Starting Our Space Study...

Overheard in the classroom:

Child, "Does anyone know whose paper this is?  They did NOT write their name on it.  What's the rule in EE5?"

Another Child, "It's TOTALLY not mine."

A third Child, "It's TOTALLY not mine either.  And the rule is...you write your name on your paper."

Original child, "Are you sure this is TOTALLY not yours?"

I can't make this stuff up.



Some of the kids were talking about the hurricane today, and it occurred to me that sometimes we don't understand stress in small children.  Think about all the preparation we all went through to get ready just in case this hurricane was bad, and how  your children may have viewed that preparation.  We all know that the hurricane didn't do much damage in our area, but the kids have no way of understanding that.  We don't know WHAT they think of any of these stressful situations.  So we gave them the opportunity to talk about it in our classroom, at our meeting (large group) and again at the writing center (small group).  I would encourage parents to do the same, just listening to what their impressions are.  Here are a couple of drawings from today about the hurricane...

 

Please notice all the swirling rain and wind.  This must have been very scary to them.  In the second picture, those shapes are trees flying around.  

 

We all did a little post-hurricane clean up out on the playground today, adding all the sticks and debris onto the compost pile.  The kids were really helpful.

 

 

 

In spite of the storms this weekend, we did come in to find MANY passion flowers blooming--red and purple.  Aren't they pretty?

 

We added a little micro-play to our science center today.  Our sensory bin is filled with black beans, planets, astronauts, rocks, space vehicles, and some other cool stuff.  It' was pretty popular today.

 

We did a little paint stamping with stars and spacemen and added a little glitter because "space is very sparkly", as one of my friends told me. 

 

Some friends used tiny blocks to build structures like the ones on the pictures.  This is a really good fine motor and problem-solving activity, and there is also some negotiation going on as well.  

Patterning with stars....