Thanksgiving Sharing Pie

Objectives:· Social/Emotional – Children will discover and experience the value of sharing and work together to create a collective craft.
· Math – Children will use critical thinking while practicing sharing and problem solving. They will also practice counting, number recognition, matching and one-to-one correspondence.
· Fine motor – Children will strengthen fine motor skills by working with small pieces of paper.
 

Attention getter:
THE BOX intro: Box, box, what's in the box? It could be something really big or something really small. It could be a toy or it could be a ball. It could be anything at all. Do you want to see what's in the box? OK, on the count of three. 1 2 3 All eyes on me!

Morah takes out a printout of a pumpkin pie:
Morah: WOW! Look at this yummy pumpkin pie. What shape is the pie? What colors do you see on the pie? What kind of pie do you think this is? Have you ever had pumpkin pie? What did it taste like? Oh, I bet this pie is soooo yummy and delicious. I bet it will taste sweet and creamy; I just can't wait to eat it. Do you have a pie?
Kids: "No, I don't have a pie :(" "I want a pie" "Can I have a pie?"
Morah: Oh, you don't have a pie:(?! I want you to have some pie too but I only have one pie. What can we do?.....
Kids: "You can rip it" "You can cut it" "You can share the pie with us!"
Morah: We can share this pie :)?! Oh what a great idea!!! We can cut this pie and everyone can have a piece. Would having a piece of this pie make you feel happy?
Kids: "YES!" "I want some pie" "Can I have some too?" “I like pie” "Let's share the pie" "YAY! We're going to share the pie!"
Morah: You know what? I think sharing this pie with you would make ME happy too!!!! I think eating this pie all by myself would not be as fun but sharing it with you sounds like SO MUCH FUN!!! But wait, how can we find out how many pieces of pie we need?
Kids: "We can count" "We can count how many friends we have in class"
Morah: Ok let's count our friends. Can you help me? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 we have 7 friends
Kids: "And you Morah" "Don't forget Morah!" "We have 8 friends" "We need to cut 8 pieces of pie"
Morah: OK so now we know we need to cut this pie into 8 pieces. First let’s use this marker to draw the lines and divide the pie into 8 equal, same size pieces.

Morah draws a line down the middle of the pie.
How many pieces do you see? Let's count. 1 2 Is that enough for everyone?
Kids: "NO" "Only two people can share this pie" “We need more"

Morah draws a line across the pie.
How about now? How many pieces do you see? Let's count. 1 2 3 4 Is that enough?
Kids: "NO" "Let's draw another line"

Morah draws a line diagonally.
Let's count and see if this is enough. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Is that enough?
Kids: "NO" "Let’s keep going" "Draw more lines"

Morah draws another diagonal line
Morah: How about now? Lets count
Kids: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "That's enough" "We have 8" "Everyone can have a piece" "Let’s share the pie"
Morah: Great but before we cut it let's count the pieces again and number them just to make sure we have enough for everyone (children count while Morah numbers each piece of pie)

Morah cuts the pie, gives everyone a piece and we pretend to eat it. YUM!


Morah: Did you have fun sharing this pie? Me too!! I would not have this much fun if I ate this pie all by myslef. It's more fun to share! Let’s think of other things we can share.... What can you share?

Morah asks each child what else they can share and writes the response on their piece of pie.

Art:

Morah puts out the round cardboard and cut up paper on the table with children sitting around it.
Morah: I have this big round piece of cardboard. I wonder what we can do with it? Does this round cardboard remind you of something else that's also round?
Kids: "A wheel" "Pizza" "A pie like the pumpkin pie we shared"
Morah: Yes a wheel is round and a pizza is round too, you're right. OH yeah!!! You're right, this IS round just like the pumpkin pie we shared before.

Morah shows a picture of a whole pumpkin pie just like the one we previously shared.
Morah: Would you like to make this round cardboard into a big pumpkin pie?
Kids: "YES!" "Let's make a pumpkin pie" "Are we going to share it?"
Morah: Sure we can share it. It's more fun to share! OK so how do we make this look like a pumpkin pie?
Kids: "We can use this paper, it's the same color like the pie" "We need glue" "I want glue!!"

With Morah's help children study, discuss and plan the craft.
Morah: What colors do you see on the pie? What color is in the middle? What color do you see on the edge around the pie? Can you match the colored paper to the colors on the pie? OK, great so here's the plan. To make this cardboard look just like the pumpkin pie we will glue this color paper in the middle of the cardboard and this color around the edges. I'm going to get some glue.

Morah gets only one glue stick.


