The day started with some very active, full-of-energy children. After they settled down a bit with some energy-burning dancing (to the joy school songs), we were able to start circle time. Eve brought the share today and showed us her beautiful red-haired cabbage patch kid in a cute pink dress (which she declared was NOT a cabbage patch kid). Eve passed the share bag to Emily for next week.
After circle and share time the children all sat down and we talked about people we can trust. I went around to each child and asked them who they thought they can trust. Eve started by saying Jesus. Emily continued the religious theme by naming Jesus' mother Mary as someone we can trust and then Isabel rounded it off with saying that we can trust God. I turned to the boys and Joseph said he can trust his mother. Grant said he trusts his father and Kai told us that he can't trust anyone. Upon further examination Kai did say that he trusts his parents. We finished our trust discussion by talking about church leaders that we can trust as well as firemen, policemen and teachers. The children then all sat at the tables and practiced writing our second letter of this unit, the letter "S." Everyone practiced writing big and little letter S. We also practiced the sound of S and some words starting with S.
The much anticipated
"art project" I kept promising the children came after S practice and we made "s"unflowers. I was very impressed with how well each of them placed the petals and glued each little jewel in the black center of the flower. They all wanted to spend a lot of time perfecting their own little creations.
It was fun watching their individual techniques. Emily started by placing petals at North, South, East and West and then filled in each of the four quadrants. She
then wanted her center to be packed with black gems. Joseph took a linear approach and lined up petals across the top of his paper and then formed an upward-facing sunflower. Eve worked her way around in a circle with as many petals as she could glue, creating a very dense ring of petals. Kai, Isabel and Grant opted for the exact placement and spacing of the petals in a circle and the equally exact placement of the center gems. I think the sunflowers all turned out beautiful and each was very unique.
After the sunflower art project the children were ready for outside play time.
After play time we had snack. Again snack consisted of an attempt to get the children to try foods they have never tried before. For today's snack we had almond butter, mango, red pears, plantain chips and seaweed.
Everyone except Grant and Kai tried the pears. Everyone who tried them ate them, although no one asked for seconds. Kai, Isabel and Joseph tried the plantain chips and ate them. The mango was a big hit with almost everyone. I think Eve and Grant were lukewarm about mango but Joseph devoured it, and Emily and Isabel had healthy portions. Grant and Eve both really liked the almond butter (on Ritz crackers) and everyone ate a lot of Ritz crackers just by themselves. The only two brave enough to try the seaweed were Joseph and Kai. I don't think Kai actually ate any of his but Joseph did take a small bite. Neither of them ended up eating it.
We followed snack with another art project in which we made little seascapes with sand and seashells. All the children loved doing this. Grant and Eve both very carefully chose their shells and just as carefully placed them on the sand. Kai and Joseph both wanted a large volume of shells on their little beaches. Emily and Isabel were trying to choose shells based on color coordination.
We ended our day with story time, consisting of two stories about firemen in preparation for Thursday's field trip. All the children cheered loudly when I told them about our upcoming field trip and seemed very excited. We read "At the Firehouse" and "Fire Down Below." "At the Firehouse" is a story which is actually about a school field trip to the fire station and what the children saw there. Everyone as usual thoroughly enjoyed story time.
