I thought we’d be launching into space this week, but we wanted to spend a few more days with the penguins. We closed the week by painting the backdrop to our solar system, first thinking that our goal was blackness, but then finding amazing color and movement.
We began our week with with using Legos as a counting tool. We used duplos to figure out how many bumps in each one. With the playdough, we make box shapes with the bottom of the lego and a round shape with the top.We also had clipboards and pencils as an invitation to write numbers. It was very important that we count to four because we were celebrating L’s fourth birthday. He rode the earth around the sun as we saw pictures of him the day he was born, when he was one, when he was two, and when he was three. One more circle around the sun to emerge as a big four year old.
While we play with ice in our sensory bins often, we had never used ice as a construction tool. Big thanks to all the parents who filled their freezers with different shaped containers. We had bowls of table salt and rock salt to experiment with and used liquid watercolors and pipettes to add another element to our sculptures. What a beautiful way to begin talk about the stages of matter. We talked about how the salt melts the ice, the reasons for the “caverns” inside the larger pieces of ice, and how the table salt works to bond the ice blocks.
I wanted to thank our Honeybee parents for supporting us this week when we needed a sub. Thank you for all the books read, coats zipped, and boots found.
On Friday we read a magical book, Where the Wild Things Are, and I can tell we are going to continue to play and create with the images and ideas in the story. Some of us know this story and some of us could not wait to see what would happen on the next page.
This week we’ll start to talk about space travel, rockets, planets, and the moon. We’ll need some big boxes to build a rocket ship if you’d like to bring one in tomorrow or the next time we have school. The roads look clear, but there is more wintery mix predicted for tomorrow.
I just wanted to add that we do celebrate Valentines Day here at school. We’ll make some paper bag mailboxes and the Honeybees can share Valentine cards. Just remember that we don’t serve or share candy at school. The Honeybee class has eleven children. I think it’s always a good time to practice writing our name when we are making or signing Valentines.
Thank you Honeybee families for sharing these inquisitive children with us at the Children’s Garden.
Sally
