What an exciting week we’ve had!  Last weekend’s Touch a Truck was such a fun and successful event.  We were thrilled to see so many faces, new and old, and everyone had a blast exploring the wide variety of vehicles!  Look to the right of the webpage for a slide show of amazing photographs of the event, thanks to the talented Edson Dias.

We also had a flurry of excitement as we welcomed 5 new students to our classroom!  Our new Tugboats were all so brave and eager on their first days, and dove right into making new friends and exploring the classroom.  It’s such a dream come true to see the classroom bustling with activity 5 days a week!

This week wrapped up our short unit exploring cars and trucks.  One of our most exciting adventures on this theme came quite by accident.  On Wednesday, we walked to our local library on Meridian Street, and on the way we passed  a long stretch of construction.  We met police officers and construction workers who were all excited to break up their work day to chat with some cute kiddos!  One of the construction workers was operating a back hoe and gave us quite a surprise: he raised the arm of the digger into the air, then bobbed the shovel up and down as if the truck was waving to us!  I think even the teachers were giddy about that treat!

Big thanks to Emily, the children’s librarian for hosting us for Read for the Record.  In recognition of this national holiday that spotlights literacy in early education, Emily invited us to the library for a story and a project.  The Tugboats loved hearing her read Ladybug Girl and the Bug Squad!  After the story, they made beautiful paper ladybugs, demonstrating how well they follow directions while still expressing their creativity.  They made us extra proud on our field trip this week!

We spent this week at HCS preparing for our Touch a Truck fundraiser.  We’ll be at 80 Border St. tomorrow, 9/29 from 1-4 PM with loads of awesome trucks, cars, activities, and music–come join us!

Most of the students are well aware that “Touch a Truck Day” is coming up soon and they are so excited!  The usual degree of interest and fascination with 4-wheeled vehicles has been magnified dramatically this week, so the staff capitalized on that for some automotive activities.  Transportation vehicles lend themselves quite easily to many math and pre-math skills, all while tapping into a seemingly universal, natural interest.  Cars can be lined up in a sequence or order, for example.  They can be sorted based upon defining characteristics.  They even provide a great opportunity for counting: how many wheels?  How man doors?  How many windows?  Cars can be an excellent source of social learning as well.  Students can play with them individually, or collaboratively with each child taking his or her own car to drive.

Our week started with a shape exploration:  what shapes come together to make cars?  Each child used a piece of black construction paper as their base, then built their own cars using squares, rectangles, and circles.  They practiced following directions and sequencing in order to make their cars representational, if they were so inclined.  Later in the week, thanks to the creativity of one of our parent helpers, we made our own road maps for the floor!  Kristen brought us two shower curtains, as well as markers, upon which the grown-ups drew roads with permanent markers.  The students contributed buildings, road signs, and landscaping with crayons.  Once it was completed, they raced our classroom cars in and out of the intersections, always obeying the posted laws of course!

We began ramping up the scale of our activities mid-week, getting ready for the big trucks on Saturday!  Recycling some old cardboard, Peter created a mega-ramp at the end of one of the slides on the playground.  Each child took turns launching one of our big plastic trucks from the classroom down the ramp.  Woah, did they fly!  It gave us a tangible example of why we go down slides with our feet first!  The maco-car theme (along with the theme of recycling) continued as we first turned our ordinary tables into cars, then made giant box cars.  The Tugboats worked so well together this week, each contributing ideas for our creations and taking turns painting or adding details.  I’d say we’re ready for the real deal!

We’ve spent the last two weeks wrapping up our Leo Lionni author study, which has been so colorful and fun!

Math Projects:  Leo Lionni often writes about mice, but he occasionally delves into the crocodile world, which provided a great source for math projects.  As we all know, crocodiles have so many teeth!  During one of our math explorations, each child was given a piece of green paper in the shape of a crocodile’s head.  On each piece of paper, a number was written.  Each child was tasked with finding the designated number of white paper “teeth” from a pule in the center of the table, then gluing them onto their crocodiles.  What a vicious way to practice our concept of quantity!  This project lent itself to differentiation quite easily: children who are confident and comfortable with one to one correspondence were given larger numbers, while those still developing their sense of quantity worked with smaller numbers.  For an extra challenge, a group of kiddos worked with Peter to begin discussing the concept of “greater than” and “less than.”  Using our numbered flash cards and a set of crocodile mouths, the children practiced using the crocodile’s mouth to eat the larger number!  Once the students are older and practice using greater than/less than symbols, we hope they can look back to this activity and find a useful mnemonic device!

Science Projects:  With all of his stories about animals, Leo Lionni’s work provides plenty of opportunities for science discussion and exploration!  After reading about a silly crocodile who hatched from an egg, we talked about the many animals, most certainly not humans, who are born and hatch from eggs.  We practiced cracking open “dinosaur eggs,” made from a baked dough, as though we were archeologists out in the field.  We also imagined what different animals’ eggs look like and decorated our very own eggs!  During one project time, we attempted an experiment to help us study the formation of crystals and rocks, but that project did not pan out as we had hoped.  One day in the future, we’ll have to revisit our attempts at making rock candy!

