A Day in the Life of Alpha Children's House

Here's a peek inside our classroom during the first two weeks of October. The photo above shows our closing "Circle Time" for Extended Day. We always love singing one last favorite song with Miss Annie.

The left photo shows the Practical Life work that we call "Ladling". It consists of transferring colored water from the left bowl to the right with a ladle. Such a simple activity, but look at the expression of enjoyment on her face. This and similar activities help the child develop concentration, coordination, independence, and the concept of a complete cycle of work. The complete cycle consists of choosing the work, setting it up, doing it, and putting it away so that it is neat and tidy, ready for the next person.

On the right is another practical life work, "Sponging", which consists of sprinkling water on a tray and using a sponge to wipe it up.













Here are two boys enjoying snack and a conversation. The "Snack Table" is an important place to practice social skills as well as get something good to eat.












Here are two girls enjoying a sweet moment in the book corner.









"Sandpaper Letter" work makes the connection between how the letter looks and what sound it makes. Tracing the letters also prepares the hand for writing.














Another work that prepares for writing is here with the "Metal Insets". By carefully tracing the shape stencils and filling in with controlled lines, the fine muscles in the hand develop.









The photo above shows one of the early math works that comes after the numerals 1-10 are well known. He is ordering a series of "Bead Bars" called the "Colored Bead Stair". He will match each bar with the corresponding numeral tag and then color each bar in his booklet and write the numeral.






These older boys have very proudly completed one of the milestone works in the math curriculum, the "Thousand Chain". They have a chain consisting of 100 bead bars of 10 beads each. They have matched tags to each bead bar of 10 with a label of 10, 20, 30,.....110, 230,...etc. all the way up to 1000. As you can imagine, this was a very big work that took two afternoons to complete. Congratulations!





I realize that you will not see each and every child in this collection of photos but I hope that as I get a chance to catch more at their work, you soon will.

If you do NOT want your child's face to appear on the my blog (which is public), just let me know and I will not include his or her photo. I can also pay attention to how I take the picture so that recognizable faces do not show.
You can get an invitation to view my HIH album on Snapfish.com by emailing me at arnol005@umn.edu and asking. I will send you a message that gives you access to my album and there you can order prints.