january slump

it's here- the most difficult stretch of winter. it is nearly impossible to be motivated and excited when we have sub-zero temperatures and the ground is covered in ice. i know that the coldest bit is still to come, and we have a solid eight weeks before we start to round the corner.

well, at least we have lots of fun things happening in the classroom.

we've been building bridges indoors using our giant hollow blocks. if you fall off, the crocodiles will eat you.

there has been an obsession with building houses and people with legos lately. my older, kindergarten-bound girls gather together every day and engage in this play. each evening they put their names on their work and come back to it the next day. i briefly considered bringing a dollhouse and furniture into the classroom for them, but decided against it. they are learning far more by building their own lego houses and furniture and people.

gingerbread fever continues. we've put cinnamon into the sand table and made gingerbread-scented play dough and decorated construction paper gingerbread people. tomorrow we are mixing up real gingerbread cookie dough, and on friday we will roll them out, cute them, and bake them.  next week, in keeping with the theme of winter foods, we will make hot chocolate. i'm wondering if the conversation will naturally turn to soup in the enxt couple of weeks as we continue to talk about seasonally appropriate foods. i would love to spend a bit learning about stone soup and making soup of our own.

what do you know about the gingerbread man?

angel: "his nose, mouth, eyes is candy."
jian hao: "gingerbread man have buttons and have foot."
nelson: "he's a cookie."
aaron: "that little old woman... he comes from grandma's house."
sharon: "he met a pig and fox and duck and sheep."
amy: "RUN!"
mandy: "he say 'run, run, as fast as you can, you can't catch me. i'm the gingerbread man!'"

it seems we already know a lot about the gingerbread man. we are going to learn even more about gingerbread and the many variations of this story (including the gingerbread girl) over the next couple of weeks. this is all part of our study of winter and the foods we typically consume in the wintertime. this year i plan on baking gingerbread cookies with the kids, too. it's something that i meant to do last year but when i found out how complex the recipes were, my motivation fizzled. i won't let that happen this year, no matter how pressed for time i am or how overwhelming this week (which is dedicated to parent conferences) feels.

paint cups on the tables are very attractive

footprints

there is a surge of interest about footprints lately. i think it began when we found bunny tracks, squirrel tracks, and bird tracks in the snow outside of our classroom's back door. yesterday these children discovered that our toy animals make footprints too, and they descended on our trays of "moon sand" with horses and tigers and hippos. there was lots of jostling for positions at the trays, and i just stood back and took notes about how each one handled the conflict. some didn't think it was worth it, and wandered away. some used their elbows effectively. others stamped feet and wailed. we are planning to make play dough on monday, and i'll bring the animals over to see if tracks are made in the dough as well.

i like how this last photo highlights the differences in the different kinds of animal feet- i have many ideas percolating in my brain regarding an exploration of this: toes and claws and hooves and paws and oh my, the possibilities for sorting and categorizing...

preschoolers, meet ipad.

ms. wendi brought her ipad to school today, and much excitement and squealing ensued. one of my girls said to me: "ms wendi, i know this ipad! i watching tv, and i see this ipad."



i found two games so far that i liked the looks of enough to purchase- an alphabet recognition and letter-sound match game, and an app that basically just shows photos of animals and plays the sounds the animals make. both are fantastic for english-language learners, but i want to find something that helps little fingers learn how to form letters and numbers. i read about two montessori-influenced apps that are getting great reviews- i'm probably going to download them this weekend and give them a test run. i have one little boy, in particular, who is almost 5 and will be leaving for kindergarten in the fall, and he has absolutely positively NO interest in learning how to write his name or draw pictures. hopefully this letter-tracing app will be valuable for him.

the other thing that we did today was try out our new snow shovels. they were fantastic, and everybody had a great time movin' that snow. too bad i only bought 5 shovels. it was harder to wait for a turn with the shovels than it was to wait for a turn with the ipad, and that's saying something.



exploring snow

glorious snow!

i am not a native midwesterner. i am from los angeles, which means that when it snows, i become deliriously excited. and that, of course, means that i am on the same page as my preschoolers.

