January

January was full of joy and exploration.

The children discovered static electricity and just had to learn more. It was a great season for ice and ice crystals, and a playground that had frozen into a skating rink. We listened to Elvis Presley singing, "Walk a Mile in my Shoes," and discussed diversity in the world and in the classroom. And we managed to stay connected to each other even as some of us were at school and the rest of us were virtual!

Click on the Content Headings to jump to each section.

Puzzle-making

Scientific Thinking

Mathematical Learning

Social-Emotional Understandings

Artistic Experiences

Literacy - Reading and Language Arts

Cooking/Baking - Measuring and Sequencing

Children-Initiated Learning

Gross Motor Play

Puzzle-making

Our puzzle-making reached new heights with our 100, 250 and 300-piece puzzles!

Doing puzzles together increases children's mindfulness and problem solving abilities, and builds communication skills and teamwork.

How many kinds of firetrucks are there? We have three different firetruck puzzles to help us find out!

Space exploration is super-exciting. Some of our friends were even planning their own trip to visit Jupiter!

Scientific Thinking

We experimented with properties of matter (solids, liquids and gases), static electricity (and atoms!), and simple machines!

The Children made many observations during our Static Electricity Experiment:

Tessa noted the balloons stayed sticking on the wall for a long time. (Could we time it?)

Indy observed that when two balloons rub together, they sometimes attract and other times repel. Also, he noticed that balloons aren’t the only things that can get staticky. Hair can get charged by sweaters, hats and sweatshirts.

Olly explained that his group rubbed the balloon on the sink and then it stuck to the wall.

Maya and Tessa rubbed the balloon on the wall and found that it stuck to lots of different surfaces including cabinets, window glass and walls.

William shared that when his team rubbed the balloon on the window, it stuck to the window. (I wonder why some things make the balloon have static and others, not?

Adler liked how when he rubbed the balloon on the sink, it stuck to it.

Aurora said that she loved it when the balloon was rubbed on her hair and pulled it all up.

Jacob shared that they rubbed the balloon on the black chair and then it stuck there.

Jeremy told us that he rubbed the balloon on his hair, and his hair just stuck all over the balloon.

The challenge was to build a domino chain reaction that would press down one side of a lever which would then send an animal on the other side flying into the air.

Mathematical Learning

We wrote and solved equations in many different formats, and used different kinds of manipulatives to help us solve them. We read word problems, and wrote equations to help us find the answers.

Social-Emotional Understandings

We talked about how are we the same, and how are we different from each other, and learned the words, "diversity" and "empathy." We discussed what it means to "walk a mile in someone else's shoes."

To read all the different answers the children gave to questions about themselves and to see all the artwork, click on this link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dChHXp6EgBu7qZefGrYKsZ22MVRlR7ZgPUn0O5s_twY/edit

Artistic Experiences

Inspired by the children's interest in "where the sky meets the tops of the trees," we have been examining and creating landscape art. The children have learned the terms, "horizon line," "foreground and background," and "perspective" to help describe our designs and plans, and our works.