Hyperlinks & Hyper Kids!

I'm back from my trip to PA! Networking with 50 of the best and brightest Early Childhood Educators that this country has to offer was as awesome as it sounds! If you are a teacher of children from birth to kindergarten age, I strongly encourage you to apply for next year's Terri Lynne Lokoff Child Care Foundation Teacher grant. You can check here to see if the application is up yet. While you're there, do click around and read up a bit on the history and mission of this unique and vital organization. They are good people! Really, do it now. I'll wait...
As soon as I set foot in the classroom, it was on to the next thing. As mentioned before, we have a lot of curriculum pots on the stove. Some of them are still cooking; our exploration of clay and ceramics is ongoing, as is the season of spring and all of the changes that comes with it. A few of the themes that we were drawing out seem to have run their course. The bus/airplane/spaceship dramatic play has dried up. In it's place, the children are fascinated with this story;

...This is by no means the first time Abiyoyo has captured the collective imaginations of the Frogs. Really, the story seems to have all of the elements that Three-year-olds love; Transgression, magic, sudden danger, monsters, heroism, and redemption- Lots of fertile ground for epic dramatic play! Lately, Abiyoyo has been showing up in the classroom at about ten o clock sharp, every single morning. You can tell he's here because someone will yell "Run for your life, Abiyoyo's coming!" and everyone will take off! This has lead us teachers to investigate what kinds of ways we can channel this running, hiding, adrenaline laced play into something that is better suited to a limited space. We were still scratching our heads when Irresistible Ideas for Play Based Learning posted this article on their facebook page. (Go ahead and read it...I'll wait again. Really, it's worth it!)

Here's an excerpt that really resonated with us;

Sensory activities fall into different categories. Perhaps the most useful one for self-regulation is Proprioceptive Input. That's a fancy word for "Heavy Work" that engages your joints. Thee activities make you feel grounded and can be calming for a high running child or invigorating for a low running kid.

"High running" is the perfect description for the kind of energy that Abiyoyo brings, so today we focused on adding some opportunities for heavy work into our environment. I'll post photos another time, so I can squeeze in one more exciting curriculum development...

If you were here last year, you might remember that we had a very intelligent Robin that somehow intuited that we were studying Oviparity and obliged us by building a nest on our playground and laying three perfect little eggs. Well guess what?

THEY'RE BACK!