Santa Claus visited Creative minds

A knock at the door and guess who it was? Santa Claus entered the room and all the children surrounded him with wonderful stories. One of the things that they told Santa was that they decorated the daycare :)  Santa sat down on the cozy red chair and told us that there are three things that we really need - LOVE - HAPPINESS and GOOD HEALTH.

Healso told us 3 magic stories:

1. Story of the magic watch - How can Santa deliver presents all over the world? Easy... he puts magic snow from the North Pole on his magic watch and it freezes up and time stops. 

2. How does Santa get into homes?  He’s got a magic key that opens all the locks all around the world.

3.How does he know who’s good? Santa's helpers give Santa a list with children that are good, caring and listeners.

After 3 wonderful stories, Santa stood up and said good-bye. Before he left he told us some magic words - "you must believe in order to receive"

Merry Christmas 

Not a box...

From the story “Not a box” by Antoinette Portis and “The Birthday Box” by Leslie Patricelli, the children came up with different ideas on what they can use a box for and make it “not a box”.

Some of there ideas were:  car, house, bedroom, bed, etc. They all decorated their boxes by using paint, sparkles, ribbons and other art materials. 

The children decided to make a house or a bedroom for their pets made out of clay. The children were risk-takers when they explored modeling with clay and thinkers when they decided how they will decorate their houses.  

3D Art

What does 3 D art mean?
3 dimensional art is something like a sculpture, clay art, metal works, pottery, beading or really anything that can be handled, touched or perceived to be 3 dimensional.”It is something that sticks out and can be seen from different sides (perspectives)”.

In connection to our decoration unit, the children decorated some 3 D Christmas trees and snowmen. They had a large variety of materials to choose from.

Emilie's table decoration

Emilie, her mother and her grandmother decorated one of the lunch tables. The children's observation about the decoration was: "I think Emilie likes purple, because the decorations are all purple" "It is very simple" " I love the marbles" 

Emilie and other children got a chance to sit at the table during lunch time. 

Thank you Emilie, for decorating the lunch table. It was lovely.

A decoration can tell us a story about a person. It can describe what that person feels or likes. 

Art - Contour line

On one of our art days, the children traced their bodies. They worked in partners and took turns tracing the contour of their bodies. The children were very careful to follow their outlines accurately. 

Afterwards, the children came up with ideas to decorate their own body shape. They used crayons, markers, paper and glitter. 

Art activity with Christy:

The children went to the forest to collect some leaves. They observed the lines (veins) of a leaf and followed the contour with their finger. Christy talked to them about the shape of their leaves and gave them 3 different choices. The children were able to paint the leaf and imprint it onto their pieces of paper, trace the contour of their leaf or to look at the leaf and try to draw its shape. Christy encouraged the children and opened conversation about their art – the children observed the lines(veins) that a leaf had, and talked about the  different shapes: heart, oval, round. 

Using sticks to build furniture

 The children were excited to explore another idea with their sticks. We used the sticks to build furniture. We observed Vincent Van Gogh’s bedroom and by being thinkers, the children decided that his bedroom was not decorated. By the train area, you will be able to observe his 3D bedroom, created by the children. Now that we have built his furniture, the next step, is to decorate his bedroom.

This week we will focus our attention on sewing some pillows, blankets and collecting materials to decorate the walls. The activity will be open to everyone. We will observe while someone is decorating the bedroom and we will take some pictures. 

At the end we will make a chart to see if we all have the same taste in decorating or if we have different ideas.

IB profile words – Open minded and Thinker

It all started with the book “Not a stick” by Antoinette Portis.

The children came up with different ideas of what a stick can be used for and not be called “a stick”.  All the children had a turn holding a stick in their hands.  Becky was saying that by being open minded, they could come up with different ideas about how they could use the stick. 

These are some of the ideas that the children came up with:  hammer, bottle, magic wand, pencil, etc..

After coming up with all the different ideas, we all went to the forest to collect some sticks. Because one of their ideas was that sticks could be used as decoration, the children received a piece of cardboard and by using their creativity they decorated it with sticks from the forest.

Different ways of communicating

The pictures show some of the different ways that the children came up with as a way of communicating. We had a fun time writing a letter and walking all the way to the mailbox with it. The children enjoyed dropping their letters in the mailbox. They are excited to get a reply.

This pictures show another way of communicating that the children liked. Painting and expressing something through drawings and then without using words, the children had to guess what the pictures where about. They are really good at understanding messages even without listening to words. They saw the picture with the children that were going to the bathroom and without asking they walked quietly to the bathroom to get ready for outside. 

IB profile word - COMMUNICATOR

I am a communicator! 

The profile word for last week and this week is COMMUNICATOR. 

We read the story Library Mouse by Daniel Kirk to get some ideas about the different ways of communicating. The children identified four different ways in the story: writing a note, talking - oral communication, writing a story and drawing. After we read the story we made a chart with all the different ways of communicating that we were able to come up with. Walkie talkies, phones, radios, talking, notes, pictures, card, stories, and our body were some of the ways that the children came up with. 

After we made the chart we came up with a plan. Every day we will use a different method to communicate with our parents/friends. The children sent an email home, they painted a picture and in the upcoming days we will use different ways to send a message. It was amazing to see them communicating without using their words. We used only our body to express what we want to say. When we painted the pictures, the children chose not to tell what they wanted to communicate through their pictures because they wanted their friends to guess. All the children came up with wonderful ideas and it was interesting that they all had different ideas about the meaning of each picture.

