january 18
Our morning began with a new Montessori pre-writing activity called pin poking. We used a jumbo thumbtack to poke holes along the outline of a shape. Today we focused on hearts and Ridley actually poked, punched out, decorated, and gifted a heart to Rigel :) We thought poking was a blast, though we preferred to poke all over the place versus along the black lines. The stronger our fingers and wrists become, the better precision we’ll have and the easier it will be to follow the lines. For now, it’s all about exploring the new materials and having fun!
In the park, we found two giant snowballs, which held our attention for a very long time. We worked hard to roll the balls across the grass and found that it’s easier to move heavy objects with lots of friends helping. Once we rolled the snowballs into place, we climbed up onto them, jumped off & walked from one to the other. Sylvie helped give friends a boost by pushing on their booty and holding out her hand to help everyone stay balanced.
A while later, we spotted our “hospital” tree across the way. We love pretending to hammer, paint, and hang out in our big magnolia tree (aka hospital). Today we pretended to be owls and the tree was our nest. We also pretended that a Missouri gray wolf was trying to blow down the door to our nest home :)
Back in the classroom, we finished decorating our skin-toned hands. Some of us “painted our nails” different colors, while others added lots of bling in the form of bracelets, rings, and jewels. We hung our hands up on the wall and are going to make name cards tomorrow so the grown ups know “which one is ours.”
Ridley and Sylvie worked hard on our Great Horned Owl book — drawing pictures of the various foods the owl eats. We broke the animals down into shapes to make the drawings a bit easier. Tomorrow, we’ll watercolor the “foods” and start to decide how we want to arrange all the pages into a class book.
We ended our day with a read aloud about emotions. We liked the pictures and hearing the words in both Spanish and English. We talked a lot about things that make us scared — “I get scared of monsters and bad dreams!” … things that make us feel excited — “A big sprinkle cake!” “If my mom said we could eat ice cream from dinner.” “If I got three baby puppies!” … and things that make us happy — “I know what makes Aya happy. Getting new sticky tabs and a notebook.” “Going to the beach with my family.” “Another sprinkle cake!”
It was a great discussion!