A Month in Review

January 2022 

With the transition to Winter came much needed rain here in the bay area and lots of fresh snow up in the mountains. So we brought the frigid fun indoors here at Pillar Kids. We’ve had lots of fun learning about the water cycle and winter weather for the first half of the month. From there we explored the way in which some animals hunker down for the winter to hibernate, and how in other areas like the arctic, animals come out to play!

New Skills 

Early Literacy

Some of our most loved activities this past month involved our forest animal, penguin, and polar bear figurines. The kids loved using them for pretend play and acting out some of our favorite stories about slumbering bears and daredevil penguins (see “Currently Reading” list for titles & authors). We built dens out of blocks for our forest animals and our penguins swam through the blue waters of our water table with some friendly sea creatures! Acting out stories helps draw kids attention to key details in a text like characters, setting, and major events or conflicts. Building these skills in early childhood not only makes reading fun, but also prepares kids for kindergarten where they will be asked to identify details and retell stories as they learn to read.

Counting & Cardinality

We have also been building our math skills here at Pillar Kids, in particular our counting and measurement skills. We have been using our math manipulative cubes to compare and contrast the height and width of objects in the classroom and of each other! Clicking our manipulative cubes together to make measuring sticks also works to strengthen fine motor skills. We work together to build the measuring stick as long as our object or person and then count the total number of cubes.

Currently Reading…

• “Bear Snores” on by Karma Wilson 
• “Archie the Daredevil Penguin” by Andy Rash 
• “Penguins Love Colors” by Sarah Aspinall 
• “Rain!” by Linda Ashman 
• “The Luckiest Snowball” by Ellior Kreloff