The normalist car

Ben spent a long time today putting together "the normalist car you've ever seen! It blows smoke and has wheels!"

Getting ready for our Passover Play!

The Lunch Bunch children started to gather props and costumes for our Passover Play.   Noah is Moses, Lily is Miriam and Micah is the Pharaoh!  Stay tuned as we will have our first dress rehearsal tomorrow!

A Bridge!

Once again, we saw the Keshet children exercising their imaginations as they constructed a tunnel, decorated the top of it, and climbed through it.  They even climbed on top!  We enjoyed looking at the photos of the Shamayim children's creations on our shared wall.  Thank you for sharing your materials with us.

Model Magic

The Etzim children were so excited to explore a new way to make sculptures yesterday!   Using glue and crepe paper, children discovered different ways to mix the two together into a moldable substance.   As Betty put the materials out, it was interesting to watch as each child approached the same materials in different ways.

Roads Everywhere!

After lunch the Tel Aviv children decided to build a road with the wooden blocks, the length of the classroom.  Josh walked over to where the road ended and said, "This is where  California is."   Charlotte moved her toy car along the wooden road with her hand, all the way to "California".   When she turned her car around and went the other way she said, "Let's go this way, back to Natick!"

Elias, Micah and Adam asked me to help make their wooden road "bigger".   I asked them if they had any suggestions as to how we could make the road bigger?  Elias asked, "Do we have any tape?"  We asked Jesse if we could borrow her tape and then went to work!   We proceeded to extend the wooded road with the tape all over the blue rug.

In the Art Center Micah, Adam and Josh shifted gears and announced ,I am going to make roads on my paper!"   Micah Gladstone suggested we make traffic lights for our roads.   He said," I am going to make four traffic lights because I am four years old."

Roads here, roads there, roads were everywhere!

Body Art!

The children had the opportunity to use face paint crayons to create designs, pictures, lines and patterns from head to toe! They had a ball drawing on themselves, classmates, friends and the counselors (EMILY was covered with beautiful Body Art).

The children drew on their on their face, arms, legs and belly! It seemed as though the children had an idea in their head as to what they wanted to create, and they went to work! They were so proud of their finished art!

Creating a Water Wall!

Today we started to build a water wall on the playground! So far our water wall is a sructure created with a variety of plastic containers connected to the fence with pipe cleaners. The plastic containers have holes so that water can be directed in various streams, drips and flows when poured over-top.

Over the next several weeks we will continue to add onto and build our water wall! Stay tuned for water wall updates!

Engineers at Work

For the last couple of days some of the Unicorn boys have been collaborating on designing road maps for their cars.  They started with telling the teacher where they wanted the roads, and what kind of designs they wanted to incorporate into the streets.  Hearts were very popular.  Today the maps became more elaborate.  Some children added letters or numbers to their maps.  In one of the shots below you can see Max explaining why he thinks more numbers were needed in one section of the map.   There has been some wonderful teamwork and lots of ideas expressed as everyone shares their vision of how the maps should evolve. 

An Invitation

The Kohavim children entered the classroom to find this invitation. The table was set with blue paper, pencils, a pencil sketch and the instructions: Make a blueprint of what you see or make your own design. Four places were set and ready and a stack of extra blue paper was close at hand for the children to use.

Next to the drafting table was the beginnings of a block and cardboard tube structure that the teachers had built as inspiration. Notice that they used cardboard columns as the base, rather than the typcial large rectangle blocks the children usually select first, already bringing the activity to a higher level. And next to that, a display of books about building, architecture and balance, some fiction and some non fiction, for the children to consult as reference in both their building and blueprint work.

What an invitation to think, create, and collaborate.

What to do with a GIANT piece of cardboard?

Today we presented the Tel Aviv class with a HUGE piece of cardboard and a lot of cardboard boxes. We were so excited to create an open-ended project that could be based on the ideas of the children in our class. When I presented them with the board and said what do you guys want to make and there was a overwhelming response of, “SUKKAH!!!” So, Sukkah it is!

