see you back in August!

We finished up an exciting theme exploring water/oceans and change.

Thank you parents for allowing me to be your child's teacher. It was a joy to watch their wonder when the blue bead floated in the salt water, or to see them filled with amazement when their sea creatures grew in the water. In science, they learned about states of matter, reversible change and buoyancy. In art, they practiced using the whole canvas, painting with paint brushes on an easel and stamping. In Math, we practice one to one number correspondence (1-6), writing the numbers, working on a variety of puzzles, and even geometric tangrams. In Reading we learned phonics s, a, m, p, t, n. We also started BOB books pre-readers. We read many stories including Commotion in the Ocean, Rainbow Fish, Max the Minnow and a nonfiction kids Ocean book. We sang the Slippery Fish song, Row your Boat and clapped in the Sailor Went to Sea song. In writing, we worked on stencils, tracing letters and even writing in the sand and pouring beans. We also worked on days of the week, saying the date and a morning message. We sang in Spanish our Hola Amigo song. We practiced our ABC / ASL phonic chant. We practiced, balancing, catching, landing and jumping on 2 feet and other motor skills.

We practiced raising our hands, lining up in a straight line, washing our hands before we eat, serving ourself our own snack and pouring our own drink (and even clearing our place!).

I look forward to our year starting back up in August!!!

Outside Playtime

Every class we have a structured outside time. During this time, I have a perceptual motor skills curriculum. These are basically skills that are age appropriate that children can learn to enhance coordination. A few examples of specific skills we worked on this week were catching a ball using hands and not your body and jumping from and landing on 2 feet. Sometimes we teach concepts, like moving across the grass forwards and "in reverse" to help understand the concept of reversible change. Or moving with holding hands, like a liquid; moving all over the grass like a gas, or not moving at all huddled close together like the solid molecules of ice. we also learn group games - like when we played "Octopus, octopus, may we cross your ocean?"

We also have a short free play time. Children may play on the swing set, dig in the sandbox, scooter around the path, pedal around on the big wheels, jump individually on my small trampoline, play with the megablocks, or even write with chalk or play with bubbles.

Exploring Buoyancy - will it float?

Last week, we discovered adding salt to water can affect buoyancy and even make a blue bead that sunk in water float in salt water.

This week, we explored clay. Could we make it float? If we did not change the water, was there a way to change the object to make it float?

Students saw the clay sink to the bottom. Then they were asked to test out if they could make it sink. One clever student said "float like a boat." Another tried to flatten the clay to make it float. Others surprised me with their determination, breaking the clay into little bits to see if maybe smaller pieces would float. Another wowed me with her imagination, deciding maybe her clay was a submarine and therefore at the bottom of the ocean.

I demonstrated then how to flatten my clay, make edges pinching corners and then carefully placed my clay in the water. It DID float. Students eagerly returned to work on making their own boats of clay float on the water. One child further tested her boat's buoyancy by placing a few pieces of clay in her boat to see if the extra weight would make it sink.

It was so much fun to see the children very engaged in the activity. Hopefully in the end, they learned a little bit about buoyancy.