Ice!
We had a nice and cold week talking about ice! We played with so much ice. Every morning the picnic table was covered with frozen dishes and a new ice project. On Monday we had lots of different colors and shapes of ice. On Tuesday we had to rescue some tiny trapped creatures and colorful buttons from ice, and then we sorted them and counted them and made estimates and compared them.
It was exciting! On Wednesday we played with "ice paintbrushes"; colored ice cubes with handles that we painted and printed with.
On Thursday we used ice and rock salt to make homemade ice cream in a hand crank ice cream maker! So much ice!
The low temps kept us at school all week, and we found a lot of time for counting, numeral recognition, sorting, and number sense activities. We also talked a lot about colors and did several multi step, process art projects. In our mealtimes inside we read quite a bit of poetry as well, including Stopping By The Woods on a Snowy Evening and Dust of Snow by Robert Frost, Wolf by Billy Collins, The Adventures of Isabel by Ogden Nash, and quite a few others from our children's poetry collection.
At circle time on Monday we read The Snowflake; A Water Cycle Story, and we took some ice cubes and cooked them in a pan and watched the water change from solid to liquid to gas, and we talked about the words evaporation and condensation. On Tuesday we had a lot of fun reading and acting out the Ukrainian folktale The Mitten. Here we are flying up out of our mitten!
Then we sewed and decorated mittens.
On Wednesday we read One Frozen Lake, a book about ice fishing featuring lots of numbers and measurements, and we went pretend ice fishing in the play yard. We used a "jig" with a magnet on the end to hook some different colored paper fish with different numerals on them. Everyone caught 3 fish, and we talked about the colors, the numerals and then the children sorted and ordered them by color, by numeral, and by numerical order. It was exciting and lots of learning and perspective was shared. This is a great example of where a multi age groups is really beneficial.
On Thursday we made homemade ice cream in a hand crank ice cream maker. We did this outside in the snow, because this is really the best place to make frozen ice cream! It was a lot of work and everyone took turns and worked hard to crank the handle and turn the mixer to turn the mixture into ice cream. It was very exciting when we opened it up and saw the transformation inside! It was delicious too.
Then we read The Snowy Day, and made a beautiful process art project with powdered kool aid, baking soda and vinegar that allowed colors to rise up through the "snow" when the children dropped vinegar into their trays. The effect was much like the colored snow artwork in the iconic Jack Ezra Keats book. (Sterling happened to be visiting just in time to join in)
It was a busy, fun week!
We welcomed a new friend this week! Frankie is 4, he loves to be outside and to ski, he's very curious and bold and he had a great first day at school. Frankie recently moved to Winhall from Florida, but he has lived and spent time in this area before. Everyone was friendly and helpful as usual in helping a new friend be welcome and feel at home. They are such sweeties
There is no school on Monday for MLK Day. We don't generally talk about historical figures or events in preschool, we are focused on the here and now and the immediate experience of the children, but MLK is such an important figure in our country and much that he had to share is very rich with age appropriate lessons for all. Here is a link to an online homeschool lesson for MLK day that my co-teacher in Oregon and I made a few years ago in case you want to check it out at home this weekend.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/134YVGn0lm-xCtu8srmnIHUxWpObKWJh137fDDI_ht_4/edit