This week we continued our Gingerbread theme and discovered many new stories about all of the Gingerbread man's friends!
Fine Motor/Literacy:
We designed Mittens after reading "The Mitten", and used inventive spelling to describe what we feel when we put our mittens on our hands. The children colored, cut and then wrote their words on their mittens. "Coze" was one of my favorite spellings, and "wmis" for "warmish". We talk about the characters and settings in the stories and what we think will happen next. We also hunt for letters and words as we read. We are making some presents for you for the holiday, so have also been working on those in our fine motor/art center. They are so cute and wonderful. I hope you love them as much as I do! The children are excited to share them with you!
We worked in our word books, had group reading, individual reading, individual sign in, letter sounds group songs and dancing, fill in the letter center, and writing pages. Writing practice remains interesting if we are constantly offering different tools, mediums, and ways to write and practice our letters and numbers. We work on our writing tripod grip daily as well. I am an avid student of the research for everything early childhood, so have read many articles lately about grippers for pencils, size of pencils and crayons, and what is the most beneficial for developing a proper tripod hold. The most important thing to remember is to work on the hold and not get hung up on the device you are using to write. Many articles recommend using regular size pencils because the chubby pencils provide too much space between the index finger and thumb and cause children to have too tight of a grip applying too much pressure, which effects their handwriting abilities. Short (golf) pencils are great to limit the space available and encouraging less fingers on the pencil. Grippers are sometimes helpful but in most cases are recommended by OT when a child has severe writing problems and the physical issues are causing them difficulty with being able to even hold a pencil. Transitioning between chubby pencils and regular pencils is typically not necessary if you begin writing with regular pencils, ensuring the pressure applied when writing is not different. Also, grippers can be uncomfortable, so when used should always be comfortable and not restrict normal range of motion while writing. Also, when a child is not developmentally ready to hold a pencil they should not be expected to develop proper tripod grip. The gripper will not make a difference in this instance. Grippers that that are soft and do not restrict movement uncomfortably, but provide a fun and different spin to an ordinary pencil may encourage writing, which is always a positive. Mixing up the different colors of pencils and markers, providing every medium for practicing writing, coloring and drawing are great ways to keep children interested. I love writing centers with stamps, markers, crayons, lined paper, colored paper, words to copy and magazines to cut and paste.
And just when you thought I was finished, here is a link to an older article but quite interesting about pencil grip.
https://www.oepf.org/VTAids/Handwriting.pdf
Math/Science:
We made a surprise with cinnamon salt dough, measuring each ingredient carefully and discussing the difference between wet and dry ingredients. The measuring cup is different for wet and dry ingredients, and it was fun watching them process why one would be better than the other for flour or water. Cooking and baking always provides multiple opportunities for comparisons of more or less than, as well as temperature/numbers and counting while we time our baking.
The children did another "turn and talk" math game where they responsively count to 100 with a buddy. It's a fun and exciting way to practice numbers and allows children to be leaders as well as learn from their peers when they are stuck. It provides the safety of practicing with a friend so mistakes are shared, and the socialization of compromising when they are unsure and deciding where to begin again. I love "turn and talks" as a tool for teaching and introducing higher level thinking concepts.
We have begun discussing coins, and how much each coin is worth. This is new for most all of the students, and is typically (at other schools) a skill introduced in Kindergarten. Some children are becoming familiar with coin recognition, but are learning the amounts of each. I love to introduce concepts so they are familiar and the for some children their interest level will lead them to more in depth study at this time. For others, they will be familiar later when they study currency and have the advantage of it being a familiar concept.
We have worked to show acts of kindness and build the Grinch's heart this week. It's nice to introduce new motivators throughout the year. They are all excited to build their rainbows, but providing an additional element is fun.
Our higher level thinking and the gifted model incorporated into our everyday curriculum continues as the children answered all kinds of questions about themselves and made comparisons to their peers. All of my classes have had many opportunities to explore questions that are typically reserved for older children, but the amazing uninhibited thought processes of four and five year old children remains my favorite for just this reason. I remember a class a few years ago answering my question about the age old, "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" It is just amazing to hear the reasoning of, "of course the chicken had to come first because he had to lay the egg", to them turning to, "well, that chicken was laid by an egg so the egg was just put there, so of course the egg came first!"
We will be baking Gingerbread cookies on Friday, and (if you are not already familiar with the scavenger hunt) we will be looking for the cookies around the school if they happen to run away! It's such an amazing and fun day for the children, full of wander and excitement, and a lovely way to end the year before a long break. I will miss them and will look forward to introducing them to the world of penguins when we return.
Happiest of holidays to you all if I do not see you this next week! And Happy New Year!
Ms. Massey
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