The girls were ready to begin the session and motivated today because they knew and had been given a preview that we would be decorating the posters we made having traced their bodies onto butcher paper earlier in the week. We began the session by reviewing expectations and exactly what we would be doing each step along the way. The girls read along with me and with assistance identified many parts of the body and where they’re located. They enjoyed pointing to the corresponding body parts on themselves, one another, and on a doll we had available. They were then asked if they knew the song "Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes" - and they happily sang along as we pointed to the different body parts. Next, the girls were asked to assist me as I assembled the materials needed to complete a poster of one of the girls. Laina raised her hand first, and Gabby didn’t seem to mind, so we began with her. By adding color and details to the chart. Laina proved to be a compliant subject, modelling her outfit and allowing me to draw and add facial and clothing details to her poster. She was wearing blue and white striped shorts, which allowed for a review of patterns; both girls noted that the shorts were blue, white, blue, white…. They also were able to provide me with the materials needed at each step along the way; towards this end, they were provided with 2 step directives, "please bring me the colored chalk from Analise's room and bring the glitter from our classroom.” The girls seemed to feel helpful and accomplished in completing these tasks and received verbal reinforcement for the jobs well done. Ms. Judie stopped by several times to comment on the picture and expressed that the essence of Laina's expression was captured very well. Laina was happy to hear this since she thought she looked like a doll; however she responded favorably to the acknowledgment from Ms. Judie and from the several classmates and teachers that happened by. She assisted in coloring in her skin with flesh colored crayon, and both girls helped shake out the poster after glitter was used to make the elephant details on Laina's shirt. Gabriela was commended for being patient and supportive while her sister's poster was being completed. I added some details to her picture before the session concluded and the girls helped me put them on the walls so that Laina's could dry and so that they could complete Gabby's next week. The girls received lollipops for being such good sports, following directions well, acting as excellent models and standing still while their bodies were being traced. The lesson was an excellent way by which to incorporate a hands-on activity while working on body parts and spatial relationship concepts such as above, below, underneath, alongside, etc. (ie; “what body part lies directly below Gabby’s knee?”; (heel, ankle, foot were acceptable answers); “please bring me the blue marker top which is alongside the glitter;” put the tape back on top of the desk at the front office;” check underneath the table for one of the blue googly eyes”. It was also a good way to allow the girls to expend some energy through movement.

We had a fun Friday today. The girls reinforced their writing skills by eagerly completing some of their worksheets as soon as they got in.
Their journal entries today were 'Cut and Paste Stories'. They used their imagination to create different stories then brought them to life by cutting and pasting different types of materials onto their pages. Gabriela made a house with a downstairs and Laina made the sea. Both girls did a great job and had fun fortifying their emergent writing skills.
We played a game where I gave the girls a sheet of paper with different numbers written all over it. They used bingo markers to find and mark the numbers as they found them. This is to strengthen their number recognition.
Gabriela and Laina had a great time working on their gross motor skills at the park today! While we were there, we also re-read "Alice the Fairy" by David Shannon. We talked about imagination and how Alice was using hers in the story. Their listening, understanding, speaking and relating skills were fully engaged as we discussed this book.
To work on their fine motor control, Gabriela and Laina used water colors to trace their names. They also were able to explore their creativity by painting beautiful water color pictures.
The girls are also working on writing their names on a straight line without tracing them.
We used the legos and connectors to familiarize them with spatial awareness and shapes and colors.
Gabriela and Laina both loved working on the computer this morning. They enjoyed learning more about letters and phonics and excelled at it! Great day!

"The Foot Book, Dr. Seuss's Wacky Book of Opposites" was a delightfully engaging way to introduce the concept of opposites to Gabriela and Laina. They were interested in the rhymes and illustrations and chimed in where appropriate as I read the book aloud and left room for them to verbally interject the correct rhyming opposite in the appropriate place. As preschoolers learn best through play, an effort was made to incorporate games to make the idea more real. At the end of the story, for example, we took a few minutes to summarize what the children had learned by reciting some nursery rhymes , such as "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and “Peas Porridge” explaining the words that conveyed opposite meanings and writing them down on the whiteboard. A cup full of water and one that was empty was also used as an example to concretize the abstraction. Finally, the activity that consumed most of the hour was making a Book of Opposites the girls created from pictures of opposites. I assisted the girls in cutting a variety of pictures and words that depicted opposite concepts and objects (big/little and elephant/mouse) which they then had to glue onto the corresponding name and paste them on opposite pages of a miniature craft book. The girls completed this activity and began to color some of the pages.

design fundamentals. Using the elements of lines and shapes, Gabriela and Laina drew pictures of a butterfly. They also made butterflies out of paper plates and sponged colors on them for the wings.

