50 posts already! This blog has grown a bit since the first post and I hope it will keep growing. Thanks for all your support!
So it's been a busy week! My last post talked about teamwork. We continued rainbows this week and had a few surprises.
My favorite part of the week was making the Cloud in a Bottle. I got this fabulous idea from Pinterest and we ended up using it for 3 days straight in order to let as many children try it as possible. If you've never done it before, try it! Just put shaving cream on top of water in a jar (closely supervised) and let children drop watercolors onto the shaving cream. It's a great way to talk about clouds and why it rains. We had a limited number of pipettes, so I'll have to make sure I have more next time. It was a great way to strengthen fine motor skills by squeezing the dropper. When they were done, the children used their scientific skills to observe the jar and record (draw) what they saw. Some pictures are below:
Wednesday, we were visited by Dina from the Incredible Years program. She talked about working together and we paired the children up to put a puzzle together according to skill level, strong skilled with weak-skilled. I was really proud of the way the children helped each other. Some of the children I was worried about were encouraged by their teammate and did a fantastic job sharing and working together.
Yesterday, we had an unexpected writing activity. We read "I am a Rainbow" by Dolly Parton, which is about various feelings using colors of the rainbow. When we were done, one child commented that the color orange is missing from the book. We had a short discussion about what "orange" would feel like and wrote our own verses to it. I wrote the responses down. I wish I'd had time to let them illustrate it, but it was time to go out.
Some of my favorites:
"I feel orange when my mom plays ropes and ladders with me."
"I feel orange when my mom gives me Raffi."
"I feel green because I'm happy."
"I feel orange when I play with R."
"I feel green when I play Skylanders and Swampforce."
Today we read "It Looks Like Spilt Milk", which is about seeing different shapes in clouds.
Since it was rainy out today, the children mixed white, black, and grey paint and made clouds out of squish art. They dictated to us what they looked like. When they're dry, we're going to put them in a class book with the same cover as "Spilt Milk." I'll show you some pictures when it's done!
Whew! Next week, I'll be on vacation. Well-earned, if you read regularly. When I come back, it's time to talk about transportation! We're spending two weeks on it so it should give us a chance to really study it and see how everything works.