Art & Sensory Projects:  After reading Geraldine, the story of a mouse-shaped piece of cheese, we decided to do a little bit of cheese molding on our own!  One of my favorite sensory projects to date was on this particular day, as we used cream cheese as if it were play dough!  Each child was given a small chunk of cream cheese and asked to try forming a mouse.  It was messy and very, very silly, but a fun opportunity to practice something they always long to do: play with their food!  It’s also a valuable fine motor task for children to use their hands to shape materials of different densities.  Frederick tells another mouse tail, this time about the four seasons and how they are all so different from one another.  After reading this story, we thought about which colors we see most often in the four seasons.  Breaking into groups, we painted four large pieces of paper using our season-specific color palettes.  The result is a beautiful seasons chart we can add to our Circle Time resources!

For a short week, this sure has been an exciting one: we’ve welcomed 5 new Tugboats this week!  Weaving new students into our classroom community requires a careful process.  New friends are learning our routines and rules, as well as getting to know many new personalities.  At the same time, old friends make room for these new Tugboats to make their mark on our classroom and infuse the fabric of our classroom with their individuality.  My favorite “first day” book is One by Kathryn Otoshi.  One tells the story of a group of colors.  Blue, in this group of friends, is shy and quiet, and is often taken advantage of by Red.  “Red was a bit of a hot head,” as Otoshi explains, and got a lot of enjoyment out of making Blue feel badly about herself.  Blue’s friends console her, but none of the colors stand up to Red.  A tall silver number 1 comes along one day and changes everything.  One stands up to Red’s bullying ways and simply says, “No.”  This gives the other colors the courage to stand up for themselves, and they each become new numbers as they do.  In the end, Red joins them, and they discover that everyone counts.  I love using this book to help establish our classroom community.  It’s important to treat each other with respect and kindness, but it’s also important to take care of each other and to give each other second chances after we’ve made mistakes.

We’ve also been reading books from our new author study, Leo Lionni.  In each of this week’s books (Pezzetino, Matthew’s Dream, Little Blue Little Yellow, and Nicolas Where Have You Been?), we learned about characters who sought to establish their own independence, but still held valuable places within their communities.  We can certainly relate to that theme here at HCS!  These books made great “getting to know you” stories and supplied projects that extend beyond self awareness into fine motor development, personal expression, team work, scientific observation, even chemistry and cartography!

Dream Catchers:  We introduced the Native American tradition of dream catchers, which are hung above beds to catch bad dreams before they can enter our minds.  We decided that our dream catchers would catch good and bad dreams; when the Tugboats wake up to find their catchers full, they can choose which dreams to keep and which to throw away!  Everyone was given a piece of round card stock with holes punched in the sides, as well as a long strand of yarn on a plastic needle.  We showed them how to lace the yarn through the holes and across the circle, making a sort of web to catch their dreams.  For those who were interested, we also added colorful beads as “bait” to entice the dreams to their webs!  As they worked, the teachers traveled the room asking each child what he or she dreams of becoming when they are a grown-up.  We wrote these dreams on a bit of paper and hung them from the dream catchers.  Lacing yarn through holes is an excellent fine motor activity for little fingers that are practicing accuracy and coordination.  For older children, the challenge was in designing where and how their laces should cross and overlap.

Color Mixing:  In three small groups, we investigated different ways of mixing colors.  The youngest group placed pieces of paper in the bottom of the sensory bin, then added a few dollops of blue and green paint and a handful of marbles.  Working together, they tipped and tilted the bin so that the marbles would roll through the piles of paint.  The result was a stripey, mixed-up masterpiece!  The next group used colored lenses to observe how objects look different when seen through different colors and lights.  They observed objects and pictures through single and double lenses, noticing how adding colors changed the appearance.  The oldest group noticed that there are many colors that we call “green,” but they aren’t all the same color.  We talked about shades of colors and made hypotheses about how those shades got to be different.  Each of them used a sturdy piece of card stock with squares drawn in a row and made their own scales.  They experimented with different amounts of blue and yellow to create a variety of shades.

Mapping:  After reading about Nicolas and his travels to find the perfect berry, we investigated our classroom globe.  We found the many countries our students have traveled to, as well as the United States.  Peter showed the Tugboats where Massachusetts is within the US, then showed them a map of Massachusetts.  Likewise, we found Boston on a map of Massachusetts, East Boston on a map of Boston, and our neighborhood on a map of East Boston.  We talked about the lines on maps, what they tell us, and how to find things.  Next, we gave each student a blank map of our classroom and asked them to fill in the tables, chairs, shelves, and toys.  While many of the Tugboats don’t yet have the dexterity to accurately draw these features, we were impressed with how many of them could locate where to add the furniture!