Wednesday afternoon

For our learning activities today, we got out our Everlasting Epic
Landscape floor puzzle. There are 36 different landscape scenes that
match up along the edges with each other.

This is a fantastic resource! There are so many ways to make use of
these landscape pieces. Here is what we did with it today: we took
turns holding a card and telling the others what we thought the
'story' was about. We started with a sentence opener like 'once upon
a time' or 'one day...' and let the children use the picture to make
up a story based on what appeared to be happening in the scene. The
great thing is that each card shows different elements to talk about
- from parks, farms, and mountains to different types of animals or
vehicles. There are so many stories one can make up. After each
turn telling their story, the children would put the card down on the
floor to form a line, and the next child would start his/her turn.
They were so impressed when they found how long the line went! By
the way, this is also an excellent story writing exercise for older
children who may experience writer's block.

The wooden blocks were also quite popular today - the children were
thinking of all sorts of things to construct with them. On the table
they made bridges and rivers! The theme with Duplos was robot
building, and the children also took the school bus and made it into
a fort or club house to play in.

This week, the children have also been using the fruit scented

markers to draw and colour various fruits. On the back of my
washable marker's box, there is a chart showing what each marker
smells like. The children noticed it and thought it would be fun to
actually draw the smell that matched the marker! Now you know why my
front hallway has some fruit pictures on the bulletin board.

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