Spring Pizza Party!

Thank- you to all of our families for helping to make the last day of school before Spring vacation so special! The "pizza luncheon " was wonderful and the children loved the 'fancy flower plates and napkins' and thoroughly enjoyed the veggies and dip, fruit, chips , drinks, and very delicious desserts! Our children love to celebrate and share in joyous moments together and gathering for a favorite meal is a perfect way for all of us to celebrate each other.




After lunch, Margaret read Babar's Museum of Art by Laurent by Laurent De Brunhoff. Through this book the reader experiences the fun of museum-going as Babar and Celeste introduce you to their magnificent museum where you may recognize a painting or two!

A special thank-you to Brooke and Margaret for organizing and setting up this very special day for us!

Enjoy the Spring vacation with your children and we look forward to seeing everyone in April!

PreK Physical Education - Personal Space & Movement

Steve 'Mr. C.' Chadwin and I, Jeff Bond, have enjoyed getting to know the Pre-Kindergarteners so far this year during our three thirty-minute Physical Education class periods together every seven days. PreK1 and PreK2 are together for P.E., so it's a special treat to be able to play with friends from the other class.

Much of our time together in PreK P.E. is dedicated to helping our young students develop a sense of their own, and others', personal space and a sense of their own ways of movement (locomotor skills).

The images below from the Fall show Pre-Kindergarteners in their own personal space, moving their bodies in different ways.

Like bridges and tunnels....

As small as could be....

As wide as could be...


In the Fall, we also practiced moving in different ways.

Like a favorite animal...

Along field lines without touching anyone else...

In the past few months, we have spent time in class experimenting with how to move while on scooters.

On bellies...

On bottoms...

Under hurdles...

Around cones...

With partners...

We've been having lots of fun with physical activity in PreK P.E. this year, and I'll continue to chronicle our exploits on this blog through the end of the year.

Magna Tiles

Magna Tiles have been a favorite manipulative material that our children have enjoyed immensely the entire school year thus far. Building with the colored magnetic geometric shapes provides numerous opportunities for children to explore shapes, size, patterns, cause and effect, spatial relationships, fine motor skills, design, and creativity. Children often build together and have many opportunities to practice cooperative social skills. We observe children engaging in imaginative play after they have finished their buildings and incorporate various props to enhance and extend their play. Our 'saving shelf ' is usually full with small building pieces that the children love to save for the day. We felt that our photos would give you insight into the amazing work your children are engaged with when using the Magna Tiles. Please stop into our classroom and spend a few minutes exploring the Magna Tiles with your child....you will see how much fun they are to build with!

Personalize a photo slideshow

Journal Writing

Children's joy of working on journal entries has increased throughout the year. Creating opportunities for the children to work on journals fosters language development, pre-reading and writing skills, fine motor skills as well as creativity. Our children love to express their ideas through illustrations, dictations and kid writing. They take pride in seeing their ideas and words in print and are very enthusiastic at being the inital stages of making letter/sound connections and early reading readiness skills.

Our journal topics are relevant to our classroom areas of study and discussions and our children are as asked to reflect on the journal question prior to drawing, dictating and writing. This process helps children organize their thoughts and ideas. Our current journal question is What did you learn on our adventure to Abington Art Center?

Try setting up a journal for your child to use at home; a wonderful way to reflect on special family experiences.

Spring Nature Walk

Our Integration time was designated to the beautiful outdoors today! Both PreK classes joined together with our resource team to go on a spring nature walk. We briefly met together before beginning our walk where the children were asked to "look for signs of Spring...."

The beautiful weather , blooming trees and wonderful spirit guided our adventure! The children were immediately drawn to the spots on campus where traces of our creek were in full access and view. The children loved using sticks to swish the wet mud around and mix the leaves with the water. We were reminded how important water exploration is in the development of young children. Playing with the water seems instinctual and the joy and satisfaction the children glean from such experiences was clearly written all over the children's expressions.

Our adventure continued to a section of our campus that is dense in pine trees and concluded with fun outdoor play in the Lower School playground. We had a glorious day !

Enjoy our slideshow!

Free picture slideshow personalized with Smilebox

Our Visit To Alverthorpe Art Center

Our study in art/nature/art history has been an incredible journey for all of us thus far. As we have mentioned in previous writings, interest in famous artists and the colorful stories of their lives and cultures has been an ongoing part of our exploration. This led us in a very natural way to conversations about' famous artwork, where these pieces of art live and eventually onto museums'. It is hard not to explore museums as one is learning about the great artists such Van Gogh, Picasso, Georgia O'Keeffe, Matisse, Frida Kahlo and Degas. We included on our classroom library shelves books about museums such as Little Museum with images selected by Alain Le Saux and Gregoire Solotareff.

As our discussions of museums deepened, we began talking about how spaces become museums. We talked about how museums are places where people can go to appreciate and enjoy art. Maggie said, " Just like our classroom ! Our classroom is like a museum because we have lots of beautiful artwork all around the room!"

And so a new path emerged where we began exploring the concept of transforming our classroom into a museum....stay tuned for the many exciting adventures and experiences to come....

Our first experience in broadening our perspective of museums was to visit the Abington Art Center. Before going, we asked the children to make predictions of what they thought that we may see on our "museum tour" at the Art Center. The children generated a thoughtful list of predictions which we recorded during this language activity. We recorded the children's responses and we encourage you to ask your child or come into our classroom to take a glance at the many ideas the children had.

At the art center we looked at three different exhibits and spent time comparing similarities and differences in the exhibits. We were interested in looking at the details of the art installations of each exhibit in hopes that we would get a few ideas that we may be able to apply as we create our own museum at school.

We were greeted by a member of the Art Center team at the door and the children immediately suggested that "we have a greeting table at our museum".

This mixed media art was hanging from the ceiling and we decided to look at our art work and see if there is anything that we may want to suspend from the ceiling. We also realized that we will need a ladder and possibly hammers and nails to hang the pieces of art work in our museum.

One of the exhibits was a collection of photographs. The children enjoyed sharing their observations about the exhibits.