our class enjoys the other exciting aspects of winter, too: searching for animal tracks in the snow,  observing icicles, spotting squirrels and dreys in the now-bare trees. birds (including cardinals!) are more visible- and so are their nests. we have been spending time outdoors this year more than we ever have before, and i am very, very happy about this.

we have represented snow by using white paint and various painting tools:

on superfreezingcold days we bring snow indoors to play with (and we talk about the word frigid)

and of course, we have to taste it.

when the thermometer tells us it's 25 degrees or warmer, we go outside to slide!

and make angels, like peter in the snowy day

and get down into the snow for a full-body experience (this boy literally plants his face in the snow everytime. and rolls around. he digs right in. i love it)

but the most absorbing and intense thing we do with snow is: we move it. we pile it, lift it, shovel it, fill containers and carry them. i was not expecting this reaction- i thought snowmen and snowballs would hold more allure. but no. these children want to move this snow, and move the snow they shall. i bought six new child-sized snow shovels for outdoor time tomorrow. can't wait.

a little catching up

whew. we have been busy!

first there was the two-day reggio emilia conference that addressed issues of culture in learning- it was fantastic, and refreshing, and motivating. we toured a few local reggio-inspired schools and came back with tons of ideas to implement in our center. of course, once we came back the task of change started feeling too momentous to consider. in my attempt to start somewhere- anywhere- i've emailed my director about purchasing a loft for the classroom. a big purchase, yes, but one that is desperately needed.

i also want to do away with our pre-set, monthly curriculum themes. to be honest i don't stick to them very strictly as it is, and we do make an attempt to select seasonally appropriate ones to explore, but i want to get rid of them altogether. it will be interesting to see how my co-teachers have to say about this at our team meeting on friday. hopefully they are willing to step off the cliff with me.

then there was thanksgiving- a very welcome break, but not a holiday we discuss very much in my classroom. when i asked the kids if anyone celebrated the day, i got a lot of blank stares and a thundering silence. my co-teacher explained that most of our parents work all day on thanksgiving, so even if they are familiar with the holiday, they aren't able to celebrate.

so instead we have been learning about the coming winter, very fitting as the first snowflakes of the season made their appearance today. so exciting, and so fun to learn the word "flurry."

we made lots of a simple flour + baby oil last week and enjoyed it for hours on end. so oily and satisfyingly squishy.

two of my guys who need to strengthen those tricky finger muscles were way into the dough, much to my delight

and today the chiffon play silks were hugely popular

"ms. wendi, i want it like batman."

nothing like a cape tied round your shoulders to make you feel like a superhero. or a ninja.

"birds die too."

last week we discovered a dead sparrow on our playground. i was hauling the balls out when a few of my children started shouting for me. "ms. wendi! ms. wendi! something happened!"

something had indeed happened, and we gathered around to observe the sparrow's body and talk about what we thought might have happened to him. it was a chilly day, but we stopped moving and playing to kneel down and discuss. here were some of our ideas:

• the bird have no jacket.
• bird cold.
• he no have mommy, no have daddy. he no have friends to take care of him.
• he fly too high, and he die.
• he fall down. he's dead.
• he's mommy, daddy sad. i'm so sad too.
• he not moving.

• we'll miss you little bird. his heart is broke. birds die too. it was too icy cold and no one to take him worms. no one to take care of him, that why he died.

it was very touching to see those sober little faces gazing at the bird and then looking to me, and expressing their ideas, confusion, sadness. most of them stayed for the entire thirty minutes of our allotted playground time. death is a profound topic for young children, and the language barrier between the kids and myself forced me to take it back to the simplest ways of explaining it: he was too old, or too sick, or too hurt, so his body stopped working. no, he isn't sleeping. no, he can't be alive again.

today at group time i read how to heal a broken wing, which is a sweet story about a boy who helps an injured pigeon, and i had every single one of my children entranced. the eruption of questions and comments after the story was finished was ferocious: ms wendi! why we not give our dead bird a bandage? what happened to our bird? we need to take him to the doctor. why that boy take the bird home?

and angel remembered how she felt last week when we found the sparrow, and before she went to wash her hands for lunch she whispered to me "i so sad about the bird."