Category: Experiences

Messing About With Tape

4/22/2020

An offering for the children of Room 5

Tape is a simple, low-mess yet incredibly engaging material for Toddlers. Below are some pictures of how Room 5 has used tape in the classroom.

How can tape be used to support children's exploration of line and trajectory?
How can tape be combined with other materials, such as blocks, people, animals, cars, etc?
Can you invite your child to line objects on top of the line, or build vertically?
Or maybe you could just set some lines up with tape and observe your child freely explore this invitation?

Exploring tape and lines with cars, trucks, and vehicles.

Could tape be presented in a way that represents the lines of a road? Could cars or other vehicles drive on this road? What else could be added to the road? Tunnels, cones, people?

Or perhaps tape is combined with light or presented on a table or with other objects. Maybe it is presented in a way that just allows the children to freely explore the material...tape!

In Room 5, the children are often observed peeling the tape off the table, or wrapping the tape around certain objects. You could present the tape in small pieces or larger, long pieces and just see what your child does with the tape.

What are some other ideas that you have for exploring tape?

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What we can give our children

4/14/2020

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An offering for the toddler families of Room 6 from Resident Teacher Sophie R

There are gifts we can give our children to support them in this strange and uncertain time.

Play

"For younger children, play is the number one activity that will reduce stress
and help children get their equilibrium back."
(Barbara Frazier, The Successful Parent)

Spend time daily playing with your child; let them lead in play and participate as they indicate. During play, turn off your phone and give your complete attention. Even if you are only playing for 15 - 20 minutes, the participation and intentionality of your focus will help your child feel better.

The science: Play activates dopamines in the brain, while increasing attentiveness.
Play gives children a sense of control and power that helps to calm distress and helplessness.
Imaginary play particularly gives younger children the space to work out emotional conflicts in disguise. That is, they feel relief without full knowledge of what was worked out. Adults have the ability to talk through problems, but children put the conflicts into play situations where they can experience control and work the problems out at a distance.

Soothe

Amidst all of this, you may see your child lose some recently gained steps in independence. It may be your first instinct to stand your ground here and insist on the abilities you know your child has developed. In this circumstances, if your child is asking for more of your time and space than usual, give into it a bit. Take a moment to cuddle on the couch, watch a movie together, build a pillow fort and "camp out" inside, or simply engage them in some uninterrupted conversation.

Instead of resisting the cling, lean into it until your child feels calmer, then back up a little bit.

Reaffirm your love for them, make them feel important, and re-establish your bond.

Verbalize

Children often feel anxiety or distress but don't know how to express themselves verbally, so they act it out.

There are strategies to support children in moving from acting out feelings to verbalizing them. For toddlers, this may look like offering the words to the child when they don't have the words themselves. You don't have to get detailed here, just offering words to label feelings is calming. Eventuarlly, "they will internalize your words and learn how to verbally identify the feeling themselves" (Barbara Frazier, The Successful Parent).

Keep this simple. Offer a few different and specific words.
Label without a lot of extra conversation
"The words are potent and give kids a place to put the feeling and leave it" (Barbara Frazier, The Successful Parent).

The list below contributed to the suggestions above and also offer additional ideas and resources for you and your family during this pandemic.

Signs of regression and what to do about it: One mom’s story
The Successful Parent: What to do when your child regresses
Dr. Mark Brentin (developmental pediatrician): Mindfulness guides for children
CDC’s guidelines
Zero to Thrive: Ideas on what to say, how to take care of yourself right now
Ways to Untwist Your Thinking

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Shadow Tracing

4/10/2020

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An offering for the children of Room 11 from Resident Teacher Jenna

During this time apart Jenna has been taking lots of walks and hikes outside. On these outdoor adventures she noticed so many shadows, some look like her, some like trees, some like animals or some even look like silly monsters.

She decided to bring some materials out on my patio to see what happened when she traced shadows.

What materials can you find to trace?
What drawing mediums can you try? Markers? Chalk?
What drawings can you create and share?
Does your imagination see something different?
Does your family see something different?

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Cows about town

4/10/2020

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An offering for the children of Room 10 from Resident Teacher Elke

When Elke found calves on her walk, she thought of her friends in Room 10. She shared her photos of the calves on the classroom blog along with her reaction to them:

"In the first picture the cows were all eating. The little baby saw me and ran over to say hi! When he was looking at me it felt like he was wondering what kind of animal I was. I told him, "I'm a person!"

