I see. I hear. I feel.

I SEE COLORS, I SEE SHAPES 

Red, red is the color I see
If you have red then show it to me
Stand up and turn around
Show me your red and sit back down!

What is rojo, what is rojo?
Rojo is red,rojo is red
Yellow is amarillo, yellow is amarillo
Blue is azul, blue is azul

Student interest continues in the colors they see, and how colors can mix together to make NEW colors! Mouse Paint was a particularly wonderful book to share with the children about some mischievous mice mixing colors and making a nice big mess.

Students used their whole bodies for color mixing by rolling balls in red and yellow paint and tossing them at a giant canvas outside! They also loved to use their hands, spools, paintbrushes, cars and wheels to roll that paint around. And what happened when we mixed that red and yellow paint? We made Orange! What fun engaging the whole body, and in turn engaging the whole mind!

What is a circle? Where do you see circles? What can you do with a circle?

 Students are pointing out circles everywhere! From patterns on their clothes and grommets in their shoes to balls and wheels on cars, we see circles all day long. We draw a big circle in the air, and a small circle on our wrists to make a watch. Que hora es-what time is it? Circle time! We explored circles so many ways this week.

                 By dipping all sorts of things that might make circles into paint and stamping them onto paper.

                                By tracing circles with our fingers and with pastels onto colored paper.

   By feeling the smooth wooden circles with our hands and staining the wood with rich and bright watercolors.

                                                       Circles go around!

                                 By adding axles to these circle shapes we discovered how they roll.

 

                                                                        And around!
     

         By looking at Kandinsky's painting Concentric Circles, we observed how circles can be small or large, inside and outside, and noticed colors of red, yellow, blue, green, pink, blue, orange and purple.

                           

                         We counted one, two, three, four, five circles within circles, went to paint.

"Color is a power which directly influences the soul."-Wassily Kandinsky 1912

I'm so inspired by other artists, big and little ones. I especially love to see the students take charge of the paint and create so confidently! We'll continue exploring shapes and color through our senses next week.  -Teacher Sonja

Sonja.peregrine@gmail.com

Science,Gardening,Exploring & Building

Children in the early childhood years learn primarily through their senses and from direct experiences. They develop an understanding about the world through play, exploration and creative activities and by watching and imitating adults and other children.-NAEYC 

This week in science we made a few observations and hypothesis about bees. 

 What are bees? What do you already know about bees? Here's what we came up with as a class:

"Bees are yellow!"
"Bees have round heads and circle eyes."
"Bees have 3 body parts. If they have 6 legs they are called an insect."
"Bees have stripes."
"Bees pollinate the flowers."
"When a bee pollinates the flowers tomatoes grow."
"Bees say buzzzzzzz buzzzzz buzzzz!"
"Bees live in hives."

What do we want to learn about bees?"
"What do bees eat?"

   

  Circles, cylinders,axles & balls!  

 

Creation station

Building Friendships

 Singing with Teacher Jack

We are having a lot of fun at school.

-Teacher Can 

can.peregrine@gmail.com

Visit this link to see some more pictures that we took in the month of September:
https://it.thislife.com/cN2NfNuQ

Week 3 Highlights

What do you hear?

ART:
Our ears tell us many things about our environment. When we quiet ourselves, close our eyes and listen, what sounds can we hear? Maybe the wind blowing leaves in the trees, an insect buzzing by, a distant conversation, an airplane overhead, our breathing, our heart beating...

We used our ears to play listening games this week, and tried to imagine what we heard. From a recorded track, we heard rain and thunder, birds, farm animals, dinosaurs, crickets, drums, pianos, and violins. We also made sounds for others to guess, and recorded and listened to ourselves singing and playing instruments!

We listened to beautiful piano music in Debussy's La Mer, floated scarves around as we danced like water, and painted water flowing fast and slow, swirling around, and bubbling up.

 

Sometimes we drew or painted other sounds we heard. During one painting session, students began experimenting with mixing colors. "What will happen if I mix red with yellow?" Soon many children became excited to try this exploration, and engaged with classmates to find out what they were mixing! This inspired a second color mixing project, where students chose a paint color to cover their hands with, and then invited a friend with different colored hands to rub their hands together to see what would happen.

Explorations are such joy!

