We Have Been Busy!

Hello everyone! My, have we been so super busy so far this year! We started our school year out really getting to know the children and helping them to get to know each other. We also focused on understanding and managing the rules, expectations, and routines of our classroom and took some additional time to really understand the interests of the children. We have been learning, growing, and exploring, so much together and look forward to sharing some of what we have been doing so far this year!

We started our "Getting to Know You" unit with self-portraits. This was a great opportunity for the children to be able to not only share a little bit about themselves but to also get to know themselves and recognize their bodies a little better. Some friends included some of their interests or favorite things on their self-portraits. After we completed them we did a little share and identified what we drew and why!

During one of our science units, we had a lot of fun dissecting Sunflowers that Miss Karin brought in from her sunflower garden. We were able to discuss the life cycle of sunflowers, how they grow, and really explore how they felt and smelled while using "dissection tools". Afterwards, we tried to re-create the sunflowers using our art materials.

For one of our favorite sensory experiences so far we explored different smells. So far we have explored cinnamon, pumpkin spice tea, vanilla, nutmeg, and lime. The children had a lot of fun exploring the smells, trying to decipher what they were smelling, sharing what the smells reminded them of, and then using them in dramatic play as "cooking ingredients".

During one of our math units, we began exploring measurements. We had a lot of fun building with different materials (cups, blocks, magnet tiles, and legos) and measuring our creations. We made a chart where we were able to compare the height of our creations to our own bodies! The children tried very hard to make creations as tall as they were! It was very exciting. 

During our "Velocity and Speed" unit we explored using ramps. The children created ramps of different angles and sizes and used materials such as cars and balls to test them out. We had a lot of great discussion about why cars or balls went faster or further down certain ramps and slow down others. We also had a "Ball Vs Car Challenge" where we made predictions as to whether or not cars or balls were faster and shared our ideas and predictions. Towards the end, we used baskets to catch our balls and cars and used tally marks to see how many we could get into the baskets. It was exciting to count at the end!

During a cooking unit, we became soup chefs. We met together to list of ingredients that we thought we may find in a soup. Then we went "grocery shopping" in our kitchen and circled the ingredients that we were able to find. After a group discussion about kitchen health and safety, all of the children sat down and helped to make some very delicious and healthy soup! It was tasty and good for our bodies! 

We look forward to sharing more with you soon!