The class is SO excited about creating our new class sukkah and today everyone started decorating the cardboard wall by either drawing designs or by cutting shapes and gluing them on. Dylan was the very first one to start drawing and brought many the other boys with him, and then the girls were quick to follow. They colored on complete side and then decided that they wanted to also color on the other one! Jacob drew lots of zig zags and then Eliza also added some zig zags next to Jacob’s in another color. Eliza also added an “M.” It was so neat to watch the children’s excitement about having the freedom to create and draw anything they wanted. Then they even decided to add some other media. Max and Eli were the first to start cutting. They decided they wanted to use scissors but they didn’t know what to cut. They tried to cut a milk carton and cardboard but found that that was challenging. Then they cut up newspaper coupons and found out that the paper was much easier to cut. Once they cut the paper up, they excitedly glued it to the sukkah adding a new layer to our creation. Rachel found some glitter paper and cut it in a circle creating a section of different layered paper. I was so pleased that every single child added something and I am excited to see how this project will grow and evolve in the upcoming week.

Let's Imagine!!

A few days a go I was talking with one of the Tel Aviv children and he said, “ I used to need an imagination, but now I have a play-station, so I don’t need an imagination anymore!”

It was funny how frankly he said this comment, how easily he was able to replace an imagination with a new playstation. However, it has made me think even more about how we can create a classroom environment that not only fosters imaginative play, but also encourages a variety of opportunity for students to play, explore and create.

Today we had a day without many of our everyday activities; no waffle blocks or cars or even the sensory table. I love all these activities, and feel as though they all foster imaginative play, but it was nice to do something different. For the first time in a while there was a wonderful game of house in dramatic play and in the reading area. Jacob, Hannah and Eli were a family who lived in our quiet reading tent. Eli was the 16 year old daddy. Hannah was 14 and she was the mommy and Eli was 3 and was the big brother. There was also a baby. They created a sweet family and Dylan, Eliza, Lily and Ezra all joined in throughout their make-believe play. They created a store, and when Eli went shopping he told Hannah to “keep the baby safe while I go shopping.” It was adorable. While this was going on we had a large unstructured art project and together these two projects elevated the creativity and imagination in our classroom, which is something Lauri and I hope to continue to foster throughout the year.

Shofar Trees

Here is a picture of the trees. What do you think? How did this happen?

A better Idea

We thought we'd explore watercolors today, but as is often the case, the Levana children found a way to extend the planned activity into a different curriculum area altogether. Eliana and Mia started by painting but quickly found it much more interesting to experiment with mixing colors. Not only did they get to practice pouring, they also created new colors to paint with!

Creating Patterns!

During "peace out" time the children put a lot of thought and time into creating colorful, detailed patterns with the magnetiles.

Apples in the sensory table!

If you put water, apples, bowls and large spoons in the sensory table what do you get?

-apple soup
-sorting the big and small apples
-an apple wash
-apple pie
-splashed with an apple or two
-an apple stand at a farm
-counting apples...How many apples can you fit in the bowl?

2:00 Pick Up!

Hannah and Eliza were very excited to be staying until 2:00! As soon as they walked through the gate this morning they announced proudly, "I'm staying until 2:00!"

When the morning children left for the day, we all continued to play, play, play! Ryan made drums out of the plastic seats, Hannah, Micah, Rachel and Eliza decorated visors with fabric paint, Jacob created his own zoo with the animals and Lizzie played with the magnitiles. Let's not forget to mention that we took a walk down to the Community Room kitchen, and helped ourselves to a cool refreshing popsicle...YUMMY!

Clay Sculptures!

The children created clay sculptures with red clay, buttons and shells. Some children just had fun playing with the "cold wet clay", others had something very specific in mind they wanted to create. Ryan sat down at the table, looked at the materials and said, "I can't wait to make something complicated! I am going to make a complicated ship with oval buttons." I then asked Ryan, "What does complicated mean?" His response was, "It's something that is very, very tricky! My Dad told me that." Lizzie created a button and shell sculpture, Leo created a sculpture with buttons on the inside and outside and Jacob spent a lot of time creating a bunch of worms. Tomorrow the sculptures should be dry and ready to take home.

Magnitile Play Outside Today!

The magnitiles took on a whole new light! The children set them up on the rectangular blue table, and built some interesting and detailed structures. Ryan built, "An airplane!" Alana, Lizzie and Rachel constructed, "A house for their animals." If they needed help or got stuck as the were building they just asked a friend and they were more than happy to lend a helping hand.