After two snow days, we finally welcomed Q week on Thursday by finding a huge dancing scarf quilt was at the rocking boat and both classes enjoyed incorporating it into their play. Read on to see how else we used the dancing scarf quilt. We will merge Q and R next week to give everyone a chance to learn about another Q friend: the infamous and fictitious Queen Quartence. Our Journal Time prompt this week is “Q is for Quit” where children draw and/or dictate things they think should not happen. We will work on this until all children have had a chance to give their ideas. You know there will be some good ones!
Our Coping Skill is Quiet. Our school boxes have been moved permanently to the shelves so we have a space to easily sit in our cubbies when we want containment and quiet. As always, the children all have access to a variety of noise reducing headphones and we can hang afghan blankets across to create a hide out too.
Our Clean Up Song for the next 2 weeks is a quintessential quiet resting song, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star (which is also the same tune as the Alphabet Song and Baa Baa Black Sheep).This week we are also working on our sweeping skills…instead of just moving the debris around the room (lol), we will start moving it into a square taped on the ground. Next up: practicing using a dustpan!
Conversation Starter: Snack Time
Morning class: We had a lot of crunching sounds this morning…kind of like our boots on snow. Charlie brought us Quaker oatmeal cereal and Cheetos. Thank you, Charlie! We also ate Honeycomb cereal which we called snowflakes.
Afternoon class: We celebrated another friend turning 5 with applesauce, red peppers (a couple of friends tried them for the first time today!), cheese sticks and 2 kinds of cookies! Happy Birthday and thank you, Willow, Annie and Eleanor! We heard from Eleanor that it took her mama 30 years to make our quilt cookies.
Conversation Starter: Story Time
What very quiet thing happened to Peter’s snowball?
It melted!
In honor of the snow we got earlier this week, we read The Snowy Day. This one of the books we have several copies of so children could look at any teacher to watch the pages change. We looked through the book and noticed all the things that happened quietly and which likely made more sound. Snow absorbs sound waves so things actually are quieter when there is snow.
Conversation Starter: Project Time
What did you dip your Q-tips in?
Colorful glue! Ms Kristin added washable liquid watercolor to the glue. Children dipped the ends in and placed them on the paper. We kept them in cubbies to dry until next week. Quinn the Alphabet Friend got more Q-tips added throughout the day too!
Conversation Starter: Circle Time
What did you make the Show and Tell things into?
A quilt! Ms Kristin sewed 12 of our dancing scarves together so children could pick which square they wanted their Show and Tell item to be in. What beautiful and unusual quilts we made! It was delightful to listen and watch children share about their items from home.
We are starting to incorporate Show and Tell into our Circle Time activities. Here are a few reminders:
- It is completely optional.
- Your child can bring any item (but please no weapons).
- Your child is not expected to share their items from home.
- The Show and Tell basket will be at the base of the stairs just outside of the bathroom.
- Help your child choose one item to put in the basket (this gives us the best chance to have the attention span to hear from everyone). If you need support in helping them choose one item, feel free to call me in!
- If your child is in distress about not bringing something for Show and Tell they can tell me about it and we can draw a picture, they can pick something out from the room or they can wait and bring it next time. Again, call me in for support if this is the case!
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