We took a brief in building field trip Monday morning to view the beautiful stained glass windows throughout the chapel, hallway, and gathering hall upstairs. The children noticed the patterns and pictures made of colored glass and pointed to their favorites. Some of us had many favorites! We then returned to the classroom where we made our own stain glass windows using colored cellophane. They cut out shapes and assembled them into pictures and patterns then laminated them. We now have our very own stain glass windows.
We celebrated the birthday of our newest four year old, who shared her special day with the arrival of spring, though her favorite season is fall. In honor of her favorite season she donated a fall themed leaf hunt book that we enjoyed reading. She then recruited a friend to join her to help share her birthday facts before walking around the sun four times. Happy birthday, birthday girl!
We practiced a fire drill using the secondary evacuation route through the storage room, back hallway, up the stairs, and out the front of the church and back around to the play area. Everyone did really well staying together and being safe.
We have been singing lots of water songs as we explore water and the water cycle and the flow of water around the earth. We read several stories about the water cycle, including All the Water in the World and Water Is Water. We used our water cycle mat as a visual to see how water flows around the earth. The children shared what they noticed, including clouds, mountains, snow, rain, grass, rivers, trees, ocean, desert, roots, lakes, soil and an underground aquifer. The children then shared how the water falls to the earth as precipitation in the form of rain or snow, and we added arrows to show that on the mat. They pointed out how it flows down the mountain, filters through the soil, collects underground, and flows to the ocean then evaporates from the ocean, lakes, rivers, and plants back up to form clouds.
Susan introduced a globe passing game, where we toss up the globe and catch it with two hands, then share where each hand landed – land, water, or land and water.
During sign language Rose introduced signs that are formed using the first letter of the word and a motion. She showed us several signs for each letter of the alphabet, many that are already familiar and some that were new. The only X sign that uses the beginning letter x she could think of was xerox.
We were visited by Henrietta and Wolfgang, who talked to us about times when someone has done something that we did not like. We read a silly story called We Don’t Eat Our Classmates about a dinosaur who keeps eating and trying to eat all the children in her class. The children then took turns sharing about an experience when someone did something they did not like. They did really well remembering to say “someone” instead of a name! We talked a bit about “on accident” and “on purpose/deliberate” but this is a hard concept to really understand or interpret. We did an activity where the children took turns squeezing toothpaste out of a tube into a little dish every time someone shared something that someone did that they did not like. We then tore and wrinkled up a paper when different unkind actions were described. Students then volunteered to get all the toothpaste back into the tube, and get the paper back to its’ original smooth, flawless condition. They worked so hard and made some really excellent progress! We discussed the steps we can take to apologize when we do something someone does not like, but we also want to try hard not to do it in the first place because even with an apology you can not take back a mean name or a hit or kick.
During Spanish with Zeanny we did our body movement songs then we played a game. Zeanny drew a type of food and sang a song, asking us if we like that food ‘ “Tu gusta manzana (apple)?” We then responded “si, mi gusta” or “no, mi gusta.” We tried to guess what she was drawing by what color marker she used and we got several right, but she tricked us with some.
During kindergarten the children painted ten beans. They chose two colors, one for each side, then when dry used them to do some addition and subtraction work. They numbered the pickets through this upcoming Monday, which will be the 120th day of school, and continued their number patterns, drawing circles, squares, underlining, etc. with different colors if the numbers were multiples of 2, 3, 4, etc.
The final remnants of ground ice melted, leaving behind a lovely thick layer of wondrously goopy mud, which sucked in all the mud monsters who dared to approach. With the arrival of the warm temperatures we spent as much time outside as possible, including lunch one day.
Friday students continued their study of birds by watching recorded readings of A Nest Full of Eggs and An Egg is Quiet. We then did some egg experimenting. How strong do you have to be to break an egg? Well, we tried walking on two dozen eggs, and couldn’t break a single one. We then tried squeezing them as hard as we could, and still couldn’t break them by pushing on the ends, so we tried squeezing the short way, and still couldn’t break them. Finally they got a little assistance making a crack on the edge of the bin, then we were able to break them.
