Continuing on with the topic of winter, we played a matching game using manoplas (mittens). Each child had to find the matching mitten in the pile of other mittens. We also reviewed the concept of grande/pequeño (big/small) using manoplas grandes (big mittens) and manoplas pequeñas (small mittens).
Since this week we talked about the winter and things that happen in the winter, it was a great opportunity to play with nieve (snow). What better way to learn about the topic than to actually play with the cold snow! The children attempted to make snowmen, and even placed the cold snow on their hands and cheeks to feel how cold it was. How exciting!!
Winter is the coldest season of the year. Since it is so cold, we are more likely to get sick. We are teaching the children to dress warm before going outside by putting on their jackets, gloves, and scarfs. We sang the song Invierno, por qué nos gustará? Through this song, we learned new things about the winter season. In math, we matched and did one-on-one correspondence with winter clothing that was hidden in the classroom. The teachers gave us one glove and we had to find the missing glove that matched. We also did that activity with penguins wearing colorful scarfs, in which the children had to look around for the matching penguin’s scarf.
This week the children had the opportunity to paint real snow. Each child had a tray with snow we got from our backyard to be able to feel how cold it was. After, with brushes and watercolors, we colored the snow in the trays. We also painted winter gloves with Dot-A-Dot paint. These are wonderful activities to develop the children’s fine-motor skills while cutting winter pictures. We started the school year tearing papers, but now it is time to use scissors.
After a very snowy week, we talked about the snow and its properties. The Ardillas had a chance to play with the snow and even had a fake snowball fight! We used chalk to draw our favorite things to do when it snows outside and the students demonstrated how to make snow angels. Peppa Pig visited our class to help us review our winter clothing vocabulary and afterwards we helped her play in the snow by painting snowflakes for her.
In Mathematics we worked on visual perception and determining what was ‘igual’ (the same) y ‘diferente’ (different). We classified white circles that were ‘pequeño’ (small), ‘mediano’ (medium) y ‘grande’ (big) to make a snowman and also reviewed numbers 0-30. We also practiced drawing shapes, writing the number two and classifying pairs. In Language Arts, we jumped right back into writing and letter recognition. The children had to work on their line tracing in their work books as well as name identification.
This week we got back to our normal routines and schedule. However, our week was very special. We got a visit from a real firefighter!
In history, we have been learning lots of information about Martin Luther King Jr. and how important is standing for your beliefs. We discussed how we feel about racism and discrimination and we all agreed that being inclusive and respecting everybody is good and nice. We will continue to learn more about Martin Luther King Jr. next week and, also, Harriet Tubman. As always, if you happen to have any materials or books related to what we are learning, we would love to include them in our lessons.
