Rounding the Bend into Spring!
The first days of spring are upon us and our Seedlings have been so excited to experience all of this wild and unpredictable weather! The past few weeks have brought snow, wind, rain and some glorious warmth and sun that is whispering promises of the months to come.
Thanks to some awesome parent donations we have recently introduced a new dress up basket to our classroom! The kids love putting on all of the clothes and accessories and filling up their bags. Dress up is not only an open invitation for collaborative imaginary play but it also requires the children to challenge their fine motor skills in a play environment. The Seedlings concentrate hard while opening and closing the velcro on the capes, zipping and unzipping the bags and wrapping the scarves around their necks!
We are continuing our self portraits unit with a project about our bodies! First we trace each child's body and then have them draw and color their bodies. We sing 'Sticky Sticky Bubblegum' and 'Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes', songs that challenge the Seedlings to identify the different parts of their bodies. We also talk about how important it is to ask our friends before we touch or hug them!
Looking Forward
After we return from spring break we will launch into everything spring! We will observe new plants and flowers growing in our classroom and outside, talk about what changes in spring and start new spring art projects with paper mache and natural dying processes. Thinking forward to the month of April, please send your child to school with lots of layers rather than one very warm jacket! The morning might feel more like winter and the afternoon might feel more like summer and we want to make sure our Seedlings are comfortable in any weather that comes our way. A song we've been singing a lot lately is 'Sticky Sticky Bubblegum'. The words go like this (with some corresponding movement direction)... [pat both hands on knees to the rhythm] Sticky, sticky, sticky, sticky bubblegum, bubblegum, bubblegum Sticky, sticky, sticky, sticky bubblegum Makes my hands stick to my head [put hands on head] And you pull it, and you pull it, and you pull it away! [pull hands away from head as if there's bubble gum on head] With each round of the song we stick our hands to a different body part. Lately with so many experts at the game we've been making it more difficult by sticking the gum to not just our hands, for example, "Makes my elbow stick to my foot".
We've been playing more frequently at Grover Cleveland and will soon leave our classroom a bit earlier so we can have more time outside in this beautiful spring weather! Our Seedlings love to play 'I Spy' on the trek to Grover Cleveland and roar hello to the tiger that lives on the corner of Himrod and Woodward. They look forward to playing in the green space with the hill and rock and at the playground with the airplane and boat!
At the playground we've been seeing our Seedlings expanding their imaginary play with elaborate games and stories about what they'll do and where they'll go on the airplane. From Florida to California to home and many other destinations, our kids are engaged with packing their bags and talking about what snacks they'll bring for the plane.
