We Are Builders!!! Building with blocks, connectors and other construction materials in the class helps to promote problem solving skills, spatial awareness, gross and fine motor development, symbolic thinking, oral communication, and social skills. We have noticed that the students are beginning to build structures with more planning and detail. Here are a few examples of the structures we have seen in our classroom.

"I made a tower!"

"I built a house for my tractor."

"Look at how fast they spin!"

"I made a person."

"A building for our tractors!"

"I built a chair."

"Look at our fort."

Building on mirrors with pattern blocks.

"I made it taller than Mrs. Mayville!"

"My crane is fixing the roof."

Gingerbread Man

The students enjoyed the story of the Gingerbread Man and also the book "Gingerbread Baby" by Jan Brett so much that we decided to make some gingerbread cookies together.

Adding the ingredients.

Mixing it all together.

More mixing.

Time to roll out the dough.

Each student cut and decorated their gingerbread cookie.

Into the oven.

We went to the oven to check on the cookies, and to our surprise they were gone.  One student yelled out, "Oh no, the story is coming true!".

The Gingerbread cookies left behind a note with a clue about where we could find them... but when we got there, they had already gone.

We looked all over the school, following the clues the Gingerbread cookies were leaving for us.

Everywhere we went, we had just missed the Gingerbread cookies.  All we could find were notes they'd left us.  The last note explained that the Gingerbread cookies were tired and that they needed to go for a rest.  We were also tired from looking for the cookies, so we decided it was time to go back to the kitchen and clean up the mess we made.

...and to our surprise there were the cookies.  They were taking a rest back in the kitchen!!!

YUMMY!!

We wish you all a very happy and healthy holiday season.  See you in the New Year on January 6th.

Playful Learning... I chose the name "Playful Learning" for our class blog because there is so much authentic learning that happens while children are engaged in play. It is our job as educators to recognize and celebrate learning as it occurs and to find interesting ways to encourage their interests and support their learning needs. Here are just a few examples of some recent "PLAYFUL LEARNING"!!

Building an Ice Cream truck for dramatic play.  Building the truck helped students to develop problem-solving and co-operation.  Dramatic play helps to develop oral language skills, social skills, and it helps students to develop their story-telling skills.

"I made an ice-cream sundae."

"Come on over to get your ice-cream."

"I'm working in the ice-cream store."

"Chocolate ice-cream with candy sprinkles."  We used beads for the candy sprinkles.

The students enjoyed using scented playdough for the ice-cream store.  We had chocolate, vanilla and grape.

Our ice-cream store ran out of playdough pretty quickly.  Time to make a new batch!!!  We are learning to read recipes and measure ingredients.

Students used their "best guess" spelling to write out the recipe.

This is our word wall we created together.  Students can refer to the wall to learn about the formation of a letter, the sound a letter makes and to find out how to spell some simple words.

This student is matching the letter to the word wall and telling his friends the sound the letter makes.

We decided to make real ice-cream since students were so interested in this dramatic play centre.

Time to beat the cream, sugar and vanilla together.

After leaving it in the freezer for a couple of hours, we were excited to see that it was ready.

"Yummy!"

This student wanted to create a jungle in our sand table, but he said we didn't have enough animals and play grass.  I invited students to create a shopping list of items that they would like me to purchase for use in the sand table.

This provided an opportunity for authentic writing.  As always, I encouraged students to try to use best guess spelling.

Students requested: 1) dinosaurs 2) animals 3) play grass 4) cars 5) spaceships 6) toy people 7) trucks 8) marbles  They also asked for googly eyes and Christmas materials for the art centre.  Time for me to go shopping.

After reading the story of "The Gingerbread Man", students used materials in our classroom to retell the story.

"I will make you a gingerbread man."

"Run, run as fast as you can!  You can't catch me. I'm the Gingerbread Man!"

We then used some gingerbread playdough that I made to create our own gingerbread men.

Playdough promotes creativity and storytelling, and it helps to develop the small muscles in fingers that are needed for writing.

Now that's playful learning!! :)