Cooperative Play!

Cooperative play begins with simple back-and-fourth play of two children. They attempt to coordinate their actions so they can roll a ball back and fourth or take turns talking on the telephone. In these early interchanges, children practice the turn-taking pattern of "first me, then you." In their preschool years, children develop their interactional skills further, and some group play begins to form. They learn to play together, deciding what to play and what roles to take. In cooperative play, all the children involved take part in the same activity.

On Wednesday, Samantha, Molly, Lily and Charlotte pretended to play school on the playground. They modeled how cooperative play looks and sounds. Their conversation sounded like this: Charlotte: Who is the stick person this week?
Molly: Let's pick a stick.(Molly used a leaf instead of a stick)
Samantha: Who is it?
Molly: It's Lily..It's your turn to take Chester home!
Then the children sang our morning welcome song, but instead of passing the Torah they passed a truck. Their play sounded and looked just like our morning circle. It is so nice to see new friendships budding as the children engage in cooperative play!

How to be a "Bucket Filler"

Carol McCloud is the author of Have You Filled a Bucket Today?  "She first learned about bucketfilling in a parenting workshop at an early childhood conference in the1990's.  The speaker, an expert in infant brain research, said it is helpful to think of every baby as being born with an invisible bucket.  The bucket represents a child's mental and emotional health.  You can't see the bucket, but it's there.  She went on to say that it is primarily the parents' or other caregivers' responsibility to fill a child's bucket.  When you hold, caress, nurture, touch, sing, play and provide loving attention, safely and care, you fill your child's bucket."

Carol goes on to say, "However, in addition to being loved, children must also be taught how to love.  Children who learn how to express kindness and love lead happier lives.  When you love and care about others and show that love with what you say and do, you feel good and you fill your own bucket, too."

Carol says she wrote Have You Filled a Bucket Today? to teach young children how to be bucket fillers. Each time we read the book with the children, we use it as an opportunity to model bucketfilling by filling their buckets.  We help them think about what they might say it do to fill someones else's bucket.  We will continue to work with the children and help them practice daily bucketfilling. 

As you can see in the above photos they are already ready experiencing the pride and joy of filling buckets.  Josh reached out to Noah on the way to down to the Community Room and said,  "Let's hold hands."  Noah smiled, reached out his hand and said, "Yes, let's hold hand."    Zach saw that Lily was having trouble getting her magnatile structure to stay up, so he offered to help.   Daily Micah G thinks of his mom and takes the time to write her special notes.   Last week Josie was having trouble stirring the pumpkin muffins...the dough was thick and hard to mix.   Elias heard Josie ask for help and started stirring the dough for her.  We sure are have fun filling buckets!

This book is a must have for you library at home!  The whole family will love filling buckets!

Playground Fun!

Lily and Josie took advantage of the weather and sat on the swings chatting away!  What a wonderful way to spend the day!

Micah turned over the plastic block seats, lined them and pretended to be jumping off a diving board.  The diving board soon became a popular place to be!"   Everyone at one point joined in on the jumping fun!

Peer Mentors!

Young children are very egocentric. They see the whole world in relation to how it affects them. Most young children appreciate the value of adults. After all, adults are the ones who feed them, bath them, take them out for dinner and read them books. Dyad play requires that children begin to see their own peers as valuable resources as well. Throughout the school year we will encourage the children to share their talents and strengths with each other.

Today on the playground the children had the opportunity to play with the hula- hoops. Charlotte repeatedly picked up the hoop and moved her hips around and around very slowly and the hoop kept dropping to the ground and would not stay on her hips. I suggested that Charlotte move her hips a little faster and to keep practicing. After a few more tries Charlotte said in an overwhelming voice, "I can't do this! Hannah was watching near by and said in a friendly voice, "I can show you." Hannah picked up the hoop and showed Charlotte how to keep the hoop moving around her hips. I asked Hannah to give Charlotte some " hula tips". Hannah's response, "You do this, this and this!" After a quick lesson, Charlotte tried it again and had some success!

Charlotte was the mentor this time...Charlotte was sitting on the edge of the slide balancing with no hands which is great exercise and really challenges your core muscles. Noah was watching her and asked her, "How do you do that?" Charlotte was more than please to teach Noah how to balance with no hands on the side of the slide!

