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Showing posts from March, 2016

Spring Seed Planting

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We have done some seed exploring in the past but what better time to revisit them than the beginning of spring!  We spent some time observing different seeds with magnifying glasses and noticed how different each seed was.  A friends said, "Some look like squids." We read a book that explained the reasons why some seeds look so strange.  We took turns planting our seeds in pots and reviewing what a plant needs to grow. After giving them plenty of water, we moved our planted seeds outside and are eagerly awaiting signs of sprouts. 

Painting Fish

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With Mr. Quack on everyone's mind and all our talk about water before break, it seemed a nature progression to start talking about the things that live in water. We took some time this week to study fish. During this activity we talked about all the different parts of a fish. On our light table we traced a parrot fish with black magic marker. The children used water color paints to make their fish beautiful. 

Goodbye Mr. Quack

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Our classroom fish Mr. Quack passed away over the Spring break . We knew he was sick and actually thought he was a goner a number of times before our vacation. We had many conversations about this happening one day soon. So it wasn't a surprise when that day finally came.  We didn't want to move on without giving the children the opportunity to process this lose in their own way. Some of the children chose to make books about Mr. Quack.    Some of those that chose this activity wrote very realistically about Mr.Quacks life, while others made up simple stories. 

Flowers

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While we were talking about water friends pointed out how important water is for flowers and all living things. With our Spring celebration right around the corner we thought it would be a great time to start a conversation about flowers.  We set up a provocation that invited the children to draw and paint flowers. We took this time to talk about the different parts of a flower and what else (besides water) they need to grow. Their paintings are beautiful and bright. If you would like to take a look at them they are hanging in our work room.

A Special Musical Treat!

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Today we had two special guests come and play live music for us. What a treat! Enid's father Mark came with his drums and he brought his friend Matt along to play the electric guitar.  They talked to the class about "rhythm" and we all tried to keep a beat with drum and rhythm sticks. Before they left everyone had a chance to play the drums! Thanks Mark and Matt!

Oil and Water

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We read the book Ducks Don't Get Wet by Augusta Goldin. We were fascinated by the fact that ducked have an oil gland that keeps their feathers from becoming wet in the water.    We talked about how oil and water don't mix but realized that we had to see this for ourselves. We put oil into a jar of water and put the lid on tight. We asked our friends to shake the jar. No matter how hard we shook the jar the oil always resurfaced to form a layer of oil on top of the water. If we shook the jar more gently we were able to see oil bubbles form. 

Sink or Float?

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This provocation invited the children to discover whether certain objects would sink or float. They made "predictions" and were then able to test them out.   One of our friends told us, "some are like submarines and some are like boats".  Everyone also had the opportunity to make a chart representing what they observed. 

Clouds

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Where does water come from?  After talking about where we find water (river, lakes, oceans ect.), one of our friends asked, "where does water come from?" This led us to a great discussion about the water cycle. With the help of jars, cotton balls, water and droppers the children were able to make rain fall from the clouds. We talked about how when it rains clouds become heavy with water "condensation" and the rain falls down as "precipitation" only to " evaporate and rise up into the air again.  A friend told us,  "the water goes up and down and up and down." We revisited the word "cycle" and talked about how a cycle is like a pattern that repeats and never ends.

Beautiful Water

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This was a simple provocation that invited students to draw or color water. We talked about all the different places on our Earth we find water. The children made  a waterfall, the sea, a pond and a lake. One of our friends wanted to make "deep water" and "shallow water" and used different shades of blue to show us. During one of our classroom discussions one of our friends told us that water is blue. That got us thinking. Is water really blue? It sure looks blue sometimes. This might be something we explore further on another day.