Bananas for Learning

  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...

  WELCOME! It is our pleasure to welcome you and your family to the 2024-2025 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. The link to this blog is only shared with Banana Families, so it is private.  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, Bread, and Clothes. They may not sound that exciting, but it is so much fun to watch them ask questions and seek to kn...

 Banana Entomologists After our wheels study the weather was warming up and I could tell the students were itching to get outside. I presented options for our next study and surprisingly, most of our students chose to learn all about insects!  We started out by learning what an insect is...did you know that bugs are insects, but insects are not bugs? We learned that all bugs have three body parts, six legs, and two antennae. Some have wings, some have two sets of wings, and some have stingers. We learned that spider are not insects, they are their own special species called arachnids.  Next we talked about how insects live; what do they eat, where do they live, and how do they protect themselves? We discussed the word camouflage and what that means. We looked at lots of different insects and how they hide to protect themselves.  In the middle of our unit we introduced cups of caterpillars to our classroom. We used magnifying glasses to observe them eating and moving ...

Wheels, Wheels, Wheels! At the end of our pet study, I gave the students three options of what topic we would explore next. The options were: balls, buildings, or wheels. The response was overwhelmingly wheels! One of the things that I love about our Teaching Strategies Gold Curriculum is that it takes simple items that are part of our lives and turns them into multi-week investigations that encourage our children to think deeper and more critically about things that they see and experience everyday (there is even a box study!).  We transformed our classroom to include centers that helped us explore wheels; different kinds of wheels, how wheels work and move, and how wheels are used in our everyday lives. Mr. Red built us an awesome convertible that we had in our dramatic play center. They were able to use tools to work with bolts, wires (bungees), and lights. In preschool we enjoy using as realistic items as possible, so students had access to paintbrushes and sponges to do body w...