Today’s theme has been circles, the shape of the letter O.  All of our table activities during free play were selected for their roundness.  During project time, the Tugboats had a scavenger hunt to find even more O-shaped objects!  Each child was given an index card with his or her name written at the top, while Peter, Carissa, and Tina (our fabulous parent teacher for the day!) each had a page of circle-shaped stickers.  As the children sought circular toys, round objects, or simply the location of the letter O in the classroom, grown-ups checked on their work and discussed it with them.  For each accurate circle or O, they got a sticker on their cards!

The Tugboats took this project in even more directions than I had anticipated.  We had hoped that the stickers would serve as a motivator, as they typically do, but also as an indicator of who was successful at the challenge.  We wanted them to work together, if independent work was too difficult, and seek the guidance of their peers.  They used this strategy without our even suggesting it!  The children paid attention to where their friends were finding Os and following their lead.  As teachers noticed this behavior, we made sure to have slightly more in-depth conversations with the “followers” to be sure that they were grasping the concept, rather than simply following the leader.  Many of them began to find more independent success with the task after some strong modeling from their classmates.  They always remind me never to underestimate the power of peer support in the classroom!

O Week is off to a great start!  Vowels can be tricky for young learners because they make two different sounds.  It’s difficult to try to listen for words that begin with either the long or short O sound, so we have been listening for words with those vowel sounds in the middle.  In so doing, we’ve always been discussing rhyming and what an appropriate time for “O” rhymes, since we’ve finally gotten some snow!  The Tugboats had a great time free playing in the snowy open areas of Bremen St. Park.  In the fall, we spent a lot of time in those open areas playing structured games, and also enjoying the freedom to simply run and play, but it’s been some time since we did that.  Today was a great day for it!  There were just a couple of inches of soft snow from the weekend and the kiddos had a blast building tiny little snowpeople.  And we all realized that snow has a great big O sound in the middle!

Back inside, we read one of my favorite books, Oh The Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss.  As with many Dr. Seuss books, the message of this story goes a lot farther with adults than it does with children.  Seuss uses such fantastical rhymes, whimsical words, and phenomenal illustrations that most young children are fascinated and enthralled, but struggle to piece together the author’s very moving and emotional sentiment.  His use of rhyme, however, fit perfectly with our emphasis on the O sound.  We got lots of practice at listening for the letter of the week!

Finally, the Tugboats enjoyed one of our favorite projects, the letter of the week decoration.  Today we decorated our letter Os with orange paint and o-shaped objects!  The children used small rolls of tape, round board game pawns, and straws to stamp various Os on their Os.  As they did so, they made observations about which items carried the most paint and which carried the least.  The game pawns, with their smaller handles, deposited large globs of paint on the paper.  The straws, with their super thin plastic, used very little paint and made the thinnest lines.  The tape was nestled in the middle of the range.  Altogether, we used an overwhelming amount of orange paint!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there is nothing in the world quite like playing in the snow with 2- 3- and 4-year-olds.  Their joy is contagious!  We were thrilled to arrive at the playground and find a total lack of footprints in the snow; we were the first of the day!  Once Peter got the gate open, they were off like race horses and didn’t stand still again until we had them lined up for roll call.  They were all over the place, making snow angels, treading carefully across icy equipment, and cleaning off the slides with their bottoms.  Check it out!

Although Christmas, the time most children associate with the phrase “Naughty or Nice,” has passed, with N-Week nearly over, it felt like a reasonable time to focus on the concept.  With many new friends still learning the ins and outs of the classroom, as well as old friends who need gentle reminders, Peter designed today’s project to be a game for reviewing behavior expectations at Harbor City School.

Peter made two large posters that he hung from the ceiling.  One was painted with a happy face and said “Nice” beneath the face, while the other was painted with a grumpy face and said “Naughty” beneath the face.  One the floor below each sign, Peter taped a rectangle large enough for all of the children to stand within and taped off the happy and grumpy faces.  He explained that while he and I modeled different behaviors, they were to determine if our behavior was naughty or nice, then show us their decision by running to the appropriate side of the room.  The Tugboats need little provocation to run, so we started the game and they were eagerly off!

We demonstrated both the naughty and nice sides of a variety of behaviors that we commonly see in the classroom, including putting away toys, sharing items, and personal space.  The Tugboats did a great job judging our behavior!  They eagerly shouted out “Naughty!” or “Nice!” and ran to the appropriate space.  On occasion, we tricked them by asking two Nice or two Naughty in a row, which prompted them to simply run from one side of the room to the other.  When we questioned them, however, their words showed that they knew the correct answer, even if their bodies were more interested in running.  Who can blame them?  Running itself falls into the “Naughty” category unless we are outside or it is sanctioned for a specific reason!  Another benefit of the game as Peter designed it is that it was accessible to our students who are not primary English speakers.  While they may not have understood all of our words in describing the behavior, they could clearly recognize and understand what we were doing.  The painted signs also helped reinforce the vocabulary.  Despite a few bumps a tussles as we played the game, I think the whole group benefited from the review and enjoyed themselves!

Some days you just need to curl up with a good book, am I right?  When you’re 2, 3 or 4 years old, some days you need to curl up with a lot of books and at Harbor City School, today was one of those days.  We read so many books this morning!  Between Peter, our parent teacher, Christina, and myself, I think we each read 5 or more books apiece!  At Circle Time, we enjoyed a book that Gigi brought in to share called A Bad Case of Stripes, by David Shannon.

This story tells the tale of a young girl named Camilla who loves lima beans but, concerned that all of her friends who hate lima beans will make fun of her, she pretends that she hates them and won’t eat them.  The next day, full of anxiety about fitting in on the first day of school, she wakes up to discover that she’s come down with a case of the stripes all over her body!  She arrives at school and is teased for her condition.  Just when she think she can’t take any more teasing, she recites the pledge of allegiance and her stripes turn into red, white, and blue stars and stripes!  Camilla’s skin slowly turns into any print, pattern, or texture she thinks about.  Her condition becomes so distracting that principal asks her to stay home from school!  Doctors, experts, and specialists are all dumb-founded by Camilla’s case.  Finally, a kind old woman, who curiously resembles a strawberry, encourages her to eat some lima beans and as soon as she does, she is cured!  It turns out that being anyone other than her true self was far worse than any teasing she may have gotten for just being herself.

The children love this story because the illustrations are just so silly!  On one page, Camilla looks like a stick of Fruit Stripes gum, and on the next she looks like the American flag!  Her skin changes so dramatically that every page is full of laughs.  Beyond the humor, the heart of the story is very applicable to many of our Tugboats.  As we continue to grow and increase our enrollment, many children face school time anxiety.  New students are challenged to adapt to a new environment with new friends and new routines.  Old friends