3-Day: Spotting Shapes All Around Us!
3-Day is currently learning about all kinds of shapes. We are reading about shapes, singing about shapes, building with and around shapes, creating art with shapes and even eating shapes!
On Wednesday we celebrated "Cindy Circle" (to the tune of "Are You Sleeping?"):
Cindy Circle, Cindy Circle
Just one line, just one line
Make it round and round, make it round and round
That is fine, that is fine.
Our unit will compare shapes that look similar, for example, circles and ovals, rectangles and squares, and some two-dimensional and three-dimensional shapes (i.e. spheres and cubes). We used paint, bright neon colors, and all kinds of circular materials to make circle art. We explored play-doh at our sensory table, using balls with a variety of textures. We even talked about the word SPHERE at meeting!
At table three, we used our motor skills to open Mr. Tennis Ball and helped him munch all the pom poms on the table. This required a tremendous amount of hand strength and hand eye coordination, too!
We read a story called Lots of Dots and used dot markers to create lots of dots on our papers at the easel. Our discovery table was a sensory sensation, filled with floating koosh balls and lots of round scoopers to scoop and sort by color.
On Friday, we read The Perfect Square as well as a story called Square. The children really enjoy their singing and story time. I was even asked to read a third story during morning meeting on Friday! We have seen wonderful progress with the children's focus and attention. On Friday, during morning meeting, instead of sitting in a circle as we always do, we taped the meeting area so we could sit in a perfect square. Luckily, all 16 of us were here, so, we talked about squares having four equal sides. Your children made some great observations and some wonderful comments while comparing squares and rectangles. Then, we sang:
Sammy Square, Sammy Square
That's my name, that's my name
I have four sides, I have four sides
They're all the same, They're all the same.
and
Robbie Rectangle, Robbie Rectangle
I have four sides, I have four sides
Two are long, two are long
Two are short, two are short.
The children painted with finger paint on rectangular cardboard, taped with rectangular or square grids. They did a super job covering all the white background so that, when I took the tape off, they looked really striking! Look for them on display outside our room.
We introduced Unifix cubes to the children. Unifix cubes are colorful, interlocking cubes, a very popular math manipulative used for measuring, patterning, counting and creating! We observed children initiating many of these early math skills in their play. This week, we also lined the floor of the block area with different shapes made with tape. The children used blocks to explore and build around the shapes in a variety of sizes.
In the discovery table, the children sorted colorful, soft cubes using the scoopers. Water seems to be one of our most favorite materials in the discovery table.
We look forward to continuing our study of shapes next week as we examine triangles, diamonds and more! Have a great weekend.
Karen and Mayson