Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Lent begins today!  Happy Ash Wednesday!  

We began our day worshipping the Lord in chapel!   We learned that Lent is a special time when we remember all that Jesus did for us on the cross.  This morning, Pastor Rouland wrote his bad choices down, and nailed His them to the cross.  When Jesus died on the cross, He took all of our bad choices with Him.  He died and rose again so that we can be saved! 

Did you know that sensory activities, such as exploring rice in the sensory table, actually lead to cognitive development?  "Early motor stimulation leads to better attention, listening skills, reading scores, and writing skills" (Palmer, 2003).  



When we returned from chapel, we had free choice time!  Many of the friends were interested in playing puppet theater.  




I noticed some of the friends taking the magna-tiles to the theater with them and asked what they were doing with the tiles.

"We are taking pictures!  These are our cameras!" 



We decided to capitalize on this child-initiated learning experience!  We pulled out some good junk, and the children were able to create their own camera for the puppet theater.  The learning process begins by engaging children's minds, and this is why we choose to incorporate learning into children's interests, such as the cameras today.  In this way, the children are already engaged and invested in the learning.  











Through the magna-tiles the friends are learning foundational math skills including spatial relationships and shapes.  They are also learning important social skills!  Social skills impact all areas of development.  Learning to cooperate with others, learning self-regulation, and learning positive conflict resolution are all skills that will benefit the children throughout their lives!   







Joey, Andrew, Alma, and Blake all worked together to carry the magna-tile tub during clean up time!  Great cooperation! 


We extended the learning about cameras as the children compared the two cameras below.  


We used a Venn diagram to organize our thoughts.  The objective of this was to introduce the concept of using a graphic organizer as a way to organize collected information.  


We had a lot of fun outside!  















We also had a dance party inside to help exercise our bodies! 



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