Baby Froggy dododododo
November 16th, 2017
Dear Parents,
We had a fantastic day of learning by playing. We did some finger aerobics which is great to strengthen our fingers as we begin to learn to hold our pencils to write. Pooja showed us ‘baby shark’ fingers (pointer and thumb) and then froggy fingers (pointer, thumb and middle finger). We tried to copy her and sing the song ‘baby shark dodododododo’ followed by ‘baby froggy dododododo’. It was fun to sing and play and exercise our fingers.
Some of us hold the crayon in a fist when we do coloring and that’s perfectly okay. However, we always do fine motor activities in the classroom which will help us to hold the pencils correctly in a tripod grip. Learning early writing skills naturally, through play, makes learning fun and helps us prepare for more advanced writing skills such as writing letters and numbers. Holding pencil in a tripod grip is important so that when we grow up and will need to write a lot, our fingers don’t cramp up. We want to learn this important skill early on since it might be difficult for us to change the way we hold a pencil later because we might be perfectly comfortable with the old way.
Many of our friends wanted to learn to write their names and we took turns to have a go at writing on the big whiteboard. We did this in a very fun play way, for example, when one of our friends whose name begins with ‘m’ wanted to write his name, our teachers said, “take your pencil up the hill, then down the hill, then again up the hill and down again and we have letter m”. We think we will probably remember and recognize the letters easily this way.
Maryna, our multi-talented ballet teacher, who also works in the office came to dance with us and we practiced for our Winter Party. We are keeping our performances a secret and hence we can’t share about it now. However, we can tell you that we love singing along and dancing with her.
We talked about farm and discussed farm animals/ birds that lay eggs. Then we read the very popular book ‘Big Red Hen and the little lost egg’ by Margaret Wild.
The story was about a Big Red Hen, who was everyone's baby-sitter. She loves everyone's babies and they love her, but what she wants most of all is someone special of her own to love. One day, Big Red Hen finds a mysterious egg on her doorstep. She wondered whose egg it was and who will look after it. Her friends convince her to look after it and the Big Red Hen sits on it to hatch it for 20 days. She kept wondering if it was the egg of a swan, a stork, a seagull or an owl. But she knew in her hearts that she would love it, no matter whose egg it was. But, Big Red Hen was ready for the biggest surprise of her life when the egg cracked and out came a little hen chick. The story had repeated questions and answers and we loved to join in with that. We also enjoyed thinking of all the different possibilities inside the lost egg.
Other things we enjoyed doing today were drawing on the birthday cards with dot markers and car markers. Car markers are actually markers attached on the toy car, and when we raced the cars up and down, the marker made a mark on the paper. It was quite cool to write as we move the cars. Our teachers always think of fun ideas to do mark making and we love it. We also made house with large wooden blocks and invited some of friends to join us inside it. Many of our friends also enjoyed dressing up as princesses, king and even cat.
Pernille helped us to start on our Christmas craft for this year. There are lot of steps involved before we can actually complete the craft. Today, we started by doing the leaves on the branch of a tree. Firstly, we stuck a pipe cleaner branch on the paper and then dipped a fork in green paint and stamped it on the paper to get the leaves kind of effect.
We are so excited for out Winter Party – 3 more weeks to go!!! Yeahhhh!!!
Love,
All of us in Petals Class