The past few days of amazing weather have really gotten us antsy for planting and what we can grow this Spring in our garden! We have practiced planting together inside, we have tidied up near our fence, and we also have been working on a composting station together! We hope to use all of our great compost that we make and use it in our garden once the nice weather is in full swing! We have talked about what things can go into our bin and what things shouldn't go into our bin. It feels so great to work together and be as resourceful as possible. We also feel such pride in the fact that we are helping to eliminate a large amount of our waste which in turn helps the environment! Yay! Today was the day that we got to add everything into our compost bin and observe what might be happening. What a great class of green thumbs!

According to  Colorado Early Learning And Development Guidelines, we were illustrating:

• Perceptual Development : The developing ability to become aware of the social and physical environment through the senses.
• Health : The maintenance of healthy and age appropriate physical well-being.
• Recognition of Ability : The developing understanding that the child can take action to influence the environment.
• Spatial Relationships : The developing understanding of how things move and fit in space.
• Classification : The developing ability to group, sort, categorize, connect, and have expectations of objects and people according to their attributes.
• Problem Solving : The developing ability to engage in a purposeful effort to reach a goal or figure out how something works

These bags are hiding small sea and sand creatures, what can we find? We had to use our hands to push around all the sand and the water to find our seashells, our starfish, and our sand dollars! It was great fun when we were able to discover what each of our bags contained. It helped when we used the light table to light up each bag and see what was inside. The light helped make our creatures be a little more visible. It also created awesome and interesting shadows for us to explore.   We took turns sharing and "trading" with one another so we all got turns. As we were exploring, lots of words like "WOW" and "Squishy" and "trade" kept coming up. We did a great job sharing and DISCOVERING what was in our bags!

​According to  Colorado Early Learning And Development Guidelines, we were illustrating:

• ​Fine Motor: Hold small objects in one hand and sometimes use both hands together to manipulate objects.
  
• Perceptual Development : The developing ability to become aware of the social and physical environment through the senses. 
  
• Interaction with Peers : The developing ability to respond to and engage with other children. 
• Impulse Control : The developing capacity to wait for needs to be met, to inhibit potentially hurtful behavior, and to act according to social expectations, including safety rules.
  
  

Shells, Rocks, Scoops, lets' build a castle! This day was filled with such a great and messy time. We got to use our senses and explore sand. We were talking about the beach and what you may find at the beach and started to get to work to build a sand castle! We used tools such as scoops, cups, spoons, popsicle sticks, and most importantly our hands. We were busy and couldn't wait to see our final project that we used such great teamwork to build. The sand was soft and easy to scoop but it had a tendency to stick together which made us ask "Why?" It was a question that made us wonder- "Is it wet?", "Is it sticky?", "Is it from the ocean?" We discussed all these possibilities while keeping our hands pre-occupied!

According to  Colorado Early Learning And Development Guidelines, we were illustrating:

• ​Fine Motor: Hold small objects in one hand and sometimes use both hands together to manipulate objects.
• Perceptual Development : The developing ability to become aware of the social and physical environment through the senses.
  
• Attention Maintenance : The developing ability to attend to people and things while interacting with others and exploring the environment and play materials. 
  
• Impulse Control : The developing capacity to wait for needs to be met, to inhibit potentially hurtful behavior, and to act according to social expectations, including safety rules. 
  
  
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Today was a day of exploration as we swam through a Kelp Forest and made our very own Kelp Trees. We talked about how here in Clark, we have forests made of various types of trees and how the Ocean has it's very own style of vegetation and "trees". We were fascinated when we used our i-pad to explore photographs of divers in these tall and dark kelp forests. We also discussed how Kelp is a type of Sea Weed.  We talked about how it might feel in our hands and discussed it's colors and shapes. We then looked at one more example of this "slimy" and "wet" sea weed in our Ocean book with drawings and illustrations. It didn't look as dark in these pictures which we seemed to like more. After deep study of these plants, we got the opportunity to draw our own kelp forests. After they were all drawn, we turned them into trees and hung them about the classroom to give the feeling of swimming through a kelp forest.


According to  Colorado Early Learning And Development Guidelines, we were illustrating:

• ​Fine Motor: Hold small objects in one hand and sometimes use both hands together to manipulate objects.
• Perceptual Development: Use the information received from the senses to change the way they interact with the environment.
• ​Recognition of Ability: Experiment with different ways of making things happen.

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Today we had so much to say about all the amazing and interesting creatures you could see at the beach and in the sea. We each picked an animal from as bucket to trace and replicate on our own piece of paper. We had sea birds, seals, whales, dolphins and eve sharks! What fun! Some of us used traditional colors while some of us got funky with the colors!


According to  Colorado Early Learning And Development Guidelines, we were illustrating:

• ​Fine Motor: Hold small objects in one hand and sometimes use both hands together to manipulate objects.
• Perceptual Development: Use the information received from the senses to change the way they interact with the environment.
• ​Recognition of Ability: Experiment with different ways of making things happen.

Last week, we got SNOW!!! It was such fun to watch it fall from inside. The snow was nice and wet- which was perfect for building a big snowman! We all worked together to build this snowman and discussed all the shapes that we used for his body and for his face! After we did that, we got to come inside and look at our shape puzzle and discuss shapes even more! It was such hard work but we had the best time playing and learning together!

According to The Colorado Early Learning and Development Guidelines we were illustrating:

• Gross Motor : The developing ability to move the large muscles. 
  
• ​Relationships with Peers : The development of relationships with certain peers through interactions over time.
• Classification : The developing ability to group, sort, categorize, connect, and have expectations of objects and people according to their attributes.

This week we have dedicated to learning all about Snowflakes. We know that snowflakes are cold and that they make up snow, but today we learned what they look like up-close! They all look so different and are unique in their own way! Just like we all our all unique and special in our own way too! We then looked at a story full of photos and tried to recreate what we were looking at! It was such fun to create our masterpieces and hang them for the world to see! After our special snowflake project, we went outside and looked up-close at the snowflakes we have on our playground! It was hard to see all the different shapes but we tried our hardest!
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According to Colorado Early Learning And Development Guidelines, we were illustrating:

• ​Fine Motor: Hold small objects in one hand and sometimes use both hands together to manipulate objects.
• Perceptual Development: Use the information received from the senses to change the way they interact with the environment.
• ​Recognition of Ability: Experiment with different ways of making things happen.

Painting is our favorite art activity!! Today we chose to paint snowflakes with our "White" Paint. The conversation began with a talk about how we love to play in the snow and then moved towards us wanting it to snow, then progressed into wanting to paint snowflakes in hope that it will snow outside.

A recent donation of drums has everyone very excited to make music, when playing the drums we focus on how we are making the noise. We drum our hands hard and as loud as thunder then we use our finger tips to produce a pitter patter sound as if it is raining. We worked hard to control the urge to play loudly while we were making rain sounds.
While outside the kiddos enjoyed playing in a big group and all sat behind the stick wall yelling and laughing together. 
Some Colorado Early Learning and Development Guidelines included here are:

• Impulse Control : The developing capacity to wait for needs to be met, to inhibit potentially hurtful behavior, and to act according to social expectations, including safety rules. 
• Relationships with Peers : The development of relationships with certain peers through interactions over time. 
• ​Gross Motor: The developing ability to move the large muscles.
• Fine Motor: The developing ability to move the small muscles.
• ​Health: Maintenance of healthy growth and participation in physical activity.