Spring Growth with the Wonder Primes
The Spring in the Wonder Primes classroom is filled with growth of all kinds. This is such a special time of year because it’s a time where our play skills really blossom and we are able to do so much more together. We can play more complicated games together like pictionary and eye spy. One way this growth can be seen is during our Morning Meeting times. When the year started, we had short meetings, maybe 5-10 minutes and we would only sing songs together. As the year went on, we slowly added stretching, breathing, books, and games to our repertoire of morning meeting activities. Lately, we have been working on turn-taking games like completing shared puzzles together or hitting koosh balls. There is a huge buy-in from the Wonder Primes students for morning meeting. They love the structure and security that this time brings in our classroom. It is a time for us to practice sharing space together, playing together, and talking about our days and worlds.
For the past 2 weeks, we have started having a “sharing” meeting, which is like a show and tell, and this has been widely successful in our classroom. The students have an opportunity to bring in something from home to share, this could be a toy, a book, a special outfit, or anything really that is special to them. It has been amazing to witness the attention and focus that the students have for each other. They have been able to practice letting others touch their things in a safe way where they know that once the toy goes around the circle that it will return to them. We have limited the amount of home toys coming into the classroom on days that we don’t have our show and tell time and we have reduced a lot of conflict and anxiety over our home items. The Wonder Primes are sitting at morning meeting for 30 minutes+ with genuine focus and interest in each other. We are practicing asking questions and making comments to each other. We are making plans for what we will share next and we are really enjoying getting to see new things. Some of the highlights from our sharing meetings have been books that we can read together, soft stuffed animals, dinosaurs with tiny dinos in their belly, axolotl toys, a sew and sew toy, and more. We are excited to continue this activity as the year wraps up and we can’t wait to see what the Wonder Primes bring us to share!
