Safety First!
9/7/2019
Children are natural explorers! Our Pre-K Orcas especially love to get their hands dirty and often engage in active play. One of my goals as an Early Kindergarten teacher is to help my students build a lifelong excitement and love for learning. I work towards this goal by creating exciting activities that allow children to gain a deeper understanding of topics in a safe manner. This week, we talked about the importance of hand washing. While many agreed that we should wash our hands often, the concept of germs was difficult to understand. Since bacteria and viruses are not visible to the eye, children stated that their hands looked clean even after recess. This lead to our first experiment, the flour handshake! The Flour Germ Experiment helped kids see the “germs” and gave them a more concrete understanding of how germ prevention work. The experiment began with one student dipping his hands in water and then in flour. We then stood in a circle and greeted each other with a handshake. The flour transferred from one child to the next and by the end of the greet, all of the students had 'germs' on their hands. The students saw how quickly the germs spread from just one person. We also talked about how we could have avoided spreading the germs. The student could have washed his hands before greeting his friend. Next, we went to the sink and practiced washing our hands properly. The steps included wetting our hands, using soap, rubbing the soap between our fingers, singing our hand washing song, rinsing and drying our hands. We also experimented with pepper, soap, and water. In the pepper germ experiment, students filled their bowls with water and sprinkled some black pepper. The pepper symbolized the germs. Students then used a dropper to add the soap in the center of the bowl. What really caught the kids interest was how quickly the pepper germs moved away when the soap was added. The more soap they used, the faster the reaction was. After this experiment, the children made sure they used plenty of soap to wash their hands. Our sensory table was filled with soapy water, toys, rags and sponges. Students practiced cleaning their classroom toys and discussed the importance of soap to get rid of germs. Students strengthened their fine motor skills while using water color paint and a dropper to create drip germ art. They talked about how our hands can get dirty. Students also used the collage items to create their own germ. They used feathers, paint dots, googly eyes, crayons and markers. Their creativity really shined in this activity! We then researched real pictures of bacteria and viruses as a class. We continued to work with tan-grams in our math center. They identified the shapes, counted how many sides the shapes had, and matched them on the sheet. Students also worked together to measure exact ingredients to make slime (germ). We learned about measuring units including a cup, a tablespoon and a teaspoon. Our slime activity was definitely one of the highlights of this week! In addition, students used a variety of play doh tools to make letters A and B. They also played a letter matching game in the literacy center. Last week we had our first fire drill practice! The children did a wonderful job staying calm and following directions. As a morning exercise, we practiced an earthquake drill in the classroom. Preparing for earthquakes involves learning what should be done before, during, and after earthquakes. Students were asked to walk around the classroom and explore their centers as they normally would. Mrs. Sam and I shook the tables to imitate an earthquake. Students immediately went under the tables and covered their heads. We practiced this drill several times throughout the week. As children participated in the safety activities, they learned how to identify problems and communicate their ideas about potentially dangerous situations. They used their speaking square to come up with solutions. We practiced Moose and Bear Safety in our play ground. Students pretended that the soccer goals, play ground equipment, and benches were trees and buildings. They got behind these large objects to protect themselves from a moose. Students also joined together and made loud noises to scare a black bear away. They also practiced lying on their stomachs and covering their heads to protect themselves from an aggressive brown bear. We then shared several interesting moose and bear stories. Students worked on their social skills as they took turns communicating with each other. Lastly, we began Spanish Class with Ms. Emani this week! We learned how to say family, mother, father, grandpa, grandma, uncle, aunt, cousin, brother sister and baby in Spanish! We also made music with Ms Andrea, worked with charcoal in Art Class and played hot dog tag in Gym Class! Comments are closed.
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April 2021
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