Cycles

April 30, 2016 by admin

Baseball season has arrived! There was lots of pitching, hitting, catching, and waiting in the dugout for a turn at bat. Even on Tuesday pitching skills were practiced with snowballs. There were some busy workers moving the rocks pushed onto the grass by the snowplows during the winter back to the driveway. They loaded up their trucks and buckets, transported the rocks across the lawn, and dumped them back where they belong. For Monday art we looked at several books illustrated by Eric Carle and examined how he creates his illustrations. We learned that he uses various techniques and items to create large sheets of painted paper, which he then cuts up to create collage pictures. The children were excited to get started making their own Eric Carle style painted papers. They used sponges, forks, scrapers, whisks, and a variety of other tools to paint with. Next week they will use their papers to cut out and paste together collage type pictures. At the art table during the week the children were busy making some surprise Mother’s Day gifts, which will come home at the end of next week.
Gerrie Scott came to read on Monday. She read the story The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle, who we had spent the morning learning about. We continued to read and discuss water and the water cycle. We observed that the water we poured into the cylinder before vacation was lower, which we learned was due to evaporation. We also did an experiment to see how water condensates after it evaporates and cools off. The children are now familiar with the terms cycle, precipitation, evaporation, and condensation. They also know that the water on earth is the same water that has been here since the dinosaurs! On Thursday we introduced string instruments. We saw a guitar, a violin, a ukulele, and a zither. We listened to the song “Mansinneedof” played on the mandolin by Sarah Jarosz. We then took turns choosing instruments to play, and several children took turns being the conductor, guiding everyone to play their instruments quietly or loudly.
Some future frogs joined the class on Thursday morning, and lots of them hatched throughout the day. It was interesting to see all of the different bugs and larva that arrived with the eggs as well. We are looking forward to watching the tadpoles over the next six weeks to see how they grow and change.
For Friday science the students learned about four different types of land forms that relate to bodies of water- lake, island, bay and cape. They used clay to create the land forms and then painted the land and water.
Stories we read this week:
Little Cloud by, Eric Carle