Remember, next week the first show of the year is coming to Amigoss to celebrate Harmony day with us. The show it’s called “Dinosaurs, Orang-utans and Little people show” and it’s going to take place on Wednesday 11^th of March at 3.30 in the preschool class. The show is character-based. From pushy Mummy Orang-utan to her adorably playful baby, Junior’s ‘give anything a go’ adventurous spirit to the self-important and in your face Sir Ratus, these characters are designed to have an instant rapport with the young audience.

Peschoolers

Friday 28^th February 2020: The Rainbow traveling water

We continued making stories with our helpful story stones practicing our imagination and communication skills. We definitely loved the Rainbow Travelling Water Experiment – who wouldn’t with that name-. Jannery the scientist, explained to us the water can travel through paper, we weren’t quite sure she was right but she was so convinced we had to see it for ourselves. We helped her fill up 3 different cups with water and color each one with a different food coloring, blue, pink and yellow. She said to us that the water also needs a vehicle to travel by and that would be paper. We had fun thinking about how paper is the water’s car. Before putting the strips of paper in we tried to work on our problem-solving skills trying to predict what would happen when putting the paper towels into the water. Then the excitement began, we were incredibly surprised when water started moving through the paper as if it was an elevator and about how quickly the water traveled up the paper towel and it was magical to watch the colors mix together.

Monday 2^nd March: Helping the faceless gnomes!

Some magic happened during the weekend. Several gnomes came to Amigoss to have a party but something went terribly wrong. The poor gnomes lost their bodies and their facial expressions disappeared leaving only some labeled balls with the feeling they had at the moment the wicked magic happened. As we went in we felt for those gnomes and decided to help them, first, by finding their heads and then we provided them with expressions and a body.

We started working on our gross motor skills running around the outdoor area looking for those empty heads.Once we had ou little gnome we tried to decode the message written on it, to do so, the blackboard in the class was a great aid. On it, we could find drawings of the feelings with the name written. It was a bit tricky to recognize the different letters of our word but with some help, all of us were able to find the feeling of our gnomes. Alphabet recognition is just one part of a child’s overall education, it plays an important, foundational role in developing reading skills, which is one of the most important factors that can promote a child’s academic success.

Once we had discovered how was our gnome feeling before losing his/her expression we proceed to draw it again on their faces. The teachers help us attach the balls to their bodies made out of toilet paper rolls which help us embed sustainability in daily routines and practices and it is a good way to learn about reusing and recycling. To finish our project, we gave them clothes with some fabric and hair made out of wool and we displayed them in our class.

Tuesday 3^rd March: Overarm throw

Today we started practicing our overarm throw, this fundamental movement skill is a manipulative skill frequently used in many sports, such as cricket, softball, and baseball. We are learning the movements we need to do to achieve a perfect throw. We practice this skill using different bean bags that we had to made them pass through some hanging hoops.

Wednesday 4^th March: Puppet show

The puppet master came to town and straight to Amigoss and set up a puppet theatre. We were delighted to receive a little clown who came and asked us what had we been learning about. After a bit of confusion due to the excitement of the new puppet show, we managed to explain to him we are becoming experts on emotion control and recognition. When we said that he asked us to teach him about this interesting topic and called us in pairs to represent with puppets different situations that involved the representation of feelings. This puppet master experience gave us the opportunity to improve our communication skills and We loved to participate in the show becoming puppet masters ourselves and gave us the opportunity to develop our language skills and helped us feel more comfortable conversing with others. No need to say, we all received a boost on our self-assurance and a sense of accomplishment with the audience clapping

Thursday 5^th March: Drawing my reflection and reverse image

Today in class we got to learn about the reverse image! To do so, we had to move a little bit of the elements in our classroom, the full-length mirror became dressing mirrors when they were put horizontally on the tables. With that set up we got to explore our own sense of identity. We painted ourselves looking at our facial features and trying to portray them on the mirror surface. When we achieved a result that made us happy, we proceed to create a reversed image by pressing a piece of paper to the mirror. We loved being able to explore ourselves and learning about who we are, and how we want to present ourselves to the world. It promotes their visual, communication and emotional skills.

Toddlers

Friday 28^th February 2020

Friday was the last day we explored the color yellow. We enjoyed having all our yellow toys out stimulating our personal development and giving us communication tools to descrive objects.

We also got to sing one of our favourite songs, Bee bee Bumble Bee. While sitting in a circle  we used our manipulative skills to pass a ball around to give a turn to say the name to the person next to us. This experience help us remember names and gives us the opportunity to practice taking turns and patience. The song goes like this:

“Bee Bee Bumble Bee

Can you sing your name for me?

My Name is____________________

(Repeat)”

We also officially welcomed Rocio to the toddlers class in her birthday party. We exrtremly enjoyed the “watermelon cake” she brought. Happy expressions and pink stains on our faces and clothes proved we enjoyed.

Monday 2^nd March:

A new color was introduced in our fantastic world of colors project: RED!. Color stimulation helps our cognitive development and gives us knowledge we will use all our lives. We had a look on things that are red, fruits, cars, clothes… After that we got to participate in one of our favourite activities to improve our fine motor skills. We glued some ripped paper onto apples and some glitter onto strawberries. Squissing the glue on the paper was so much fun, our hands got sticky and our hands looked funny with so much red on them!

Tuesday 3^rd March

Keeping up with red color we participated in an experience about sorting apples by color. We had three different trees and lots of apples in three different colors (red, yellow and green). Sorting by colors helps us improve our visual perception and thinking skills. Learning to categorise and classify gives a boost to our memory!

When we sorted all the apples, we practice our numeracy and language skills by counting them in Spanish.

Wednesday 4^th March:

Today we decided to go deeper in our experimentation with the color red. On the tables we found a sticky board made with clear adhesive paper for each of us and in the middle of the table there were a great diversity of items to take. We spent quite a long time exploring the textures and getting better with our eye-hand coordination. Spending that time creating together made us feel stronger bonds in between our peers.

Thursday 5^th March

We are feeling so much bigger after today. We got to do a cooking experience developing this way our self-independence. Our teachers came with some red fruits: watermelon and strawberries and we got to use rounded knives to cut them for afternoon tea. Using knives teaches us about risk assessment and improves our self-esteem.

Babies

Talking about women 

We’ve got an important day coming this weekend, Women’s Day. It is for that reason I decided to show the importance of women to my little babies. I invented a story about the importance of women showing them different pictures of women during history. Taking into account their favourite women in the whole world is their mum the babies made special flowers for them painting with their hands. A tactile experience such as messy hand painting stimulates babies’ senses and assist in the development of hand eye coordination and fine motor skills.

Playdough squishing and squashing

I have always loved watching little chubby fingers squishing and squashing play dough. The sensory nature of play dough allows babies to be naturally curious and explore the world around them using their senses.  It is also beneficial for fine motor development and strengthening little fingers, hands and wrists.  As children grow and develop, play dough also grows with them and is so versatile for different learning experiences such as imaginative play