3-Day Seashells by the Seashore
We’ve finally had a stretch of warm weather, and 3-Day has taken full advantage of outside as well as our classroom Bowen Beach! We continued our exploration of the ocean through sand and seashells in our discovery table, a dramatic play area that has been turned into a beach filled with flip flops, snorkel masks, beach towels and sunglasses, and a giant shark on the floor of our classroom. We encouraged the children to see how many of them can fit inside the shark! By Friday, our discovery table turned into a local fishing hole where children fished for a variety of colorful ocean creatures in tropical blue water.
On Monday we completed our jellyfish by attaching tissue paper tentacles to the jellyfish bodies that we painted last week. Children really enjoyed creating coral reefs with lots of colorful fish using our connectagons, and swirled ocean waves made of playdough on Monday and shaving cream on Wednesday. We learned the term “symmetry” and we added to our ocean life by making painted symmetrical seashells (or at least that’s what we intended to do)! We will begin to send home quite a variety of ocean art.
This week we continued to learn more ocean songs. Your children particularly love the seashell counting song and the Waves in the Sea song we taught them last week. Since Paula was out on Wednesday we tried to add a lot more singing into our regular day. Because the weather was so hot on Wednesday we also go to have a special Italian ice treat out on the playground thanks to Mia!
On Friday we spent the day wrapping up our unit exploring the texture of starfish, rolling and squishing some beautiful blue ocean playdough with beach shape cutters, and some sorting and patterning with Goldfish crackers at our table number 3. We think the children had fun and we hope you got to see a glimpse of the sea creature role playing carried over from our classroom playtime! The kids pretended to be mermaids, crabs, squid and more as they walked down the halls of Bowen.
Next week we hope to begin a show and tell with the children. We’ve noticed throughout the year that the children have become increasingly willing to share information and what better way to foster this sense of expertise than through Show and Tell? Below is a schedule we’d like to follow but we plan to keep things very low key. If your child would like to share something special from home, (preferably not a toy please) help them prepare by asking them “why” the item is special and prompt them to share what they know. We will also be helping them during morning meeting as they share. If your child does not want to share that totally FINE; sometimes it’s not so easy to get up in front of a group. We will encourage 3-Day friends to ask questions, so this is another way you can help prepare your child if they choose to share.
We hope you all have a great weekend and enjoy some time outside.
Karen and Emily.
SHOW AND TELL SCHEDULE
5.7 Mia and James
5.9 Annabelle and Margot
5.11 Nate and Camilia
5.14 Marlo and Minna
5.16 Lucas and Wren
5.18 Robert and Alexander
5.21 Marie-Sophie and Connor
5.23 Caleb and Kaia
