A warm front briefly brought some spring-like weather.  We enjoyed building snowmen and giant snowballs.  On Wednesday it was warmer outside than in, so we took off jackets and got to work chopping out a channel to drain all the melted snow and ice.  The children loved scooping out slush, water, and ice chunks, and floating sticks down the flowing river.  The tunnel was filled with melted snow as well, and they had a great time scooping it out and dumping it down the fence, while attempting to stay dry. As cold weather returned the playground became quite slippery, so we carefully navigated our way around.Tuesday was a rainy day, so we constructed an obstacle course, which went through a couple of changes.  The children had fun navigating all the obstacles, going up, over, under, and through. Hopping, jumping, balancing, and crawling. To end the indoor morning we took out the ribbons and did a little ribbon dancing.For art on Monday we introduced the Japanese art of suminagashi, aka paper marbling.  We showed examples of marbled paper, then got to work creating our own.  The children carefully squeezed drops of dye onto water, then swirled it around to create patterns.  They carefully set their papers on top of the dye, then slowly lifted them off when they had absorbed the ink.  They created some beautiful swirly patterns.The children painted a large US Postal collection box, then got busy mailing letters to all their friends.
We read several stories about taking on challenges and introduced the term determination.  We read a true story about Emanuel Ofasu Yeboah, a man born in Ghana with only one working leg who would hop to school every day, until at 13 years old, he left home to earn money to support his family.  He eventually decided to bike across Ghana to raise awareness about disabilities.  We tried hopping all around the classroom on one leg and quickly realized how challenging it is! This link will take you to a 5 minute video of Emanuel sharing his story.  We also read about basketball player Michael Jordan, who at 9 years old decided that he wanted to someday play basketball in the Olympics, and how he worked to accomplish that dream.  We also read about a boy named Jabari, who wanted to climb up and dive off the diving board at the pool.  He was scared, but with his father’s support, he built up courage and finally did it.The story of The Mitten was introduced last week, and the children loved performing it, so we continued performing it throughout the week, taking turns being Baba, Nicki, and the various animals who crawl into the mitten.We took some time to write thank you cards for postman Tim to thank him for taking time to give us a tour of the mailroom last week.For Spanish Zeanny played some color and size games with us.  We stood up very big “grande” and shrunk down very small “pequeña.”  We sang the color song and used our color vocabulary to match items to their color words.We celebrated the most recent fifth birthday with pink and purple frosted chocolate cupcakes.  The birthday girl walked the globe around the sun while we all counted the years and listed the seasons as she grew from an infant to a five-year-old.  Happy fifth birthday!For music Susan played high notes and low notes and notes in between while we moved up or down or in the middle to match the pitch of the notes.  When she played high notes, we stood up high.  When played low notes, we scrunched down low.  When she played middle notes, we crouched with our hands on our knees.  When she played the scale, we slowly moved up or down with the rising and falling of the notes.  She also played the notes slowly and quickly, and we attempted to move accordingly.On Friday our science study of the states of matter continued.  We began to discuss liquids.  We became molecules in matter and moved far, far apart to become a gas, then moved closer together to become a liquid, then smooshed as closely together as we could to become a solid.  We then gathered together and watched as different liquids were poured into a tall glass cylinder.  We watched how they flowed and observed that some flowed much more slowly than others.  We poured the more dense liquids in first.  We observed that as we poured liquids that were less dense, they poured more quickly and seemed “lighter.”  The various liquids formed layers that floated on each other, rather than mixing together.On Tuesday afternoon we had a goodbye party for Tricia with some special treats and the children all gave her cards they made.  We said our official goodbyes throughout the week, and our final goodbye on Friday, her last day at Sunnybrook.  We will miss her dearly and wish her well on her new life adventures!