Welcome to Room 3! We are off to an exciting start!

Our classroom is the final stop before reaching Pre-K A or Pre-K B. What is our focus, you ask? Play is our focus! Embedded in all our fun, are so many valuable skills, concepts, and values which are fundamental to becoming a little learner. While we play, we socialize, use language, solve problems, make decisions, expand our understanding of the world around us, and learn how to let our light shine for Jesus.

Above all else, we pray that every little heart connects to Christ. As we worship, pray, and read God’s word daily, we confidently expect those seeds that are being planted to take root. John 15:5 says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit…”

The Fruit of the Spirit so completely encompasses the “good” attributes we hope to instill in our children. Thankfully, God gives us (YES, even 3 year-olds!) The Holy Spirit— to help us, comfort us, and guide us so we are able to possess His attributes (love, patience, kindness, and self-control, just to name a few).

3 year-olds are AMAZING! Everyday new friendships sprout, curiosity grows, independence asserts itself, and imagination is taken to new heights. As educators, it’s our duty to ignite that curiosity, provide opportunities for independence, offer safe/appropriate choices and create an environment that builds confidence while learning. Here are some ways we strive to do that and more in Room 3!

We explore the Outdoor Classroom and Enrichment Patio!

We enjoy free choice play in our classroom!

At morning meeting, we sing songs, choose weekly helpers, discuss the calendar, count together, and pray over our day.

We enjoy family style snack! Our responsible “littles” bring their cups and napkins to the table, pray together, count the pictures on our snack board, serve themselves, pour their water, and practice table etiquette such as, taking turns talking and cleaning up after themselves! Serving and counting snack promotes autonomy, fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination and one-to-one correspondence.

We love Bible time! The Rhyme Bible Storybook is one of the children’s Bibles that we read from. It’s short, colorful and captivating—PERFECT for our growing attention span! To keep Bible fun and engaging, we implement visual aids, interactive skits, and so much more!

At small groups, we explore: Literacy, Writing, and Math/Science. We plan fun, age-appropriate games, activities, and projects to target an objective and practice a skill.

Art is critical for neural development, representation, expression and more! We have a creative God who made us in His image. Therefore, we have an amazing capacity to create!

 

We explore important concepts–like lines and colors through art.

Print is fascinating to us. We love to promote print awareness starting with the ability to recognize letters. We are seeing ALOT of self-directed exploration of letters and print in our environment.

At Big Field we exercise, practice gross motor movements, coordination, cooperation in a large group game, and listening skills. Our first fun pursuit was Red Light, Green Light! 

PetCo Where the Pet Lovers Go! 

Puppies have been the talk of the town, therefore we have changed our dramatic play house into a Room 3 PetSmart pet shop. 

Remember our daily recap is available on our white board. This is a fantastic way to prompt your Room 3 friend to share more about their day.

We are looking forward to all the good things God has in store for us this year! More fun to come!

To capstone our exploration of community helpers, Room 1 visited Los Angeles Fire Station 82 this past week. As we drove up to the station, ALL three emergency vehicles pulled out of the garage, sirens blaring! Our little ones were captivated while our adults were a little nervous that our tour would be canceled. But OH YEAH, that was just God’s favor…AN EXCITING look at a REAL response to a call. The firefighters returned within a few short minutes, skillfully backed the engines into the garage and our tour began! They showed us their fire gear, equipment on the truck, their kitchen and their gym. They even let us hold and spray a firehose! Check it out!

 

Thank you to our wonderful parents and grandparents who chaperoned, drove, and made this field trip possible and so much fun! And a HUGE thank you to the amazing firefighters at Station 82!

 

Check out just a few other fun things we’ve been up to in Room 1:

 

Welcome to Room 1! Our year is well underway and we are having so much fun together! Our little ones have been hard at work and play and we’re so excited to see how well they have acclimated to our classroom routine, are meeting classroom expectations of being loving toward one another, and are learning to work together as a family unit!

Check out some highlights of our day-to-day activities!

Our day begins with “Morning Meeting!” This is a fun, focused 25 minutes of learning. Engaging Bible Memory Verse songs help us learn God’s word. We select daily job helpers, review calendar, share news, and pray for our day. This is a fabulous time for us to practice taking turns, public speaking, self-regulation, counting, and one-to-one correspondence. We also build print and phonological awareness by writing words and emphasizing sounds together. What an exciting way to put to work all our pre-kindergarten/kindergarten readiness skills!

