Imagine

The children made these beautiful cards for their parents for Valentine’s Day.  It was a multi step process that invited the children to trace, draw and glue.  We asked them, “what’s in your heart?” 

One day we read the book Pancakes, Pancakes by Eric Carle. We were happily surprised to see how the story connected well to things we had been talking about. When Jack wants pancakes he finds out just how much work goes into making them. By the end of the story we were all pretty hungry for pancakes. So maybe we could make them? Hmmm.... In the story Jack has to bring the wheat to a mill to be ground into flour. In the book the mill was powered by water that turned a wheel, we needed to use our own power. We got to experience first hand just how hard it is to grind wheat berries into flour . No wonder humans figured out a way to make it easier! We didn’t have a butter churn but got the experience of making butter by shaking a jar full of heavy cream. You have to shake it for a long time! It’s not easy work! We followed a “recipe”, “measured”, poured and stirred. We cooked them using electricity until golden brown, and ate them with strawberry jam just like Jack.

The weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day have been filled with multiple opportunities to trace, draw and cut hearts. We added hearts to the dots on our infinity wall. We read books and had some great conversations about love. We even started to have some ideas about a performance for our upcoming Spring celebration.  We provided many different experiences that allowed the children to hone their fine motor skills. We used our potato print hearts to create a one to one correspondence activity. 

We read a book about “renewable” energy and discussed the difference between resources that can run out and ones that don’t. We know that the sun is a resource that doesn’t run out.  We see it almost every day in Florida!  On this day we had a great conversation about the sun. We asked the children what are things they know about the sun and got a lot of answers. One friend told us, “it’s in outer space”, another, “It comes in the morning, and goes away at night”. Someone was very quick to say, “it doesn’t come and go anywhere it just stays in outer space”, adding, “the Earth spins around the sun, that makes it day and night”.  Everyone agreed on some basic information it’s “hot” and it’s “bright.”  Another friend wanted us to know that it’s “a big fire star because it’s a star that’s on fire”.  Someone said, “it melts ice cream” and, “it makes people warm”. Somehow it seemed easier for most to grasp on some level that the sun can be an energy source.  In ...

This was another way to see how our own “energy” can create a “force” that has the power to create movement. This time making beautiful art!

It all started when a lamp fell from a shelf and broke. There were so many questions about this event. “What makes the lamp work?”, “what is electricity?”, “how does a lightbulb work?” These are some very big questions and the subject is really not part of any preschool curriculum that i could find. I set out to try to approach this topic from a place appropriate for this age group. We read books and talked about all the things that work due to an energy source. We listed so many things!  When talking about electricity you really need to start with energy or power. We asked the question “what is power?” Our friends had many answers, “power is when you have something magical”, “power is in invisible lines”, “energy is inside batteries”.  The idea that it was “invisible” or “magic” kept coming up. So we realized that maybe we needed to approach this subject from a little different angle. We brought it back to our first question. “What makes things move, light up, work ?”.  ...