- Teacher Sonja

SCIENCE:
This week we continued to talk & learn about ourselves, our senses and how we use our senses all the time. We talked about listening and hearing, seeing, and touching.

(We talked about being gentle to babies. Amanda is a new big sister and she wanted to tell the class how to be soft when playing with babies because they are small.) Our conversations about bodies were interesting because a lot of kids have younger siblings. They started talking about their sibling's bodies. They wanted to share information about the babies they know instead of talking about themselves and their own bodies.

"They cry loud"
"When I use to be a baby I would cry."
"They cant walk yet."
"Look I have a baby in my tummy."
"Babies want to be carried!"
"My baby sister is small."
"The baby comes out of a tummy at the doctors."
"My brother."
"There are babies at our school too, they go on the other gate."

It is amazing how considerate our students are. Many children wanted to tell us about the babies in their lives.

GARDENING:
We learned about seeds and the growth (turning into a flower). We pretended we were seeds that grew into giant trees! We talked about fruit and bees, bugs and creatures that live under the ground. Next week we could talk more about bees, worms and bugs. Students were interested in the pollination and composting process. It would be wonderful to bring worms into the water table someday soon. Teaching the connection between fruit and seeds as they do have an understanding on what a plants need to grow-water, soil and sun. By Monday we will be able to see growth in our class garden bed. Seedlings are sprouting!! This will be exciting to observe.

NATURE HIKES:
We went on a few nature hikes. Students observed that there were different textures on the trees. The leaves were different colors and the sand at the park felt different from the sand at our school. We found shapes in nature. We found new rocks to add to our rock collection. Students's interests were:

- Sorting rocks
- building houses
- pulling logs and tree branches
- asking friends for help and problem solving. "This is too heavy, Hey can you help me?"
- formulating ideas for the outdoor classroom. Some ideas students had: "more rocks, a new garden, bird food for the feeders, a table to color on, jump on a big pile of dirt."
- the students heard airplanes and trains.
- students noticed the circle shape. The round tennis ball is a circle. The sun in a circle. The rock is a circle. Our eyes have circles. There are tiny circles on this leaf.

One more note! Thank you to all the incredible parents that have spent so much time in the classrooms helping out!! It's such a treat to have parents involved. We have an awesome group of families! Thanks again.
  
-Teacher Can
can.peregrine@gmail.com

This Week In Escuelita

Music
ART
Science
Self Identity
Sensory 



Greetings from Escuelita!

It was wonderful to see so many families come out for our back to school night on Thursday, thank you for supporting us!

We use our senses to navigate our world, and this is especially true in the sensory-motor stage of preschool. Our amazing bodies have eyes that see, ears that hear, noses that smell, mouths that taste, and hands that feel! In Escuelita this week, we have been talking about our selves and learning about each other- about who we are and what we can do. We can do so many things!

In art, we sang about our heads, shoulders, knees and toes, counted fingers, and played games-manos arriba! We observed our hands, and noticed our ten fingers, fingernails, palms, knuckles, the lines on our hands, and our fingerprints. We talked about all the things our hands can do-hold, tickle, clap, draw, paint, squish play-doh, make sounds, shake, high five...(check out our bulletin board for more!) We looked carefully at paintings and saw people using their hands to work, to carry, to play an instrument, to stroke a pet, to  hold a baby... We pressed our hands in colorful ink and onto paper to create hand print art and traced our hands with pastels. We also used our hands to make paintings, drawings, and mold play dough!

In Science we have been talking about self identity: What we know about ourselves and also about growth. The remembered self incorporates all of the memories the child has about his or herself. This information becomes the child's story of "Then and now."  We talked about growth and the essential & necessary things that we need to grow. This is what they came up with: 

"I need water." 

"I need my mommy."

"I need food."

"My brother needs milk."

Teacher Can gave interviews-What do we know about ourselves?

Who are you? Where are you from? Where do you live? What kind of things do you like? Check out the Science bulletin board for these dynamic interviews!

We will continue these self-discovery studies this week, exploring what we hear with our ears. Please feel free to send in items that might help us explore sounds/music from home that your child can share with us at circle time. 

Enjoy the day!

Maestras Sonja y Can

                     Enjoy these pictures of our second week: