Pirates and so much more......

Ahoy mates!  We put many pirate related objects in a bag and then let the children brainstorm to see if they could figure out our next unit of study.  With a treasure box, a cookie cutter ship, an earring, and an X the children soon realized we would be talking about pirates.

Each area in our room seems to have something pirate related.  The girls are working together on a pirate puzzle.

Small pirate figures, boats and gold are all props we have added to the block center.  Presenting new materials in an existing center sparks imagination and your children see block play with fresh eyes.

Our goal is for the children to engage in block play for longer and more focused periods of time.  It certainly works.  Here you see the first combo pirate ship, garage and airport!

Noor is painting her striped pirate shirt. 

Each child chose 3 colors to create an ABC pattern. (It's difficult to see Suri's third color, a light gold.)

                        

                                                            Since there was no visual pattern, the children had to
                                          concentrate to be sure they were completing the pattern in the right order. Amelia is all smiles! She knows that she did a good job!
                       
  

Painting left to right across the shirt provides a chance to have  multiple crossings of the body's midline, an important developmental step for writing.  This activity encourages both sides of the brain to work together.

Daniel is starting his pirate face.  Do you ever watch your kids draw?  Many times they make the face so tiny, there is no room for distinct facial features.  In this activity we wanted to emphasize making the face  large enough....

...and the eye patch in proportion to the face.   (It is interesting to see what is happening in the background of this picture.  Noor is cleaning up after herself.  Daniel, Jake and Saul are having a conversation about what they are going to build.  All types of learning are occurring naturally, throughout the day!)







Where do the pirates go?  On their ship, of course.  The literacy component of this unit is shown here.  Each day we ask 3 children to tell us something pirates need.  Together we sound out the word and then we add the pictures to help the children remember what was written.  Right now we are asking the kids to tell us which word begins with a certain sound or who suggested a certain word.  Each of these questions encourages making a phonemic connection between pictures, letters and sounds.  We love to see the children independently come over to this display and "read" the words themselves.



Patrick and his dad are checking out all the pirates.  It is a bit hard to see, but right over their heads is our crow's nest.  A discussion about why a boat needs this area and how it came to get that name prompted some good thinking.  Which pirate would be on the lookout in the crow's nest........how could we fairly choose?  We placed all the children's name cards, face down, on the rug and then we picked one card.  We'd talked about being a good sport if your name wasn't picked and we can report no one pouted!  Who is in the crow's nest-----ask your child!

Here is a new sign in.  The big picture is from an "I Spy" book  and shows a beach scene. The children look at one small picture and try to find it in the large scene. This activity is a way to develop visual perception.  It also trains their eyes to identify small differences between objects, no matter how"busy" the background may be.
 

Alex is carefully searching.  Sometimes the object is very hard to find and you might have to stand still and look for a few minutes!  Way to go Alex!

Zoey is showing her dad where the starfish is hidden.

Look at this very tall magna-tile tower.  It got so high no one could reach to put any more tiles on....except Govind.  He was so proud of himself when he carefully added a tile!  Working together and recognizing (and using!)  the unique "skills" of a classmate are all life lessons we hope the kids are beginning to internalize.

E is such a tough letter for show and share.  Noor brought in the earth and her clues  showed us she knew a bit about the planets.  So did the class!

Daniel could hardly wait for show and share.  He was so cute all day long, looking at the schedule frequently to see "What else do we have to do?"  Even though we had had elephants before,  Daniel's was different and gave the children a chance to make some good comparisons.

The girls called us over to look at the coral jungle they had made with play dough.  That ball with spikes was used with paint 2 weeks ago to create some texture on our ocean scenes and was really just laying on the counter.   Who knew it could create texture in play dough too!  How much fun for the girls to show us, and their classmates, a new use for an "old" object!

In music, Julia made stringed instruments with rubber bands and styrofoam trays.  The children are using geoboards in our room to make designs and shapes. 

Both activities help the children develop strength in their fingers as they stretch out the rubber bands.

Vani, Govind's mom, came in and talked about the small bell she had brought our class from India.  She told us how it was used to accompany prayer, much like Julia's guitar or Eli's accordion.  The children were very interested!



Vani even showed Harriet how to drape that beautiful scarf !