The Same-Same Game!

Unfortunately, the Puppet Show scheduled for today was postponed to next Wednesday, March 4th.

Fortunately, we have a great class who took it in stride and enthusiastically jumped right into another engaging game, perfect for these rainy days...The Same-Same Game.



There are two primary objectives of this game:
1) Develop tactile awareness - identifying objects by touch.
2) Encourage responsive one-on-one interaction and turn-taking.

All who played, joyfully exhibited both objectives beyond expectations.

Here's how it's played. We have a dual chamber "touch box" with flaps covering the openings at each end. You could just as easily use a pair of shoe boxes containing duplicate objects - the main thing is that they DON'T PEEK!

Player 1 reaches in and extracts an object and holds it up for Player 2 to see. Using only that visual, Player 2 reaches inside his own box to find the most similar object by sense of touch alone, with the question, "SAME?"..."SAME!" Turns alternate until all items have been discovered.

As more language develops, you can substitute one of the boxes with descriptive tactile clues such as hard/soft, light/heavy, smooth/rough, round/pointy, etc...

We're All Fired!

No, this is not part of the current economic situation, but the completion of our first ceramics unit:

CERAMICS
As illustrated above, the class marveled at the transformation of dull pastel tones to vibrant, shiny hues on our ceramics. Note their fascination with the remains of one pinch pot on the paper plate in the center of the table. This item exploded in the kiln, the result of a teacher too eager to fire before it was adequately dried. No worry, though...we'll be rolling in the clay plenty more this year!

TODAY'S STORY
Alpha Oops!, by Althea Kontis, illustrated by Bob Kolar. Z is tired of always having to be last when the alphabet family lines up. He is demanding fair and equal treatment! The letters (more or less) agree to go backwards, but it's not long before P has some ideas of his own. And so does H, for that matter. In fact, it seems as if almost every letter has a different opinion about how the alphabet should be arranged. It's chaos! It's pandemonium! And it's definitely not as easy as A-B-C! Filled with visually humorous details, Bob Kolar's colorful illustrations are the perfect foil for Alethea Kontis's snappy story about the comic confusion that comes when the letters of the alphabet, like a class of unruly children, step out of order and show that each one has a mind of its own.