take home to celebrate the end of our ball unit. During this activity the Beginners got to practice their counting skills because we had to wrap the yarn 75 times. During choice time when the Beginners weren’t testing out ramps and the marble run toy, they were working together to build awesome block castles. Block play help children learn to take turns and share materials, develop new friendships, become self-reliant, increase attention span, cooperate with others, and develop self-esteem.
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Annalee JohnsonEK Teacher Archives
January 2021
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