December

We celebrated Chanukah and put on our play for the whole school!

The coming of winter gave us new questions to ask and answer. The children's questions are in quotation marks. The deeper questions that came from our discussions are in parentheses.

• "How does Siri know what the temperature is?" (What tool can we use to find out the temperature?)

• "Why does it get cold in winter? It's still sunny." (What happens to the Earth that makes our part of the world cold while other parts are warm?)

• "What is snow? Why does it sometimes snow and sometimes rain?" (And what are the other kinds of precipitation, and what happens to make each fall?)

• "When does water turn into ice? How cold does it need to be?"

• "Why are snowflakes pretty?" (How do snowflakes form, and what do they have in common?)

Snowflakes

We learned that snowflakes are made of ice crystals. They almost always have six corners or six arms, and they arms are symmetrical. We made snowflakes out of blocks, beads, felt shapes, and paper (and salt dough, too), and we can't wait to analyze and explore REAL snow when it falls this winter!

We made two kinds of salt dough!

• Fine motor development, squeezing and shaping the dough.

• Mathematical learning as we each measured our ingredients and talked about and experimented with fractions!

• Creative art development as we sculpted with our different doughs.

We made regular salt dough (above) and glittery salt dough (below)!

Journal writing, reading and math are part of our everyday learning adventures. And WOW! These kids are flying!

Emergent Curriculum - How Things Fit Together

The children have been motivated to create mosaic designs with dominos and other small colorful blocks. This, combined with their interest in puzzle building, and building and ramp making has encouraged spacial thinking and more planful design in the classroom.

Stay tuned for more fun in January!