What a busy week we had with many activities out of our routine. It is not always easy for preschoolers to make this many transitions and adjustments, but your children did a wonderful job! Tuesday we had a full day field trip to Ioka Valley Farm to take a hayride, navigate a corn maze, eat lunch, feed the animals and pick pumpkins. Wednesday was picture day. Thursday we had visitors during the day to look at the layout of our classroom. Friday was Grandparents’ and Grandfriends’ Day.

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We hope you enjoy the photos of our field trip. And for comments, we are going to share the main activity your children did with their grandparents/friends. Unfortunately because Vicky was sick, we had just one teacher, Amanda, and she was not able to get many photos. The explanation for our activity will also serve to give you more insights into our program.

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Berkshire Country Day

Grandparents’ and Grandfriends’ Day

Preschool Classroom

October 10, 2014

Welcome to our classroom! Our activity today will be working with your grandchild or grandfriend to see the ways we integrate developmentally appropriate concepts and skills.

Concepts:
sorting and classifying objects by size, color, shape and/or type
comparing objects which is bigger, smaller, wider, etc.
sequencing objects from small to large
counting practice (many children this age do not yet match an exact number to
numbers of objects but adults can model this by counting out loud while pointing to objects)

Skills:
following directions
taking turns

Directions – Place a set of twigs, flowers, seeds evergreens and pine cones on the table. Do one or all of the activities.

  1. Have your grandchild/friend sort them with you. You might want to ask, “What are the ways we can group (or organize) these?” This can be done multiple ways and can be done once or many times. You decide. Talk with and listen to them to see their thinking. Follow their lead.
  1. “Which one is…?” Game. Take turns pointing to (or picking up) which object is the… Ask, “Which one is the biggest? smallest? heaviest? lightest? fattest? skinniest? roundest? softest? hardest? smoothest? darkest? most colorful? tallest? shortest?”
  1. Over/Under Game. Say and do, one at a time, “I wonder if we can put…a twig under a flower; a twig over a flower; a pine cone next to a twig; a flower in between two twigs; a lot of twigs around a flower, etc.” You can vary the objects to practice following directions, and understanding prepositions. Follow your child/friend’s lead. Some children will want to do this again and again. Others will want to move on.
  1. Additional activities:

Sequencing: “Can we take all the sticks (or pine cones) and line them up smallest to largest?”
Counting: “Let’s count all the twigs. all the pine cones, etc.”

  1. Aesthetics. Ask, “What kind of design could we make using these objects?” Let your child/friend take the lead on this one, and let us know when you are done, so we can take a photo of your masterpiece!

What have we accomplished? These activities have integrated language arts (communicating, comparison vocabulary, preposition vocabulary), math (classifying, sequencing, comparing, counting,), social studies (developing relationships, family and community, taking turns, following directions, developing awareness and compassion for the earth), science (investigating and exploring familiar objects), and art concepts and skills using multisensory objects from our natural world.

These are some of the ways we incorporate developmentally appropriate work and play into our program. At a small independent school such as ours we can allow this to unfold at a natural, unrushed pace and we can use materials that come from our earth. We consider ourselves fortunate that we are not bound by plastic toys and work sheets. In education speak this is called “authentic learning.”

Extension of these activities might be reading about patterns and objects in nature, taking a walk outside and viewing things with new eyes, talking about what we see, sketching, painting and print-making, and gift-giving in nature (making pine cone bird feeders and the like.)

Thank you for coming in today. It means a lot to your grandchild/friend and to us!

Ms. S and Ms. Kane

For those of you viewing this blog on your iphone or ipad, you can view the pictures here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bcdtech/sets/72157647254977052/