What a winter! More snow than ever, and more fun and excitement for the kids and what could be better than soup on a cold, snowy, day. Matthew’s mom Josie, came in with former nursery mom, and professional chef Sandra Nachman to make vegetable soup with the children. That’s why we asked all the children to send in a vegetable. The children enthusiastically helped with all the dicing and chopping and many of them loved the soup. We now have a class book circulating about this experience. We acted out Stone Soup We sang AikenDrum using only vegetables. Not only did the kids learn that soup can be made from scratch, they have also learned that their experience can be represented on paper and they had the opportunity to connect literature to real life so that it can have more meaning for them. We’ll be pursuing a bread theme as the year goes on. We’ve already made pop top bread, pita bread and soft rolls. We’ve done some experiments to watch the yeast burp, and then we’ve watched our dough rise. Soon we’ll be going to the pizza store and watch how they do it there. The children will discover how pizza begins with dough, how the pizza man shapes the dough, various ingredients that are used, the types of ovens that are used, the fact that we purchase pizza and it is a service the pizza shop provides in the community, the cooking utensils that are used to make pizza etc.... Back in school we’ll make our own pizza Not only will this provide a tasty snack, but it will give us the opportunity to put our trip on paper, and draw our experience for our pizza book. These are the children’s first experiences with the symbolic representation of their ideas on paper. .. a precursor to writing and reading. The children will also be setting up the dramatic play area as a pizza shop, reenacting what they learned on the trip and having the opportunity to extend the development of language as well as developing social skills as they interact and take turns being customers and servers. All this while they’re having fun playing and making friends. Our next big theme will be dinosaurs ( to run parallel to bread), and will be highlighted with a class trip to the Museum of Natural History. Again it will be an opportunity to extend children’s language and symbolic representation. It will be the foundation for a lot of art and music and literature. It will provide the opportunity for much dramatic play. It will give us a fun way to sort and classify and extend mathematical knowledge.
My thanks to all the parents who have come in to visit our children. We love seeing you.
Looking forward to a winter wonderland.
Minia, Kirsty, Lucy, Jan, Jean and Nicole.
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