We should all continue to seek out child mentors both at home and at school. When a child is struggling at a particular time of the day, such as snack, buckling their own car seat, cleanup, catching a ball, pumping on a swing, help them find a child mentor to partner with.

Welcome to the Shamayim class!

We had a phenomenal first day!!  

Whenever you join a new group, it takes time to navigate your surroundings, get to know each other and form friendships.  Today, the Shamayim children showed that they are experts at exploration.  The seeds of friendship and negotiation were sprouting, as well!

Sonia, Victoria, Ilan and Bella enjoyed imaginative play in our kitchen.  It is obvious our babies are going to be well cared for this year.

 Josh, Grayden, Bennet and Rosie enjoyed an impromptu story about a colorful car race.  They were respectful when their view was obstructed and all really enjoyed the story.

We made sparkly apples for our families as we begin to talk about Rosh Hashanah.  We all shared the glue, shapes and buttons and waited patiently for Judi to add the awesome blue and red sparkles.

Sonia helped Max and Josh with the trains.  Together they built a large track for everyone to use.

 Grayden and Victoria did some extra exploring.  Grayden found our doctor tools and road the big blue truck around the room as a doctor.  Victoria built fun trees with our legos.  She even found a little hiding place for one of our animals.

We loved spending our first day with the Shamayim children.  We know it is going to be a year filled with learning, growth and smiles!

If Children Made Their Playdates...

...they would be a lot crazier than they are now! Sauci was sitting with Alana, Jake, and Zack at the art table when she overheard their conversation. Apparently, Alana is going to have Zack and Jake sleep over...without Alana's mom knowing! They are going to come over after midnight, watch four movies, two TV shows, and stay up all night! They also thought it could be funny to all wake up Alana's mom at the same time to surprise her. As their fellow classmates started hearing the plans, they thought they sounded so great, they got invited too! It sounds like Sara Zaiger may have to be wary of a gang of five year olds coming over in the middle of the night!

-Sauci and Alison

Hooray for Purim!

Once again the children listened to the story of Purim. They sat on the blue rug listening with their mouths wide open, as we told the Purim story while using finger puppets for props.

When the story was over we invited the children to come over two at a time, to the Art Center. In partners/buddies they worked on one stick puppet together. When the stick puppets dry we will all have the opportunity to play with them (Esther, King Ahashuerus, Haman, cousin Mordechai) in our palace/castle in the city of Shushan.

One teacher stayed with the two children long enough to help them work smoothly together with each other. The teacher modeled the kind of behavior we wanted to see.
We gave them the language by scripting some of the dialoge that works when working with a partner.

All Smiles!

Everyone was happy to be together today after a long February break! The conversations at lunch were interesting and fun. We talked about some of the things we did with our families during our vacation. Peace-out time was spent working together on puzzles, writing , drawing in the Art Center and building with the wooden blocks was a popular place to be as well! Before we went outside we talked a bit about Purim and read A Medieval Castle (A Magic School Bus favorite).

Playing Together

The presence of the blocks and wooden people created lots of dyad and small group play today for Josh, Audrey, and Molly. After Ilan began playing with the potato heads, he attracted Grayden and Molly. In both groups, there was lots of back and forth dialogue and laughter!

"We Wish You Well"

Rachel had tubes put in her ears yesterday and was not in school. Some of the Tel Aviv children took it upon themselves to write "We Wish You Well Cards". They made Rachel a card and put them in her classroom mailbox! She was so surprised and just delighted to receive her cards this morning!

Good times!

We had an intimate lunch full of conversation and chatter! Jacob brought his ABC cookies and spread them out on the table (as he does each and everyday). Rachel asked him, "What does that spell?" His silly response was, "Foo, foo, fa, fa!" Eli said," It really spells goop, goop, la, la loop!" After we finished our lunch we had some "peace-out time and then made some gak with the Kochavim children.

BLACK OUT NAME CALLING!

The Tel Aviv Class wore black today to symbolize how we are blacking out name calling. Our class was so excited to not only wear black but also this day helped them realize that what we have been learning about friendship is important to everyone no matter where you live or how old you are. The skills that we have been focusing on our life skills the teach us friendly ways to relate to others. I was pleased to notice how there was no name calling during our entire morning together. Great job Tel Aviv! However, the only picture we could get where the majority of the class was looking at the camera is this wonderful silly picture..but don't worry we aren't sticking out our tongues at you or calling anyone any names! We have learned better!

