Let’s Make Tracks! The 2′s Class Learn About Animals’ Footprints~
Bits from Teacher Rachel’s November Newsletter:
Hello Sprout Families!
I feel like the time is just flying by! We’ve had a bit of an odd month, with no school on Thursday the 10th and no school next week, but once we come back from break we will resume our normal schedule.
This past week we also started to think about animals. We started with just labeling and learning animal names, and then we will move into describing the animals. At circle time we have been telling the story “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?” to the children. Rather than use the book we use a felt board story and put each animal on the board one-by-one. The kiddos then yell out the name of the animal (Teacher Molly and I usually ask the color once they name the animal). The kiddos loved it! I think they had so much fun partly because they like the story but also partly because usually they have to have a “quiet mouth” at circle time and we were letting them yell out loudJ. We’ve also started using animal sounds while telling the story, by asking the kids “what does the _____ say?” Everyone does a great job with frog (“ribbit!”), cat (“meow!”) and dog (“woof!”) but for some reason everyone tends to get stuck on horse. Some of our kiddos have started saying “yeeee hawwww!” for horseJ. Teacher Molly and I emphasize that while a cowboy says “yee haw” that’s not the noise the horse makes. We’ll continue with the story and the animal sounds over the next few weeks so hopefully by the end of the animal topic everyone will be “neighing” with the best of ‘em!
We also did more painting! We covered the tables in butcher paper and put all our animals out on the table. The children dipped the animals’ feet in plates of paint and made “animal tracks” all up and down the paper. We came upon a brilliant discovery; each animal’s foot leaves a different track! Amazing! Of course after about 10 minutes the children decided that they were done with animal tracks and began to smear the paint with their handsJ. Naturally it covered all the animals’ tracks but toddler art is all about exploration! Some of the children even began to paint themselves (see the pics below!). The kiddos are becoming more and more comfortable not only with the purpose and the feel of paint, but also with how to navigate group projects. They are becoming better at recognizing personal space and switching the materials. Of course they still need guidance, but all in all I think the project was a success!
- The 2′s class discovers animal footprints…
See what else the 2′s have been up to, here!
