Bananas for Learning

  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...

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...

  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',...

  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...

  Bananas for Apples! October was such a fun month of growing and learning for our little bananas! With the cooler temperatures, we began to focus on the changes that we see in fall, especially the produce that is harvested this time of year.  We started with learning about apples! We began the study by. seeing how we can describe apples and noticing their different features. We talked about the different colors of apples, where apples grow, and the apple life cycle. The following week we focused more on how we use apples. We did a taste test of green, yellow, and red apples and students chose which one they liked the best. We did an apple investigation by cutting open an apple and seeing what was inside. The students loved seeing the star on the inside of the apples and counting how many seeds were inside. We wrapped up our apple-icous learning by making and eating all things apple! We made applesauce and got to use Miss Susan's special apple machine that cored, peeled, and s...

  Settling In in September I cannot believe that we have been in school for nearly a month! The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of getting to know one another, getting to know our school, and getting to know our routines. We have been getting to know the names of our centers and school materials, using our words to get our needs met, practicing sharing toys/materials with those around us, and doing routines over and over and over and over and over again. While we aren't exactly diving into a study about the world around us, we are focusing on the extremely important topics of school/classroom expectations, the people who work at our school, and how to be a good friend. It is these lessons that form the foundation for the rest of our year and set us up for success! It means a lot to Miss Carolina, Miss Tia, and I that we create a classroom community and that we are all on the same page.  I hope that your child has come home excited about what they are doing at school and t...