New Year 2010

Holiday Sing-along: After the children perform and before caroling, we enjoy a story.



Each of you, and especially your children, are a huge part of our lives. Long after the last family leaves, we think about you. We share the hilarious, wise, and incredible things your children say or do with our loved ones and each other.

I cannot express in words how grateful I am that you have chosen to be a part of our (Windsor) community -- really, family -- and entrusted your children with us. Your children are the reason we cannot wait to get up in the morning. They are the reason we work so hard every single day, often late in the evenings and on weekends. They remind us how to play, constantly question, and marvel.

We wish you a very happy new year. It's going to be an exciting, wonderful year!

-SS & Windsor Staff

Lei party

Sheer exuberance

Peek into the young toddler room

Sensory experiences: Squishy Bags

Materials Needed:

3 plastic ziplock baggies;

shaving cream to ½ fill a baggie;

pudding to ½ fill a baggie;

toothpaste to ½ fill a baggie

Procedure:

Filled each baggie with a new squishy material and allowed the toddlers to interact with these baggies… while feeling the texture of each substance. Heated pudding and cooled s. cream so that there are multiple dimensions to the sensory experience.

Benefits:

This activity is beneficial to the child cognitively as it increases sensory inputs into brain. They are able to experience new sensations. Additionally, it provides cognitive development through the use of new vocabulary to describe these sensations. For instance, some of the children learned: squishy, soft, hot, cold, etc. 

This activity is also beneficial physically. Particularly, it exercises fine motor development as the child squishes the contents of the baggie around while using each finger individually.

Most of all, it's SUPER fun! We had a blast!

-SS

Can dramatic play teach self-control?

I have been reading the very recently published NurtureShock: New Thinking about Children. I just made it through the chapter discussing self-control in preschool children and the implementation of Tools of the Mind. Current studies indicate that self-regulation skills predict academic achievement more reliably than I.Q. tests. The program aims to increase cognitive self-control through complex dramatic play.

I first read about this in this New York Times article, which well summarizes the new findings. It is something I am currently reflecting on. We've already started implementing some of these ideas (see previous blog entry on Doctor imaginative play).

Sean, Sahil, and I are further researching the Tools of the Mind program  to see what it provides to our curriculum at Windsor.

If you're interested in learning more, please read the article linked above.

-SS

Emergent Curriculum: Doctor Dramatic Play

Dr. H in the middle of a check-up

We started dramatic play with our various medical kits and dress up uniforms.  We took turns being doctor, nurse, and patient. We learned how to take blood pressure and check our reflexes.  When the first two childen put on their doctor and nurse costumes, the children had a good giggle--they were thoroughly enjoying themselves!

The childrens current interest in doctors and the medical setting, likely brought on by their recent flu shots, inspired our role play.  Furthermore, we have a child who will soon be undergoing minor surgery and this dramatic role play will hopefully ease her fears.

This is part of our emerging curriculum in which ideas for curriculum emerge from the interaction of all classroom participants: both children and adults.  Emergent curriculum comes from the Reggio Emilia educational philosophy.

We will be continuing and extending this theme for the next week or so.

"I need to open this and get my mustache." (medicine)  -Samantha
"I want a band-aid." (right after getting one on his left hand)  -Neil
"I need to get some blood pressure."  -Nishita
"I'm sorry, but I'll need to give you one more flu shot."  -Ellie
"It's really beeping!" (hearing Mr. Sean's heartbeat with a real stethoscope)  -Alayjah
"Do you need a band-aid?"  -Therese

-Sean 

Party Feedback from the Children

"Um... um... My favorite part was BARNEY! I danced with him. The music came out of his mouth. He had little dots in his mouth and the music came out from there."

"I saw the five little pumpkin puppet show."

"Neil's mom had a scary costume!"

"Neil's mom had a mask. It covered her face... I was scared of her!"

"I made an Ariel cupcake... a little one."

"I was Minnie. My baby sister Emimy (Emily) was Minnie. Mommy was Minnie too. Chocha was Minnie. Daddy was Mickey."

