Thankful Thoughts
11/18/2017
This week, the Beginners investigated what types of buildings are near PNA and in our neighborhood. We took a walk to the neighboring apartment complex and looked at the buildings. We talked about how there are several different homes in each building and how they were alike and different than the homes we live in. We noticed there were no yards at the apartment complex and talked bout how they have a community playground, instead. We also looked out the window at PNA to see what kinds of buildings are surrounding our school. We saw Fred Meyer, McDonalds, I Luv Sushi and many other buildings where people work. Towards the end of the week, we began to talk about Thanksgiving and what it means to be thankful. And while it may be a concept that is difficult to grasp for a 3 year old, as a teacher, I was reminded of how lucky I am to be able to walk into the doors of PNA each day and see the smiles and hear the laughter of the Beginners. I'm so lucky that I can give a child a hug when they're sad while also respecting their thoughts, feelings and emotions. I'm lucky that I get to support so much learning. I'm lucky that I can rejoice in so many different accomplishments for so many different children. I am thankful for all of the parents that support learning and growing inside and outside the classroom. I am so thankful for all of it! To conclude our week, we made apple sauce and invited the EKers over to share. They made us corn bread and we were thankful for friendship. Buildings
11/11/2017
This week, the Beginners began a new study on Buildings. We talked about what buildings are used for and what they are made out of. We looked at pictures of different types of buildings and talked about what makes them unique. We walked around PNA and looked at different areas of the building and learned what they are used for, who uses them and talked about what the building was made from. The Beginners experimented with building with new materials, like the tin-foil wrapped blocks and the wedgit toys. They also used wooden cubes and sugar cubes (the shape of the week!) to make towers, walls, cities and zoos. The children also experimented with using tools by hammering pegs into the last of our pumpkins. It's looking like this is going to be a fun study!
Fog was thick in the air this week as the Beginners paraded in their halloween costumes on Tuesday. In the spirit of all things spooky, we mixed together some skeleton bones, ghost snot, goblin blood, troll teeth and bat eyes to make some super yucky, yet oh-so-fun-to-play-with, monster slime. To wrap up our pumpkin study we explored different things that people can do with pumpkins. We learned that people grow really big (600+ pound) pumpkins, cut a hole in them and scoop out the guts. Then, they sit in them and race down a river. Weird? Yes. Cool? Super cool. So, we made our own pumpkin boats and added some toy dinosaurs, people and animals. The scenarios were endless. We read the tongue-twisting book, Runaway Pumpkin, by Kevin Lewis and then experimented with our own runaway pumpkins we tried to figure out ways to stop them from escaping at the bottom by building different structures from different types of materials. This activity was a great segway into next week, in which we will be beginning a new study on buildings!
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Annalee JohnsonEK Teacher Archives
January 2021
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