Lara's Classroom

Sun is out 🌞 which means outdoor learning opportunities 👩‍👧‍👦

Letter recognition by matching the letters. Then sprayed the letters as we said each sound. Of course the rest of the garden was sprayed afterwards 😁

🌈Somewhere over the rainbow

🌈 Rainbow scavenger hunt

🌈Rainbow fine motor journals

🌈Number seven math journals for how many colors in a rainbow

🐛 ➡️ Swipe to see our own very hungry caterpillars. This cute story turned into learning about the life cycle of a butterfly and adopting some caterpillars of our own.

We will now get to observe each fascinating stage of the life of a butterfly.

The children chose the names Fulmine (because they want them to hurry up 😅), Fiocchetto, and Elefante.

Some observations so far have been:

💁🏼‍♂️How come they are not red and green like in the book?

💁🏽‍♀️ Why do they not eat strawberries and oranges?

💁🏻‍♂️ They sleep, eat, and p**p a lot.

💁🏼‍♀️They are getting bigger every day.

We cannot wait to see our beautiful butterflies 🦋 but at the same time love our caterpillars 🐛

🌲 Christmas S.T.E.M. centers from . I didn't think this activity would capture their attention as much as it did but some of the children wanted to continue building long after I told them it was choice play. 🙌🏻

We focused on shapes in the beginning and then I allowed them to construct what they wanted.

🍎Messy play is a great opportunity to teach how to clean-up 😆

🍎 Recognizing our shapes by running to the one I called out. 🔺️

Finding shapes in our classroom.◻

Making patterns with shapes 🔵

Shapes big ➡️ small

🍎 Why is play so important and what is the experience of children when they are at play?

⭕ Play allows for children to be in control.

⭕ Play allows them to take risks in a safe environment.

⭕ Play encourages autonomy and independence.

⭕ Play helps children learn more about themselves, their likes and dislikes.

⭕ Play develops social skills.

⭕ Play builds self-esteem.

⭕ Play enhances language development.

⭕Play builds characteristics such as problem-solving and decision making.

⭕ If you are tuning in you can learn so much about a child when they play.

Do not underestimate the power of play.

🍎 An invitation to science 👨‍🔬👩‍🔬

Thank you to for this cute apple science set-up.

There is:
- measuring
- tasting
- counting
- life-cycles
- comparing
- observing outside and inside
- and learning the parts of the apple

🍎👏🏻

🍎 Apple suncatchers for our apple week. This was such a great activity for our three year olds. They had fun making them and what a cute addition to our classroom 😍

🍎 I found these adorable sprout green houses done by 🌱

On the first day we took on our scientist role and examined the parts of the bean, we used a magnifying glass to observe the different parts and discovered inside the food, the baby sprout, and saw the beans coat.

Afterwards we drew in our observation journals what we had seen. While explaining that as scientists we draw exactly what we see and not something from our imagination they proceeded to tell me that they all saw vitamins and curvy lines inside the bean. 😳 They were all so excited and convinced I couldn't tell them otherwise 😆

After planting our beans in the cotton with a tiny bit of water we are counting the days and seeing how they grow. Every couple of days they continue to draw how the bean is growing and can write what they see underneath as part of their observations. 🌱

🍎 We've started our plant project 🌱
We discussed how plants grow-with soil,seeds,
sun, water, and care. We looked at the plant cycle and talked about the parts of a plant.

Now we sit back and watch our flowers grow 🌻

Planting teaches care, patience and responsibility which is why it is such a great thing to do with children.