Sparkle, sparkle up above, little angel made with love! This little angel is holding in her little hands one of the many gifts of the season. Sharing and Caring, Love and Laughter, Family and Friends, Hugs and Smiles, Beauty and Wonder! These are the gifts we treasure all the year through at Hazel Drive Early Childhood Center. Our first half of the school year has passed quickly and joyfully, with lots and lots of HAPPINESS! Let's get caught up on some of the goings-on!
LITTLE BUNNIES AND COTTONTAILS
Miss Laura, Miss Alanna, Miss Cathy, Miss Linda and Mrs. Shirley
These are our littlest children, our two- and three-year-olds. We reside in the big, bright, yellow room, filled with light, toys and books and musical instruments and all the happy sounds of childhood! Our day starts with playtime when the children have a choice of toys on the table or floor, an art project at the round table using glue, paint and perhaps even (one-on-one) snipping with scissors, a table game with a teacher, and, during rotating weeks, easel painting, fingerpainting, water table or play dough. There is a lot of creating and learning that takes place during these activities! MegaBlocks can turn into a tall tower or a crazy car with an elephant at the wheel. Children use language and math skills to match the pictures on a lotto board. Colorful shapes are carefully placed on paper with drippy glue to create a masterpiece, while learning about spatial relationships, patterns, shapes and colors. And the drippy glue is fun and learning all by itself!
Circle Time is a time for fun and learning, too! We sing our Circle Time Song and hold hands to form a circle! We move the circle around like a merry-go-round, which takes a lot of cooperation among classmates. (The moving circle is a building block for other games like "Ring Around the Rosie," "Here We Go 'Round the Mulberry Bush" and "We're going to Kentucky.") We learn to define our own "circle space" when we sit down right where we just stamped our feet! We sing our Hello songs, recite the Pledge of Allegiance and sing our songs about America and her flag. Then it's time to put another number on the calendar. The helper of the day is asked: Where does the next number go? (Left to right reading) What number will it be? (Counting) What picture will it be? (Recognizing patterns). We sing a song about the days of the week and the weather. Our Color Song is a cherished part of our Circle Time routine! Usually the helper needs to use a wooden spoon as a pointer to reach all the way up to red! Here it is, to the tune of "Frere Jacques:"
Red is rojo
Green is verde
Blue's azul
Negro's black
Yellow's amarillo
Purple is morado
Gris is gray
Brown, cafe
Orange is naranja
Pink is rosado
Blanco's white, blanco's white
Then we use our "flat screen TV" (flannel board) to determine "Who is at school today?" The children's names are printed on different color bunnies, and they identify their names (and most of their classmates' as well!) and place them on the flannel board. Then we can count the names, and count the children, too, and we know "Who is at school today!"
After a sociable snack time to nourish and refuel, we head outside for recess. Slides, the climbing wall and ladder, the playhouse, balls to throw, catch, kick and chase, ride-on and push toys, swings, a big sandbox and a big yard for running (not to mention a mild November and December!) provide plenty of opportunity for using those big muscles and big voices!
Story time, music with Miss Laura on the piano or guitar, housekeeping play, the ABC box, and the Shape-osaurus or a combination of these activities await the children upon returning indoors. And all of this takes place before lunch! We keep the Little Ones as busy as they keep us!
BIG HOPPERS
Miss Gloria, Miss Alanna, Miss Janet, and Mrs. Sharon
Our Young- (or Almost-) four-year-olds are the Big Hoppers. Their home base is the front room where they work and play under the watchful eyes of the children and bunnies in Miss Gloria's beautiful mural! What could be happier or more colorful than that? They are learning many skills and concepts as they grow! They put the "PRE" in "Preschool" with their pre-writing, pre-math and pre-reading activities! They are getting ready to become competent Kindergartners or Wascally Wabbits!
Drawing skills are very important to becoming writers. Learning about shapes (letters are lines and curves, after all) and spatial relationships, holding the writing instrument properly, and being able to reproduce what they see, all contribute to the ability to put words on paper. Miss Gloria provides drawing lessons that enable the children to follow directions and to copy shapes and lines step-by-step until, VOILA! There is a picture of something that all can recognize! Wow, a snail! A house! A clown! Other pre-writing exercises include copying or tracing diagonal lines, loops, and horizontal or vertical lines. These activites are often incorporated into an art project, so that the Big Hoppers are practicing these important skills and creating beautiful art at the same time. Good old-fashioned coloring with crayons is an important childhood activity that is practiced by the Big Hoppers. We don't want this to get lost in our modern age of doing with our thumbs on a screen!