Morah: OH no friends, I only found one glue stick. I don't know what to do. How can we make the pie with only one glue stick.
Kids: "We can get more glue" "Look again" "We need more glue" "Give me the glue" "I want the glue" "OR we can share, let's share the glue"
Morah: OH what a great idea!!! We can share the glue just like we shared the pie. But wait a minute, how are we going to share the glue. We can't cut the glue stick like we did with the pie. How can we share the glue?
Kids: "I know!!!! We can take turns" "I want a turn" "I want a turn too" "When is it going to be my turn" "Can I go first?"
Morah: You're right!! We can take turns, taking turns is also a way that we can share something. So let's share this glue and everyone will have a turn.

Morah facilitates the sharing process as children take turns with the glue and then place the colored pieces of paper in appropriate places while looking at the printout of the pumpkin pie for reference and accuracy.

Kids: "We did it" "Wow look at our pumpkin pie" "It's so big" "Look just like the pie in the picture" "It looks the same!!!"
Morah: You're right this pie looks great, just like the one in the picture. Did you have fun making this pie?
Kids: "Yes" "Let's make another pie" "We can share the glue again"
Morah: That's right we shared the glue. If we did NOT share the glue we would not be able to make this pie. It's more fun to share!!!
Kids: "Yeah it's more fun to share" "We can share" "We shared!!!"

The process of counting and dividing the pie was repeated with this pie as well however this time we glued long strips of paper to make the separation of pieces instead of cutting the pie. We also wrote on each piece what we can share and we saved pieces of the pie for friends who were not in school on that day. We also repeated the whole pie sharing circle time box activity twice more on different days so that everyone in class had a chance to experience this lesson and thoughtfully add what they can share to our Thanksgiving Sharing Pie. Children really loved this lesson and imitated the process of counting, cutting and sharing the pie in the kitchen area during center time.

Unexpected Pumpkin Exploration

One autumn morning a friend brought a pumpkin to school. "This is my pumpkin." We have been learning about autumn for a while and what else makes you think autumn like a round, orange pumpkin? The pumpkin was a great conversation piece in our class not to mention a wonderful sensory experience. Add a few good open ended questions and we found much more than just seeds inside of this pumpkin experience.

• So what do we know about pumpkins?

"Pumpkins are orange and round." "This pumpkin is heavy." "When I went to the ice cream store with my mommy I saw a pumpkin there." "I have a pumpkin at home, it's on the stairs." "I go to a pumpkin patch and I saw a LOT of pumpkins there. Pumpkins grow on the ground and they was dirty, we has to clean them." "I see a pumpkin and it was HUGE!" "I don't have a big pumpkin I have a little, tiny pumpkin." "This pumpkins is not huge."

• What do you think is inside of the pumpkin?
  

"Open it!" "I don't know." "My daddy, he open a pumpkin and I see there is SEEDS inside!" "Can we open this pumpkin ?" "Can I open it?" "No the pumpkin is too hard." "We need a knife."

• Do you think there are seeds inside of this pumpkin?
  

"YES!" "I want to see the seeds!" "We going to open the pumpkin!" "Be careful Morah." "The knife is sharp, you can get a boo boo." "I don't touch the knife, only Morah can touch the knife."

"What is it?" "Wow LOOK there's seeds!" "So many!" "What are we going to do now?" "Can I touch it?"

"Lets take it out!" "Can we do that?" "Yes?" "I want to do that." "There's more seeds!" "What's that?" "It's pumpkin?" "Orange, squishy pumpkin!?" Giggles, giggles, giggles....

"It's squishy." "It's wet." "It's yucky-squishy, I don't want to touch it." "I want to touch it." "It's squishy orange." "I like pumpkin." "Can I eat it?" "It's food?" "No, you have to cook it first, right Morah?"

"Is it empty?" "No there's some more." "I want to get it." "Can you help me?"

"Now it's empty." "We cleaned the seeds." "That was fun." "I want to do it again!" "Yeah, lets do that again!" :)

Toddlers in Autumn

Autumn is a time associated with wonderful things like back to school, festive holidays, harvest and changes in weather and natural landscape. Naturally, the themes and icons that we are learning about in this autumn unit include changes in nature, leaves, hibernation, animal migration and preparation.

So how can toddlers authentically learn about and experience autumn?

- With whole bodies, all senses, lots of fun exploration and a bit of imagination.

We began our autumn unit by first discussing what we know about the summer. The information and experience was fresh in children's minds and they all had lots to share. The discussion naturally lead to noticing that it's not as hot anymore and we are now wearing different clothes than we did in the summer. That is because it's not summer anymore it's autumn time now. So what is autumn? What does it look like? How can we tell it's autumn? How can we learn more about autumn? We love books and they're great for learning about new things so we read a book about autumn and learned that signs of autumn are all around. We then decided to take a look outside our window to see if we can notice any changes in nature.

