This week we went to the Rocky River Nature Center and the children learned about how the beavers shaped the path way by building dams to keep the water from flooding the pathway. The naturalist explained to the children that when they were making the pathways, they had to build around the beaver’s dams and they saw the one side of wetlands had water and the other did not. The children were very observant! They learned about how to tell a box turtle apart from a snapping turtle. The snapping turtle has spikes on its shell and the box turtle’s shell is more rounded. They got to see a live box turtle, turtle shells, different animal furs, and they even got to look for animals in the pond while standing on the bridge. We went Madison Park where we played there all day and the children played with field toys in the big field. The children invented games, pretended they were on a pirate ship, and they played on different climbers. We finished off the week going to the Cleveland Museum of Art where we saw so many different art pieces. We tried to see as much as we could and we walked through each level so that the children can see how different the art is because some thing it’s all paintings but there is so much more than just painting. If you were to ask the children what their favorite parts were they would tell you the interactive art was their favorite. We showed the children our favorite art pieces and why they are our favorites. Afterwards, we had lunch and played on the big field at Wade Oval.
Ms. Joanne did a terrarium with the children and they seemed to have so much fun because they were choosing what they wanted to put in their terrarium carefully and they kept changing how they wanted to place the items. It was nice to see them very focused on what they were doing. They even choose fake plants carefully too! We did tell the children to have their parents carry the terrariums because we were afraid the glass would break and we did not want anyone to be sad that the terrariums they worked so hard on broke.
Our theme of the week is Farm and the children were able to tell us the different farm animals they saw in person, if they ever been to a farm, and they even were able to tell us their favorite farm animal. We have a barn with horses in the classroom and the children were playing with it telling me that they are pretending it’s a horse farm. We made Pig in the Mud and they made a paper plate cow. We had the children draw pictures while listening to music and some of the children made their own pictures of any farm animal they wanted. We did an activity where the children had dominoes lined up around the rectangle table and the circle table and then they would knock them over. They were asking what would happen if they were knock then over at the same time and which would be done first. They said it was the circle table because it was smaller than the rectangle table.
We have been working with the children on using our indoor voices when we are inside because it tends to get loud when we have over 20 children in the classroom and we try to explain to them that if someone needs us, we cannot hear because the noise level gets too high. So, what we do is give the children quiet time where they can read a book, do a puzzle, and/or do an art project. We are trying to teach them to speak in a softer voice because of the children taking naps or resting their bodies. This tends to be hard for some children coming from a school setting where there’s no nap time to here where we have children who do take naps. We don’t expect them to be completely quiet but try to use their indoor voices so that we don’t disturb others or get too loud.
Our field trips next week: Westlake Rec Center Park, Play n Bay Park, and Botanical Gardens.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out!