As we continued our discussion of winter, we moved our focus to animals, how they prepare and what they are doing during the cold winter months. Students learned about adaptation, migration and hibernation. Through videos, nonfiction books, stories and discussion, the students learned which local animals hibernate, why we rarely see birds in the winter and about New England animals and how they survive the harsh weather.
Writing
We have started learning how to write the uppercase letters of the alphabet and began with Straight Line Letters. These include the letters L, F, E, H, T, and I. Before practicing on paper, each day the children create a letter using multisensory materials. For example, building the letter with wood pieces, stamping it on a Stamp and See screen, writing it with a sponge on a chalkboard, or creating the letter with playdoh.
Literacy
Students learned about nonfiction books, which we called teaching books this month. We discussed the components of a teaching book such as headings, diagrams and labels, and photographs.
Math
We continued to learn about shapes creating them with wood pieces, searching for them in the environment and making them out of blocks. Students also practiced identifying and making patterns.
Below students played with counting bears, ordering the bears from lowest number to largest, matching bears to counting cards and finding bears with the same number of hearts.
STEM
STEM is when we combine Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Sometimes we add an A for art in STEAM. This month the children enjoyed two STEM projects. One was to build shapes with a Funphix fort building toy. The other was to create a hibernation habitat for one of our toy animals using natural materials.
Yoga
We have really gotten into a rhythm with our yoga and I am constantly impressed with the focus of the children when we are meditating, focusing on our breath or just doing some yoga flow. We start each day with some kind of breath and movement.
Mindful Monday: On Mondays we focus on our breathing, just listening and noticing our breath. We also talk about different ways that focusing on your breath can help you to calm down, focus, release tension and anger, prepare for something difficult, etc. We used a Hoberman sphere as a visual to really stretch our lungs while we breathed in and then let all of the air out. We also used a snow globe. Students took slow breaths as they watched the snow in the globe slowly settle to the bottom.
Twisty Tuesday: On Tuesdays, the students learn new yoga poses. We focused on learning animal poses during the end of our winter theme. Students learned both animals around us and polar animal poses.
Theme Thursdays: On Thursdays I either tell or show a story on the screen and we all practice the poses we've learned for the week. This time I told a story about taking a trip to see polar animals and we listened to Jenny's Winter Walk:
On Fun Fridays we play class games to practice our yoga and breathing skills. These are great for following directions, balancing, cooperating and putting together all that we have learned during the week. Some games we have played are Yogi says, Musical Mats and Museum Curator.
Students above are in their favorite, restful pose. We usually end our yoga flow this way with mindful breathing.
Free Play
During free play students are learning how to interact with one another more easily while keeping a safe distance. Below students are playing a beginning sound bingo game.
Other favorite games were Don't Break the Ice and Zingo.
This year we've done quite a few directed drawings. The goal is for children to practice following directions, to draw shapes, and to create representational pictures of things they see in the world. While I usually direct these drawings, there was a center available for the children to explore drawing different animals by following step by step directions on a piece of paper.
Students also had the opportunity to go ice fishing.
Art:
The children enjoyed painting with colored ice at the art center.
Mystery Reader
We had our first few mystery readers this month and they were awesome! The children loved trying to guess who might appear on the screen and were equally as thrilled to hear a story. We look forward to welcoming more visitors into our classroom through Zoom!
Indoor Recess
On those days when it is too chilly to go out, we still have some fun in the classroom. During our most recent indoor recess time, we set up an obstacle course in the classroom.
