Jumping Jelly Beans!

Today we painted with jumping wind up Jelly Beans and Easter Eggs.  The children focused on fine motor skills, taking turns, mixing colors, color identification and vocabulary expansion.  They had so much fun watching the Jelly Beans jump across the paper!  They were able to explore the what happened when the Jelly Beans jumped through thin paint and thick paint.  They also made circle prints with plastic eggs and used fine paint brushes to paint with the remaining paint.  Enjoy watching the video!

How To Make Duck Soup

This was the book we used for our Friendship Feast in late February.  The children loved this story and we highly recommend it!  It is all about a duck named Max and how his friends help save him from his own soup.  Have the children look at this cover and see how much of the story they can tell you.  This is a great activity for helping them build their long term memory, remembering story details, characters, setting, story sequencing, events, plot and increasing the general love of reading. It helps if you read the book first so you can help them recall the story and the sequence of events.  The following pictures show you how they made their own soup for their Friendship Feast. 

 No ducks were harmed in the making of this soup!





The children cut the potato's with plastic knives after the teachers cut the potato's into smaller pieces.  The children were closely supervised.  This was a great fine motor activity and helped them build the small muscles in their hands that they will need to grasp writing utensils properly so they can form letters and words.





We also did a science experiment with onions.  We cut them on the table and they made us cry!   We talked about the gas that was released into the air when we cut open the onion.  Then we cut the onion under water (we filled up a dish pan with water to do this) and we did not cry.  When you cut an onion under water it diffuses the gas and it does not reach your eyes and your eyes do not get irritated.

 




We took turn adding ingredients.





Everyone adds a little bit of love to the soup.

 

We asked what Max would add to his soup so the children would have to refer back to the book and take previous learning (from the book) and apply it to current learning (making the soup).  This is how long term neural pathways are formed in the brain.  Children need numerous opportunities to reapply previously gained knowledge to current activities for learning to be meaningful and relevant.



Oh-la-la!  The soup!  (They say Oh-la-la in the book so we said it too!)




Watch out MAX!  Don't eat the duck!

 

The children set the table for their friends in the afternoon class and added Ms. Beth's ducks to the soup.  Thank you Ms. Beth for letting us borrow your little ducks.  We thought they were funny.

 



We had children that normally would not even try a vegetable try the soup.  Some loved it, some did not like it, but they all tried it.  We think it was because they got to make it.  They were invested in the process.  The activity was more like an art activity than a cooking activity.   The more involved a child can become in an activity like cooking a new food, the more likely they are to try something new.  We all had a great time with this book, with this activity and with each other.  We hope you enjoyed looking at these pictures and talking with your children about this experience.  Feel free to write down their reflections on these pictures and send them to us in an email or in their backpack so we can add it to their portfolio and use their reflections to help us plan further lessons.



The Amazing Milk Magic Trick

Today we did a really cool milk experiment.  We video taped it so you could do it at home with your child.  It is simple and so much fun!  It is also an art project.  I am posting the video and the pictures for your enjoyment.  Let me know if you do this at home.  This is a great project for one of the rainy days when you are stuck inside this spring.

After we finished showing the children how to do the experiment we let the children perform the experiment themselves.  They each got their own pan and filled it half way full with milk.  The practiced their fine motor skills by squeezing one or two drops of food coloring into the milk and just one drop of dish soap into the center of the food coloring.  They then used their toothpicks to make swirls and lines through the food coloring.  They also dropped more plain milk into the swirls of food coloring to see if anything would change.  Below are the pictures of the process and the results.  The children were so involved and the experiment lasted almost 45 minutes.  Who ever said children had short attention spans?  It just depends on how interesting and relevant the project is and how involved they are allowed to be in the process.

Carefully adding a drop of blue food coloring into the pan of milk.

The food coloring immediately separates and flows to the sides of the pan when the dish soap comes into contact with the milk and food coloring.  The concepts of chemical reactions and surface tension are introduced in this activity.

Each child was able to do their own lab experiment.  Children need early exposure to math and science and they need to experience science in a way that is hands-on, fun, magical and fascinating in order to create a life long interest in the math and science arts.  This early exposure to lab experiences and science vocabulary is crucial to creating students who enjoy and not dread taking math and science classes in middle and high school.

Ta DA!  Magic.  The star pattern appears as the soap hits the milk and food coloring.

Now the children are adding additional drops of food coloring after the initial experiment had been completed.  The new drops no longer scatter when the dish soap is added.  Now the colors just merge and swirl.

Milk art.  Now our science experiment is becoming an art project.  Many times art and science are interrelated.  This is way it is critical that art programs remain in school programs.  Children become much more involved in scientific concepts when presented in artistic presentations, such as mixing different colors, different textures, solids, structures, sounds.  As we erase the arts we also erase math, language and science proficiency.

The children used vocabulary words like swirly, layers, mixing, yucky, cool, crazy, combining, coming together, floating, spreading out, moving and many more as they watched the changes as they added, stirred and mixed the colors.

The more we mixed, the more complex the patterns became.

One child said this looked like a storm cloud.  Making these types of comparisons shows the development of higher level thinking and shows that the child is assigning meaning to their art.

The children spent a lot of time trying to find pictures in their milk art.  Some saw rainbows, waves, flowers, hearts, butterflies, blood, chocolate milk, clouds, lines, and roads just to name a few.

