I love it when the class is excited to start a craft. Today when everyone came in and saw the big tubs and paint on the table they were very curious. I told them the secret would be revealed at circle time. Needless to say everyone was anxious to get to the carpet. When they found out we would be painting snow, there were a few doubts but everyone soon got the hang of it! After painting for awhile I then brought out eye droppers to use to color the snow. I saw colourful volcanos, cookie batter, dirt, rainbows...It was a fun activity.
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Okay this picture shows how it started....I brought some snow in the classroom. A little boy said to me, "Miss Dawn, you shouldn't have done that because that snow is going to melt." I said "hmmm, now why would it melt in here and not outside?" Everyone said the snow would melt because it was warm in the classroom and colder outside. And that is how the discussion started. From there we had a great dissusion on how to make snow melt; heat, from our bodies and from the sun, warm wind!, warm water, even salt! These are the things I love about teaching. You can plan one thing and sometimes it turns into something even better. You see, I had planned for next week to do some "experiments" to see how to melt snow but this smart group was way ahead of me. We then started to notice that as the snow melted in our hands that "it changes colour"! Everyone was very excited by this. I explained that it was now kind of transparent or see through. As everyone, was trying to get their snow to "get see through" I encouraged them to try to use the new word...transparent. Later I heard one little boy say to another, "Say transparent, it's the real science word." Ha I love these guys!!! It was a great day! Snow and Snowmen have been our focus these past two weeks. We have been singing about them, drawing them, making them...snowmen have taken over our classroom! Everyday we do calendar in our class. We talk about the month, day of the week and the first letter of these words. We talk about events that are coming up during the month; birthdays, special events (like when Gramma is coming!), holidays. And of course, we count. We count down to these special events, we count out the date. I have a little trick I use when we count. I pick a part of our body, let's say, our elbow and we tap that body part while we count out the days on the calendar. Not only does it keep everyone focused when counting, it also teaches different body parts and one to one correspondance when counting. We have been spending time talking about patterns in numbers and how after 10 we use the same numbers again as we continue counting. We try to guess how today's date might be written by figuring out the pattern. We then do a drum role (everyone's favorite part) to see if we have the correct number. This month in the calendar we got all the way to 30. I thought it was a good time to show how we count by 10's. My "super-duper smart kids" got it right away! They then said we should play a game of Miss Dawn vs the class so they could all show me. What a smart bunch!!
I have some really good "cutters" in class this year so for more of a challenge we have moved on to cutting curved lines. This snowman craft was perfect for the children to try this skill. It seems everyone knows what to do with the scissors, open and close... but they still sometimes forget what to do with their "helper" hand. The "helper" hand holds the paper and it has a very important job; to move the paper. I found this great site missmancy.com/cutting-skills/ that offers some fun ideas to get that "helper" hand working. I love finding new ways to strengthen little finger muscles. Hammering is great exercise and lots of fun. In our "Santa's Workshop" this year I had "plastic" styrofoam (regular styrofoam works too but you must be prepared for a large mess!), small nails and kid size hammers. I was very impressed with all the ideas that the class came up with in their building...very creative! Make a tree. Put pieces in order from smallest to largest. To reinforce the skill, we worked together to put the class in order from smallest to largest. We then did the same with cubes of various lengths. Christmas is always a fun time in preschool. We spend lots of time making fun crafts and learning new songs and rhymes. One thing we love to do is pretend it is the Night Before Christmas. Everyone wears their pajamas to school and we do some of the activities that you might do at home to get ready for Santa's visit. |
Miss DawnI teach preschool in my home to 3 and 4 year olds. It's a wonderful adventure filled with lots of laughter and learning. Archives
January 2017
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