Winter is finally waning!  We really enjoyed the warmer days this week and all of the snow that has filled up our playground.

The children were ready for school to resume after a week of vacation.  They were very busy and engaged with their work, particularly the transfer activities in Practical Life.

For Monday art students were introduced to monochrome art, specifically the use of blue.  They then proceeded to make their own blue art. The blue art materials remained at the art table, and we saw many blue pieces created.

During the month of March we will be focusing on fish.  We began by listing characteristics of fish, which include living in a water habitat, scales, gills for breathing, fins, and a bony or cartilaginous skeleton.  We discovered that sharks, rays, eels, and seahorses are all fish, but whales, dolphins, crabs, squid, octopus, and jellyfish are not.  We learned about what a habitat is, and read the stories Animal Habitats and About Habitats: Oceans.

The sensory table was filled with water and fish, including many sharks, rays, deep water fish, eels, and tropical fish.  We started to learn the names, including the hammerhead shark, great white shark, mako shark, eagle ray, blue spotted ray, manta ray, hatchet fish, angler fish, viper fish, gulper eel, moray eel, trigger fish, butterfly fish, and clown fish.

Wednesday morning we were very excited to meet a special visitor!  A friend’s bunny, named Tom & Jerry, joined us for a short while.  We formed a circle around him so that everyone could see.  He preferred to stay close to his family, but he allowed everyone to take a turn patting him before he returned to his crate and home.

For Friday science we continued with our space unit.  We learned about the phases of the moon while reading and discussing the story Faces of the Moon.  We read about the different names, including new, gibbous, crescent, and full, and we learned about what it means when the moon is waxing and waning.  We discovered that what we see of the moon each night is determined by where it is in its’ orbit around the earth, which affects how much we can see of the sun’s light shining on it.