Pajama Day Pillow Fights

Experimenting with Plants

We started our plant unit with an activity to show what a plant needs to grow. The children pretended to be seeds, rooting their feet on the floor so they couldn't move. Then I sprinkled small colored pieces of paper on top of them.The children did not know what the colors represented- blue was for water, brown was for soil, and yellow was for sun. I also included a few red papers for diseases and black for bugs.  The children picked up as many papers as they could without moving their feet. Then we looked at what each child had to see if they would survive. If they had no blue ones, they wouldn't survive. If they had more yellow than the others, they may live in a desert. If they had too many blue, they might drown. The red or black automatically died. It was a good way to show how hard it is for a seed to survive. 

It was also fun to see celery leaves turn blue after the celery stem was put in blue water. It is a great way to show how plants absorb water and nutrients.

We have had fun learning about plants and what they need to grow. We did an experiment planting seeds in water/ no water, dirt/ no dirt, and light/ no light. The children predicted which ones would grow and were amazed that all the seeds grew except the one with no water. The seed with no light grew the fastest and the leaves were yellow and scrawny instead of green. The seed in water with no dirt also grew roots but stopped growing when the sprouts started. 

Sharing decorations

The children have been busy making ornaments to share with residents at a nursing home. We have made paper chains, paper ornaments, snowflakes and pine cone ornaments. 

Holiday fun

The month of December our class will be learning about different celebrations of light around the world. We learned about the countries that celebrate St. Nickolas Day and read The Baker's Dozen, a tale about St. Nickolas. We celebrated with gingerbread cookies. Joanne helped us celebrate Channukah by teaching the dreidel game and giving each child a dreidel to share with their families. For our celebration of Las Posadas in Mexico, the children are helping to make a piñata . It was very messy and gooey!

Second graders reading to preschool buddies

Having fun with ramps

Apple projects

This week we are learning about apples. We read The Apple Pie Tree by Zoe Hall and The Seasons of  Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons. We used a mystery bag to feel an apple without knowing what it was and described what we were feeling. There were some great descriptive words such as hard,cold, smooth, pokey, round and big ( I used a huge Honey Crisp apple). Then the children guessed what was in the bag. A ball and an apple were the most popular guesses.

At the art table we made apple prints on paper. At the math table there are different sized apples to arrange from smallest to largest and there is also a scale to weigh apples and find out which one is the heaviest and lightest.
We also made applesauce. First the children used an apple peeler to peel the apples. Each child had an opportunity to turn the handle and the children enjoyed seeing how long a peel could be without breaking. Then they chopped the apples carefully into small pieces and put the pieces in a pot to cook. Our room smelled wonderful as the apples cooked. When the apples were soft, we used a colander fruit press to mash the apples. We added a little cinnamon to our applesauce. It was Yummy!