Our favorite part of the day is BIBLE time! We love to open God’s word everyday and HEAR His word so we can DO His words. His word guides us, teaches us, corrects us, and strengthens us. This year we will be reading the greatest, most exciting rescue story of all time! The Jesus Storybook Bible will take us, chronologically, through the story of creation, detail the ministry of Jesus Christ, and end with the Resurrection and arrival of the Holy Spirit (God Himself, loving and helping us everyday). Our Bible time includes, micro-dramatic visual demonstrations, skits, dramatic audio stories, interactive visual animations on the Bible App for Kids and so much more!

Our small group rotations are 10-12 minutes of fun! With four small groups, three teacher directed groups and one independent group–We explore Language/Literacy, Math/Science, Manipulatives, and Daily Writing Journals.

Play, play, play! We’re developing social, emotional, cognitive and physical skills as we engage with others and our environment.

We’re so thrilled that we get to grow together this year! We truly have no greater joy than to hear and see all our kiddos walking in the truth (3 John 1:4). We love you and are praying that your families have a wonderful school year!

Love,

Ms. Kristen, Mrs. Jen, and Mrs. Sarah (Left to Right)

 

Why is emergent curriculum so great? Engagement! Engagement! Engagement! When children are engaged they are productive and productive play is essential to a successful learning environment.

Our Room 1 friends have been productively exploring their interests in everything Medieval! Our “Almost Kindergartners” began showing interest in princesses and knights, a popular area of interest for 5 year olds. So naturally, and with their help, we transformed our classroom into a medieval kingdom. We have been exploring their interests in dynamic and multifaceted ways–ways that have not only kept their interests alive for MONTHS but have absolutely propelled them forward as critical thinkers, scientists, mathematicians, engineers, artists, writers, and thespians!

Room 1 loves to start exploring an area of interest with literature! Books and pictures inspire us, peek curiosity, provoke questions and brainstorming…

We built.

We measured.

We catapulted.

We melted and molded.

We designed.

We wrote.

We patterned.

We micro-dramatic played.

We painted royal self portraits.

We became knights, princesses, servants, and jesters.

We built castle walls and colored stain glass windows.

We created.

We declared ourselves children of the King.

We put on the full armor of God!

“Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.” Ephesians 6:11

We know there is a war going on for our hearts. God wants us to obey His word and the enemy doesn’t. When conflict arises in our classroom we remind our kids: “Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.” Romans 12:21

It is our prayer that our kids learn to fight this spiritual battle. We want them to put on their helmet of salvation and believe in Jesus. We want them to gird themselves with honesty, fairness and righteousness. We want them to use God’s word to separate right thoughts and actions from wrong ones. We want their faith to extinguish the lies–lies that they don’t have to be obedient or share their toys or love their classmates. We want the truth of God’s word to hold everything in place. We want them to walk out the Gospel with peace. We pray our little ones make Jesus the Lord of their life because He is the King of ALL kings and the Lord of all lords!

If we had to use one word to describe the children of Room 1 it would be: CREATIVES! We have grown and continue to grow in our ability to create things. In September, when we first put markers in these little hands we saw LOTS of the early stages of emergent writing (random marks and scribbles, sometimes not even on paper… YIKES!). It is an incredible process we get to help children through! And as Early Childhood Educators, we always remember how important every stage is to the process of becoming a proficient writer.   Now it’s February and we see each child making leaps and strides toward becoming great writers through representational drawing, drawing distinct from writing, symbols, and partial phonetics. It is so exciting!

Our Writing Center features a variety of materials such as: markers, crayons, letter stamps, number stamps, letter punches, word cards, white boards, glue, scissors, and our favorite this year…TAPE!

In January, we said goodbye to plain white paper at small groups and now we journal on lined kindergarten paper!

Cards, lists, and books are just a few of our favorite things to create.

We enjoy white boards for a different tactile writing experience, especially on those days we don’t fall asleep at nap time!

Imagination, here in Room 1, is never in short supply. Check out some of our more elaborate pieces…

“And I have filled him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom, in understanding, in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, to design artistic works, I have put wisdom in the hearts of all the gifted artisans, that they may make all that I have commanded…” Exodus 31:1-4

Just as God called the artisans to create a place for His presence, we pray our little ones use their time and gifts to fellowship with the most spectacular creator, Father God! The One who deposits all of these gifts and skills into us for His glory, and as a reflection of Himself.