February 9, 2015

Dear Families,

It is hard to believe that we are already in week six of the semester!  The children have been exploring several new inquiries within the classroom.  We have been studying building from different prospectives and building strategies, the motion and movement of sand and our continuing to explore rolling.  We have also been collaging, painting with tempera paint and continued our clay explorations. We are so impressed with the children’s creativity!

We have had a few questions regarding Valentine’s Day.  The children are welcome to bring in cards for their classmates.  There are ten children in the morning and ten in the afternoon.  Please sign the cards with your child’s name and we will distribute them. We ask that families do not bring in food or candy due to classroom allergies and our food policy at school.

Also, please remember to pack proper snow gear for your child.  We try to go out most days, so it is important to pack hats, gloves, boots and a warm coat and snow pants. The children truly love going outside and we want to make sure they are kept warm!

Just a reminder that Spring Break is the week of February 23-27, 2014 and our classroom will be closed. We wish you a wonderful Spring Break as we look forward to getting closer to spring!

As always, please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Stone & Ms. Jones

Hello everyone. We are so excited to be interning with your little ones this semester. We are all seniors in the Children and Families program, and plan on graduating this May. We are excited to learn and grow with your children, and appreciate you allowing us to be apart of your child’s growth here at the ECEC. Here is a little information about us:   

My name is Jennifer Makowski and I could not be more excited to be interning at the ECEC with your children! Following graduation this May, I want to continue my education in speech and language pathology at Wayne State University.  I currently work with infants and toddlers in a childcare center and have 10 years of experience with children under the age of 5.  Getting to know your children and figure out their interests through play is going to be an adventure this semester and I look forward to helping them grow and learn over the next few months.  Wednesdays are my designated day to be in Ms. Stone and Ms. Jones’ room, from 8 am to 3:30pm.  Outside of the classroom, I enjoy traveling, music including going to concerts and local shows, and playing with my two dogs Zoe and Hank.  My goals for this semester at the ECEC include creating bonds with your children and finding new and interesting ways to inspire their growth both physically and mentally.  I am excited to be a part of such a welcoming teaching team and am looking forward to our collaborations in the classroom.

Hello, my name is Katie Trinkle.  I have been working in the childcare field since September, 2011. I am a lead toddler teacher at Morning Star Child Care in Dexter. This will be my third year working with toddlers and prior to that I worked in an infant room. I enjoy watching the infants and toddlers go through the different milestones and I am excited to learn and grow with them. I will be interning in Ms. Stone and Ms. Jones room Wednesdays from 8am to 3:30pm.  My education includes graduating from Dexter High School in 2007.  I have my Associates in Applied Science from Washtenaw Community College in Child Care and now completeing my bachelors’ in Children and Families. After graduating I plan on getting my certification in therapeutic riding. You may be interested to know that I have lived in Dexter on a horse farm for most of my life.  I have one brother and three sisters. I enjoy my outdoors and spending time with my family.

Hello! My name is Emily Phee and I am interning in your child’s classroom this semester on Mondays and Wednesdays. I am very excited for this opportunity! I look forward to getting to know the children and learning about what they are interested in. My goal this semester is to better understand how a classroom functions and to get better at teaching children based on their own interests. I know we will work together on some exciting projects over the next few months.

I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you a little about myself. I have a strong background in early childhood and a lot of experience in the classroom. I have worked in several toddler and preschool classrooms previously and always enjoy my work. I also have previous experience working at the ECEC as staff and learning through other practicums. I will be working as staff throughout the building during the rest of this semester as well.

I was born and raised in Southeast Michigan. I graduated high school in 2011 as a good student with every intention of majoring in Political Science. After my first year in college, I realized that this was not the right choice for me. I am incredibly thankful that I switched to the Children and Families program because it has taught me so much and brought me so much joy. I have had the pleasure of meeting many professors and peers that really love teaching young children. This has made me look at teaching as not just a job, but a passion.

   Currently, I live in Wyandotte with my family. My son, Owen, is five years old and is my biggest motivator every day. Being his mom has shown me so much about what it takes to teach and care for children. He has put us through every possible situation and has been patient as we tried to figure it out. Together, we love to read books, go on walks, play with friends and explore nature. Having a family, working, and going to school keeps me pretty busy. When I do get a moment of spare time, I love to cook, read, go to new places, and spend time with my family.