"Miss Shanam and Siona were pennnnguins!"

"Mr. Sean dressed up like a hippo." (he was dressed as a Doctor)

"My mama dressed up like a fairy godmother!!! A fairy godmother is a type of fairy."

-SS

Fall Party Pictures

After the puppet show, everyone gets cozy for a fall-themed story

It was lovely seeing you at the Fall Party today!

Here are more the photos that Miss Dana took:
http://picasaweb.google.com/windsorparents/FallParty2009PhotograhyByDana#

-SS

Welcome our new teacher, Mr. Sean!!

Greetings to all!!

I am Sean and I am the newest addition to the Windsor Preschool Academy family! I have worked with children of all ages for over 15 years in a variety of places. Be it drama, summer day or science camps, after-school day care, babysitting or directing K-6th graders in fully staged musicals. I love the energy and wonder that children bring to everything in life. To see their faces light up at a performance well done or a math problem correctly solved is an amazing thing to see.

I look forward to getting to know and working with all of the children and parents at Windsor!

-Sean

Five Little Pumpkins

We have been doing creative, imaginative fall-themed activities. Today
we are sending home the classic children's poem, Five Little Pumpkins.

We have introduced this poem to the children as both fingerplay and
dramatic play. We suggest you post it on your refrigerator. Talk about
the different emotions the pumpkins must feel (i.e. the third pumpkin
is feeling grumpy/cranky, etc.). Children enjoy learning ordinal
numbers while they characterize each of the pumpkins, so emphasize
this. Role play with your child to stimulate his or her imagination
and increase self-regulation. Have fun with it!

Skills: comprehension, story sense, interest in reading, dramatic play, listening, communicating, ordinal numbers

-SS

Happy Deepavali!

With a fairly diverse group of children, and living in the Bay Area, we make efforts to celebrate major holidays of all the cultures the children belong to. Tomorrow is Deepavali or Diwali, the Indian festival of lights.

We started the day by pulling out our classroom globe and identifying where India is on it. We talked about how Deepavali is celebrated there, and that we were going to celebrate it too.

We then decorated the front of our school with "rangoli" art in groups of two or three. Rangoli, a popular artform in India, is a sandpainting decoration that uses ground up powder and colors. It is a sign of welcome. We used giant sidewalk chalk, wetting it first with water.

The children also made red sparkly lanterns. We carried these on a Diwali parade around the school. Naturally, the younger ones didn't form a line, but they did follow along in a little clump at the end of the line. :-) While parading around with our lanterns, we sang (to the tune of London bridge is falling down):


Little Lamps are burning bright,
burning bright, burning bright.
Little lamps are burning bright, It's Diwali!

See them lighting up the night,
up the night, up the night,
see them lighting up the night, It's Diwali!

We ended our Diwali party with some sweets-- delicious cookies from Miss Aida.

Happy Diwali!

-SS

Pumpkin activity

In an effort to help you spend some fun and informative time with your child, I'd like to ask you to bring in a pumpkin for your child by Wednesday of next week.

I hope that you're able to spend some time with your child between now and Wednesday to travel to a pumpkin patch (or grocery store) and give your child the opportunity to choose the pumpkin which they like the color and shape of the most.  Take this opportunity to talk about colors and shapes. Talk about how pumpkins grow (on a vine vs. underground). Have your child lift pumpkins of various weights and compare.  Let your child feel different pumpkins.  Use words to describe how the pumpkin feels (rough, cold, etc.).  Have your child smell the pumpkin.  Ask your child to make a guess about how pumpkins grow and why people like to grow them. Modify these ideas to be age-appropriate. Hopefully this is a great chance to extend some of our fall-themed activities from class.

Again, please bring in this pumpkin by Wednesday, October 21st. We'll extend the pumpkin activities at school with the pumpkins children bring in (talk about them, compare them, count them, etc.).

-SS

Do schools kill creativity?

