Happy New Year! The children have been so happy to be back at school, and have done a wonderful job remembering our rules and routines. This week we started a new study of animals in winter, focused on bears. Here are a few things we’ve learned and done this week:
- We read Going on a Bear Hunt and created a bear hunt obstacle course out in the woods
- During small group time kids learned about the different foods that bears eat and got to collect those foods.
- Our dramatic play center is set up with many materials for becoming bears and making bear dens.
- We read counting books with a bear focus. Later this week or next week we’ll start making a class counting book of our own.
- We went on tracking expeditions from the woods, and though we didn’t find any bear tracks we did follow a fox trail for a while.
- We sang songs about bears: The Bear Went Over the Mountain, and Sleeping Bears
- Joan taught us about the ways that bears move and the tracks that they make.
In the coming weeks our study of animals in winter will also focus on otters, birds, and squirrels. If you have any good books, costumes, stuffed animals, or other related materials you’d like to let us borrow we’d be grateful!
In pre-k licensing news, we’ve recently found out that we can’t have any of the kids’ clothing that hangs in the cubby area touching. SO, we’re looking for donations of large reusable shopping bags. We’ll have kids store their jackets and snow pants in the shopping bags hanging from their cubby hooks.
And while we’re asking for donations, we’d also love old tissue boxes, cereal boxes, or other small cardboard boxes that we can use to make habitats for some little clay animals the kids are working on. Thank you!
Kids have been spending a lot of time carrying large branches around the outdoor classroom together
Kinetic sand on trays is a great sensory experience
Check out the bulletin board outside the classroom to see the tracking pictures kids made last week
Sometimes we buddy kids up for a part of our choice time. These two chose to build dominos together.
Making a den in our dramatic play center.
These goofballs
Following some fox tracks...
...took us on an expedition out into the field.
We found a cool hole in the ground and kids made many predictions about what lived in it.
Snow art with liquid watercolors.
Some more teamwork carrying a tree together
We finally strung up our loom and have started some weaving.
These kids worked together to roll that giant snowball across a puddle.
Check out that E!
These bears are collecting food to make them fat for the winter.
Carrying another large stick together...
We've brought some large pieces of lumber into the woods, and they've become all sorts of imaginative things.
Sauteing snow
A comfy tree hangout
We've discovered that there are a TON of baby worms in our bin!
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