Posts

Showing posts from January, 2017

Painting Honeycomb

Image
Last week we mixed paint to match the different shades of honey. We painted with some of those shades on a large piece of butcher block paper. When the " honey" was dry we invited the children to stamp hexagons on the yellow shades of paint to create honeycomb. They used a brush to apply the paint to the sides of the wooden hexagon and then stamped them on the paper. They really took their time stamping the shapes next to each other trying to create a mural that really resembles honeycomb.  We aren't sure yet what we are going to do with our honeycomb mural. Maybe we need to make some bees! 

Our Bee journey continues....

Image
While tracing a honey bee on our light table the children learned about all the different parts of a Bee.  In our tasting room we sampled three different kinds of honey.  We asked the question, "why are they different colors?" , and "why do they taste different?" One of our friends was quick to tell us "they are from different flowers".  We created a tally graph so we could keep track of how many people liked each of the different kinds of honey. We did some counting and discovered that the class liked the wildflower honey the best. 

Bees!

Image
A beekeeper friend of ours let us borrow some of her cool bee stuff. The children were able to look inside a hive and see a real honeycomb, try on a beekeeper hat and glove and hold (and smell) a hive smoker. It started a great conversation about honey bees. We started out asking the class what they already knew about bees. We found out we know a lot!  Things like, "they make hives", "they have wings", " they sting people when people bother them". After we talked about all we know about bees we talked about things we would like to know about them. Our friends wanted to know things like, "How do baby bees get born?", "how do the bees make the honey?". Someone wanted to know, "why do bees make honey?  "A classmate answered, "they make it for the people" and another friend said  "Bees are making honey for themselves".  We are excited to have some of our questions answered about these intriguing honey making cr

Rhyming Cards

Image
We read a book called  Jam & Honey  by Melina Morales as an introduction to the idea of bees. When we were talking about flowers we read some things about bees and the class seemed to have an interest in learning more about these important honey making creatures. We found right away that what interested the children the most about this book was that many of the words rhymed. We picked out all the words that rhymed as we read the book. During activity time we came up with the idea of making rhyming cards. Each child chose a word that was related to bees and thought of words that rhymed.  Look for the cards on our peace table. They turned out really cute. 

Painting Flowers

Image
Art is a way for children to express what they know. We had learned the parts of a flowers and used our knowledge in our painting of flowers.  We set up a provocation and invited the children to paint a still life of different kinds of flowers. We pointed out the different parts we knew, wondered about why some were one color while others had multiple colors and designs. We counted how many blossoms we saw and which flowers were bigger and smaller. Then we left the children to their paint.  Some chose to paint an image true to what they saw in front of them. Others chose to deconstruct the image in such interesting ways, while some younger ones were just happy to spread colors across the paper. 

Flowers make seeds

Image
We read a book about seeds because we wanted to know more about the pumpkin seedlings on our playground, and in the book it talked about how most seeds begin inside flowers.  We set up a provocation that invited the children to really explore the different parts of a flower.  They used a magnifying glass to see detail, and pulled apart the flowers in order to see what was inside better. We named the different parts we could see and talked about what purpose each part served.  We talked about the flowers life cycle and acknowledged that all living things also have a life cycle. 

Seeds

Image
We realized that pumpkins we had explored during October and opened had left seeds to grow while we were away.  We found a seedling with  seed still attached and brought it into the classroom to investigate under a magnifying glass.    While observing the seed Leif told us "the seed is an oval".  While observing the root system  Rylan told us, "They look like worms" We talked about seeds and seedlings and what all plants need to grow healthy and strong.

Birthdays

Image
In this first week of the new year we have been exploring a few different ideas and we are starting to make some really cool connections. Before the holiday break we were talking about measures of time. Hours, days, weeks, and months make up a whole year. We talked about the new year, a new beginning a "baby" year.  We talked about our own birthdays. What month were you born in? What day of the month? Everyone had the chance to write their name and the day of their birthday along with drawing something that reminds them of that special day.  We hung them on our Birthday mobile that lives in the preschool kitchen.