Connecting to past learning - from dinosaurs to glaciers

 Earlier this year we did a unit on Dinosaurs (go back through our blog to refresh your memory on paleontology).  During the second semester we are connecting what we are learning now to what we learned earlier this year.  One example is our unit on icebergs and glaciers.  The children created their own glaciers and icebergs out of the abundance of snow  during the January snowstorms.  During the process of freezing and melting the snow each day some of the animals they were playing with in the sensory table became frozen in the iceberg.  Some of the children made the connection to the dinosaur unit back in November in the following way.  Dinosaur bones became trapped in rocks.  The Arctic animals they were playing with became trapped in the ice in the sensory table.  People who tried to get bones out of the ground or ice are called archaeologist.  The children remembered that they were being archaeologist when they started digging the play animals out of the ice in the sensory table.

 They connected their current play to their past play.  This is called LEARNING!  And this critical type of learning cannot be achieved without hands-on, child-directed play. 

You will see more and more play experiences during the second semester that connects current play to past play creating more concrete and long term learning.

These children are excavating, using their tools, chiseling through the frozen ice trying to free the frozen animals from the glaciers.  The students are developing fine motor skills, strengthening their hands for proper grip on writing utensils,  working together as a team to remove the ice, problem solving  how to remove the hard ice without using warm water, how to negotiate space and take turns, using their vocabulary, and most importantly, using their past knowledge learned during our dinosaur unit and applying that knowledge to thier current play in the sensory table.

What animals are frozen in the icy waters?  Which ones are mammals?  Do they get cold?  Why?  Why not?  What keeps animals from getting cold in the icy water?  Make sure you ask good open-ended questions and not just yes and no questions.  You might be amazed what the children will teach you!



Now the children wanted to create their own glaciers and icebergs.  Needless to say, Ms. Sarah, Ms. Nancy and Ms. Carole Dawn spent a lot of time bringing in snow from outside so our young scientists/meteorologists could create their own glacier.  Some of the students even created their own land masses.  Maybe we will have to teach the children about places like Iceland and Greenland and put up maps that show cold places like Antartica.



These students created several glaciers and noticed that rivers formed between them.  Next they wanted to create boats to navigate between the glaciers.  With this activity the students showed an interest and an acuity toward understanding land formations, waterways and how people travel by land and water.  This is one of the most critical ways we find out what the children are interested in and how we can create activities that spark their imaginations.

More cool October activities

I wanted to share a few more pictures of some of the activities we did during October.  The first activity was just too much fun.  The children learned about gravity, stickiness, the concepts of up and down, and practiced problem solving when they were asked open-ended questions like  "how can we get the skeletons up onto the ceiling?" and "how can we get the skeletons down from the ceiling?"

What is that on the ceiling of our classroom and how did it get there?  How does it stay there?

Oh, they are sticky skeletons!  How do we get them down?

  The next activity used yet another pumpkin from our Daniels Farm field trip.  The children strengthened their fine motor skills by hammering golf tees into the pumpkin.  They had to increase their hand-eye cordination to successfully complete this task. 

The big pumpkin and the hammers.

Decorating pumpkins was a fun activity.  We carved pumpkins.  We colored on pumpkins with washable markers, wiped them off and colored on them some more.  We put stickers on the pumpkins.  But one of the most fun ways we decorated a pumpkin this year was by adding beads, wires and pipecleaners to the pumpkin.  The children said the pumpkin looked like it had crazy hair.  How was this learning?  The children learned many different things during this activity.  Some children sorted the beads by size, some by color, some patterned the beads on the wire (such as green, blue, green, blue) which are all math skills.  Some children counted the number of beads they could fit onto the pipecleaners.  Some children worked together, passing the bowls of beads back and forth to their friends, taking turns, helping each other find particular colors, shapes and sizes of beads (interpersonal, social and problem solving skills).  Language skills, vocabulary and descriptive words were used abundantly during this activity.  Fine moter skills were practiced when the children had to string very small beads onto the wires.  The children were developing their appreciation for art by creating a three demensional sculpture.

The last activity I want to share with you in this post is an activity we used in the block area.  We bought two packages of plastic cups.  We placed them on the shelves with the blocks.  The children attacked them!  We built with them for a week solid.  They had so much fun with them that we are going to leave them there for several more weeks.  We are also going to explore with different styles, shapes, sizes and materials (such as paper cups and styrofoam cups) for building over the school year.  The children first started building with the teachers, then they became confident and started building with each other and by themselves.  They turned the cups over, built castles they could climb into and then found different ways to knock these structures down.  Durning these activities the children learn about balance, structural support, shapes, team work, problem solving, thinking ahead, pre-planning, trying again if something doesn't work out as planned, hand-eye cordination, fine motor practice, concepts such as length, width, tall, short, big, small and long.

Here the children are exploring how to stack the cups in traditional and nontraditional ways.  Some have stacked the cups one into another, some have stacked the cups by stacking the bottom of one cup on top of the bottom of another cup.  They are learning to think in multiply demensions which is critical for higher level math.

The children worked with the teachers and their classmates to create this tall tower.  We learned that this shape is called a pyramid.  It looks like a triangle.  We also realized we could have made a pattern with the colors.

This was the most fun part, knocking the whole thing down! CRASH!

The First Week

I am uploading a few pictures to show you some of the activities the children participated in the first three days of school.  I will add much more content to the blog in the following weeks including links contacts to the staff of room 411.  Enjoy!

Reading with a friend, learning to turn pages left to right, context clues, taking turns

Building with blocks, creating bridges and towers, using their imagination

Getting ready write letters, names and words, learning how to correctly hold a pen/crayon/pencil, forming lines and squiggles

Painting, fine motor development for learning to hold a pencil, patterning and ordering objects

Developing large muscle strength and cordination.

Jumping in puddles after a big rain!

Discovering our shadows, learning about the sun, clouds, weather and water

Discovering nature, water displacement, observing changes in the natural environment