There are only two Reggio Inspired Teachers at our school but some of our colleagues are interested in the Story Play happening in our rooms and are beginning to offer these creative and open ended experiences for their students modelled after the Story Workshop shared by the Opal School. While we have been doing Story Play all year three mornings a week, this month my Kindergarten students have begun to meet with a Grade Two big buddy in our two classrooms once a week for Story Play. Alex (Reggio Inspired Gr 2 teacher) and I are both amazed at the focus, joy and collaboration we are observing while the students work with a partner to create a story using loose parts. I love having an opportunity to spend time with the grade two students and observing the care and kindness shown to my kinders as they make connections and get to know each other.  The story narratives are rich, the conversations are full of invitations to share ideas with "how about". "why do......

          The children have had access to clay in the classroom during exploration and Story Play but since we don't have access to a kiln the clay goes back into a bag each day. Yesterday I noticed that the clay was beginning to dry out and I thought it would be nice to do this month's outdoor nature art using clay and nature's loose parts to create symmetry discs. Here are a few examples of the beautiful pieces made by my kindergarten students. The students worked in a small group with an adult. They were each given a ball of clay and asked to make a pancake, draw four boxes and use nature loose parts to create a symmetrical piece. They are beautiful!!!! We decorated the forest with our art for other visitors to enjoy. ...

This month I have added some new literacy activities to our Daily Five Flow to align with the areas where the children need to build fluency.  As the children complete Read with a Friend and move on to Literacy Play they choose from five activities to play with a partner. Alphabet Rock letter matching . I added a mixed up upper case alphabet board for our more mature students as well as a sequenced alphabet board and a picture alphabet guide to scaffold the younger students. They easily move to the board that is a best fit. Alphabet Pocket Chart. This centre contains upper case/lower case letter cards. It also has vocabulary cards with a picture with the first letter in the word in bold print for the more mature students. Story Play. Since the children are doing story play three mornings a week very successfully I have added it as a literacy centre to Daily Five. CVC Word Building. I added this literacy centre last week as we now ha......