Imagine

A favorite quote of ours is, " a line is a dot that took a walk". This activity seemed like a perfect way to segue from the concept of dots to lines. As with many of our provocations we really didn't know what the interest level would be or what the end product would be, or if there would even be one. It turned out that the children loved pulling the dots off the paper and sticking them onto the wire. We ended up suspending it under a shelf in our studio and for about two weeks the children added lines and dots to the hanging sculpture. It's a beautiful, very whimsical addition to our studio that everyone had a hand in making.

We used yarn to create a cool web-like line sculpture. We did this together as a group, weaving yarn through the slats of our circle castle.  It was interesting to see the project grow. One line became many lines. We noticed that the lines made shapes that changed with the addition of more lines.  We used words like horizontal, vertical and diagonal.  When we felt done with our creation we laid under it on our backs and looked up at all the lines in the sky.

We read the book " Lines that wiggle" by Candace Whitman. We talked about different types of lines. Lines that curve, wiggle and bend, lines that zig zag, twist and sway. We asked the class if they could find lines in our classroom. We noticed that lines were on the ceiling, the walls and just about everywhere you look. We invited the children to draw lines.  They drew thick lines and thin, straight and curly. We hung their line drawings on a "line" made of string.  A few of our seniors took on the task of sounding out the word "lines" to put in our window.

On this beautiful fall day we did another engaging measurment activity. The children gathered sticks on our playground. We asked them if they could place them in order shortest to longest. We brought this activity back into the classroom with us. The children made stick compositions and later some wanted to make their work more permanent by gluing them onto paper.

One of of friends had his four year old check up this morning. This started a conversation about how they measure how tall you are every time you go to the Doctor. We asked if anyone knew why. Ben told us " so they know how tall you grow". We made a great connection between our baby selves and our bigger, older selves. We are so much taller now!  We measured everyone on our "measuring stick" . It's a very visual way to see how tall you are. It provides opportunity to compare your height to the height of your friends. We also used blocks to measure how tall we are. When we first start talking about measurement with preschoolers we very often use non standard units of measurement. Blocks are a great way to do this. "How many blocks tall are you?"  Our measuring tape made its first appearance this week as well. The children measured everything in our classroom. Measurment is a subject we will visit in different ways throughout our school year. 

We asked the children if they would draw themselves as a baby. In our classroom we like to explore the same subject through different mediums. Pen and paper gave the children more opportunity for detail. They added belly buttons and fingers, hair and expressions. We used our " magic shrinking machine" to make their sweet drawings smaller. We put each child's birth date on their drawing and laminated them to use on our birthday mobile that is located in the preschool kitchen.

We started talking about babies after one of our friends said " I used to be a baby." This led to a number of discussions about babies. We asked the class to tell us something they knew about babies. They said things like,  "babies can't talk", "they stay still", "they can't walk" ," if no one is in the house with them they would cry". We put baby pictures of all our friends up on our wall. The children found themselves and they tried to find all their friends. We introduced some new babies into our classroom. We talked about how babies need to be handled gently. They need to be fed, changed and be given lots of love. All these conversations led us to realize just how big we are now. My friends can feed themselves, use the potty and so much more! We used to be babies but we're not any more.