A favorite science activity this week was making little legs out of playdough.  These flopped over until we built them around some toy leg bones.  Then they were able to stand up!  This experiment helped the children to see just how important our skeletons are to our own bodies.

We dug in the flaxseed sensory bin to find all kinds of bones.  We also studied some cards which showed pictures of  animals, but when we tipped them slightly, we could see the skeletons inside!

Dinosaurs had skeletons, too.  Scientists know this because they found fossils and assembled the bones to see what the dinosaurs looked like.  We had a group project where we built a dinosaur fossil zoo with our unit blocks, and populated it with our dinosaur skeletons.

We also looked at some pictures of fish skeletons before drawing chalk "bones" onto black paper fish.

We sang the skeleton dance, where "the head bone's connected to the neck bone," etc.  The children seemed to understand that skeletons are a part of us, and not separate entities that walk around on their own.  Maybe when we see a skeleton as a Halloween decoration, we'll remember that every girl, boy, and animal has their own skeleton inside their body.

On Wednesday we had the meadow all to ourselves, so we decided to have fun with some hoops.  We practiced rolling them before we laid them all down in the shape of a caterpillar.  We navigated the hoop obstacle course by jumping from hoop to hoop, or by just happily running through it.

Music class with teacher Lauren was so fun this week!  We met a puppet, sang songs, learned finger plays, and practiced keeping the beat.  Scarf dancing was especially fun, and so was using maracas.