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.

 

Stone Soup - 2021

"Bring what you've got! Put it in the pot! We're making Stone Soup."

Our classroom focused on the version written by Heather Forest and illustrated by Susan Gaber; however, there are many versions of Stone Soup, all of which teach the lesson of how each of us is significant and, no matter the size of the contribution, when we come together, we create a healthier, happier community.

The children worked hard to churn heavy cream into butter, which we enjoyed during our feast.

Not only did the children contribute items for the soup, they worked on their cutting skills and did a wonderful job!

Along with the many different versions of Stone Soup, I read to the children, each day, Giving Thanks: A Native American Good Morning Message by Chief Jake Swamp. 

Every individual has something to offer a community; when we come together, we create a community worth celebrating. 

We have so much for which to feel thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Dodecagon Turkeys

Inspired by the Indian traditional art of rangoli, the children have been working with manipulatives, such as tangrams, to create beautiful designs using patterns to build different shapes, such as dodecagons. 

These beautiful displays overlapped with our conversations about Thanksgiving and the tom turkey, who uses his display to attract a mate. Here is one of our Rangoli inspired dodecagon turkeys! 

Of course, there's also the old tradition of hand-traced turkeys this time of year, but we like to take those up a notch, too. 

The children's hands have been quite busy increasing focus, concentration, and fine motor strength!

Of course, we had to weave in some feathers to showcase the turkey displays. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Tomato Update

If you are following our tomato experiment, the picture below shows the latest progress. So far, the children have observed that, while batch one sits in the window and batch two is in a box with a banana and no sunlight, they seem to be releasing lycopene at a similar rate. What do you think?

batch one

batch two

 

Harvest Festival (Halloween Party)

For our harvest festival, the children enjoyed a bean bin scavenger hunt with flashlights...

fine motor building ghost cutting...

and they absolutely loved creating their own apple rings with a variety of toppings, prepared for them by our fabulous room parent -thank you!

The children also enjoyed an excellent fine-motor building math work - 16 beads per stem times 8 (how many beads, total?!) - which turned out to be a fabulous pumpkin decoration.

 Happy Autumn!