Shown and Tell
Bring a leaf from three different plants.
Topic: Plants
Learn how plants work
The value is responsibility. A part of re-sponsibility is taking initiative. When there is an emergency, it is even more important that we act without being told.
For safety, we’ll learn how to act if there is a fire.
Outside, we’ll play the clap game and keep the balloon up.
The songs we’ll be singing are Edleweiss, The Green Grass Grows All Around, Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, Consider Your-self, and Oh, What a Beautiful Morning.
For creative dramatics, we’ll act out fire scenarios.
Our art activities are fancy plants, nutty pets, adopt a tree, nature sculpture, and nature patterns.
For motor development, we’ll work on co-ordination by playing beanbag partners and space circles. For postural response we’ll play rocking horse, egg rolls, ball pass, and rolling the ball.
STARTING A DIALOGUE
We’re communicating more and with more people today than ever before. Email is being usurped by Skype, Instagram, and text messages. The downside is that experts are expressing concerns that we’re getting a false sense of intimacy. Our ‘friends’ are not really friends and frequently, they’re not even acquaintances. We’re losing the fundamental social skills of being able to read facial expressions or the emotional context of a body movement. Because our conversations are taking place via electronic devices, our children are losing the opportunity to develop good oracy skills. The ability to use words to communicate thoughts and needs and to ask questions, to understand language heard in conversations and in books is a key foundational skill for later reading achievement.
We can intentionally develop oracy skills by having conversations with our children. By definition, a conversation would be not only speaking skills but also listening skills. These language interactions are the basis for building children’s understanding of a large number of words, which is a crucial ingredient in their later ability to comprehend what they read. To develop strong oral skills children need to:
- hear and use a rich and abstract vocabulary
- hear and use increasingly complex sentences
- express ideas and ask questions
- answer questions and express abstract ideas
We can extend children’s understanding by providing multiple definitions and examples and by connecting ideas with concepts children already know. If we encourage children to tell their experiences, we not only expand oracy skills but also reinforce memory. Ask questions to enable children to express abstract ideas such as things they might imagine or predictions of things that might happen in the future.
Reading together tremendously expands opportunities for conversation. Books have a variety of words that might not be a part of our family’s vocabulary. Libraries are a wonder of choices for children to explore their own interests. Expand choices to include fiction and non-fiction, poetry, picture dictionaries and encyclopedias, and single-topic information books. Focus on the new vocabulary to which your child is being exposed and expand ideas with abstract language such as:
- what would have happened if a character had done something different?
- what are the characters thinking or feeling?
- what is the moral of the story, poem, or picture?
- how is that like your life?
In General
How to Know? – If you’re wondering what your child is learning, the obvious answer might be to ask the teacher. Another way is to ask your child about things you know are in the classroom or that was an activity for the day. The little enrichment curriculum flyer you can get each week lets you know the songs the children are learning, what the art activities for the week are, what physical development exercises we did, the science/ecology/safety/cooking project for the week, and the main topic. These can be conversation starters for you. A big success tactic will be to listen. You might hear about a new friend, a new concern, or a new interest your child has.
classroom news
Evan uses his class time to work with the pin punching work. Using various shapes Evan punches tiny holes along a line on a piece of paper the shape is then punched out. Delighted with his achievement Evan shows his work to his classmates. This work is a good activity for developing pincer grip, this work also helps to improve attention span and hand to eye coordination. Daniel has been working with the numbers and counters and the spindle boxes both aid in identifying numbers and applying a quantity them and also offers a better understanding of the concept of numbers. Ella and Piper are both working on writing and identifying numbers 1-20
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