Hope everyone had a day free from name-calling!

What does it mean to be a friend?

What does it mean to be a friend?

Eliza- "To be nice."
Dylan-"Saying I love you."
Eli-"Taking turns!"
Molly-"Playing with each other."
Jacob-"Making drawings."
Hannah-Inviting people to my house."
Ezra-"Inviting people to my Birthday Party!"

Then we read The Sandwich Swap again. One of our favorites! It's about two girls that are best friends, hurt each others feelings, spend a short time time being mad at each other, and at the end of the story they apologize/take responsibility for their actions, forgive and make things right!

When we finished the story we talked about how even best friends don't get a long all the time, can say hurtful things and make mistakes. The important thing is to apologize and make things right if you can. But it takes two people to make thing right, being able to forgive is not an easy thing to do no matter how old you are. It takes lots of practice too! It was a great discussion if you get a chance ask your children about it.

Partner Work!

The children were asked to close their eyes and pick a classmates/buddies picture out of a bucket and make a bracelet/necklace for them. At our second circle we gave our buddy the bracelet or necklace we made for them. When each child received his/her necklace the teachers took the opportunity to model the appropriate social skills, such as scripting, "Thank you for the necklace you made me, or "Thank you Dylan".

We also set up a buddy activity at the easel. Rachel and Eliza enjoy sharing space and painting together at the easel. We will continue to encourage and set up partner activities so the children can learn and practice how to work with a partner.

What do you think?

A Bad Case Of Stripes by, David Shannon

"Camilla Cream Loves Lima Beans But She Never Eats Them. Why? Because the other kids in her school don't like them. And Camilla Cream is very, very worried about what other people think of her. In fact, she's so worried that she's about to break out in... a bad case of stripes!"

The children loved the book so much I promised them I would read it again tomorrow. The illustrations alone really capture your attention! As I was reading the book I kept highlighting the fact that it was really too bad that Camilla was so worried and preoccupied with what other people thought of her and the most important thing is what we think of ourselves!

Tomorrow I will read the story again and ask the children the following questions:
Why do you think Camilla was afraid to have people find out she liked Lima beans?
Camilla is trying to be like everyone else- What would the world be like if everyone was the same?

Friendship can be more powerful than difference!

Eliza came over to me and said, "Lauri can you help me, Lily is mad at me and I am sorry." So we went to find Lily...She was sitting on the rug with her hands over her face. I told Lily, "Eliza came over to me and told me she was sad because you are mad at her. Eliza went on to say that she did not treat you fairly and she would like the opportunity to make things right with you." Lily and Eliza looked at each other and Eliza said, "What do you want to be Lily?" Lily did not answer her right away. Previously Eliza told Lily she had to be the sister and Lily actually wanted to be the brother in their "play sequence".

Then I asked the girls ,"How can we work things out?" Eliza said, "Lily you don't have to be the sister you can be who you want to be. I'm sorry." Lily said, "Okay I will be the brother." Eliza's friendship with Lily was far more important than telling Lily who she should be in their "play sequence".

Like in The Sandwich Swap in that moment Eliza's friendship with Lily was far more powerful than their differences.

The Sandwich Swap

Today we read The Sandwich Swap, by her Majesty Queen Rania and best selling author Kelly DiPucchio. Queen Rania tells a story inspired by her own childhood. " The main characters Salma and Lily reach the true spirit of tolerance and acceptance. The smallest things can pull us apart-until we learn that friendship is far more powerful than difference." A must have for your home library!

When we were done reading the book we invited the children to make a hummus and/or sun butter sandwich for snack...Yummy!

Today I feel...

When children become aware of how their words and behaviors affect others, they can begin to evaluate what kinds of behavior will work to make friends. When they grab a toy away, they can look at their friends face and discover that grabbing is not a good strategy to maintain a friendship. When they help a friend find their missing shoe, they can see the smile on their friend's face and discover that helping is a good friendship skill. Today we read Today I Feel Silly & Other Moods That Make My Day ,by Jamie Lee Curtis. After we read the book we all had the opportunity to create bagel faces that express a certain mood(silly, mad, crazy, happy). Fun activities like this, help children develop this awareness of how we communicate our feelings/moods with facial expressions/body language.