Space Ships...and...um...SNOW!

With Tamara away for the next three days at the conference for the National Association of the Education of Young Children, we get to play with Kate! Kate is wonderful, and it is a joy to have her in the Owl classroom.

The Owls were continuing the exploration of building, and in the dramatic play area this morning, two groups of friends built different flying contraptions out of platform blocks: an airplane and a space ship.

 It was soon realized that these two groups could combine their separate creations to build one huge space airplane! Our builders scrapped the parts from their old ships and started fresh, catching the interest of new perspective flyers. Before we knew it, the space airplane became very elaborate, complete with pilot seats, magic wands, maps to help navigate, and fire blowers to help propel the ship forward. Many of the Owls took a seat in the ship as we blasted off into space. We noticed stars, moons, suns, meteors, and a pair of very invasive dragons.

Also, in case you didn't realize...it snowed today! The snowfall began while we were enjoying our outside time on the playground, so friends enjoyed running around and trying to catch snowflakes on their tongue. A few conversations occurred on what time of year it is when it snows (namely, just because it's snowing doesn't mean that it is Christmas or Hanukkah time).

Our view of the accumulation outside our window

And today is Sadie's birthday! We celebrated with muffins and lots of smiles.

Other owlings:

Dance Party!

A Fran-ly Visitor, Planes and Expanding Buildings

Today a wonderful visitor came to spend time with us: Fran! Fran was a teacher in the Turtles classroom last year in the Early Childhood division, so many of the Owls had known her. Luckily for Fran, all of the Owls are very friendly, so even friends that were just introduced to her were very excited to see her. We enjoyed showing her our classroom, our new playground, and some things we know about writing letters.

Some Owls became very interested in paper planes, we spent time making paper planes. A few of us even took a trip to see Raji, one of our Kindergarten teachers, who is also an expert paper plane maker! His class last year did a whole study on airplanes, and the interest was started by paper planes, so Raji was able to show us one of his favorite models.

The Owls are also creating increasingly complex and detailed creations. Friends are becoming more familiar with materials, and testing building boundaries and abilities. Our morning began with some very interesting sand buildings being made, and this surge of creativity transferred over to the block area, which was originally a spot in our classroom that held only a little interest. Of course, there were some very interesting magnatile creations, which are a class favorite. Today, some of the block structures being created were amazing! In will be interesting to see how these creations progress.

Other Owl happenings:

Continuing our letter writing

One final note: Tamara will be out this Wednesday, Thursday and Friday because she and Carol are presenting at a conference for the National Association for the Education of Young Children. We wish her the best of luck and know that she will represent AFS and the Owls well!