Teamwork

At the beginning of the last week of preschool, we brought out the straws and connectors. 

We challenged the kids to work together to build a structure that at least two kids could fit inside. 

The whole idea was to both expand their building problem solving skills, get them to work together, and to figure out how to use their building materials to make a big and strong structure. Here's what we got.

Making Rainsticks

We worked together as a whole team and made a rainstick today. If you are interested (and brave) and would like to make a home made rainstick, here is how you do it. You will need a tube (like a mailing tube or big paper roll innard), nails (the longer the better--as long as they do not go through the tube), hammer, duct tape and masking tape, thinks to make the rain noise such as dried beans, small pasta, rice, lentils, popcorn etc.

1. Pound nails into the tube in a pattern that follows just next to the seam of the tube--a spiral down and around. Pound in two more tracks of nails following the same pattern, but now away from the seam. You will easily use a box or more of nails. Kids may need an adult to start the nail for them, then they can hammer it in. 

2. Next, seal one end tight with duct tape. We made an X pattern and then covered all the holes and then streched a piece of duct tape around the top of the tube to hold it all tight.

3. Fill the rainstick. When you look in you will see the pattern of the nails you hammered. Put in a generous amount of dried beans, lentils, rice, small pasta, and popcorn. You can test how the stick will sound by covering the open end with a jar top and tipping the stick over. We checked twice and put in more stuff before we were satisfied.

4. Close the other end of the rainstick with duct tape. Then use colored duct tape and/or masking tape to cover the whole stick. This will keep the nail heads from sticking out.

5. Play your rainstick by turning it upside down and letting all the dried food pieces hit the nails on their way down. 

Digital Microscope

This week at small groups, the kids learned how to use our class's new digital microscope. It is called a Dino Lite. We can magnify any object that the kids want to bring to the science table. Then, we can take a picture and save it to the computer. See if you can guess what the following objects might be.

To find out what they are, place your cursor over the picture and look at the bottom of your browser. The picture's name is at the end of the link to the picture that shows up there.

Jazz on A Saturday Night

As part of our focus on music, we read the book Jazz on a Saturday Night, which I had ordered from Scholastic last month without really knowing the story. It turns out, the book introduces a dream team of Jazz musicians as if they were playing together as one band for an audience in a club. It focuses on the instruments they play. First, there is Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis on the trumpet. The kids remembered Louis from when we sang "What A Wonderful World" earlier in the year. Then there is John Coltrane and Charlie Parker on the saxophone. Their horns have a conversation. Next, Max Roach on drums. Thelonious Monk is the keyboard player, Stanley Clark plays stand up bass (we noticed how big the case was for that) and finally, Ella Fitzgerald was the singer, whose only instrument was her voice in the microphone.  The cool thing was, after seeing the ensemble playing together in the book, the bandstand in the classroom during play time became more cohesive. They pretended like they were playing music together.
I realized, as I was reading and explaining to the kids who the real people were in the book, that I had CDs of all of them at home except Charlie Parker and Max Roach. I burned CDs at home and made a new playlist for the iPod. Today, during play time, I was able to play the music of all of these greats for the kids. They really got a kick out of me belting out "Don't Fence Me In" with Ella Fitzgerald. It was great to see the band pretend today with the music in the classroom reflecting the people we had learned about from Jazz on a Saturday Night.

Branon Farm Field Trip

We had a very fun, if a little cold, field trip out to the Branon's Farm. The whole plan for the trip was for kids to get a look at some winter animal habitats. The kids took a short snowshoe hike (or sled ride) out in the farm field. They were able to find several holes that they suspect rodents have made for their winter homes. We did not find many tracks, except our own that we left with snowshoes.

Beth, who was off getting extra shoes, and Farmer John, met the trekkers in the field with the big John Deere tractor. John had hooked up a hay wagon do that the ride back was a little easier than the trek out. We took a chilly hayride back to the house to gather sleds. Then we headed out across Chester Arthur Road to the field with the sledding hill.

Everyone had a chance to slide down the hill with friends or on their own. The first few times down the hill were a little slow. Once we had made some nice packed down tracks, the sledders picked up speed. We got really good at yelling, "LOOK OUT BELOW!" as we zoomed down the hill. Kids who got a little too cold were able to warm up in the tractor, that stayed parked up on the hill with us.

After we tuckered ourselves out on the sledding hill, we made our way back to the farmhouse to warm up with hot cocoa and snack. Candy had everything ready for us. We also got to meet the bunny rabbit that lives in the house. As we ate and sipped in the warm house, Candy performed the puppet show for winter habitats.

We found out that mice don't hibernate, but they make warm homes under the snow. They try to stay hidden from weasels, who like to eat mice. We also found out that bears don't necessarily sleep all winter. They are dormant. They sleep a lot and don;t eat, but they are sometimes awake in their desn. Especially the females who give birth in late winter and have to care for their cubs in the winter den.

Bee Bots

I've finally finished using the Fudge for Funds money to purchase more technology tools for the classroom. This week, the kids were introduced to Bee Bots. These are programmable robots that look like bees. You can make them move forward, backward, to the left and to the right. For each direction you program in, the Bee Bot moves 15 centimeters. The Alphabet mat the kids are using above has the letters in 15 cm boxes. They can program the Bee Bot to move through the alphabet. They can start on the J and figure out what steps to program to get to the M (or any other letter they choose). They are learning that when they program a turn, the Bee Bot does not move forward--it only turns. That has been the trickiest part of figuring out how to make them move. The kids can randomly program and see where the Bee Bot ends up, or they can purposely try to get from one place on the mat to another. There has been some nice partnering, where one child programs and the other uses the mat to figure out where the Bee Bot will end up.
We have made a few other mats, one with shapes of different colors and one with numbers. There are more ideas coming for using the Bee Bot mats to teach other concepts--mapping, directions, vocabulary, etc.