5-Day: Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but in 5-Day it's so delightful...
This week, we continued reading Jan Brett's books with another purpose besides enjoyment. The children have been noticing similarities and differences between some books, specifically The Mitten, The Hat and The Umbrella. They have compared and contrasted the storylines, the animals, and the settings. Their wonderful thoughts and ideas will be outside our classroom for you to enjoy, hopefully early next week. Along with this literacy activity, they have been working on their artistic interpretations as well. The art table has been busy as the class designed umbrellas by cutting different kinds of green paper onto an umbrella shape, creating a mosaic motif. When they were dry, animals from the story were added. For the story The Hat, the children had a great time placing colorful tile shapes onto a hat. These will also be added to the bulletin board.
We read The Gingerbread Baby to tie in with our gingerbread playdough, which smelled so good. There were lots of fine motor skills displayed through rolling dough, placing buttons, and using cookie cutters. Sequencing concepts were explored at the math table and estimation skills were developed by filling a plastic snowman with different materials, estimating how many were inside, and then, counting them out. One day, the snowman was filled with pom-poms, another day with cornstarch noodles, and, finally, with duplos. The children had a lot of fun with this idea.
Lots of ice was found in the discovery table this week. In the first ice activity, we searched for floating arctic animals. In the second activity, we tested to see what happens when you put warm water or salt on small ice blocks. And, finally, we tested to see what happens when you try warm water or salt on large ice blocks. At the easel, the children had a wonderful time designing snowmen with foam pieces, buttons and markers.
One day, we stopped and took a quick snapshot of what was going on in the classroom at the same time and this is what we saw:
Marie-Sophie and Wren acting out The Mitten.
Connor, Caleb and Lucas filling up the trucks with blocks.
Ashwin and Mia cooperating on building the bear puzzle.
Tanya, James and Marlo making gingerbread cookies.
Alexander and Kaia using tongs to fill up the snowman.
Asher drawing at the writing table.
Minna and Margot decorating snowmen at the easel.
Nate filling his hat with colorful squares.
Madeline busy cutting and sequencing her animals from The Hat.
We are looking forward to an author study of the Laura Numeroff books beginning next week.
Thank you,
Cathy and Kristi
cutters