Bananas for Learning

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',...