Ms. Abby's First Day

Today was our first day with Ms. Abby and Ms. Ariel.  Typcially this session will be outside for LOTS of moving around space, but with the rain yesterday they thought the ground might be too wet and mushy....so we relocated to the classroom down the hall. 

They had so many fun things planned for us!  We began with a warm up song to get our muscles moving.  The kids loved making choices and participating.  The new teachers introduced themselves and each child stood up and introduced themselves.  Some kids even got encouragement and applause from the class.  It's so wonderful to see the kids supporting each other.

 

The first activity was a color search race. Ms. Abby had lots of different colored things in a pile. She would yell out a color and one by one the kids took turns running over to find something that matched the color Ms. Abby named. I think the hardest part was deciding what object they wanted to pick up!  The discs and the colored dice were a hot ticket item for sure!

 

 

Next, Ms. Abby had set up an obstacle course with big steps and jumping and balancing.  The children did a wonderful job taking turns AND waiting for their turn!  They cheered each other on and gave high fives for a good job!

The last game was a race between the children and the grown-ups.  Ms. Abby had cones set up all over.  The children were supposed to kick over the cones while the adults tried to keep them standing.  I'll admit the adults got a little distracted by some rough kicking.....but everyone had a great time and the kids definitely thought they were the "winners".  When we switched sides....and the grown-ups did the kicking, the kids used their problem solving skills and each held down two cones so they couldn't be kicked over.  They came up with this idea completely own their own!  I would say that it was cheating....but it was so incredible.....I was just a proud teacher!!

Our story today was Leaf Jumpers by Carole Gerber.  This book told us all about different kinds of leaves.  We learned some more leaf names, talked about their shapes and sizes, and even learned what colors they turn in fall.  The kids really enjoyed practicing the stranger tree names,  like willow, sassafras, sycamore. We clapped them out and said them over and over......in between some laughing!!



For science, we took some examples of the leaves from the book and made a chart.  A complex chart!  The kids were so excited to fill in all the boxes. It was really neat to see that they understood the information presented in the book and could use it functionally!