Again, we couldn’t be more honored and excited for the opportunity to get to know your children this semester!  Please feel free to chat with us about what is going on in the classroom at drop off and pick up.  

January 2015

Dear Families,

Welcome to a new semester!  We are so excited to see all of the children and look at how much older they all seem!  So far we feel like each child has grown so much over break! 

We are looking forward to another great semester and know this one will fly by as fast as the previous one did!  We have three new interns this term.  Emily will be with us on Mondays and Wednesdays, and Jennifer and Katelyn will be with us on Wednesdays.  They all seem excited to work with the children and get to know what we worked on last term. 

Ms. Jones and I will be taking our planning time on Monday afternoons this term.  This will give us the chance to plan for the children each week and look over our documentation that we collect.  Our classroom will be well staffed on Monday afternoons and we will be able to check in frequently with the classroom.  If you need to get in touch with us during this time you can let the staff members in the classroom know and they will get the message to us.

The weather outside seems to be taking a turn towards winter now.  Please make sure your children are bringing their outside gear and that items are labeled with each child’s name or initials.  We have a lot of boots, mittens, and snow pants to keep track of so this will help us to stay organized.  Wet boots can be placed on the boot rack outside the classroom door or in your child’s cubby.  We will be going outside if there is snow on the ground so snow pants are encouraged.  There may be days that it is too cold to venture outside on the playground but we are encouraging everyone to be prepared just incase. 

Monday, January 19^th is Martin Luther King Jr. Day so the classrooms are closed on this day. 

Please know that with the weather this season if you see that the University of Michigan-Dearborn has closed campus that we are closed also.  Notifications should be on the major local news stations.

As always, if you have any questions, or comments please don’t hesitate to let us know!  Have a great week and stay warm.

http://ecec-stone.blogspot.com/

(313) 593-5424

Cars down ramps

The children have been very interested in the movement of cars as they travel down ramps in the classroom.  We have found different ways to manipulate the ramps so they are at different heights and have different textures on the actual ramp.  We began to change the surface at the bottom of the ramp.  We wanted to see if the children made the connection between the bottom surface and the distance the cars traveled – looking to see how friction impacted the distance of the cars.

We used two ramps and changed the surfaces under each ramp.  Under the first ramp, we added a shiny, smooth mirror.  Under the second ramp, we added several thick carpet squares.  We knew the surfaces would elicit different responses from the cars as they reached the bottom so we were curious to see if the children noticed.

The children noticed immediately.  They could not right away verbalize what they saw but pointed, laughed, and smiled as their cars traveled down the ramp with the smooth mirror at the bottom. Later in the week, the children were using words like “fast” and “go” to describe their cars.  Responses from the ramp with the carpet included looks of confusion, and children pushing their cars down with more force to see if they could get their cars to go further.  It was interesting to see that some of the children connected force to distance right away while others took a little longer to figure out effective strategies.

We will be continuing this with the children, manipulating the ramps with different bottom surfaces again.  We want the children to continue drawing comparisons and contrasting the textures and how they relate to the distance the cars travel.

Rolling Cars in the Sand

Moving Cars in the Sandbox

In the classroom we have been working on the concept of motion and the various aspects of motions. The concept that I have been focusing on with the children is making motion visible to them. We have been exploring motion with cars by making the motions of the cars visible by using paint, crayons, and markers to track the motions. For this exploration we used cars in the sandbox. I placed the sand box on top of the table so the children would be able to stand around it as they explored the cars and the sand. I was curious to see if the children noticed what happened to the sand when the cars were moved through it.

The children were initially intrigued that the sand box was on the table and curious as to what they could do with it. The children first touched the sand with their hands and then began moving the cars around in the sand. I think the children were curious about the cars because they picked them up and looked at them before moving them around in the sand. I think that Max was curious about the tires because he picked up the car looking at and touching the tires of the car before placing it back in the sand. The children moved the cars in the sand at various speeds and directions. Adam moved his car all the way across the sand table and then back again. Ali moved the car he was using back and forth very quickly, using a small space in the sand box. I think that Adam was curious about how far he could move the car and I think Ali was more interested in the speed of his car. Lana and Ayeden pushed the cars in the sand without taking their hands off of the cars. I believe that they were interested in how they affect the movement of the car. Amir was curious about cause and effect because he pushed the car in the sand letting go.