Spring time is when a lot of new baby animals are being born, so I thought that you might like to hear a story about them."

She then shared a video of herself reading about baby animals.

Elke then invited the children to share with her any animals they find on their walks.

By inviting the children and families into her experiences during this time of physical distancing, Elke was strengthening the human relationships and connections within the classroom.

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Playing with pendulums

4/10/2020

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An offering for the children of Room 6 from Mentor Teacher Faith Hanning

The toddler children of Room 6 have been playing with pendulums in their classroom. They were invited to join together in a zoom group to explore swinging and spinning. The class has been offering multiple zooms through the week and inviting families to sign up for the different experiences up to four families per time.

Three children joined this call, each bringing a different home experience. One child brought a spinning top, one used rings hooked on a tree to swing his body in circles, and one spun herself in circles on the ground.

Faith, the teacher, built a pendulum at her home using a carabiner, hammock straps, and a water bottle. Faith's video inspired the children to build additional pendulums at home.

By offering the families the concept of spinning to explore, there was room for each family to personalize the experience with the materials and interest available.

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Painting with lavender

4/9/2020

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An offering for the children of Room 9

While pruning the lavender bushes in her front yard, the teacher in Room 9 became intrigued by the dried buds on the end of the limbs. She noticed there were so many buds it was impossible to count - and some had seeds hanging from them.

Since lavender is naturally purple in hue, the idea of painting with a completely unnatural color scheme was intriguing. Red, orange, pink, and blue tempera paints were mixed with water to offer a saturated look. Watercolors would offer a muted look.

Using a large paintbrush makes it easy to cover the buds, while a small brush would offer an additional challenge towards intricacy. Use whatever you have handy at home - it will offer a beautiful process, no matter what!

Enjoy exploring materials together, collaboratively as a family or follow your child's lead.

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An Inventory of Familiar Sounds

4/9/2020

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An offering for the infants in Room 2

As the Room 2 teachers continue to ponder the relationship between humans and sound, they have been talking together about the emotional nature of hearing familiar and routinely heard sounds. They are imagining the infants in their home environments, experiencing sounds and further developing associations for them. They heard an example of an infant who can hear the garage door when their parent comes home, and responds by crawling in anticipation toward the door where they enter the house.

At school, the teachers and children have listened with the infants to the gurgle of the bottle warmer, a sign that their bottle is on its way. They have observed infants quickly relax at the sound of the noise machines being turned on for a nap, and one who even kicks and dances to the sound of the spray bottle after a diaper change.

What sounds are signals to the infants at home? How do the infants demonstrate that they have a relationship to a sound? What times are these relationships strongest, perhaps shared times, like meals? If you are taking walks or having time outside... are there sounds that are particular to the neighborhood (ex. construction) or the time of year (ex. birds singing) that infants are paying close attention to?

Attending to the sounds in the environment can be helpful in keeping us grounded and finding peace in difficult times, and infants are models at helping adults remember to tune into the present.

The teachers of Room 2 invite the families to share what sorts of sound relationships families see with their infants at home to compile an inventory of familiar "home" sounds of the Room 2 infants!

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Relationships with trees

4/9/2020

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An offering from Mentor Teacher Laura Freund

The children of Room 11 have spent the past year and a half forming a relationship with the tree at the bus stop across the street. Laura has been missing the tree as well as the children and offered this video to extend the experience at home.

What can you graph at your house? You can try a color walk and graph all the colors you see. Or use a graph to figure out what food is your family's favorite!

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A message from our pets

4/7/2020

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We have received a message from our beloved pets who are holding down the fort at school!
Click through the pictures to see what our little animal friends are up to.

Thank you to our Assistant Director, Marisa Wheeler, for taking dictation!

What messages do your children want to send back?
Do you have pets or stuffies who might like to correspond?

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Zumba

4/7/2020

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An offering for the children of Room 16 from Mentor Teacher Kayla Klinzing

Mentor Teacher Kayla was a former Zumba instructor. She created this video to continue dance parties with her class. In addition to offering an experience to engage in together, this also offers the children a glimpse into Kayla's life.

This is a great dance to follow along with inside or outside - just be sure to have a level dancing surface and plenty of space.

Questions to extend the experience
Can you move your body like she does?
Can you add your own moves?
Does it feel different to dance inside vs out?
What other music inspires you to move?