More Winter

This week we continued to learn all about winter. 

We read the book The Mitten. 

We did an activity using the animals from the book, as well as few others, to learn about which animals hibernate and where. We learned that hibernation is a way that animals adapt to the environment. Animals hibernate to escape the cold. Animals that don’t hibernate are able to adapt to the cold. Furthermore, we sorted which animals hibernate and which animals don’t. You can see our chart hanging outside of our room.  

We also acted out the story by pretending to be the characters climbing into the mitten. That was a lot of fun! We acted it out at least 4 times this week because they enjoyed this so much. 

As a literacy activity, each child was asked to decide what animal could fit in their mitten. They then illustrated their work and wrote the name of the animal.

            

This week we also took the time to teach the children about things that come in pairs, such as, mittens, gloves and boots. We discussed the body parts that we have two of, like, our arms, legs, eyes and ears. We then spoke about how we need to make sure that all of our articles of clothes can keep them warm. That is why we need two of things like, gloves and shoes. We made beautiful water color paintings that were cut out to the shape of mittens. They are hanging in our classroom to create a beautiful winter wonderland.

                 

In the winter it gets colder and the temperature drops. So we conducted a fun science activity, using thermometers to experiment with temperature. We learned that a thermometer helps to tell us the temperature. We had two thermometers both reading at the same temperature. We then decided to keep one lying out in the classroom and we placed the other in a bowl of ice. When we check on the thermometers later will they still be at the same temperature? Some said yes and some said no. The children were very excited to see the results.  Later, when we compared the two thermometers we did see a difference! The thermometer in the ice was at a much lower temperature than the one sitting out in the classroom

 Furthermore, we made delicious Rice Krispy treat snowballs and drank some hot cocoa to keep us warm during this cold weather. 

Painting Class

We viewed Jasper John's Alphabet painting and used this painting as our inspiration. Instead of writing the entire alphabet though, we just wrote out the letters of our name. We wrote in crayon and painted over using watercolors. 

            

Winter

This week we returned from break to begin our winter fun. We shared what we already know about winter. 

We also played a game where we dress Petey. What clothing does Petey need to play outside during winter time? Each child had a turn to put one item of clothing on Petey.

We read the book The Snowy Day and discussed what we like to do on a snowy day. Each child illustrated a picture and then dictated their words. 

The book additionally touches upon snow melting. So we decided to conduct a fun science experiment to turn a liquid into a solid. We filled ice cube trays with water and since it was so cold outside, we put them outside. We left them over night and lo and behold, the water turned to ice! The children were very excited. We then brought the ice into the classroom to see what would happen next. 

With snow being our main theme of the week we practiced our fine motor skills by cutting to design our own individual snowflakes. We also made snowmen. We talked about different sizes: small, medium, and large. We used the three sizes and put them in size order to make our own snowmen. We then gave children a pair of eyes, arms, legs, gloves, boots, and a hat to glue onto their snowmen. We additionally, as a literacy activity, wrote our own creative writing stories about our snowmen.  

   

Song:

Snowflake Song (Tune: I'm a Little Teapot)

I'm a little snowflake, fat and round

Falling softly to the ground

When enough of me falls hear me shout,

"Here's a snowball, better watch out!" (pretend to throw a snowball)

Painting Class 

This week we focused on Edvard Munch's famous artwork The Scream. We noticed the beautiful colors he used to paint the sky and we focused on the emotions of the person in the painting. We then created our own scream painting.