IB profile word - REFLECTIVE

Dear Families,

Every week we will have a different story in the afternoon for our IB profile word. The children will get to explore that story through math, art, science, music, movement and language while learning about the meaning of the profile word with their lives and the lives of the character.
Last week our story was called "Tops and Bottoms" by Janet Stevens The children enjoyed being reflective; thinking about what they have learned, what they are good at and how they can improve the next time. They also learned that being reflective means to take their time to think about their actions and effects. The children realized that at the end of the story the bear was being reflective. He realized that he is good at planting and working in the garden, but he chose the easy way, sleeping the whole time while someone else was working in his garden. At the end, he reflected on the situation and realized that he has to work hard for himself if he wants to have something. 

I hope the children had a chance to tell you about all the different vegetables they tasted and all the different activities that we did related to the story.

Have a great week,
Anamaria

Health Break

Dear Parents,

In the morning we will explore the forest and right before group time the children will have a Health break. They will read books, rest in the comfortable hammock or swinging chair, eat a healthy snack and/or hydrate their body with some water.

Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! by Candance Fleming and G. Brian Karas

Our book study for this week is called Muncha! Muncha! Muncha! by Candance Fleming and G. Brian Karas. Mr. McGreely has worked hard on his garden, and it is full of the ripest vegetables. But three bunnies are drawn to its lovely smells and tastes, so Mr. McGreely builds a fence to keep them out. It doesn't work, and Mr. McGreely's fences get taller and thicker until it would seem they'd keep any bunny out. Or would they? 

From this story we learn how important it is to share, even if in some situations it can be really hard :) 

We made a chart where we wrote what our favourite vegetables are. After, we took real vegetables, washed them, measured them, observed and discussed their colour, size and taste. The children were very excited to be open minded and try all different types of vegetables. After they tasted the vegetables, Jared and Sara said that we are risk takers and open minded when we try new things. On our chart we wrote down if we liked each vegetable or not. At the end we counted how many children liked the particular vegetable and we graphed the number of children. Their favourite vegetables were broccoli and red pepper. 

Cook - A - Doodle - Doo! by Janet Stevens and Susan Stevens Crummel

Our book study for this week was Cook – A – Doodle –Doo written by Janet Stevens and Susan Stevens Crummel.

What is a Homonym? A Homonym is each of two words having the same pronunciation but different meanings, origins, or spelling. Why did we study homonyms? Everything started when we read the story and the animals were making a cake. The cake needed flour so the iguana went and picked a flower. We all made our own homonyms booklets and we had some fun exploring the different meanings of homonyms. Jared was a risk taker and a thinker and he tried to share, with us, some of the homonyms that he knew. Some of the children expressed their understanding of homonyms by using    

                                                    sentences, others by using pictures to 

                    describe the different meaning. 

  

I would love to share some of your stories with the children, so please feel free to write some down, right here on the blog, if you remember of a situation like the one in our story.

Cake from Serena

We all want to thank Serena for the wonderful ice cream cake on a sunny day. We all enjoyed the cake in the forest. The shade and the delicious cake made our day sweet and amazing.

Thank you Serena

Honey...Honey...Lion by Jan Brett

 



This week our study book was Honey...Honey...Lion! written by Jan Brett. The children enjoyed cooperating just like the real bees. We talked about the body parts of a bee and we dramatized their work. We had antennas that helped us smell and feel, their tubelike tongues and wings. Flying through the garden like busy bumblebees, the children went on a nectar hunt. They all did a waggle dance when they found the nectar and all the other bees came to help. 
Cooperation is very important for the bees and the children saw how important it is to work as a group. 

Cloudy with a chance of meatballs by Judi Barrett

Cloudy with a chance of meatballs written by Judi Barrett was our book study for this week. Involving math in our activities, we created our own town. Using colourful sticky dots to pretend that they are meatballs we wrote down what we wish would fall down from the sky. We organized the food that the children came up with and the food that falls down from the sky in our story into different groups. At the end, we made a chart and we analyzed and discussed if our meal would have been balanced.  We created the town by using different kind of shapes and every group came up with a name for their town. 
The question that the children asked: How would it be if you would have ordered food and it would have fallen down from the sky?

The Enormous Carrot by Vladimir Vagin

Last week we studied through art, music and movement the story of the Enormous Carrot. We made an enormous carrot out of cardboard and construction paper. For music and movement, we made a chart and we wrote down the characters that appear in the story. Using musical instruments, we dramatized the story and at the end we ate carrots, made a salad and juice out of root and other vegetables.
Did the children talk about being open-minded and trying different kind of juices?

Express yourself – summative week

Last week we explored Becky’s idea about Fish. We gathered the information that Becky and the other ones knew about fish and what they would like to explore more. We all made a connection to the Friendship unit – The Rainbow Fish story by Marcus Pfister, but this time we were looking to see how the rainbow fish expresses himself. The children identified two different forms of expression: body movement; when the rainbow fish swam by, he was expressing his pride; and by using words. We also talked about different opinions and different perspectives, so the children identified that in the story, the octopus is a character that sees things from a different perspective and helps the rainbow fish out.

At the end, we all modeled a fish from our own perspective of what a fish looks like and Nicolas said that from his perspective he will make the fish with all the scales shiny.

For the summative week, we will try to demonstrate our understanding of the central idea, We express ourselves in many ways and this helps us connect with one another, in different ways.