Flat Flatly in Chicago

 I'll be posting several of the Flat Stanley Project adventures here on the website. Our Flat friends have visited states all over the country as well as 4 countries outside the United States. When they return to the preschool with pictures, I have been sharing their adventures with the kids and posting where they went on our map just inside the classroom.

Here is installment number one:

 

The Truth About Snow

   Since we have been starting our preschool day outside on the playground this winter, we get out more days than I ever have in the past during the winter. I am a strong believer in getting outside in all kinds of weather. I have a "dream" that someday I will own enough rain boots and slickers to make going outside in rainy weather easy. I have such fond memories from my own childhood walking to and from school in the rain and playing in the puddles caused by all of the downspouts on houses.
   Back to winter in Vermont. I have noticed how kids (and I was one of them too) like to "sample" snow. As a grownup, I find this disgusting, because I know how dirty snow can be. I have had many conversations with the kids about how gross snow is, but they have not really believed me, considering how pristine and white a fresh layer of snow appears. 
We did a science experiment with snow in order for me to definitively show them that they may want to think twice before chowing down on their next snow cone.
  We got a large, empty, clean jug and filled it 3/4 of the way up with snow from the playground.  We brought the jug inside the classroom. The kids all predicted that it would melt, or change to water. We were surprised that by the end of the preschool day, there was still a lot of snow in the jar. It was slushy, but had not all melted. We decided as to let it sit inside over the weekend and we would check it on Tuesday. 

On Tuesday, this is what we found.

The kids looked in the jar and observed that there was lots of dirt and even some small rocks and pebbles in the water in the jug. They also said the water was not very clean, like drinking water. They all agreed that they did not really like to eat dirt and rocks and now they know that snow has that stuff in it. 
    The other observation that we made was that the snow had filled the jar 3/4 full, but the water that it melted into only took up a little bit of space on the bottom. I asked them what they thought made up the rest of the space in the snow--what else was in the jar? One of them realized the jar had air on top. We talked about how snow is made up of a lot of air and a little bit of water. 
   They gained a lot of knowledge in a very simple experiment of melting snow. I'll have to see if their new learning carries over to the culinary behavior on the snow-covered playground. I hope it does.

Self-Control

This story was on NPR yesterday and it connects to many of strategies we use in the Fairfield Preschool classroom. 

 Connect to the story

The teachers at this preschool in Maryland were trained by people from the Center for Social Emotional Foundations for Early Learning (CSEFEL). The folks at CSEFEL have been training trainers in Vermont. This summer and October, many teachers and providers, including me, from Franklin Central officially became CSEFEL trainers. You may recognize some of the techniques in this NPR story to what you see in our classroom everyday.

  This poster of solutions is a resource for helping the kids solve their own problems when they come up during play. We learned the words "problem" and "solution" early on in the year. We know when we have a problem we need to find a solution. Now we have a mediator (or problem solver) each day as a job in the classroom. That person helps others solve their problems with a set of solution cards they wear on a lanyard. 

 

These are the five basic rules we have for the classroom. They are stated positively (what the expectation is, rather than what we don't want to see). We review these often and they are posted near the meeting area. This helps kids understand the consistent expectations for everyone.  

This is our schedule, which helps kids know what we have done and what we will be doing. We move a clothespin along to show where we are at in the daily schedule. Our secretary (another job) reads the schedule at meeting and we always ask if we will be having a regular day or a different day, which helps kids stay grounded.

 

These are the four expectations for whole group meetings. We regularly ask the kids to check themselves when we are to the meeting area.

 

When the kids enter the room, they use this visual to know the four steps of coming into preschool each day. The goal is that they will do these on their own, without adult help to build their independence. 

Preschool Song Lyrics

Preschool song lyrics are now being posted to a page on the Fairfield Preschool's webpage. Follow this link:

Fairfield Preschool

Field Trip to St. Albans Post Office

All of the kids with Beth and a parent in front of a mail truck

Matt Durphy, the officer in charge at the Post Office showing us around.

We had a great visit to the St. Albans' Post Office. We have been learning about how mail and packages move around the country and world in preschool all month long. These boxes hold packages for people who pick up their mail at the post office.  






There are a lot of carts to roll mail around on inside the post office.

A worker sorting mail.

We saw a postal carriers sorting the mail for their routes. Each sorting carousel has slots in order by block and house. Rural carriers use cars to deliver the mail. City carriers load a mail truck, but park and walk their route with a bag.

The whole class got on the big scale. We weighed a lot, about 460 pounds.

A few of us tried out the slanted chairs at a sorting station.

We had mail to send out. We mailed Flat Stanley paper dolls to Florida, Illinois, New York, Connecticut, France, and New Zealand.

Most of them cost about 88 cents to mail. France and New Zealand cost $1.18.

We each had a valentine we made special for another student in the class. Everyone addressed and stamped their envelope to send it in the mail. We wonder how long it will take to make it to our friends' houses?

What's Up!

We finished our focus on Outer Space at the beginning of January, but I have been remiss in blogging to all of you about what transpired as we navigated the stars. The above photo is one example of the many projects we undertook. We made a solar system model with the sun in the middle and the eight planets orbiting. You'll see that Saturn has pipe cleaner rings. And Uranus' rings are rotating at 180 degrees, because that planet has a tilt that makes it spin as if it were a bowling ball.

We also went stargazing in the bathroom--the one room without any windows. When the light was on, we talked about how that is very much like the daytime on earth when the sun is shining so bright, we cannot see the stars, even though they are still there. Then, when we turned the light off, simulating night, glow-in-the-dark constellations appeared on the bathroom ceiling. They were placed in the "relative" positions to where you might see them in the winter sky. We included The Big Dipper, Aquila, Bootes, Orion, Leo, The Serpent, Lyra, and Cassiopeia. 

We did an experiment with gravity that helped the kids gain a concrete understanding of this force. I asked them to jump up and then stay there. Even though I asked them to stay up, they all came back down to the floor. We tried it a few times, but they still came down to the floor every time. We even tried it outside in the wind, but we discovered that gravity is stronger then the wind, which is why we really don't blow away in strong winds. 

We learned there are about only a few people who do not live on the earth--those are the scientists on the international space station. Otherwise, all humans live on the earth.

There was a lot more to absorb as we rocketed through the universe: meteors, comets, galaxies, rockets, shuttles, satellites, and moons. It was a wonderful time of learning about what's out there.

Holiday Concert

Here are the preschoolers performing at the Fairfield holiday concert.

The really rock, don't they?