Pre-K PE

Coach asked: What is white, comes around when it snows, and goes away when it warms up? A SNOWMAN!!! In PE, we took a break from working on our basketball skills and designed snow people, which was an opportunity for creative building and team work. The children were asked to use PE equipment to build their people. They had so much fun, they wanted to build more than one! 

(and so... they did!)

Here's one with a bow!

 

Build a Menorah STEM Challenge

In the center of the room, I placed a menorah. I asked the children, what do you see? 

DW- it has a rectangle on the bottom. It might fall over if it didn’t have it.

MT- It has a vertical line in the middle.

LW- It has fire holes. It has clay in the holes and then you light the fire. I saw two pieces of clay. It has one orange and one purple.

DW- There are curved lines. There are 8.

EW- There are 9 cups.

After reading about Hanukkah and the Hanukkah menorah, the children were given a STEM challenge to build a menorah. Here is some of what they built, as well as our continued conversation about this remembrance and festival of light. 

Before placing the candles in the menorah, I asked the children, what do you think belongs in the "fire holes?" 

EW- It has black strings and 9 of them that you light the fire on.

LW- You put fire and clay.

We learned through reading several books about Hanukkah that candles belong in the menorah and I asked, what are candles and from what material are they made?

EW- Candles are made out of clay.
DW- Bricks.
LW- Wax.

After reading several books, I placed the shammas and the first candle in the menorah and asked the children, why do you think I only put two candles in the menorah?

DW- So the school doesn’t light on fire.
LW- Because you only have two candles.
LW- Because you don’t have enough clay.

To end our focus on Hanukkah, we lit the menorah, listened to traditional music, and ate latkes and applesauce and read the story Latkes And Applesauce: A Hanukkah Story by Fran Manushkin.