Swimming in the Afternoons and February Plans

We swam for the first time in the afternoon last Thursday and it was very successful.  The children did very well with the change in schedule and we feel that it will be better for the children to have a few days rest after swimming and a whole week of school.  We returned to the school after swimming just in time for a snack and then it was dismissal time.

This past week we also had our ice races in the gym which was a lot of fun!  Previously, we filled several containers of various sizes with water with the children and they helped us find room in our freezers to place our containers.  On Wednesday, we gathered all of our frozen containers, put our mittens or gloves on, and separated the various ice cubes from their containers. We started off picking two students who picked the ice cube of their choice and then sat behind the starting line.  We predicted which ice cube would go the furthest and then the students pushed their ice as hard as they could and we put a piece of masking tape with their name on it to mark their spot.  When all the children had a chance to race, we measured each spot and talked about measuring and distances.  After that, any of the children that wanted to continue to race were able to race to their hearts content!  We brought out our little swimming pool to place all of our ice cubes in and we talked about what made the ice melt and why.  The children added salt to their ice cubes to see the effect that made.  The children really enjoyed this activity and we learned a little about the properties of water in different forms.

We have started a small Kindergarten readiness class for the students that will be starting Kindergarten in the fall.  We meet together as a group and we do one activity together that helps the children with their listening skills and following teacher directions.  We'll send some of their work home so you can see their wonderful progress and we'll save some of their work for their scrapbooks that you'll receive at the end of the school year.

Our water table has been very popular this month so we'll continue that for February.  We have funnels, hoses, turkey basters and eye droppers for the children to experiment with and they're learning a lot!  We will also freeze water in balloons this week and then peel off the balloon when they're frozen. Then we'll experiment with the ice balls and see if we can use salt to melt the ice to make snowman with them. We'll also use our eye droppers to add food coloring to allow the children to see how the ice balls melt with the salt a little more clearly.

With Valentine's day around the corner we'll be talking about friendship and how to make friends and how to be a good friend.  We'll have a Valentine's party on Valentine's Day where we'll share valentines with each other.  I'll send home a letter about this with all the children's names.  February is also Dental Health Month and on Wednesday, February 16, we'll have a dental hygienist come in and talk to the children about their teeth and the importance of brushing them.

Dates to Remember:

Swimming on Thursday, February 10

Valentine's Party at 2:00 on Monday, February 14

Dental Hygienist on Wednesday, February 16

Swimming on Thursday, February 24

Snow and the World of Bounce

Well, I have successfully picked another snowy, wintry day to play our World of Bounce trip and for the second time we had to postpone the trip.  Wow, I just can't believe it.  I still think it's a good trip to make in the winter since it's an indoor activity...it's just getting there...that's the problem! We made the day last Thursday as fun as we could for the children and we had a picnic lunch in the sensory room right before we loaded the buses early for the early dismissal.  I'm hesitant to plan a third trip....but I will!  I'll get with our bus drivers and plan another date in February.

We will continue learning about water, snow, and ice this week.  Last week, we filled multiple containers with water and placed them in the freezer with the children.  These containers are of various sizes and when they freeze we will hold ice races with them in the gym.  This will be great fun as we can make predictions as to which sizes will go further and faster and why.  We have gloves or mittens for all the children as they will need them to handle the ice. If there's enough snow on the ground this week, we'll bring some into the classroom to put in our sensory table and build snowmen with them and other things that the children want to build.  We'll also paint with our frozen colored ice cubes that we made last week.  We can see what makes the ice melts and what effect it has on paper. 

January 2011

We're off to a wonderful start in 2011!  It was fabulous to see the children after their Christmas break and get caught up on what they were doing!  They had many stories to tell us about their adventures!

This month we'll be studying water in all of its forms.  We have our water table open with many options for the children to explore.  Starting with turkey basters we'll experiment with air and water.  We'll do experiments to learn what effect air has on water, then we can use our funnels and clear plastic tubing to see how gravity effects water in the tubes.  We'll have this center open for the month of January and as the weeks progress we'll add other forms of water like ice and snow.  We made colored water this week and poured it into ice cube trays.  We put a popsicle stick in each section and we will paint with our ice cubes later next week and discover how the ice melts and under what conditions do they melt faster.  Then we discussed where we might place our four containters to freeze them.  The children decided on one in the freezer in Nurse Karla's office, one in the refrigerator, one in our little freezer in our refrigerator in the classroom and one outside.  We checked on all four of our experiments and we learned several things.  We learned that snow fell on our ice cubes tray that we placed out side so they have a layered look and we learned that our refrigerator is set too cold as 1/4 of the ice cube tray froze in the refrigerator...so that was a lesson I wasn't counting on but we talked about why that happened!  That's the fun of experminenting....you just never know what you'll learn!

Our World of Bounce field trip has been re-scheduled for Thursday, January 20th.  We are also resuming swimming at the Y and here's our schedule:

The Red Room will be swimming on:

Wednesday, January 26

Wednesday, February 9

Wednesday, February 23

Wednesday, March 9

Wednesday, March 23

Wednesday, April 13

Wednesday, April 27