What do you see when you look at this picture?  What can you do with a pan of milk, some food coloring, a few toothpicks and some dish soap?  How long can you play with your child, have a conversation, laugh, expand their vocabulary, ask open-ended question, have fun, connect and just enjoy each other's company?  I dare you to play in your milk!  And don't worry if you spill some, we did!

The blue tornado experiment and video

Ms. Sarah found a way to make a tornado by using milk (which we added a few drops of blue food coloring to for this video) and water.  You can recreate this experiment at home by following the steps illustrated by Ms. Sarah in this video.  She used one of the droppers you use to give medicine to an infant or toddler.  It is very easy and as you can tell by the children's reactions, very exciting.  This experiment causes the children to use the process of scientific reasoning to figure out how the tornado works.  Vocabulary used after this experiment was done included words like vortex, circular, uplift, swirling and spinning.  The children also expanded on the activity by trying to recreate the experiment by placing the milk at the top of the container to see if the results would be the same.  They made their hypothesis and tested them.  The children were also encouraged to do this experiment without the teachers help to see if they could recreate the results.  The act of squeezing the bulb, controlling the flow of milk and placing the milk carefully at the bottom of the container took a large amount of concentration and fine motor control.  The children also had to wait patiently for their turn and negotiate who would be first and if they would work together.  And they thought they were just playing in milk and water!  Enjoy the video and let us know how the experiment works at your home.  Take your own video and send it to us.  If you don't video your child's face we will post it on our classroom blog.



snow and ice

We hope you all survived the snow and ice January has brought us!  Sorry I haven't posted since the Ronald McDonald House Event.  The snow and ice have put me a little behind to, not to mention the holidays!  Some of December and January will be mixed in together for the next couple of posts until I can get caught up so bear with me.  For this post I am posting about what we did today taking advantage of the snow and ice.  Here are a few pictures of the students doing some snow painting.  I am also including some pictures of the children doing some ice painting  last week before the snow days (who knew we would have the real thing happening?).  Enjoy!  Come back often.  I have a lot of catching up to do so I will be adding a lot of posts over the next few weeks.

In this picture dried tempra paint was put on paper and the children used frozen water to "paint" their pictures! 

The children learn how to blend colors and practice their pincer grip for writing.

This is a great snowy day activity to do at home.  Just freeze some ice cubes, add water color or regular paint (may I recommend the washable kind!) and let the children go crazy.  You may even want to join in the fun.

We had some water color paint left over from spray painting snow last week and wondered what we could do with it.  We brought some of the snow in from outside and placed it into the sensory table.  We placed large and small paint brushes in the table with the water color paint and waited to see what the children would create.

A blue snowman!



The children realized that this snow was different from the snow we played with last week.  This snow was "heavier" and "stuck together" better.  Some made snowballs.  Some of the students went and got their gloves and mittens out of their cubbies because their hands got cold but they didn't want to stop playing.  What great problem solvers!



Working together.  Playing collaboratively meaning to play interactively, not just side-by-side.  These two students are talking back and forth, working together to create a picture together, discussing what colors to use, how to take turns and who should paint where.  They were using lots of social and descriptive language.

Again, next time their is a snow day, fill up the bath tub or sink with snow, color some water with food coloring (watch out though, it will stain) or water down some paint, get out some paint brushes and let your child(ren) paint a masterpiece.  Better yet, paint with them.  Build sculptures inside or outside and paint them.  Don't forget to take a picture and send it into school with them so they can tell us all about it.  Believe it or not, this is where the real learning takes place.  It is not just play.  Size, shape, colors, number, language, sharing, taking turns, working together, problem solving and just plain having fun and making memories all are vital to your child's long term development.

In the afternoon class one of the other teachers gave them some ice cycles to examine.  Even though our lesson plans didn't have ice cycles in them the kids taught us a thing or two!  They put them in the sensory table and started painting them with the water color paint.  They turned into beautiful works of 3-D art!

One thing we have learned as teachers, always listen to the children.  They see the world in ways that we have forgotten as adults.  They saw the ice cycles as something different than just plain old frozen water dripping off the building.  They saw them as dazzling, magical and amazing objects to be painted, explored and manipulated into something new and even more beautiful than they were before.  I think that is why we love our jobs so much, we get to see the world fresh and new each day again, and not the way we are taught to see it as adults.  See the snow and ice as the children do.  Glittering.  Soft.  Fun.  Cold.  Yummy.  Not as we are taught to see it as adults.  Inconvenient.  Annoying.  Difficult.  Sometimes just changing your perspective can bring about joy in places you forgot it existed..

So, until next time, try to find a little fun in the snow.  It will be gone soon and before you know it the days will be long again and we will be in shorts and it will be 100 degrees outside and we will be wishing we would have enjoyed the snow while it was here.  With that said, drive safely.

Digging for Dinosaurs

The children got to learn about paleontology this last week.  We created some plaster of paris rocks from them to excavate (special thanks to Leah's father for donating the plaster of paris for us).  We placed dinosaurs, dinosaur bones (found at the dollar store), rocks and shells into the wet plaster and let it harden.  We then placed the rocks out on trays for the children along with hammers, screwdrivers, toothpicks, chisels, paintbrushes and toothbrushes so the student's could get to work.  The kids had a great time unearthing the treasures buried deep in the rock.  It took all week long but finally ever dinosaur was freed.

This fossil was left behind after one of the students freed a dinosaur from it's rocky enclosure.