February 2024: Love and Appreciation
“I love my body from my head to my toes!”
Mindful Focus: The Many Ways to Say I Love You!
Explorations: Animal Life!
We sure did have fun this month in the variety of weather doing many different activities! Taking the children on a “Wildlife Tracking” walk taught the children about what animals they might see around the school and Ogden area. We strive to encourage children to be mindful in nature and become aware about how the Earth and outdoors are living around us. After making duck food, we went to feed the ducks which made everyone involved happy!
The played a lot in the mud kitchen and digging area, checked on the garlic we planted earlier in the season, and made yummy granola on cooking and cleaning day.
New songs we sang this month:
5 Little Speckled Frogs
I Had a Little Turtle
There Are Many Ways To Say I Love You
Animal Life Exploration:
Classifications, homes, habitats, pets, food, family, and more!
Learning about animals Is usually highly interesting for children. Animals are cute, exciting, and provide us with a sense of wonder about the world and the living things it holds. We talked about pets and how we can take care of pets. We had some lovely and unique pets come and visit us at school! The children got to have a pet shop and groomer dramatic play area in the downstairs classroom. With a hands-on approach we learned about animal classifications and why some animals have different types of bodies. We worked hard to sort our animals to their right habitat! We also got to explore other homes like burrows, caves, shells, and nests. What do animals eat and what does an animal family look like? Through play, hands-on exploration, sensory input, listening, categorizing, and predicting, our classes found out some much about animal life and opened our minds to more curiosity!
Art Exploration:
Background and Foreground Painting, Step-by-Step Animal Drawings, “Make-a-Pet” Craft
We provide so many different art opportunities here at SimpleLife. We put the importance of the process of creating, rather than the outcome of a project first, but we also recognize the benefits of teaching children how to make a plan, follow steps, and use art tools in an appropriate way. While guiding children through step-by-step animal drawing, children were able to create an image they had in their mind with support from a teacher along the way. We were so impressed by all the animals that they made! We learned about the words foreground and background and then put our skills into action! Children mixed colors to make a rainbow foreground for the animal painting. Each child carefully watched and listened in order to make their foreground a fun colorful creation. The best part, they were all so unique and different!
Okay, now for the pet rocks. We reduce, reuse, and recycle as often as we can. When planning, we ask ourselves what can I use instead of buying something new? Oh how excited the children were about their pet rocks! With little food and water bowls, blanket and bed, and a sweet home for them to be in. The children named, decorated, and showed great love for their pets. We loved hearing the children tell us about what they are going to do with their pet when they get home and how excited they are to tell their grown ups about it. They don’t care that it’s “garbage”, it’s important to them.
The Many Ways To Say “I Love You”:
How do you show the people you care about that you love them?
Embedded deep into The SimpleLife Philosophy is the heart of Mister Fred Rogers. Bringing us calm, acceptance, and love each day of our lives we vow to continue his legacy through our teachings. Mister Rogers sang of the many ways to say I love you. How do you show the people you care about that you love them? Helping, hugging, sharing, or giving. There is so many ways to let people know that we care.
We spread love throughout the school by cutting out paper hearts and decorating our classroom. A mentor teacher of Miss Demi’s once said, “It’s likely that one of these kids will become a surgeon one day, so it’s pretty important to teach them how to cut.”
On our Love Day Celebration we did a love scavenger hunt where we searched for hearts that listed many ways to show someone you love them. We had healthy almond cookies, decorated bags, and passed out meaningful cards and gifts to our classmates!
Since it was the month to spread love, we figured it would be a great time to have Teacher Appreciation! Thank you all so much for your gifts, kind notes, and expressions of love! We are grateful to have such a considerate community around us. And most of all, thank you for choosing us to bring your child to spend time with. We promise to accept, nurture, and love each one of them just they way they are!