                              

       

Ramps and Angles

Last week the children were working towards figuring out why the cars moved down a ramp propped up on a shelf but the cars did not move as easily down a ramp that was placed much lower to the ground.  Many of the children while using the ramp placed near the ground ended up pushing their cars down on their own and pushed the cars all the way along the ramp.  I think the children were pushing the cars all the way along the ramps because they felt like the cars should move all the way down the ramp like they do on the higher elevated ramp.  I’m not sure at that point they were making the connection between the movement of the car and the angle of the ramp.

This week we propped up the lower elevated ramp a little bit to see if the children noticed a difference in how the cars moved down the ramp.  Initially, some of the children tried to push the cars down the ramp again, but then began to notice the cars moving on their own.  Some of the children looked surprised to see the car moving down on its own.  For weeks we have left the lower ramp at the same elevation so I think the children expected that the car would perform the same way, even if the angle was changed.

A few of the children attempted to change the angle of the ramp again, possibly trying to alter the results as the car moved down the ramp.  Most of the children realized physically pushing the car down wasn’t necessary.

I am interested to see what will happen this week – to build off this interest in the angles I would like to increase the angle of the higher ramp now.  I am curious to see if the children begin to comment on how the cars move down the ramp or notice that the distance of movement is greater with a higher elevated ramp.

Newsletter from our interns

Hello Families,

I’m Ms. Swift, an intern student at The University of Michigan-Dearborn. I’m working collaboratively with Mrs. Stone and Ms. Jones in your children’s classroom for the fall 2014 semester. Our goal is for each of our students to experience a rich educational environment. This school year, our classroom’s big idea is movement and motion. Through traditional lesson plans and inquiry work, the children have been exploring, sound through movement. Children, were given the opportunity to use musical instruments to explore sound, while simultaneously using imagery (children viewed live images of themselves on a television screen), as a result some children have connected vision to movement.

Next, I began to wonder, “What does sound in motion look like?” During, a finger-painting exploration, I observed a student, represent “sound in motion”. To illustrate, she, places both of her hands in the finger paint, then she moves both hands across the paper, while using a swaying motion. She sings, “The wipers on the bus go swish, swish, swish all through the town.” The children appear to be very interested in sound, movement and motion, therefore we will continue to explore the concept of “sound in motion”.

Furthermore, most of what children learn and do requires coordination of multiple systems that mediate production of speech, efficient limb and whole body movements, as well as dexterous movement of hand and fingers. As early childhood teachers, we measure cognitive development in young children, through their behavior and actions, specifically their motor output and verbal out. Considering, our students age group, it is appropriate practice to engage children’s learning through sensorimotor activities. The developmentally appropriate activities we are using in our classroom, will aid in identifying your child’s current level of sensorimotor abilities, so further development of those types of skills (fine motor, vision, hearing, gross motor and cognition) can be sought after through the planning and implementation of future lessons.

 In our classroom, we have posted a communication board. Please feel free to share your thoughts, ideas or any observations you’ve witnessed your child partake in at home, as it relates to movement and motion. In the future, I look forward to discussing your thoughts about your child’s interests, in reference to our classroom’s big idea.

Thank you,

Ms. Nicole Swift

Hello Families,

                I just wanted to take the opportunity to introduce myself and the work I have been doing in the classroom. My name is Kelsey and I am interning this semester with Catie and Julianna. I am pleased to be working with in the classroom with Catie and Julianna and all of the children. I have enjoyed my time in the classroom thus far. I have been working with the children on movement and motion objects. We are focusing on how we can impact the movement of objects with our own bodies and also making those movements visible to us. This seems to be of interest to all of the children within the classroom as it is a main idea that Catie and Julianna are also exploring with the children. I have been working on exploring visible motion with children by using mediums like paint and crayons to track their movements. Recently we explored the movements of cars by placing paint on the tires of the cars. Throughout the semester I will be working with the children on tracking their movements and making them visible.  You will be able to see the work and explorations we have been doing at Curriculum Night which is November 12^th after school.

I look forward to an amazing semester and seeing everyone at Curriculum Night.

Thank you,

Kelsey Hadyniak