The Bumblebees

Our castle project has lead us to investigating bumble bees!  If you look back at our previous blog posting you can see the story of how the bumble bees were chasing us in the castle!

The children found this collection of materials and pictures waiting for them in the class room! 

The beautiful shades of yellow, browns, black and greys inspired us to create art pieces of bumble bees

The children got straight to work........

We even came up with a new way to use a highlighter ;0)

We are also having so much fun reading and writing too!!!  Who says you have to sit down at a desk to learn to read and write????  It is in everything we do!  We had fun on this particular day..............

We love to tell each other what letters we are making........

Look at our fabulous E!  Did you know that the word BEE has two E's in it?????   ;0)

Our Imaginations Coming to Life

With children and their development, nothing is more important than imagination to help with the growth of thought processes and creativity. Children that are able to get away from it all and place themselves, mentally, in another world are more likely to be able to think "outside the box" and produce more creative results when learning and working. For this reason, the importance of imagination cannot be underestimated and should be encouraged when raising children.

Because they were talking about castles and ladders during our tape project, we are providing every opportunity to make their imaginations come to life..........

The Little Wonders Studio Director and the Class Teachers worked together to use the materials they painted and created, and worked with the children to create a castle!  We recorded and wrote down dialogue from the children's conversations, discussed our observations, and

here you have our final product!!!!!

Jack was the leader in the ladder!  From the very beginning when the poles were first in the class, he said that it was a ladder!  Everyone followed his direction, and here you have the ladder to the castle!

We mixed primary colors and discovered what colors they made to paint our boxes for our castle.  This was so much fun for us, and most of all it helped the members of our class who don't know our colors work on remembering them!

We made tiny ladders with popsicle sticks.  This was fun!  We counted and counted so many times to see who had the most sticks on his/her ladder!

Finally, today, we finished up the BIG ladder!  This is the one that goes on the BIG castle!  It helps us climb up to "get away from the bumble bees!"  (This is what the children told us today!  They were all hidding in the castle to get away from bumble bees!)

How much fun we had in the castle!  It was "gark" inside ~ dark :0)

We even had two doors that opened and closed with drawstrings!  This was so much fun crawling in and out of it.  But shhhhhhh, make sure not to make any noise, because the bumble bees might hear you!!!!!!

Jonathan is always on the look out!  He will scream really loud if anything is coming! ;0)

This is so much fun!  We are having fun listening to the dialogue of the children and coming up with ways to make their imaginations come true!  We believe in the importance of creativity and allowing our children to experience the possibilies of thier imaginations!
Please take a few minutes to click on the following link to hear Ken Robinson speak about the importance of creativity in children......

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Ahhhh.....The Wonder Of Tape!

The most fun with our inspired philosophy is the opportunity to develop projects along side the children based on their interests.  Below is a picture of what the children made last week, which inspired us to develop a project around their interest in tape!  We consulted with our studio teacher, Marjon Aucoin, and we worked together to develop three structures for the children to explore tape!  The parents were wonderfully involved in this project and brought so many different types of tape.  We had tape of all colors, sizes and textures!

The thought behind these structures was to give the children the opportunity to put the tape inside, under, over, through, on top, to identify colors, who has a longer or shorter piece, etc.........  There are endless possibilities for learning in this project!

we are really excited to see what comes out of this one!

they started right away!  No time was wasted!  As soon as they saw the structures, they went at it, the children didn't even want breakfast ;0)

Look how perfect Ereeni placed her pieces of tape!  It was interesting to see how she always put them on the board and not on any of the other objects!

Ryan and Jack started making the "ladder" right away!

But it kept getting "Skuk!"  (stuck) ;0)

Aidan and Dylan came along to offer their expertise!  They wrapped the tape around, and made our ladder so sturdy!

"look how long!"  We pulled hard, stretched the tape out, and worked together to cut the pieces.  We did so well communicating and asking for help from our friends............

Raina got to work making her house ;0)

Natalia was right by her side helping her make her house look pretty with pink and purple tape.........

Devyn's favorite was the electrical tape........

Jack never stopped at the ladder!  He was determined all day to get it exactly how he wanted and he told the teachers what colors he needed at each step of his construction.........

Look how well this project is building our team work!

We have never seen Jonathan so serious, he put tape on everything all day, and also painted the pieces to add his signature touch!

Ella mostly stood back and directed everyone, but would jump in if they didn't do it to her standards! ;0)

Ereeni was so proud of all of the colors of tape she brought that she made sure to put each color on every part of the class project!  Of course, Ryan was her number one man helping her do everything she wanted! (so cute!)

Last touches for the first day......

whew, and to end it, Ryan and Amanda spent such a long time under the "ladder" hiding from "monsters!"

We will continue to explore the children's interest and see where it leads us!  Maybe we will build a ladder soon, or a castle or house!  Who knows??????
It is great to see the children have the opportunity to explore this media, when it is assumed that children can learn how to use tape at the age of four!  (what do they know?)  The conversations, and the concentration is amazing for their age.  Who says children at this age cannot focus for long periods of time?  When the children are engaged and interested, the concentration can last all day, as it has with this project!