A Window into Our Classroom: January 2026
We have loved sharing this first month of the new year with all of the children. Coming back after a two-week break was a big deal for our friends, and as they’ve explored new materials and cozy corners, they have settled back into their routines and joyful play. We are noticing so much progress in the children’s collaborative skills, and they seem confident and happy to be back at school!
Memorable Highlights
This month in the classroom, we began exploring the wonderful world of food. With the holiday season comes a lot of food-centered traditions
We brought food into our art, play, learning, and conversations. We sorted food into groups using cutouts from food magazines, using cognitive and math skills while recognizing visual patterns in food. We added play-fruits to our sensory sand bin and saw many children sorting fruits, or using sifters to sprinkle sand over the fruits. We brought coffee cups, sushi trays, and real (empty) food containers into our dramatic play area, and adjusted it to have a bigger “pantry space.” There has been lots of pretend mixing, cooking, pouring, grocery shopping, and order-taking! Their pretend play world has become rich with creativity, ingenuity, and a creative use of the materials provided.
We guided a few “still life” courses by asking children questions like “what shape do you see when you look at the apple?” or “What color does the pear look like to you?” Some children really focused on observing the fruit and trying to render that reality though paint. The results were varied, and truly wonderful. We also painted with food! We used cut apples to make prints, and we smashed berries on paper with mallets but we made the executive decision not to send those experiential art projects home. Last week we had a very fun day when teacher Jenny brought in beets and beet juice and we all got to taste a cooked beet and some beet juice before we used the beet juice to paint. We did the same with spinach, we tasted a spinach leaf, then we blended it up and tasted the spinach puree before we used that to paint with too! This week, teacher Ana’s donut shoppe was bustling as the kids made fancy donuts with sparkly sprinkles - they loved it so much we did it twice!
We had lots of other little projects as well - we have planted beans (hanging on our window), one set is in plain water, one set is in sugar water, and one set is in salt water. We all guessed which one we thought would grow the fastest …what do you think? Come check your answer in class next week! We all shared our favorite foods and made a favorite food bingo game that our teachers are trying to teach the children to play the actual bingo game rather than talking about the foods (although that is always fun to talk about). Today we brought in another sense and we had a little smell-fest with things like coffee (which they almost all recognized), garlic, cloves, ginger, nutmeg and so on.
It occurred to us that most of you probably don’t hear the same meal-time conversations that we hear at school. First of all - you are all gold-star lunch makers. The children come with an impressive variety of healthy foods, and they love comparing their lunches and talking about who has what, if they have the same things (that is always very exciting! “You have strawberries?! I have strawberries too!”). We also place photo cards with their names every day for lunch so they get to talk to different friends every day. It’s a lively, engaged time that reminds us of the importance of sharing a table and connecting over food, at every age.
SOME QUOTES ABOUT FOOD:
“I love bacon” - Eisley
“Take this one cause it’s bacon and you love bacon” - Sloane
“Cucumber is a vegetable!” - Eisley
“I’m making cupcakes for my turtle that loves cupcakes” - Sloane
“Daddy made noodles!” - Dutch
“The cookies that are GF”- Grace
“Does anyone want popcorn?”- Eisley
“What’s your order?”- Arthur
“Look at my chocolate donut!” - Tommy
“Who wants a cookie? What do you want?”-Sylvie
“I like pasta. Nom nom.”-Lucia
STONE SOUP
This month, the children took part in making a communal soup! Teacher Ana introduced the soup in our afternoon circle time, and the children took turns placing a sticker with their name on it next to the ingredient they wanted to bring. Thanks to your generosity (and attentiveness to the soup recipe in the mudroom), we were able to make a huge amount of vegetable soup!
The children chopped vegetables in the morning, strentgehning fine motor skills and sense of independence. We saw some children very confident in their chopping skills, and others handling a cutting tool for the first time! For the rest of the day, the classroom smelled amazing as we simmered the soup in our slow cooker.
We served the soup for afternoon snack with a drizzle of cream. Although most didn’t love the vegetable soup (it was beige, after all), many children were brave enough to try it and a few of them even asked for seconds!
Larger-scale cooking projects like this foster a sense of community and collaboration and make each child feel like they are contributing something important. You never know where our next great chef will come from, and it just may be First Friends!
SOME QUOTES ABOUT OUR STONE SOUP:
“I brought the peas!” - Dylan
“I love peas and corn” - Eisley
“It tastes like olive oil” - Arthur
“It tastes like peas!” - Dylan
“It taste like onion” - Sylvie
“It tastes like soup!” - Winter; “that’s what we just made!” - Dylan
“Let’s make real soup next time!” - Arthur
FIRST FRIENDS RECIPES
We have been busy behind the scenes putting the finishing touches on our first school recipe book. We have all enjoyed talking about our favorite foods, what a recipe is, how recipes are written, what all those measuring cups and spoons are for, and all the joy of cooking . We think you’ll enjoy their recipe contributions as well!
We have also put your little ones to work illustrating said recipe book, and we’re eager to share our hard work. We are waiting on a few family recipes so let’s see if we can get those in and get this masterpiece to the presses next week!
OTHER INTERESTS THIS MONTH
We have been loving, and getting very good at, cutting with scissors. Coming up soon - cutting challenges to get them excited and develop those hand muscles!
