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Getting into the Swing of Things in the Bananas

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  September Study: The First Six Weeks We have officially wrapped up our first month of school! It has been a whirlwind of fun, laughter, a few tears, and lots of joy. The majority of our focus has been on learning the rules, expectations, and procedures within our classroom. We have practiced washing our hands a countless number of times, how to wait in a line, how we sit on the carpet for large group instruction, how to clean up, how we clean up after meals, and so much more! While some of these things feel instinctual to us now, we have to remember that kids don't come into school knowing all of these concepts so it is up to us to teach them each step so that they can master the skill. It feels tedious in the beginning, but it definitely pays off later and gives us much more time to learn and play later1 We've also been practicing how to use our school tools. We talked about how scissors are for paper and NEVER hair or our bodies, we practiced putting caps on markers so they...
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A Fresh Bunch of Bananas

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  to the 2025-2026 Bananas It is our pleasure to welcome you and your family to the 2025-2026 school year at the Frankie Lemmon School! We are so happy that you are part of the Bananas class and I know that we are going to have an amazing year together. We will become like a family; learning, growing, and laughing together for the next ten months.  This blog will be used to share what we are doing in our classroom. It will be updated monthly with pictures and descriptions of what we are learning. If you do not want your child's picture featured on our blog, please let me know immediately. Each month we have a different study using the Creative Curriculum and will focus on deepening the children's understanding of things they encounter everyday. Examples of studies we used last year are: Wheels, Pets, and Buildings. They may not sound that exciting, but it is so much fun to watch them ask questions and seek to know more about the world around them. It takes a lot to keep our cl...
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Bananas are Bugging Out!

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  May Study: Insects + Plants We have finally wrapped up our final study of the 2024-2025 school year! The Bananas chose to learn about insects for the month of May and we had SO much fun doing so. We started talking about what we know about insects; what they look like, how they move, and what they eat. From there, we dove into the investigations.  First we talked about the characteristics, such as the sounds they make, how they work together, and how they move in nature. To illustrate this, the kids got in groups of three and lined up with hands on each others shoulders and moved about the playground. We also measured how far we could jump and talked about why its important for some insects to jump. We spent a lot of time talking about the three body parts that all insects have: a head, an a thorax, and an abdomen. Insects also have six legs and some have wings. If it doesn't have six legs and it doesn't have three body parts, it's not an insect!  In our next investigat...
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Bananas are Rolling into Spring!

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  April Study: Wheels I'm not sure if you knew this about some of your children, but they are OBSESSED with all things that move. Whether it's playing with vehicles in the block center or spinning on the saucers outside, they love things that move! At the end of our buildings study, we allowed the students to vote on our next study and they had the choice between Water, Clothes, or Wheels and they overwhelmingly chose the Wheels study!  Again, the Teaching Strategies curriculum that we use at Frankie Lemmon is meant to take what we think we know about topics and stretching it out to create a deeper learning experience that encourages discussion and questions. We start by exploring the topic and looking at what we already know about wheels, such as different kinds of wheels we see in our daily lives and how wheels help us. We talked about big wheels/little wheels, wheels that push/pull, and why some things have 1, 2, 3, or 4+ wheels. As we moved further into the topic, we inves...
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Banana Builders

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March Study: Buildings As our children have grown and matured, I've allowed them to take a little more ownership of their learning and education. As we wrapped up our shapes study, I allowed them to vote on a couple of topics for our next study and they overwhelmingly chose buildings. So in the month of March we talked about different kinds of buildings, construction workers, and what makes our building so special.  March was also filled with lots of other fun activities, including St. Patrick's Day, a visit from the Cary PD, and celebrated World Down Syndrome Day on March 21st. Did you know that we wear crazy socks on Wold Down Syndrome Day because  when chromosomes are stained and viewed under a microscope, they look like paired socks, and people with Down syndrome have an extra copy of the 21st chromosome? By far, the favorite thing to play with during this study was the stacking cups! Who knew a package of cups from Wal-Mart would encourage so much creativity and problem s...
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Bananas SHAPE Up!

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  February Study: Valentines + Shapes + 100 Days Smarter With all the snow days and special events, February was such a disjointed month, but we made the most out of it! We decided to spend one week doing special Valentine's Day activities and the others focusing on shapes. After our winter assessments, I found that this was a skill that we needed to work on and it is also an objective in our Teaching Standards Gold curriculum. Many of the students knew basic 2-D shapes, but we decided to also dive deeper into learning about 3-D shapes. We didn't get a lot of photos of our shape study, but instead focused on the shapes that we see around us and they have had so many good observations! As you move through your home each day, help your child notice shapes you see every day, such as the cylinder that is a soup can or the cube that is the dice to a board game.  We transformed the dramatic play area into a post office. We had different sizes of boxes and envelopes, 'stamps',...
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We LOVE Our Pets!

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  January Study: PETS As I've previously mentioned, it is important to me as an educator to provide the students with learning opportunities that incorporate the world around them. I want them to be able to go home and apply the lessons from school to their day-to-day lives or to have relevant conversations with family members about the topic. In that spirit, we decided to do the pet study for January! We set up the dramatic play center to mimic a veterinary clinic and pet shop. There was a waiting room with all kinds of animals; birds, snakes, hamsters, dogs, and cats. Students were able to write down the pets name and diagnosis, use a variety of tools to care for them, and shop for supplies such as leashes & collars, as well as toys and treats. The students loved this center and we loved watching the ways their imagination blossomed and how they were applying what we talked about to their play.  Other centers also focused on our study. We had animal puzzles, allowed stud...
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