Bears, bears and more bears!

This week we focused on bears.  Two main themes and books stood out to be of most interest to the children.  First, Goldilocks and the Three Bears was a hit.  The students enjoyed listening to the story and watching it retold with props.  Many students spent much time in the dramatic play center with the story props.  Our sensory table will be full of dried oats next week (porridge) and we will continue to expand on the story.

Here are some of the props available in the dramatic play center!

                                                           Scarlet and Goldilocks.

                                          Ellie is using the story props with the felt board.

 Bear in a Square was also a favorite this past week.  The students especially enjoy the activities to go along with the book.  We play a game where the bear gets hidden under a shape and the students take turns guessing which shape it's hiding under.  During this time we aren't just working on shape recognition but also on turn taking, predicting, using full sentences (i.e. "The bear is under the blue diamond"), color recognition etc...  The students have had a blast playing in our large group activity time but also with each other during center choice time.

                                              We made shape collages this week!

                                                 Zander beginning his shape collage.

                        Our name chart.  Everyday students place their name on the chart as part of attendance.  This promotes name recognition, participation and counting (we count who is present).