Sunnybrook Montessori School

Montessori preschool & kindergarten in New Hampshire's North Country

Shadows and Tracks

funny snow faceteamworkThe groundhog has returned to his burrow for another six weeks after seeing his shadow on Friday, but we don’t mind the snowy weather.  The children continue to have fun sliding around on their bellies like penguins and taking turns on sleds.  We loved the Thursday snowfall, which got everyone busy shoveling up the new snow into sleds and onto new snow mountains.shoveling snowsleddingReady, set . . .a penguin belly slidingchipping the sled rope out of the icea pea in the podpulling shadowsat the bottom on the hillsnowing downshoveling a chunk of icecatching flakesfilling the sledFor Monday art we introduced shadow puppets.  We read several books about shadows, including Nothing Sticks Like a Shadow by Ann Thompert and What Makes a Shadow? by Clyde Bulla.  We watched a video of a shadow puppet performance of The Three Little Pigs made by a group of students in England.  The children then decided which characters they wanted to create, found pictures for reference if needed, drew them, cut them out, and stuck them on sticks. The shadow puppet theater was very busy all week as the children put on shows with dinosaurs, princesses, owls, puppets, monsters, etc. for their friends.Here comes Curious Georgea dinosaur puppetthe princess being attacked by two monstersa princess and a monsterputting on a showdinosaur vs monstersome crazy puppeteeringWe introduced being nature detectives by using clues in nature to determine which animals have been passing through.  We read Footprints in the Snow, Big Tracks, Little Tracks, and a big book about tracks.  Susan taught us about the different types of walkers – diagonal walkers, bounders, gallopers, and pacers.  We tried walking the same way the animals do to create the track patterns we found in our books.  It was quite challenging!  We laid out large pieces of paper and the children used track stamps to recreate the walking patterns that animals make.animal track patternsbounding like rabbits, walking like catsanimal footprintsSee all the animal tracks?nature detectives looking for clues with their magnifying glassesZeanny has returned!  We had our first Spanish session on Tuesday.  We continued our color identification and counting practice, and she introduced a fun story about pollos (chickens) and pollitos (chicks) that visit the biblioteca (library) with the bibliotecario (librarian) and niños (children).  Zeanny gave everyone a colored pollito and we played a game with them, then we taped our pollitos onto popsicle sticks to take home as puppets.pollitade qué color espollito writingOn Wednesday we did a germ experiment after reading the story A Germ’s Journey by Dr. Thom Rooke about how germs are spread.  We pretended to cough or sneeze into our hands.  Everyone who wanted to try it were given a dab of “Germ-glo” lotion.  We then touched some things with our germy hands and used a UV flashlight to detect the “germs” that we spread around.working on lettersbuilding flowersfabric matching by feeltowers and tunnelsteen boardbell matchingreading with Susango together picturescoloring rainbowstrinomial cubeDoes it smell like cinnamon, peppermint, or orange?short bead chainshorse nomenclaturepaintingair, fire, rock, waterrhyming puzzlebeginning sound matchten pin bowling mathnumber traywild animalsletter workbuilding a beaver lodgeletter formation workclean upportraitcutting boxa fortress of firelongest to shortestthese match!one down, nine standingDragons Love Tacoscareful cuttingplay dough and sand pouringspindle box counting workWhat does it smell like?animals in the forestconstructingteam paintingblond girls in pinkreading timeWe read the groundhog day stories Grumpy Groundhog (brought in by the Armstrong family – Thank you!) and Gregory Groundhog Predicts the Weather to introduce groundhog.  Children who were interested made their very own groundhogs with shadows at the art table on Thursday.  They had fun coloring them, cutting them out, pasting them together, and coloring the snowy ground around the groundhog shaped shadows.  On Friday morning Tammy showed us a brief clip of Punxatawny Phil predicting when spring would arrive.groundhog shadowsthe pink towera tall brown and pink towera brown and pink sunwill it stay?teamworkDuring Thursday music time with Susan she read several animal poems and we pretended to be the animals she read about, moving as described in the poems.  She then introduced The Carnival of the Animals, composed in 1886 by Camille Saint-Saëns.  She told us how he composed it as a piece of fun correlating his friends to different animals and making the music reflect their personalities.  She read poems by Jack Prelutsky that were written to go along with the music, and we moved to the music and poetry.scurrying like squirrelsgliding like swansstories from the weekFor Friday science we combined our knowledge of measuring with an introduction to ramps.  The children split into two groups.  Each group chose three marbles – a large, medium, and small, then set up long tubes to act as ramps/tunnels.  They took turns dropping the marbles through the tubes and marking where they stopped, then measuring the distance that they rolled.  They soon began just rolling them through and marking where they stopped, then comparing how far each marble rolled.  They had a lot of fun changing around the set up of their tubes to see if they could change the distance the marbles traveled.Woah!How far did it roll?How many inches?drop it through the tubemarking where the marbles stoppedWhere did it stop?trying it from higher upWill it go further from here?a train trackgrouping animalsa magnatile fortress

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