Please enjoy one of my all-time favorite videos from the TED conference (http://www.ted.com). Some of Dr. Robinson's ideas have really affected my personal teaching philosophy.

In it, he talks about creativity in children. His thesis is that children are naturally creative. Creativity isn't something they learn later in life, it is something they know from birth that is all-too-often forced out of them.

Please take the 20 minutes necessary to watch this video. It may very much influence your opinion on the subject. Also, he gives some very interesting examples of how he has seen creativity in children "handled."

-SS

Instruments from around the world

Music has always been an integral part of the Windsor program for its various beneficial effects on brain development. To the children though, it's just plain FUN! Babies and preschoolers alike enjoy making music with tambourines, maracas, triangles, wrist bells, etc.

We recently received a very wonderful gift from Sarah's family in celebration of her birthday: instruments from around the world (a kit from Lakeshore Learning).

Today we got a chance to really explore the Chinese gong, Chilean rainsticks, and Asian frog rasp. The children were in awe of the child-sized guitar and banjo as well. It was a music-filled day!

Thank you to Sarah's parents for their generous gift and to Sarah, lover of music, for sharing it so nicely with her friends.

-SS

Juggling Fun!

Today we had a very special visitor: Bugsby the juggler! He put on a juggling performance for all the preschoolers and babies.

He also talked about juggling and taught the children to juggle.

A highlight during the performance -- Bugsby juggled an apple and two balls, and as he was juggling, he took a bite out of the apple. Liam seemed more interested in the apple, insisting that he he wanted a bite too. :-) Samantha was so excited she couldn't stop jumping up and down! Michael was wary at first, but eventually joined in on the juggling fun.

Bugsby was wonderful, but, honestly, I most enjoyed observing the children's expressions and reactions. All the children, irrespective of age, had faces full of such wonder and amazement.

-SS

Children's Creative Theatre

We had a special guest storyteller today with a background in Children's Creative Theatre. With the use of puppets, he told the classic story of Goldilocks to the children.

He did several theatre games related to the story. This involved role play to stimulate imagination and creativity.

With the preschoolers, he also did some pre-math pattern exercises.
i.e. #, *, #, *, #... what comes next? (only it was related to the Goldilocks story to make it more fun, relevant, and engaging)
i.e. size relationships: small, smaller, smallest, etc. with the bowls of porridge and beds in the story

The children thoroughly enjoyed it. :-)

-SS

Mixed Age Classrooms

Many parents ask me about our philosophy on classroom structure at Windsor. We believe strongly in the concept of mixed age classes.

Traditionally, schools separate children by hard age cutoffs. Though this is a convenient way to delineate between students, it ignores that social and academic development do not always directly track age for all students. Different students have different learning types and speeds at which they might reach a development milestone.

Mixed age classes, as the name implies, allow students of varying ages to all be in a classroom environment together. This is much closer to how young children developed throughout much of history. Their siblings and other children in the community were not always within 12 months of their age, and this allowed younger children to learn not just from adults, but also from the older children around them. It also provided the older children an opportunity to practice their social skills through teaching younger children.

Here's an example that we encourage and facilitate at Windsor: helping put on shoes. "Older children who have mastered this skill will often help younger [children]. The older child has the opportunity to develop her patience, as well as the verbal skills necessary to communicate the steps to the younger child, while the younger learns how to [put on shoes]."

"Often, an older child may read a story to a younger child, occasionally pointing out letters of the alphabet as they read. The older child has the opportunity to develop and solidify reading abilities, while the younger has an opportunity to develop listening and early reading skills."

Lillian Katz, one of the most prominent early childhood researchers of the past few decades, wrote an article on this same subject. It is highly recommended reading for any parent who would like to learn more about the theory behind mixed age classes or another perspective. (http://www.ericdigests.org/1996-1/mixed.htm)

And if your appetite persists, there is one more article I would recommend you look at. It is by Debbie Reese. (http://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content4/mixed.age.group.pn.html)

Remember, I'll check back on the blog posts often, so be sure to leave any relevant comments or questions you might have about this subject.

-SS