Numbers! The three numberblock amigos (should I say who?) have everyone seriously into numeracy. They have been leading the way as all the children have been counting things, making patterns with manipulatives, adding numbers, writing numbers (in some very cool ways), playing number bingo, making models of the Number Block characters, and more! Recently the flamingos re-wrote all the numbers for our calendar (after the set it came with went missing) and will get to do it again when these ones go missing! Some skills you may be seeing include counting to ten or beyond, one-to-one correspondence, “counting on” from a number, subitizing (recognizing small numbers of items without counting), writing numbers or symbols representing numbers and more.
Books We Loved
The Gigantic Turnip by Alekei Tolstoy & Niamh
Mara Plants a Seed by Robert Furrow
The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter
Just Like My Family by Ashley Molesso and Chess Needham
Pete’s a Pizza by William Steig
Pout Pout Fish by Elise Allen
Sweet Dream Pie by Audrey Wood
Fix it Familia by Lucky Diaz
Songs we Sang
Tooty-Ta
Donut Shop
Counting Blackbird
Emotions Itsy Bitsy Spider
I like to eat apples & bananas
Jump Into the Circle
The More We Come Together
On Top of Spaghetti
Birthdays We Celebrated
Brooks-3 years old
Eisley-4 years old
Sloane-4 years old
Cooperative and Collaborative Play
As we move into the second semester, we are noticing a beautiful shift in the classroom. Many children are moving from parallel and associative play into more collaborative and cooperative play. This is a big developmental milestone.
In the early stages, children often play side by side or with similar materials, gradually beginning to share ideas and materials with peers. Recently we are seeing children plan together, negotiate roles, solve problems as a group, and build shared stories and structures. This type of play lays the foundation for future skills like teamwork, communication, perspective taking, and flexible problem solving. It also supports relational thinking, understanding how their ideas connect with others’ ideas, and the beginnings of empathy, leadership, and collective creativity.
Cooperative play is important not just for social development, but also for future academic and life tasks that require collaboration, listening, focus, regulation and working toward a shared goal.
In the classroom, we have seen this come alive in many of our activities-
Block Building:
Block building naturally invites collaborative and cooperative play and there was a special moment where a group of friends worked together to build a tall structure that they needed to “decorate” using many of the materials in our block building area. First Winter & Dutch started with the brown stairs & pink tower to create a symmetrical tower. Next, Brooks joined in and said “this one matches”. Soon many children joined and started working together to create ramps & slides for the animals and add decorative touches. They were sharing ideas, negotiating space, communicating plans, with the shared goal of creating a large house.
In another scenario, Levi was building a house with the diplos (larger legos). Sloane said, “Can I play with you?” and Levi responded, “Yes.” Dylan joined and said, “Can I have a turn with that?” and then Jude joined and said “Pretend this is where the lions goes”. This scenario shows how the children invited one another into the activity, shared materials, and co-created an idea. Levi welcomed peers into his project, Dylan negotiated a turn with materials, and Jude contributed an imaginative idea that expanded the storyline. Together, they were building not just a structure, but a collective plan and narrative, practicing communication, flexibility, and shared problem solving. We love it!
Playdoh Gardens:
We put out some open ended materials for the children to explore - flowers and play doh. The children began to stick the flowers into the play doh to make gardens. Sylvie said, “I’m making a garden”. Sequoia heard the excitement and ran over to the table and said, “Can I help you?” and Dylan replied, “Yes! We are making a garden come sit here.” Soon, the entire table of children was working together, growing their gardens side by side and sharing ideas and materials.
Obstacle Course:
We have many materials in our outdoor space that naturally support collaborative learning. Tommy, Sammy, and Porter began making ABA (red blue red) patterns using our plastic bins as stepping stones for an obstacle course. Dylan and Miko were inspired and joined them, grabbing bins and lining them up alongside the others. Teacher Mo helped the children think critically about their design by asking, “Should we have the bins on the cement where it’s more slippery or down on the woodchips?” The children discussed this and decided to move their bins onto the woodchips for a sturdier and safer foundation.
Soon, many of the children began adding milk crates and chairs to extend the obstacle course all the way around the play structure. As the course grew, the children had to problem solve, wait patiently for the friend in front of them to take a turn, negotiate space, share ideas, and decide together which direction they wanted to walk. Sky said, “I want to go on the obstacle course!” It was wonderful to see them feeling inspired, constructing a shared plan and supporting one another through the challenge! While cooperation and collaboration happen in small moments and groups throughout the day everyday, this was one of the largest, most epic child led collaborative experiences this year!
Overheard at First Friends
A collection of our favorite quotes of the month-
“Proud means getting apples off the tallest branch of the tree” - Tommy
“Miko, do you have any pets?” “I have kaiyas” - Miko
“Jude, what’s your frog’s name?” (Looking at me like I am crazy) “it doesn’t have a name, it’s made out of legos” - Jude
“Teacher Ana, I’m never tired” - Dylan
“I don’t wanna grow up. I wanna be a kid forever” - Winter
“Later today I’m going to a house with tigers and LAVA. It is in South Carolina. It also has sea turtles.” - Arthur
“I put my jacket on my own self” - Kiran
“I saw an iguana in Antarctica” - Freya
“Oh biscuits!!!!” - Arthur, when frustrated
“My granny is the best at reading books” - Kiran
“We both have tongues” -Brooks
“I’m feeding the baby cow”-Tommy about giving Porter a bottle
“I’m 25,100”-Sammy
“Look at me teacher!”-Eloise
