What A Week !!!

Where did we get this giant gourd? What are we going to do with it?  Look for next week's blog to see the many ways we'll incorporate the gourd into our learning!!  Thank you to Alex and his family for buying (and carrying!) this very large gourd for us.

The children were trying to see if they were as tall as the unifix line they had all made together.  What they did discover is that Jake and Patrick are about the same height!

Every day  we count the number of days we have been in school.  Each tenth day  we get a visit from "Zero the Hero" who  always leaves us a zero surprise.  On Monday, when we reached the 30th day of school,  Zero left us "zero kisses".  You can see the children using the stickers to make unique designs.  Some children sorted by color while others had a different plan.  The children's hands and eyes  have to work together to peel those tiny  stickers off the page.  Zero helped us to have our fine motor workout that day! 

  During the past few weeks, every child was given the opportunity to tell us something they could see in our room.  Their answers allowed the children to express themselves orally and in print.  Every sentence began with the same two words, "I see......" On Wednesday, as each child entered the class, our literacy challenge was to find the words" I "and" see" somewhere in our room.  Govind found one of the words on our easel.

Briana found the word "I' in the dramatic play center!

Emma found the word "see" by the computer!

Charlotte shows us the word "see" that she found hidden under the circles on our board!

Noor found the word "see" and what she thought was the word "see" until she compared the two words.  She is using several important reading skills as she touches each letter and moves her finger from left to right.  The second word had the same letters, but not the correct sequence of letters. She said, "These letters are the same but they are not the right way"!  Great visual discrimination!

We had taken down the children's sentences.  Zoey read hers again and then we cut the words apart.

 Then we asked the children to sequence those cut apart words to make their original sentence.  Suri glued the words on a sheet of paper. The steps in this activity provide opportunities to develop several reading skills such as print and sight word recognition.

Oh no!  The Magna Tile tower kept falling over.  Why did this happen?  Maybe there was something making it difficult to balance the tower...like all the unifix cubes.  We asked, "Where could we build the tower so it won't fall"?

"This would be a better place to build."  Good thinking, Amelia!

We examined so many leaves in the gan, and noticed that each one has veins.

Back in the class we used glue to make vein designs on white paper.

Look at the concentration and strength it takes to squeeze the glue!

The children used watercolors to paint over the dried glue design.We had told the children that "magic" would happen when they added paint to their glue designs.  The paper absorbed the paint quite differently than the dried glue, so our art lesson became a science lesson too.    The next day we traced and cut a variety of leaf shapes from the papers.  These fall leaves look beautiful hanging from the branch in our room,  Thank you to Jason and Lauren for climbing on chairs and step ladders to do the actual hanging!!!

This week Heidi talked to the children about the life cycle of chickens.  She taught the children that a baby chick will hatch from an egg if there are roosters with hens.  If you only have hens as in our chicken coop you will get eggs for eating.  Heidi showed the children three different yolks. One yolk was from a store bought egg, one egg came from our coop, and one egg was from a duck.  She asked the children to compare the three yolks.  The children observed the three yolks. They answered Heidi's question by describing the color and size of the yolks

After we examined the yolks in the science room,we went to the chicken coop.  Heidi asked the children to observe all the hens.  She asked them to tell her what traits made the hens similar and different.  Using their sense of sight, the children talked about the hen's feathers, color and size.  Then Heidi and Kim told the children that they could see something very exciting in the hens' house.  She told them to use their eyes,but not to talk. 

Charlotte and Suri looked into the coop and they saw the hen sitting in the nest where she had just laid some eggs!

When Alex peered into the hen house , he was surprised to see that the hen left her eggs in the nest.

Kim brought the eggs for the children to see.  Did the one hen lay all three eggs?  After looking and touching the eggs, they all answered with a very definite "No"!!!

In the Curious George class, the leader for the day counts in the language of their choice before we say our blessings.  They have been very excited that Alex's mom is teaching us to count in Italian! Wow, we can count in English, Hebrew, Spanish, French, and now Italian!