Play Dough and Paint

Dear Parents,

We started our week playing with play dough and painting at our easel. We ended our week playing with play dough and painting at our easel. Everyone wanted a turn to paint and some wanted second and third turns. We are mixing red and yellow, and blue and yellow. Children are discovering new colors as they paint and mix colors. 

We also added food coloring to our white play dough. Half the class chose yellow, while others picked red.  A new color emerged as we began sharing play dough. Play dough is a great hand strengthening activity that helps exercise drawing and handwriting muscles.

We read You Are My Wonders, Babies, More, More, More, The Night Before Kindergarten, We Share At School, Follow The Line To School, We Love School!, Miss Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten, Now, Soon, Later, and Wow! School! 

On Monday and Tuesday we had seven sleepers during quiet time. Shhhhhhh.

We are continuing to learn each other's names, working on pulling our pants up and down in the bathroom, using soap when we wash our hands, and one paper towel to dry them. Everyone is working on taking turns talking, listening, swinging, and painting at the easel. 

The classroom is becoming more colorful each day as we hang our easel paintings. The sandbox has been open for business too.

Have a warm weekend,

Therese

First Two Days

Our first two days were spent getting to know names, familiarizing ourselves with the space, making it our own, and laughing. We also played!

We started in the yard, swinging and climbing on the jungle gym, then went up to the classroom for circle time. 

We sang Good Morning, the Hokey Pokey, Shake Our Sillies Out, Swimming in the Swimming Pool, Five Little Ducks, Five Green and Speckled Frogs, and the A,B,C’sy. We read two books about dogs going to school, one with cats, another with little monsters, and several others. We noticed in one of the stories that the pictures looked remarkably like our own classroom. 

We played with homemade play dough and the children made: big long snakes, lots of tiny snakes, unicorn snakes, a snake slug, a unicorn snail, a wrecking ball, a bouncy ball, the St. Louis Arch, a ramp, a castle, pancakes, several tornadoes, and a tomato pizza. Tomato pizza, not tornado pizza. 

In the classroom today we played with math manipulatives, building with soft blocks, connecting multicolored waffle pieces, and plastic people. Several children were excited to connect the peoples' hands. One person, after connecting four people, said, "This is my family."

We dug in the sandbox too, and had a splendid beginning!

It was a busy two days,

Therese