Happy New Year! Our return to preschool was a frosty one, with days of cold weather beforehand. Because the buckets and bins outside had been laden with rain, on Tuesday we found many different shapes of ice awaiting us for exploration and play. The children had fun dropping pieces and watching them smash apart on the ground, and then took turns loading the pieces up into the wheelbarrow and dumping them in one corner of the yard. Because of the different patterns in the ice, food coloring was brought out and dripped onto it, which helped to reveal the cracks, and we watched some colors slowly blend into each other. Beautiful.
On Wednesday, we conducted an experiment indoors. Using three small trays, two ice cubes placed on each: T ground some pepper onto the first tray of ice; V used a small spoonful of salt on the second, and B sprinkled some sugar onto the third. Then, we watched and waited. During this time, we worked on 'mail' for each others mailboxes, with stickers and crayons, checking the ice from time to time. In the end, the observations were that the salt had melted deep craters in the ice cubes, the sugar had also melted the cubes a bit but "not so deep", and the pepper? "Not so much" as the others, concluded T.
Thursday, too, we brought out the paints (it was a painty week.. as you'll see) for some Ice Painting. This was done similar to marble painting, but we used circles of paper in an old soup pot for this. The children each chose colors and we squirted them directly onto the paper, and then added an ice cube that was slightly melted so it wouldn't stick. Then the children tilted the pot back and forth to move the ice around. The water from the ice blended the colors a bit, creating swirly bits between the brighter tempera paint. I have the feeling that this will be another art activity we'll revisit, as the kids had a great time.
Tuesday's painting time was in the form of using foam letter and sun/star shapes to dip in paint for a group collage. There were plenty of "B"s where B stood, happily stamping out the letter of her name in various colors. T learned that he could use the letter "I" twice to make a letter T, and V enjoyed both printing with the shapes and using them to smear color around. The bright collage hangs on the wall in our Housekeeping area, so feel free to come in and take a peek.Your child would love the chance to tell you about it! Wednesday, we had our weekly Easel Time, and the children just lost themselves in the act of filling up their paper with bright color.
We had a lot of stories and dramatic play going on this week. On Tuesday, I told a story of how the elves had come and taken ALL of our blue stones. Those imps! We had a 'treasure hunt', where V and T delightedly dug out some stones hidden in the oatmeal bin while B very happily filled up little tubes into bigger containers. The children suspect there are more treasures hidden in the sandbox, but because of the cold weather, the frozen-clumped sand was hard to work, so they wait to be discovered. At our Gathering on Thursday, all the children did a bit of playacting, once being "a big brother and a sister" (both girls wanted to be sisters, so then there were two) "and the big brother tells the sister to go to bed. The sister doesn't want to..." the conflict added a little humor to the juvenile drama, and the sisters went to bed. In our second story, dictated by B: "A big sister and a brother and they are playing with B.They play toys." So the children pretended to do that, too. Dollhouse play introduced a kitchen stove which was dubbed a "television" and placed on it's back so the hood could be the screen. B's dolls went in and out of the doors and T's doll used the small coffee table piece as a 'skateboard', and rode the frame of the dollhouse like a teenager grinding sidewalks and curbs. (Our dollhouse is adjustable; it has slots and pegs together, thus it has no conventional roof, but great lines for a skateboarding boy doll!)
At our Thursday Popcorn Picnic, we created a new "Princess Pinkie and the Green Prince" story where our characters took a trip to the zoo to see a " giraffe" (T's suggestion), "Some Tiger Lights" (V's suggestion) and ride the Zoo Train, (B's contribution) as well as taking public transportation to get there. The children had great fun telling me what sorts of snacks the Princess and her friend should pack, including Hot Cocoa and Soup and raisins. Later, we looked at an old, colorful picture book of the San Diego Zoo, where T proudly announced that he "couldn't say 'flangos'" (flamingos) and we all had a laugh at that. V told me that the peacock in the book was like one she'd seen in her backyard, which leads me to believe that either Portland or our imaginations are becoming more exotic, which is fine in any case. One of the children also pointed to a picture of the polar bears and said "Oh, that's a winter bear". Interesting connections, kids make, naming it for the season its surroundings represent instead of the geographic locale.
Can you tell that I could just go on forever about what we do? Here are a few more sweet moments from our week:
Ice Cream Play: the Cone Puzzle was our ice cream supply yet again. All the children took turns being 'the ice cream seller'. When the play was over, I asked the children to put the toy away; V and B did this cooperatively. "Hazel! We did it together!" was B's delighted cry. V emphatically added: "We did teamwork!"
More playacting: we played several rounds of "Doggie, Doggie Where's Your Bone" and the kids hammed it up as dogs. We also read that classic "Caps for Sale", and the children were mischievous monkeys to my peddler, shaking their fingers, stamping their feet and shouting "tzee tzee tzee" liked those capped monkeys in the tree.
Lots of puzzles this week: a colorful alphabet butterfly puzzle was put together at Gathering, and several of our botany puzzles came out: turtle, wasp, a boy and a fish. These puzzles fit closely together, and as well as labeling the parts of these creatures, we also worked on holding the pieces by the pegs so our fingers don't get under them and in our way. Our color/shape graduated blocks were also brought out, to be used for patterning and matching shapes. The Pegboard, too, gave them opportunities to arrange pegs in rows of color as well as shape.
Songs: at Gathering on Wednesday, T asked if we could 'sing about what we did at home"... V sang about 'watching a movie', Be 'went on a great big slide at Mommy's old park' and T cracked me up, saying "I had a hard time this morning, but I feel better now", so we sang about that too. On Thursday, the children had a spontaneous jam session, getting out the basket of instruments and taking turns leading, singing ABCs, Old MacDonald, Yankee Doodle, Itsy Bitsy Spider and Row, Row Your Boat, walking in circles around the border of the rug as they shook their instruments.
It's been a busy, learning week, and I'm looking forward to next week, with Pajama Day and Ice Sculptures to look forward to. Have a great weekend!
Hazel