The Big Hoppers use everyday objects to learn sorting, sequencing and counting. Pom-poms, beans, multi-colored and multi-sized bears, and the children themselves are employed to teach pre-math skills. Attributes such as length, height, size, color and shape are used to classify items. Numeral recognition is practiced as well in a variety of activities including coloring by the numbers! Using real objects to add and subtract teaches these concepts in a way that is meaningful for little children.
Doing fun activities with the children's names is a very effective pre-reading activity. When Miss Gloria puts the wrong name in front of someone, and everyone laughs and shouts "NO!," they are reading. When they go to the table and each one finds the paper with his or her own name on it, they are reading. A child's name is one of his first sight words for reading. And did you ever notice how children recognize signs and logos? That is reading, too. In the Big Hopper room, you will see reproductions of signs for many local stores. They practice reading them, and learning the letters of which they are composed.
The Big Hoppers are fully engaged in social activities as well, as they play and pretend together. An important part of being a Big Hopper is practicing how to get along: to be polite, ask nicely, negotiate, share, and to think about the Golden Rule that we sing about in the Hazel Drive Song. They receive guidance in being a good citizen of our school! It's a joy to see them working things out as they immerse themselves in imaginary play! In additon to the Pledge of Allegiance, here is another pledge the Big Hoppers recite each day:
I pledge to myself on this day,
To try to be kind in every way,
To every person, big or small,
I will help them if they fall,
When I love myself, and others, too,
That is the best that I can do!
WASCALLY WABBITS
Miss Missy
Although our oldest children are called the "Wascally Wabbits," they're not altogether wascally...In fact, they are rather nice! These are the older four-year-olds, five-year-olds who miss the Kindergarten cut-off and Kindergartners who spend the other half of their day in our midst. They have the distinction of being the BIG KIDS at Hazel Drive, and they live up to all expectations of that lofty position! They are characterized by their independence, their thirst for learning and their penchant for social play. They show equal enthusiasm whether they are gathered around the big table with Miss Missy, learning, discussing, writing, drawing, coloring, tracing, cutting and gluing OR engaged in the wonderful world of make-believe, building fantastic structures or dressing up and pretending with inventive scenarios they've created.
The Wascally Wabbits draw on and practice their natural abilities for more independent fine motor work than their younger counterparts. They are expected to trace, draw and cut on their own with the unique results you'd expect from your budding artist. The walls of the Big Red, White and Blue Room are decorated for every season and occasion by the thoughtful artwork of the Wascally Wabbits. Their themes so far this year included "Chicka-Chicka Boom Boom," a pumpkin patch (ever so charming with each of its unique inhabitants), a tribute to firefighters, and a tribute to veterans. A flock of turkeys and a herd of whimsical reindeer could also be seen adorning the room at the appropriate times!
Because of their ability to use abstract forms to represent concrete events, the Wascally Wabbits also draw their own calendars and graph the weather each day. They can collect the data to compare the number of sunny and cloudy days at the end of each month, for example. Do you think they found any snowy days in 2015? They are working their way through the alphabet, learning the letters, their shapes and sounds practicing writing the letters, and creating themed art for each letter.
An important part of the curriculum is playing board games, card games and table games. A game of checkers, 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe, Uno or Connect Four teaches many academic and social skills, and has never stopped being fun from back in the "olden" days before electronics.
The biggest kids have a big time out on the playground each day, using those long limbs to climb, run, jump and pump on the swings and using their big voices (yes, "outdoor" vioces!) to shout, yell, and call out to their friends!
Our not-so-Wascally Wabbits learn how to be good listeners, folllow directions, follow the rules and to be great helpers for the teachers and for the younger children in the school. They are definitely learning, not only to be good citizens of Hazel Drive, but of their communities as well.
2016 is here! May it be filled with blessings for you and your family!
Love,
Miss Laura, Miss Gloria, Miss Missy, Miss Alanna, Miss Cathy, Miss Linda, Mrs. Shirley, Mrs. Sharon, Miss Alyssa and Miss Joslyn. Mr. Fix-It, too!
