“Hola!” and “Buenos dias!” has been ringing out in the Pre-Primary classroom. The study of Mexico has brought many exciting opportunities and ideas for the children. They have loved wearing the poncho and sombreros while playing the maracas. Many children have worked on counting in Spanish and learning about the history of Mexico as well as Aztec history. In March, we welcomed parent volunteers into our room for our cultural celebration. Children created maracas with tiss

This past week our class was excited to have a special guest. One of our Seedling’s families had spent two weeks in India celebrating a wedding. They brought back some native music, instruments, a book, and pictures for us to look at. We first looked at the pictures from the wedding and loved seeing the dresses and flowers. Then we were introduced to some new instruments, the favorite was the Ghungaroo (bells to wear around your feet while dancing.) Once each child had an ins

The young child is in a sensitive period for the perfection of movement. In the classroom, we provide for this need with the exercises of “walking on the line”. We use a line on the floor, in the shape of a circle, and we teach the children to walk on it. Sometimes the line is used for movement with objects or moving to the rhythm of music. Other times, the line is for simply walking with one foot in front of the other, to practice balance, coordination and focus. One morning

Recently our classroom celebrated the country of China for our yearly Cultural Celebration. The children were incredibly excited to study such a fascinating place, learning all about its people, music, food, art, history, and language. Many activities were planned for the morning. Our class explored and tried on clothing from China and practiced serving tea in a dramatic play area, learned to count to ten in Mandarin by painting the symbols on paper, and read many Chinese fol

As we come to the end of our peace unit that focused on creating peace with others, the class learned at a recent peace circle how to give one another a compliment. We began our circle talking about what a compliment is, what it sounds like, and why we would give a compliment to another person. “A compliment is when you say something nice to someone else”, “You say it in a kind voice and look the other person in the eye”, and “We give compliments when someone does something y

We are thrilled to have some spring weather coming our way. With the “Critter Cabin” still closed, we have taken up a new hobby of hiking in the woods. We are fortunate enough to have the beautiful Pine Grove right at our feet. We begin our walks by establishing the buddy system. Each child finds a friend to hold hands with during our walk. We have gone down several paths and found some neat footprints along the way, including birds, a dog, and of course, a big foot. The chil

A basket of an array of animals sits on the top of the Science shelf. As circle is dismissed, two or three children rush to retrieve that basket as their first work choice. A little boy is the first to choose the basket. He spread out his work rug in the circle and digs out the four labels: fish, mammal, amphibian and reptile. He lays them out at the top of his work rug, side by side. He then dumps out the animals and begins to sort through them. He finds a crocodile an