AFC PINE PM

We are so thankful to caper with our friends from Dogwood and Magnolia! Every week the kids of Pine love to be able to play with the others and see what their friends are doing in their classrooms.  Before we started, the boys worked together to try and roll one another in the box. A game that first started out as knock knock, has now transformed into rolling each other in the box.  "It's so heavy! We need everyone's help." M and F worked together to try and roll L who was inside the box.  With every push, the boys would start giggling and try to push harder.  "It's kind of rolling, but it's still so hard." They eventually were able to roll L to the end of the carpet and began to clap and cheer as L came tumbling out of the box giggling.  Capers started and the boys ventured off to explore different spaces.  We are so thankful for our friends and playing with one another! Have a safe br

At our meeting this afternoon J asked if she could be the teacher. The kids looked quite surprised when I said yes! A huge smile spread across J's face and she proudly sat in front of her peers. She began meeting the way we always do, singing a welcome song to each of our friends.  J showed the class the rhythm they needed to follow by tapping her knees. The class followed. She sang for each friend and even guided those who needed some help to find their names and match it to their pictures.  Next, J wanted to share our afternoon schedule with the class. She held up the visual schedule and began explaining what the Pine kids were going to do today.  "We got to play in the boxes, and then we are at meeting. We get to caper today too then we eat snacks." She nailed it!  To end our meeting, J read a book out to all of the kids. She followed along with the pictures and pretended to read the words that were across the page.  By the end of th

This week we started a new book entitled "Not a Box." In this book, the main character creates different modes of transportation and even a volcano out of an ordinary box. That gave the kids in our class an idea... is there something we can create from a box?  We set out on a "box hunt" in old Webster and kindly asked different businesses if they had any large empty boxes they were willing to part with.  We were in luck! One business in particular gave us three boxes!  "We should make a race car!" "Oh and we should make a star ship." "What about a volcano?" They quickly decided that the smaller box would be used as a race car and the bigger box a volcano, but first the boxes could be used for something else.  In this two part video, enjoy the play between the Pine friends this afternoon. 

The light projector was a huge hit yesterday, so today the kids were offered the same materials, but this time they were also given markers and paper.  "I'm going to draw the circles. Look I made a triangle!" M started grouping the small disks into groups and circling them.  M then moved over to the whiteboard and began the same kind of grouping and circling.  As he used his marker to trace, but was having some difficulty doing so when his own shadow was getting in the way.  \ "I can't see it right now. The circle went away." As he continued to draw he noticed that as he moved his body he was able to see the circles reappear.  "I can see them now! I can try to get that spot again." J was also working on tracing different circle creations, but she decided to match the color marker with the color disk that was being projected.  "I am matching all the colors together! Look!" J began tracing c

The Pine kids were excited to see something different set up in the classroom today that they have never seen: an overhead projector! Different colored round plastic disks were spread out across the flat surface. Both F & W started moving the disks around in different patterns. At first, each child worked side by side creating different patterns and designs without looking up at the projected image. Then, F began moving pieces around individually and realized what he was moving on the surface of the projector was also moving up on the board ahead of him.  He placed disks under each finger and began moving his hand around. It looked as if his hand was ice skating across the glass top. He giggled as the pieces he moved with his fingers were also moving on the board straight ahead.  J & M noticed this from across the room.  "Look, it's moving around!" "Yeah, when I do this here, it's doing it up there too." "My different c

This afternoon our Pine friends joined in with kids from Magnolia and Dogwood to participate in weekly capers. Today, M & J noticed something familiar.  "Look, they have leaves like in our classroom." "How do we draw a leaf?" "I don't know if I can draw a leaf." M looked around and saw pictures of leaves lying on the table.  "We can use these to look at!" He got to work by using the thin sharpie to draw an outline of the leaf. He worked cautiously to get every detail just right. He then picked up the smaller paint brush, dipped it in water, and decided he was going to start with green.  "I am going to make it different colors because the leaves are sometimes different colors." J worked in silence as she drew the outline of the leaf. She drew it so it filled the whole page.  "I made it really big so I can put a bunch of colors in it!" She used a variety of colors and seemed to put them