The girls were excited to practice their letter writing by completing their letter worksheets as soon as they came in. Gabi worked on the letter 'F' and Laina finished up the letter 'X'.
Gabriela and Laina both enjoy singing our "Hello Chant" and learning how to say hello in different languages. Today we learned Vietnamese, Arabic and Korean.This strengthens their multicultural exposure and language development. We then talked about the weather outside and they told me what their favorite types of weather are. Laina said hers is stormy weather and Gabriela said hers is cold weather. They worked on their emergent writing skills by writing in their journals about their favorite types of weather and drew wonderful pictures to go with them.
Gabriela and Laina used number cards with only numbers (no pictures) to practice their 1-1 correspondence. They both did a great job recognizing the numbers and laying out the correct number of gold coins to go with the corresponding card.
To encourage their listening, understanding, speaking and relating skills, the girls read our wordless book, "I Am in the Attic". Both girls were able to recognize and tell me what they thought was going on throughout the book. We also added words to our word wall from our story. We also read "Alice the Fairy" and discussed the book while reading it.
To work on their gross motor development, we played musical instruments to different songs while dancing with them.
During snack we read "Hop on Pop" and "There's a Wocket in My Pocket" to encourage their reading and rhyming skills.
Gabriela and Laina did a great job tracing their names to not only practice their writing but to strengthen their fine motor control.
We ended our morning together with open ended art to fortify their creativity. Great day for both girls.

We began the first half of the session with the girls discussing and deciding upon which poses they wished to showcase when being traced onto butcher paper; both decided on very similar poses. We then used a detailed anatomical poster with which to identify various body parts; the girls pointed to the corresponding body parts when asked. After tracing each girl's body on the paper, I began labelling different body parts on sticky notes for a subsequent activity to be completed tomorrow as there are about 20 body parts to be labelled. The girls had said they were going to wear skirts and dresses for today's activity but instead wore other outfits. This was fine and they were told they could color in their outfits tomorrow, after their outlines were defined with a sharpie. Both Gabriela and Laina seemed to be looking forward to this activity.

After the first hour, I read "The Hat in the Cat" book by Dr. Seuss. Gabriela was particularly interested in the story and read along with me. We pointed out various details in the story. Particular attention was paid to the rhyming sounds and to making predictions about what would happen ("the cat was going to drop everything"..."mom was going to be very mad when she came back to the house.") The word 'patterns' was introduced here. Gabriella understood what the word pattern meant (a repeated decorative design), and she correctly pointed out that the colors in the cat's hat were red and white. She then colored in the red and white design on a cut-out hat using a marker – and made her own pattern on mini sentence strips. Laila said, "I am too tired to do this right now," so she was allowed to watch and abstained from the activity. Gabriela completed the pattern exercise and received a grape lollipop (her favorite) for her perseverance on the exercises, as well as her good ability to follow directions. She was apprised of tomorrow's activities and readied herself for dismissal, as it was now time to go home.

We started our day by completing a beginning sounds worksheet to strengthen the girls' recognition of beginning sounds. They then wrote stories in their journals to work on their emergent writing skills and letter recognition. For our small manipulatives and math exploration we practiced 1-1 correspondence with our dot cards and hearts. The girls played with our numbered popsicle sticks and rubber bands. They had to put the correct number of rubber bands on the corresponding popsicle stick.
For our story time the girls both read their own wordless books and explained what was going in the story. We also used these to find new words to add to our word wall. This strengthens their ability to listen, understand, speak and relate. Gabriela and Laina both absolutely LOVED our song "Tooty Ta". They sang, danced and followed the direction perfectly. This was a great gross motor development activity. After our music and movement time, the girls helped me read "Inside a Zoo in the City" to work on their emergent reading skills.
To practice sequencing, Gabriela and Laina completed their "cut and glue to tell a story" worksheet. They also started working on their letter 'X' worksheets to practice their writing skills. They will finish them tomorrow. At the end of the day we played a sight word game to work on their sight word recognition and sang "Tooty Ta" again, per request. Overall a great day was had by all!

We played with hula hoops, played follow the leader, and worked on big movement exercises. We finished with an obstacle course and treasure hunt which they loved!

The girls used fine-motor skills to create the first letter of words on their white boards. They demonstrated good coordination of small muscles in movements, and age-appropriate abilities in activities involving the synchronization of their hands and fingers. Upper and lower case letters were added to the activity to assess if they could visually discriminate differences, and both did well on this exercise. We then incorporated a rhyming activity (called "Johnny Oops") with a one-to-one number correspondence exercise that involved ten fingers on both hands. The girls appeared very responsive to this activity as it involved the repetition of sounds and rhyming words by which to incorporate and consolidate the counting skills and numeric memory that was introduced in prior sessions. We concluded the session with a counting game in which the girls had to alternate counting upward as far as their attention span would allow; both girls were able to count up to the 70's by doing so, with prompts. Once their attention began to slightly wane, the activity turned to one in which the girls drew animals and scenes on their white boards. They were then asked to identify the beginning sounds of the pictures they had depicted and to repeat them when pointed out.

Today Gabby, Laina and I made Vanilla ice cream with mini M&M’s in the play and freeze ball. The ball has two openings one on the top and the other on the bottom. On one side, we filled the ball with ice all the way to the top and added ½ cup of rock salt and closed the lid tightly. Then on the other side, we filled the ball with 2 cups of cream, 1 & ½ teaspoons of vanilla, 1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons of sugar and ½ cup of mini M&M's. We then started playing with the ball. We talked about why we added salt to the ice. We learned that it causes a temperature drop that slows the melting rate and increases the freezing rate. After 15 minutes of playing with the ball we got to try Gabby and Laina's delicious ice cream.