The 3 Bears kept us very busy this week at SES! Both the AM & PM classes were very engaged as they retold the story of The 3 Bears. Our dramatic play area was filled with action as the children set the table with small, medium and large bowls & spoons, prepared porridge that was "too hot", "too cold" and "just right" and then ate the delicious porridge. This type of play offers wonderful opportunities for math & literacy learning, imaginative role-playing, problem-solving and vocabulary development.
Check out this photo of the children "eating" their porridge in small, medium and large bowls.
The children also enjoyed retelling the story of the 3 Bears using Character Cards and Finger Puppets. In the AM Class, retelling with Character Cards was a small group, teacher-directed project. For the PM Class, retelling with Finger Puppets was a Choice Time Project.
Check out the PM Class independently retelling The 3 Bears. They were able to tell the story in accurate sequence and use specific phrases (i.e. "Somebody's been eating my porridge!") as they played with the puppets.
Our Half-Day schedule meant that the Afternoon Class came to school in the morning today. It was fun to see those smiling faces bright and early! Despite the change in routine, the Afternoon Group jumped right in and got busy with Self-Portraits. We are documenting the children's progress in creating representational artwork by drawing monthly self-portraits. This monthly practice, along with regular Mat Man practice (our Handwriting Without Tears model) has already made a big difference in the children's artwork. Today the children were looking carefully at specific features -- hair, eyes, hands -- and trying to add these to their work.
In addition to Self-Portraits, we continued our work with The Three Bears. We read The Three Bears by Paul Galdone and followed our reading with some sorting work. We sorted porridge bowls, beds and chairs by size -- Large for Papa Bear, Medium for Mama Bear, and Small for Baby Bear.
We were all so happy to be back at school on Monday!
We jumped right back into our daily routines and began
a new unit of study about The Three Bears. The children
were busy exercising their fine motor skills as they cut out
circles to create bears from construction paper. We also
explored the concepts of Small, Medium & Large as we
rolled Cinnamon Scented Dough into balls.
We began reading The Three Bears by Paul Galdone and this generated an
interesting discussion about porridge. What is it? Does it
really taste good? Maybe we'll add porridge to next week's snack menu!
