This morning in the gym we had a freeze dance party!  Freeze dance is fun, good exercise, and helps increase inhibitory control.  (Inhibitory control is an important part of executive function skills.  Learn more about executive function here)  

After stretches and snack, we gathered for small group time.  

The friends worked together to identify letters and make words. 

They also strengthened their fine motor skills and creative expression with play doh. 

The friends continued to play hide and seek with the gems.  This increases counting, subitizing, and the ability to understand that numbers can be composed and decomposed to make new numbers.  This lays a strong foundation for future learning of addition and subtraction.  

The friends also worked to make books.  Children's writing develops over time.  Success for some of the friends is writing controlled scribbles and attributing meaning.  Success for other friends is using phonetic spelling when writing.  Success for some fiends is writing strings of letters and attributing meaning.  Still other friends find success as they use letter like forms to express themselves when writing.  It is important to provide many open ended wiring experiences so that children have the opportunity to grow and develop their writing skills. 

Free choice 

The friends worked to make. gate for snow park.  This provided many opportunities for engineering, problem solving, collaboration, and persistence.  

"How can we get it to stand up?" 

"Let's try tape!  Tape will help it stand up!" 

"I am making a small gate over here." 

Some friends chose to continue in the play doh. . .

while other friends continued writing. 

I put some other materials out for the children to use.  I did not tell them what to do, but allowed their critical thinking and problem solving skills to develop as they used trial and error to figure out how to make the gate stand.