5-Day: Sparking our Imaginations
Imagination is an amazing tool our brains possess. It’s important to nourish and encourage imagination because it will help your children develop creativity and many cognitive abilities. There are so many ways to encourage your child’s imagination. One way is through stories. This week, we read two classic fairy tales, The Three Little Pigs and Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
Monday and Tuesday were all about The Three Little Pigs. The children used puppets to retell the story in dramatic play. Through play, they are building reading comprehension, a sense of storytelling, and fluency each time they act out the book or watch from the audience. Of course, they sold tickets and popcorn for the show. The cash register helps us sneak in math opportunities, like counting money and identifying numbers. They enjoyed taking turns managing the cash register, putting on the show, and being in the audience. They were also able to retell the story with little character figurines that were inside our sensory table filled with hay. They pretended to be the big bad wolf as they huffed and puffed through a straw to create the beautiful watercolor paintings that are hanging on our outside bulletin board. Then, they created the houses of the three little pigs, by gluing on pieces of hay, toothpicks, and paper bricks. To help build comprehension skills, we used story wands with questions to explore plot and characters. They were also able to build like the pigs with different kinds of blocks.
On Wednesday and Thursday, we read Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The children sorted objects that were hard and soft. They also explored hard vs soft at the easel, by painting with different rollers. They did a classifying activity where they compared objects that were small like Baby Bear, medium like Mama Bear, and large like Papa Bear. We worked on patterns with bears. We even used bears to measure different objects, including our feet.
After a week full of fairy tale fun, we decided to let our creative juices run free and create our second class book. They love becoming authors and illustrators. Here is our story:
The Three Wolves
(Cover page fantastically illustrated by ROCCO)
Once upon a time there were three wolves. STELLA
They lived in a house on the beach. REID
One day, they wanted to go into the water. SLOANE
When they were in the water, they looked for seashells. SCARLET
Then, they dried off. ELI
Suddenly, a little pig came along. CHARLOTTE
Then, a hammerhead shark came! LUKE
They chased the wolves to a dog party. GEORGE
When they arrived, they ate the most delicious cake. CECILIA
They juggled meatballs. NICHOLAS
The three wolves ate the meatballs. ISLA
Then, they rolled over and crashed into a big bad wolf. ARIYAN
He was so angry. LIAM
He ate the pig. BLAKE
Then, everyone ran home to the beach. MAE
And they lived happily ever after!
We can’t forget our specials this week. Melissa from Puddlestompers came and talked to us about nocturnal and diurnal animals. She was happy to see how much they knew. They children pretended to be a nocturnal predator hunting mice. They also enjoyed a parachute game. To our surprise, when Steve came for music, he sang a song called "Goldi-rocks". It was about a girl who sang and performed with three great bears in the best band ever. At Creative Movement, they had so much fun playing new games with Coach Rapha. Pirate ships with hula hoops was a favorite.
We also started Showtime this week. The children are very excited to share their books with the class. After we read the story, they are able to take a pointer and take questions or comments from friends. The most popular comment is "I like your book," so, here are the books that were shared this week. :)
Ariyan - Egg
Blake - Dragons Love Tacos
Cecilia - The Icky Bug Alphabet
Charlotte - Not Quite Narwhal
Eli - Incredibles 2
In two weeks, we will be learning about food and nutrition. If you have any empty food boxes or containers, we would love to have them for dramatic play. We can also use any supermarket circulars you may have.
Have a nice long weekend. See you on Tuesday.
Caroline & Cathy