W walked into the Pine room and noticed the flashlights on the table.  "It's a light!" He turned it on and giggled. W began to shine the light around the room.  The others saw the flashlights and expressed interest in playing with the flashlights.  "It needs to be dark!" We found a sheet and draped it over the end of the table.  B crawled under the table with a flashlight in hand. At first he turned the light on and looked straight at the bulb, he blinked, then pointed it at the underside of the table. B laughed and began wiggling the flashlight around.  M wandered under the table and pointed his flashlight on the sheet. He moved his hand in front of the light.  "It's a shadow!" He continued to wiggle his fingers around and watched the shadow fingers mimic his movement. M erupted in giggles which attracted all of the other kids to run under the table.  Within the next few seconds, everyone broke out into song!

What a beautiful snowy day! During meeting time we talked about how we can prepare ourselves to play in the snow.  "We need to wear hats!" "And we need gloves. I brought gloves with me!" "I have boots too! I want to wear my boots." "I don't have boots, can I have some?"  "We need our coats!" After finding all of our appropriate clothing to wear the boys headed outside to check out the freshly fallen snow.  The boys checked out different parts of the front of school noticing their footprints they left behind going from one thing to another.  "Look, I made these tracks with my feet! I just did this with my feet." M modeled how he shuffled his feet through the snow to create long drawn out tracks.  "You can't even tell they are my feet!" "It's so cold!" "It keeps falling down." "I love to play in the snow." "Let's

The Pine kids really enjoy being able to caper with kids from Magnolia and Dogwood, so today we decided we wanted to make something all together to represent our love for playing together. Before starting capers today we sat down and read the story "Sam & Eva" to get a better idea on what it's like to work together and make a collaboration.  Magnolia invited the kids from Pine to add to their classroom project.  "We have to glue this stuff down. There's lots of corn and acorns we can use, but first we have to put glue on I think." J & M got to work. Each of them picked up paint brushes and started tracing along the preexisting lines with glue. After creating streaks of glue across the paper they carefully added corn and acorns to the paper.   "They are sticking down to the paper with the glue. There aren't enough brushes though so I think we have to share." "Yeah we have a lot of stuff though so I think ev

This afternoon before heading to the forest, the Pine friends were in quite the predicament.  What breathing technique should we use to calm our bodies down? "I really want to do a snake breath!" "But I think we should do a pretzel breath, we never do a pretzel breath!" "No, the snake breath!" What were we going to do? The kids decided we needed to choose which one by voting.  Each child took their name and placed it under the picture of the kind of breath they wanted to take.  After everyone voted, it was decided that because 4 kids wanted to take a snake breath and only two wanted to the pretzel breath, we would do a snake breath.  "I just really wanted to do a pretzel breath, could we maybe do it later?" "Let's do that one later!" That was that, they came to a compromise. Snake breath before the forest and pretzel breath after the forest.  But why do we vote? "I think we

J looked curiously at herself in the mirror. She first started drawing on her reflection, making broad strokes on her eyebrows and coloring over her face. She giggled and then put her marker to the paper.  She quickly drew a circle to represent her face and head and then began adding subtle details of her face.  "I'm gonna put my eyes, my hair, my mouth, a nose, and some eyebrows!" She worked carefully as she would gaze at herself in the mirror and then begin to draw the facial features she missed.  J looked at herself one more time and decided she needed hair because,  "I am Elsa and Elsa has long hair this like! Like me!" K also took a shot at drawing herself. She, like J, carefully drew her facial features with care. She used self talk as she drew. "I need my eyes. I have pretty eyes. I also need a nose like this." She continued to describe herself as she drew.  "Oh, I can't forget to give myself