Cloudy

May 7, 2016 by admin

Baseball, tag, construction work, races, biking, and many make believe games took place on the playground. It was great to be outside and active so much even with the constant cloud cover.For Monday art the children learned about Henry Matisse and how he used scissors to cut out colored paper and paste it in patterns to create art. The children then took their Eric Carle painted papers and cut them into shapes, which they pasted in patterns or pictures, just as Matisse and Carle do.
We read a book that Sue brought in called Right Outside My Window by Mary Ann Hoberman, then each of the children took some time to draw a picture of what they see out the window. They are pretty fantastic, and we are excited to display them on the last day of school for everyone to see. There was water in the sensory table, and the children had a lot of fun pouring, stirring, fishing, washing the baby, and squirting water. They did well staying dry and keeping the water in the table.
This week we started to learn about clouds. We read that clouds are named according to how high they are in the sky, and what shape they are. Clouds that are really high are Cirrus, those in the middle are Alto, and the lowest clouds are stratus clouds. We also talked about which clouds will bring rain, and those that will bring thunderstorms.

We learned a new term: erosion. We looked at pictures of landforms and other types of erosion caused by water, including bridges, canyons, and rivers. We also examined smooth, rounded river rocks eroded to smoothness by rushing river waters pushing the rocks together, and smoothed driftwood. It is amazing to think that water can carve away earth and rock.

On Thursday we opened up the front of the piano and looked inside. We observed the very complex action that takes place when the keys are pushed, causing the hammer to strike the string. We discussed whether it is a percussion or string instrument, and everyone had differing opinions. The children were all excited to have a turn playing and watching the action. We even tried out the three pedals to observe what each one does – one quiets the piano, one makes it louder, and the third holds the note. After taking turns at the piano we chose instruments to play and some children took turns being the conductor.
Sadly, our tadpoles did not live long enough to turn into frogs. The egg waste may have been too much for the amount of water, and by Wednesday they had all expired. I will have to do some research and figure out what to do differently next time.

The children requested that we set up the doctor’s office/ambulance/ER again, so we pulled out the tools and they got busy brainstorming how to go about setting it up and what will be needed. We will get some more ideas on Monday from the Teddy Bear clinic about how to proceed. In the meantime, they were very creative with their set up.
Friday students had fun with science. They were introduced to the terms dissolve, solution, and suspension. We learned that things that dissolve (break down into tiny pieces we can’t see) in water form a solution, while those that don’t break down form a suspension. We tested ten different cooking items to see if they dissolved or not, then checked them off on the chart.
Friday was so beautiful that the children did not want to go inside at the end of the recess, so they requested a picnic, which we had, then spent a busy afternoon outside digging, playing, and hunting for sticks, flowers, and natural items on the bank behind the playground.