Spring Conference

Spring Conference was last Friday and boy did we learn a lot!  All Academy teachers (over 320!) went down to our Thompson's Station location for a day full of training.  We had AMAZING speakers that totally re-energized our teachers and got them ready for a fun summer program.  The theme was GLOW (Gusto, Loyalty, Ownership and Work Ethic).  We talked about customer service, "who does that", process vs. product art, "Gettin' Loose with Mother Goose", and many more topics! 

 GLOW party!

 Kindergarten Boot Camp Training

 AoCS teachers representing!

 Staff incentive game of Deal or No Deal!

 Branches Ministries made an appearance.

 Crazy Taneshia showing her baby bump GLOW!

 Process vs. Product art training with Lisa Maddox Vinson.

 Never Grow Up!

 Puppet play training!

 The Academy of Cool Springs!  Ready to learn!

 "Gettin' Loose with Mother Goose" with Mary Jo Huff

 Customer service training with Dennis Vicars

Ramp Investigations

The children in Pre-K Two turned into investigators during shape month.  First, Ms. Robin and Ms. Kristen had them find objects around the room with different shapes.  They then put each shape into different categories - circles with circles, squares with squares, and so on. Before we started our investigation children predicted the outcomes and developed their hypothesis. After our guessing was complete, children explored each option and how it went down the ramp.  Some objects were slow, some were fast!  Some objects wouldn't even move down the ramp so we had to put other, heavier objects behind it to push it along.  The kids were so excited to find out the spheres were the fastest down the ramp! After the investigation, the children drew their account of what happened.  Here are a couple of pictures from our ramp/shape project investigation.

 Testing the objects.

Drawing the ramp and making our guesses.

Human Triangles!

We are learning about shapes in all different ways. Check out Preschool Two as human triangles!

Infant Cuties

Hello from some of our sweeties in Infant One as they read books, enjoy bubbles, and play with our water sensory mat.  We have such happy and sweet babies here at AoCS.  We are busy bees in this class.  Ms. Lina and Ms. Roxanne gives us lots of opportunities for play and learning.

 Play time with friends!

 Sensory play is so fun!

 Bubbles!

Just doing a little reading.

Shape Show-and-Tell, Square Suncatchers from Preschool Two

Yesterday the kids of AoCS had a special show-and-tell, shape edition.  They all brought items from home to teach their fellow classmates about it's shape.  The highest form of knowledge is being able to teach it yourself!  So we gave the kids a chance to be the teacher for a bit.

 A rectangle train!

 A round ball.

 

 Another rectangle train!

 A round sand bucket with shapes inside!

 A round helmet.

 A round baseball.

 A shape sorter!

We also made square sun catchers.  We used clear contact paper and colorful square tissue pieces to make our art.  Each one is uniquely beautiful and we love seeing the light come through the different colored squares.

Preschool One, Circles and Squares

Preschool One is loving shape month.  They've played with circles outside and made beautiful square art inside.

Shape Snack

Check out Pre-K Two making squares and triangles out of their afternoon snack.  It was a fun, and yummy, way to learn!

Mud Day 2015!

It's our favorite time of the year...MUD DAY!!!  Every Spring we grab some mud and get MESSY!  Mud is a great sensory tool for the children to explore.  We made mud pies in wet mud and planted flowers in drier mud.  Ms. Kristen let her kids get extra muddy when they took off their shoes and walked in the mud.  They said it was cold on their toes!  Later that afternoon we ATE MUD with WORMS!  Well, chocolate pudding disguised as mud.  We love mud day and we hope you love our mud day pictures.