The snow is melting, which meant lots of wet, messy, water play!  It was such a great week to be outside, so we took advantage as much as possible.  The warmth made the snow perfect for molding, so for the first time since December we were able to pack it and manipulate it into snowballs, snowmen, and snow castles.

On Monday we used special marbling paints that we dropped onto a paper dot on top of water, then swirled the paints around before carefully laying a piece of paper on top.  The paint adhered to the paper, making our very own marbled paper patterns.  The children were quite enthralled, trying different techniques and watching the paints pool, swirl, and make patterns.

We continued with our fish unit, focusing more specifically on sea horses, sharks, and food chains.  We read a book about seahorses which compared the various seahorse parts to those of different animals, such as seahorse and horse head shape, seahorse and monkey tails, seahorse and lizard eyes, seahorse and insect skin, and seahorse and kangaroo pouches.  We then read the story Mr. Seahorse by Eric Carle, about a father seahorse who carries around the baby seahorse eggs until they hatch and swim away, and some of the other fish fathers that he meets who help care for the eggs.

In the book, National Geographic Readers: Sharks, we read some interesting information about sharks.  We learned that some shark eggs are surrounded by an egg case called a mermaid’s purse, that shark skeletons are made of cartilage rather than bone, and that sharks were on the earth before dinosaurs.  We listened to the entertaining story, The Great White Man Eating Shark, by Margaret Mahy, about a boy who pretends to be a shark so he can have the beach all to himself.

We also read the book Who Eats What? and learned a new song about an ocean food chain.  We found out that plants are the only living things that produce their own food, and that they are the foundation of every food chain.

The sensory table was filled with water and fish, and the children continued to swim them around and examine them, even taking them out to find them in the fish books at the science table.

For art the children used permanent markers to color an ocean on a clear shower curtain.  At the end of the week we hung it on the wall, then moved it to hang from the ceiling to create an ocean room for a submarine.

The Friday students had an eventful day.  They spent some time in the morning playing in and painting the submarine before science, which caused them to all be covered in yellow paint.

For science we did a sink or float experiment, selecting and testing different objects, then recording our observations.  We discovered three items that originally floated, but then something caused them to sink.  Ask your child why the bottle, sponge, and brass bowl floated at first and then sank.

Before recess we decided to take a field trip into town.  We walked down to the Polish Princess Bakery and everyone chose one item for an after lunch snack.  After we returned the children had great fun sledding and playing a make-believe game together before heading in for the afternoon.