What an adventure we had this week!  With water and weather and classroom deconstruction it was quite a ride!

For Monday art the children were introduced to the Japanese art of Suminagashi (paper marbling).  The children dropped colored inks on water, then used paintbrushes to swirl them.  When they were happy with the patterns they created, they carefully laid papers on top to collect the inky swirls.  They created some beautiful papers!
Snowy Tuesday led us to a beautiful, warm, sunny Wednesday.  With our classroom in disrepair, we rearranged our day.  We started with an outside adventure, which included a trip to the back field to look for animal tracks.  We found some prints that appeared to be made by a dog, but possibly a fox or coyote.  We also discovered some squirrel tracks.  After track hunting we did some yoga with Susan while she told us a yoga story.  Everyone ate snack together then chose from a variety of activities, including drawing, magnatiles, hopping frogs, animals, etc.  After lunch we went to the library for a little playtime at the end of the day.
Thursday and Friday we spent at the library in our temporary classroom.  The children adjusted well to the change, and we attempted to keep on schedule as much as possible.

For Spanish Zeanny sang several songs with us, including the new Casa song she has been teaching.  She then read Rubia and the Three Osos, written in a combination of Spanish and English.  Afterwards, all of the children chose the color they wanted for their house, drew their family members inside, and decorated the front, adding a Puerta (door) and ventanas (windows).
After having snack, the children had a variety of activities to choose from, including joining Ronnie in the children’s room for story hour, which several of the children chose to do.  After the story, some of the children stayed to play with shaving cream as well, and had a lot of fun with the smooth, soft, puffy, white stuff.
For Friday science we read about mammals and pretended to be lots of different mammals.  We learned that mammals have hair, give live birth to their young and the mothers feed them milk, they are vertebrates (have a back bone), and have four limbs.  We then took turns reaching into the feely bag to pull out different animals and sorted them between mammals, and not mammals.  The children were invited to make a book about animals if they chose – either animals in general, mammals, or the 12 animals of the Chinese Zodiac.  The results were really fun!