Artists made segmented hearts by tracing or drawing a heart then placing strips of tape across it. They painted or colored in the sections then pulled the tape off, leaving behind blank lines and colored spaces.
The children had fun finding mammals with Rose. She made a mammal sign and the children took turns pointing to it with her pointer stick. Piggy and Gerald puppets helped tell the Piggy and Gerald story, My New Friend is so Fun! Rose then introduced a neat sign language art activity. She showed the sign for I love you with the thumb, pointer, and pinky fingers up, and the middle and ring finger down. She showed the children how to stuff a glove with polyester fill then sew down the two fingers then the bottom of the glove to make their own I love you stuffy.
Our group of students who are passionate about weapon play and war watched two videos of books about battle. The first was a wordless picture book set to music called Why? by Nikolai Popov and the second, Boy by Phil Cummings. We then had a short discussion about war, why people engage in war, and what the end goal is. They were well versed in the knowledge that wars occur because people have a disagreement, or some people are not treated well and a war my occur to help make things better in the long run and keep people safe and secure. They shared that we don’t want to hurt or kill anyone and that violence is never the answer, but sometimes people need protecting and hopefully peace can be negotiated.
Michelle and the children whipped up some soap foam for play in the sensory table. They had so much fun scooping, dumping, pushing, and coating their hands and arms.
There was an exceptionally high amount of restlessness, frustration, and energy this week, so we had lots of indoor physical activity when it was too cold to go out, and then spent as much time outside as possible. We had yarn ball battles in the small classroom, balloon toss and catch games, Dancing with koo koo kangaroo and the bucket drummers, and an obstacle course around the room with a trampoline, scooter boards, bean bag toss, bilibo spinning, crawling under tables, through tunnels, and in the long fabric sensory fish tunnel, through hoops, over river rock stepping stones, more spinning, and walking over a chair bridge. Round and round and round they went! Friday afternoon students went on a long snow shoe trek out in the meadow with Michelle and Makenna.
We returned to our drumming instruments this week and introduced musical notes. The children practiced counting and tapping rhythm sticks together to the count of four over and over. They learned that a quarter note is one count, a half note is held for two counts, and a whole note is held for four. We tried reading and playing some rhythms with our rhythm sticks, then took turns playing patterns on different percussion instruments for everyone to listen to and imitate.
Kindergarteners were busy this week! On Monday they went on a word search, looking for sight words taped around the room as they were called out, then finding, reading, and pointing them out. On Tuesday they chose a color then found the corresponding color name on the chalkboard using letter clues and sounding out skills, then recording the name next to the color. On Wednesday they chose to write Valentines to friends or family. They cut out heart shapes, added stickers, and wrote a message to someone they love. Thursday they were pirate teams. Each team had a treasure chest. One pirate would plunder the large treasure chest and fill their own, then go hide it. The teammate would then be given clues to locate it in the classroom. They would then bring it back and count out how many large silver coins, small silver coins, rings, and jewels they had, then write down and a solve the addition equation.
Friday students read some stories about POOP then watched two short videos about the digestive system before chewing up and digesting some crackers, thinking about all the parts it passes through before it comes out the other end. We took some crackers and banana and added some “saliva” and “chewed” it up with our fingers, then passed it down the esophagus into the stomach where it was combined with some stomach acid and mixed some more. It was then pushed through the intestines, which absorbed all the nutrients, before pooping out the rectum. We measured out some hoses that were the length of the small intestines (15 feet) and then a tube for the large intestine (5 feet) to measure out 20+ feet of intestines!
