We began a new topic of study this month about Characters We Love!  The staff have observed several characters and groups of characters emerge in our students conversations and play.  We are spending the month of November investigating those characters we love so much and why we love them!  First up: Superheroes!

Our crew is always into superheroes, and Halloween only intensified that love.  As a topic of study, they lend themselves very well to social learning.  Superheroes help us to look closely at traits we may want to emulate ourselves, and others we may want to leave for the pages of a comic book.  We began our week talking about what makes a superhero super.  The children told us about super powers, exciting uniforms, and awesome names.  Next, we spent most of the week becoming superheroes ourselves!  The Tugboats designed themselves as different heroes, painted their own capes to look like their fabric patterns, made masks to finish off the look, and built a super hero fort in which they could convene to solve problems!  Throughout the week, we made sure to frequently link the super qualities to the children themselves.  In drawing parallels between a superhero rescuing a citizen and a Tugboat helping a friend clean up a mess, we aim to highlight behaviors we like as well as cultivate positive self esteem.  Seeing their fabric patterns become capes helped reinforce that as well!  We had some non-superhero fun along the way, including mowing the “lawn” that has been growing in our sensory table, and our favorite Thursday activity: yoga!