Happy Spring!

[in Just-]

Related Poem Content Details

by e e cummings

in Just- 

spring          when the world is mud- 

luscious the little 

lame balloonman 

whistles          far          and wee 

and eddieandbill come 

running from marbles and 

piracies and it's 

spring 

when the world is puddle-wonderful 

the queer 

old balloonman whistles 

far          and             wee 

and bettyandisbel come dancing 

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and 

it's 

spring 

and 

         the 

                  goat-footed 

balloonMan          whistles 

far 

and 

wee

Classroom Updates

Infant I: A couple of breakthroughs in movement this week: we have one new crawler and one new walker! Woohoo!! Many children have also been engaged in activities surrounding the wooden boat this week. A couple of them are now able to climb in and out of the boat independently, and they love experimenting with its tippiness both while sitting or standing inside the boat and while holding on to the outside, it's a new frontier in balance. Finally, lots of our routine care has fallen into a nice schedule. It's been a pretty calm and smooth week overall.

Infant II: Working together: we have been working on giving each other space and trying to figure out what is acceptable space. To encourage the children to be around each other without pushing we had a couple of group projects where they were very close to each other working together. We used paper maché on a tree stump! All of the children enjoyed playing in the goop. They were all taking turns putting paper onto the stump. We then poured all of the goop into the sensory table where they all gathered around and shared in the fun. Toward the end of the week, we put a very large piece of white paper on the ground. They all got very excited about using markers. They all sat on the paper, again very close to each other, to create a collaborative piece of artwork. The children even worked together to trade crayons and markers with one another.

Toddlers: We had a busy and active week in our classroom. We are working hard on encouraging independence and fostering self-help skills throughout the day. We continue to work hard on getting undressed after coming inside from outdoor play. The children are hard at work unzipping zippers, pulling down snow pants, and taking off boots. This week we worked on bringing our wet clothing to the drying rack and putting wet boots in the boot tray. Everyone is focused on being responsible for their own clothing. We also worked on basic shape recognition and discussed the three sides of a triangle and the roundness of a circle. Literacy and language continue to be a big part of our day, specifically in the morning. Books are an important aspect of our time together and we really enjoy reading books with our teachers.

Preschool I: We have had a busy week! Monday we took the class to the ice rink and watched them take out the time. We are almost ready to take the whole class on walks regularly because everyone is doing so well. Wednesday was the first library day for many of us and we had lots of fun. We have talked a lot about spring time and how many animals are coming out of hibernation. We are especially interested in bears hibernating after reading the book "Hibernation Station" by Michelle Meadows. We ended our week with a bear hunt down to campfire forest where we did lots of rock climbing and stick gathering.

Preschool II: Our focus and interest in letters and phonetics continues. The labels in our classroom have become very interesting to some children. There has been a lot of collaboration to identify the letters and sound out the words. We are also continuing our work using our sandpaper letters. We are working our way through the consonants. Most of the children can now label all of the vowels! We discussed the change in season and are watching for any new signs of spring. No one was disappointed by the new snow we received. We trekked to the big hill by SES for a wicked fast day of sledding. We thought it might be last for the season so we made the most of it and hiked and climbed over and over again. On Friday Jane spent the whole day with us and we went to the Woof Trail with Kate and a few children from the prek class. Everyone is working on listening and following directions with a new teacher.

PreK: This week prek developed some new interests: we are learning about dinosaurs, volcanos, and different types of bridges. We've played Memory with a few different versions of the game. We also set up a self-portrait station where children can look in the mirror to draw pictures of themselves. We continue to enjoy answering our "question of the day" and use the information to create number sentences. Our library book "Tyrannosaurus Math" has number sentences and several other new math concepts of us to explore. We have also been getting to know Nancy, our new afternoon teacher. If you haven't met Nancy yet, please feel free to introduce yourself. She most recently worked at SES so you might have met her before.