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- OCC Staff
Hello world!
1
A Typical Day At OCC
From the Infant Classroom - Our babies are having so much fun in the infant room where their teachers sing songs, read many stories, dance to music, play with toys and encourage developmental milestones everyday. Our babies are very happy and love the classroom colors, bright sunlight, music and entertainment the teachers give. Some of the infants are sitting, others are rolling over, standing and a couple are talking their first steps! Every day the infants surprise the teachers with new developmental milestones and we all love to see the babies grow and learn.
From the Toddler 1 Classroom - When the weather permits, the children love going outside to play on the playground but with winter around the corner, the children look forward to playing more in our “big room”. The teachers keep the toddlers busy by introducing a letter of the week along with weekly seasonal themed activities and a book of the day. The children are involved with activities utilizing hand coordination by coloring, painting, tracing, gluing and filling in shapes with different colored objects. The toddlers greatly enjoyed making pizza during “Pp” week. All by themselves they spooned sauce on the pizza shells, spread cheese over the sauce then after they were cooked, the children loved eating the pizza’s they made. Our toddlers love the cooking days and have been very creative with food items like pasta, pudding, pretzels, donuts, and monkey bread. How they love their cooking classes. The toddler 1 classroom will continue to learn about how important it is to be united with friends and family and enjoy when a new “toddler” joins them from the infant room.
From the Toddler 2 Classroom - Here in T2 we added a new friend to the classroom – “Violet” – a purple Beta fish. the children love taking turns feeding her (although she is a he) and watching her swim around. The teachers are introducing the children to a letter and number of the week by exposing them to themed activities, cooking projects, hands on art activities, along with stories and music about the letter and number of the week. The first three letters we introduced were B, M, and D. During “Bb” week the children explored special baking activities and a day of bubbles. The children had a blast with our music and movement unit during “Mm” week where they enjoyed listening and dancing to music from around the world. They also made their own music with instruments they made themselves. While talking about the letter “Dd”, the children began a farm unit. They learned about the different types of farms, daily duties farmers perform and learned about farm animals. We played a listening game where we galloped like a horse, rolled like a pig, grazed like a cow and waddled like a duck. They really enjoy when Ms. Dee visits from the town library – she is the greatest librarian around!
From the Preschool Classroom - The preschoolers continue to be exposed to the alphabet and the sound each letter makes. The preschoolers put the letter of the day on their “Alphabet Soup Bowl” and are involved with activities and crafts which revolve around the letter of the week.
From the Toddler 1 Classroom - When the weather permits, the children love going outside to play on the playground but with winter around the corner, the children look forward to playing more in our “big room”. The teachers keep the toddlers busy by introducing a letter of the week along with weekly seasonal themed activities and a book of the day. The children are involved with activities utilizing hand coordination by coloring, painting, tracing, gluing and filling in shapes with different colored objects. The toddlers greatly enjoyed making pizza during “Pp” week. All by themselves they spooned sauce on the pizza shells, spread cheese over the sauce then after they were cooked, the children loved eating the pizza’s they made. Our toddlers love the cooking days and have been very creative with food items like pasta, pudding, pretzels, donuts, and monkey bread. How they love their cooking classes. The toddler 1 classroom will continue to learn about how important it is to be united with friends and family and enjoy when a new “toddler” joins them from the infant room.
From the Toddler 2 Classroom - Here in T2 we added a new friend to the classroom – “Violet” – a purple Beta fish. the children love taking turns feeding her (although she is a he) and watching her swim around. The teachers are introducing the children to a letter and number of the week by exposing them to themed activities, cooking projects, hands on art activities, along with stories and music about the letter and number of the week. The first three letters we introduced were B, M, and D. During “Bb” week the children explored special baking activities and a day of bubbles. The children had a blast with our music and movement unit during “Mm” week where they enjoyed listening and dancing to music from around the world. They also made their own music with instruments they made themselves. While talking about the letter “Dd”, the children began a farm unit. They learned about the different types of farms, daily duties farmers perform and learned about farm animals. We played a listening game where we galloped like a horse, rolled like a pig, grazed like a cow and waddled like a duck. They really enjoy when Ms. Dee visits from the town library – she is the greatest librarian around!
From the Preschool Classroom - The preschoolers continue to be exposed to the alphabet and the sound each letter makes. The preschoolers put the letter of the day on their “Alphabet Soup Bowl” and are involved with activities and crafts which revolve around the letter of the week.
Thematic units help to involve the children in their learning process. Each child is unique and learns in his/her own way. To provide experiential learning, the classroom is set up in centers which include blocks, math, science, home-living, writing, art, and library. Activities are planned around the needs of the children with the focus on helping them to be ready for Kindergarten.The Preschool day starts with free choice centers. Once everyone is ready, they begin the learning adventure of the day with Calendar Time. While the 3 year old’s are eating snack, the 4 year old’s are engaged in Circle Time where the teacher spends time reading a thematic story and involving the children in a learning game or activity. After the 4 year old’s have finished Circle Time, they eat snack and the 3′s join the teacher for Circle Time. The 3 year old’s listen to a story based on the theme of the week and also get to play an age-appropriate as well as developmentally appropriate game or activity. Learning Centers follows Circle Time. During Learning Centers, the children can be found doing art projects, which helps develop their fine motor control, and activities centered around the theme as well as science experiments and cooking projects. Outside time or time spent in the big room playing games, running around, and riding bikes help to develop their social skills as well as their large muscle coordination. Much time is spent socializing and sharing our thoughts/ideas in order to develop problem solving skills and vocabulary. Big words fascinate preschoolers!
It’s Summertime at OCC
Well, spring did finally end but summer seemed to take a long time to start. As we all know, summer brought lots of rain which did not harm to our outdoor classroom gardens. Earlier in the spring, the children planted their seedlings into the gardens along with many donations from family and friends. Together, the seedlings have grown at a remarkable rate and are all so very healthy. As our own home gardens did not fare as well, the gardens the children planted have prospered. We grew strawberries, although again we shared them with the local chipmunks, and zucchini squash, different types of tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans and lots of sage! We also started a new classroom garden this year, which next year will be our very own pumpkin patch. At this time, in the new garden, we are growing bush beans, sunflowers and lettuce. This garden area used to be the daycare’s sandbox, but because it was in the sun and had no shelter for the children, we transferred it into a new garden and purchased a new sandbox for them. The new sandbox is under our canopy completed shaded from the sun’s harmful rays. Plus the new sandbox has a cover which keeps all unwanted items out of it. The children absolutely love the new sand. Some of the younger children completely lay flat on the new white sand as if they were at the beach.
Summer time did bring many sad goodbyes to the graduating preschoolers but also brought the arrival of many new babies. As summer quickly comes to an end, we look forward to another great school year with many new faces in the center and lots of happy children and staff.
