Last Official Blog Post

Sadly, this will be my last post on this blog for the Fairfield Preschool. I ended up having to make the decision in July to leave my position as the Inclusive Preschool Teacher for the town. 

I have loved sharing my life with the Fairfield Community over the last 6 years and I have made many friends along the way. You will still find me around town, especially on Tuesday nights at the library playing Mah Jong in the loft. 

I will also continue to blog, but more generally about early childhood education and special education for parents, teachers, and decision makers. That new blog, "All Together Now, " can be found at this address: 

http://bethcpeloquin.blogspot.com

Thank you, Fairfield, for being such a fantastic place to work and learn with your kids. 

Cheers to All,
Beth

Chickens Live

The Chickens should be hatching on Tuesday, May 21. Check back here to view them as they emerge from their eggs. The hatching usually begins early in the morning on Hatch Day and continues for about 36 hours. Click the link below to view the Ustrem Live Webcam.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/fairfield-preschool

UPDATE: It appears the free streaming through UStream needs to be refreshed every thee hours.  I'll stop in early tomorrow morning and start the camera again. 

NEW UPDATE: I'll be keeping up with the live stream on the brooder box until I leave the library tonight at around 8:30. Then, I'll start broadcasting again in the morning. 

Blasting off to Kindergarten

As the year winds down, we are heading to the stars as we learn about "What's up?" We began this week by reading I Want to Be An Astronaut by Byron Barton. I realized that book is now a bit out of date since it talks about traveling in the space shuttle. It does help the kids begin to grasp the concept of what it means to go into space in lower earth orbit. 

Our big cardboard box has morphed into a space shuttle (or rocket) and the kids have flight suits and headsets to wear as they go on missions into orbit. 

We made "telescopes" from paper towel tubes. The black paper taped to the end has one of the constellation's shape in pinholes. When you point it into the light, it looks like a night sky view. 

Since it is so nice out, we took advantage and made some star-scape art by splattering white and yellow paint onto black paper. Some of them looked like the night sky, some looked like galaxies or nebulae. We are going to learn about the eight planets (sorry Pluto, you are but a dwarf planet now), and the constellations in the next few weeks.
 
We have already learned about gravity. My favorite experiment to do with the kids is to count to three and have them all jump up at the same time. The direction I give them is that when they jump up, they should try to stay up in the air. We try a few times, and then we discuss how gravity will always pull us down to the earth (or to the closest flat object that is on the earth). We also tried dropping objects of different sizes to see which would hit the ground first. It didn't matter what the difference was in the sizes of the objects, they always hit the ground at the same time. The kids thought that we might get a different result if we tried it from one of the high parts of the playground structure. We spent the better time of outdoor play on Tuesday verifying that gravity pulls down all objects to the earth at the same rate, regardless of their difference in size or weight. The only exception to this rule is when something is so light that the air resistance keeps it from falling straight down (like how a feather or plastic bag float down to the ground). 


Bennett Dawson, our resident rocket builder in Farifield, will be in next week to build individual rockets with each of the kids. We'll have a "Launch Day" on Tuesday, May 21st, as long as the weather cooperates. Each child will get to launch their rocket. Last year we had a great crowd of middle schoolers and parents to share in the joy of blasting off. Anyone is welcome to join us. 

    

I don't Know Where I'm Gonna Go When the Volcano Blows

We have been talking about dinosaurs and volcanoes in the classroom. Beth visited Hawaii and brought back some real photos and video from her trip, which included a day trip up on Kilauea, one of Hawaii's to active volcanoes. 

In the classroom, we made a model volcano together and used the explosive mixture of baking soda and vinegar to make it erupt.

We started with a medium glass vase to function as the magma chamber and crater of the volcano. We used play dough to build the structure of the mountain around the crater. Then, we covered the outside in modeling clay, which will hold up to repeated lava eruptions better than play dough on its own. 

Once the volcano was finished, we put a bunch of plastic dinosaurs at the base. This is reminiscent of the one of the theories that an asteroid hit the earth and caused the dinosaurs extinction. Part of that theory is that the asteroid blast set off a number of volcanic eruptions that helped in the dinosaurs' demise.

Once we had our dinosaurs in place, we put baking soda in the crater (and into the glass vase). Next, we put food coloring and vinegar in a plastic cup. Each child was allowed to decide what color lava they wanted to make when it was their turn to pour in the vinegar. By the end, we were mixing colors to see what would come out. 

Then we poured the vinegar in and here is the exciting result. 

We will have the volcano erupting as long as it is still holding the kids' interest in the science area all next week.

Simple Machines: Pulleys

 One morning, one of the boys noticed that there were a couple of round things hanging from the crossbar on the sensory table. 
"What are those things?" he asked.
"Those are called pulleys," I said. "They are one of the things that make work easier for us. Do you want to see how they work?"
"Yeah," he said.

Soon we were joined by a few other inquiring preschoolers. We go some yarn to thread through the pulleys and we put it around one of the big, long hollow blocks. I showed them how to use it to make the block go up. The kids decided to add some of the sorting animals inside the block.

"It's just like an elevator," one student said. I told them this was a similar system to the one that elevators use to go up and down.