Through the window things still looked pretty much the same as they did in the summer. We needed to take a closer look and investigate the outdoors hands on. Before going on our nature walk we remembered from the book and talked about where to look when looking for signs of autumn. We also brought explorer bags outside with us so we could bring some evidence back to class for further investigation.

We looked high.............

We looked low...............

And here is what we found......

"Wow, look at all the leaves on the ground." "I think I see a bug." "Hello bug, are you there?"

"Look Morah, I found a pine cone like in the book." "I'm going to bring it to class."

"Look up there, I see some red and orange leaves." "The other leaves are still green, they're not red or orange, they didn't change colors yet."

"I found some leaves on the grass, I'm going to put them in my bag so I can bring them to class."

Later in class we took a closer look at all the leafy treasures we found on our nature walk. We touched the, we smelled them, we shared what we know and learned about them and finally we concluded that signs of autumn are most certainly all around.

Here we are exploring what we found.

"I found this leaf on the ground, this leaf is red and yellow."

"I got a lot of leaves and sticks, this leaf is green."

"I found some rocks outside."

"I'm looking at this tiny leaf, it's green with a little bit of yellow."

"You want to see...... Look........."

"Leaves are messy but that's OK because we all work together to clean up."

We discover the world and everything outside of ourselves through our bodies and through our five senses.
We are scientists in the making. We are equipped with our appropriate tools, our five senses, to help us engage and learn about the world we live in. There is so much to uncover, discover and investigate in the budding season of spring and we are taking advantage of that.

We use our noses to smell the abundant smells of spring: the air, the soil, the flowers, the forest, the trees and whatever else grabs our attention. We smell different flowers and see if their smells are similar to each other.

We touch and try to get our hands on everything. But touch is not exclusive to our hands.
Our skin is the body’s largest organ so we can feel the world through our skin all over our bodies; rolling in the grass, walking barefoot, digging deep in the soil and making outdoor soil soup.

We stop and listen and take in the sounds of spring. What life is happening around us? Can we detect any animals or birds outdoors. Can we name what we hear? We can listen to the sound of the wind blowing through the tree branches, or through wind catcher. We can hear the sounds of the active or slow flowing river.

There is so much to see and let our eyes take in the beauty of the world.
We spend lots of time outdoors noticing the details in nature. Little ants crawling on the tree branches or daddy longlegs crawling on the bike path; we see little grass growing in the cracks of the cement and flowers beginning to bud on the trees.


Now that spring is here we can begin to prepare vegetable seeds to plant in our outdoor garden. Soon we will be able to taste the ‘fruits of our labor.’ We have been sampling and tasting some the yummy fruits of the season as we learn more about fruit and vegetable seeds and share snacks of fresh cut fruit and vegetables and look for their seeds, peel and learn the many ways to describe them.

As we use our senses to discover the world we are using our mind, body and emotion to process all that we are learning. Along the way we will be enhancing many skills that help us connect what we see, hear, smell, taste and touch to a level of understanding. We will enhance our logical thinking skills, observation skills, social emotional skills and of course, we will be enjoying the growth and freedom that nature represents.

Each fruit has it's own unique characteristics. We are learning ways how to describe the things that we see. One way we can stop to notice things is to ask ourselves questions to help us concentrate on specific areas. Therefore we are asking ourselves questions to help us notice the some of the details. Come ask along with us. Try asking your child these questions at home when you are preparing some fruits and vegetables for dinner, snack or lunch:

• Where are my seeds located? -inside or outside of the fruit,
• Do I have a peel, if so can I eat it?
• Can you eat my seeds?
• What size are my seeds?
• What color is my inside and my outside?

When we ask ourselves these questions then we begin to put our information together to realize that even though fruits and vegetables may look different from each other could there be some things they have in common? A kiwi and a banana look and taste very different yet there are some things about them they share in common. Bananas and kiwis are both fruit, they have little tiny seeds, their seeds are found inside the fruit and we can eat the seeds. Pretty amazing information for us to process, to see similarities between things that may appear so different.
Here are some photos of us investigating and enjoying natures treats.
Thank you to all our friends for bringing in these yummy snacks.Soon we will be sampling more fruits and vegetables. We are waiting for the mangoes in our classroom to ripen so we can investigate them as well as avocados. We will keep you posted.

Morah Batsheva

Today we celebrated Olivia's 3rd birthday.
The children designed the birthday celebration with making her birthday presents, playing a music game, singing happy birthday and eating delicious chocolate cake that we baked. Birthdays are special times as it is a sign of our growth and maturity we have accomplished. It is also a time when we can look forward to our continuous growth we wish to accomplish in the upcoming years.
We would like to thank the past few birthday friends for the gifts they have donated to the class in honor of their birthdays. Delia, thank you for the new book in our library and Olivia for the new ABC puzzle.
I would like to share with you the process the children go through to prepare for each of their friends birthdays to help make this moment a meaningful one.