Holiday Fun
12/19/2020
This week in the Beluga classroom as we have been preparing for winter break, we have had LOTS of holiday fun! We have been painting and crafting every day, and made several holiday gifts. The children's excitement has grown each day! We began the month of December by decorating for the holidays. Miss Cassy made a giant paper Christmas tree in the hallway, and the children loved making decorations for it! She also made us a menorah to help us celebrate Hanukah. Our classroom window was decorated with lights and a garland of candy canes which the children had painted. We also had a garland of gingerbread boys hanging across the hallway! One of the benefits of all our crafting and some of our other activities is that they have provided opportunities to work on our fine motor skills. Good fine motor skills help children develop the hand and finger strength needed for a good pencil grasp and control of a writing instrument, and they help provide a strong foundation for handwriting. Lacing the edges of the gingerbread with white yarn to look like icing was a difficult task for many of the children. We also decorated a few projects with beads, sequins and jewels which could be challenging for little fingers to pick up. Managing glue bottles and trying to get small dots rather than puddles also was a bit of a challenge. They were all determined though and did a great job! They were so proud of their creations! In the play dough area, children used rollers and gingerbread cookie cutters of different sizes to cut gingerbread people out of play dough. We also added trays which became "cookie sheets" which the children used to pretend to bake their "cookies". The best part of the week by far, was when Ms. Anna came in and shared with us some of Sweden’s holiday traditions and helped us make pepparkakor, which are Swedish gingersnaps! This was a two-day project which involved mixing the dough one day and baking on another. It was hard to wait, but it was SO worth it! The Belugas wish you all the happiest of holidays! See you next year!!
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The Science of Bread!
12/5/2020
This week in Early Kindergarten we have been having lots of fun as we have explored our theme “All About Bread”. We began our discussion by making a list of all the different kinds of breads we could think of. Also, since we had made bread in the bread maker the previous week, the children knew that flour is an important part of bread. So, we included in our discussion other kinds of foods we make with flour. The children were able to make quite an impressive list! We talked about how flour is made from grain, and we looked carefully at some kernels of wheat. A few brave souls even crunched a few to see what they tasted like! Together we watched a couple of short videos about how growing and harvesting wheat has changed over time. We also were able to see how much work it takes to thresh by hand using flails compared to using a combine harvester. We read two different versions of the Little Read Hen, and we decided it is important to share the work if you want to share the rewards! Early in the week we talked again about the ingredients were necessary to make bread, and we wondered if we could add other things to the dough to make it taste different. That day we made cinnamon raisin bread in the bread maker and ate it for our afternoon snack. Some children gave it two thumbs up, and some spent a lot of time picking out the raisins! All this led up to our science experiment for Fun Friday. After we made a list of what we thought could be the reasons for adding yeast, we wondered: Is there a way we could see what yeast does? What would happen if we added water, sugar and yeast to a bottle and then attached a balloon to the top? Would we be able to find out something about why we put yeast is in bread dough? The children were excited to find out, and even more so as we watched the yeast bubble up and fill the bottle and put “air” (carbon dioxide) in the balloon. This must be what happens in bread dough! It helps it puff up! So why relate this experience in such detail? Simple. All of these “wonderings” children have and the subsequent discussions, observations, and explorations we have in class are really how we utilize the Scientific Method in early learning. We listen to the children and help them formulate a question “What do you think will happen if…?”. The children are always eager to share their ideas (hypotheses)! Then we try out these ideas (experimentation) and see what happens (observation). Children are natural-born scientists, and by wondering with them and guiding their experimentation, parents and teachers can capitalize on their enthusiasm and help them explore and learn about their world. We can also have a lot of fun in the process! Other fun from this week! |
Melissa SmithMs. Smith has a degree in Early Childhood Education and has taught kindergarten for many years. Alaska has been home to Ms. Smith for 28 years, and she can't imagine living anywhere else! She has four children, a dog and two cats. She loves reading, camping, gardening, and genealogy! Archives
April 2021
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