A Winter Wonderland of Learning

Wow...it's been awhile!  December and January flew by.  December was just plain busy, but January came and went in a snowy, icy, cold blur.  I thought I would organize this month's blog post by highlighting some of our favorite activities over the past few months.

Nature Study:  Porcupines and Snowy Owls

I love nature, which means my kids love nature too.  Even if they come in September weary of anything outdoors, I guarantee that they will have a genuine love of it by June.  We learn about the animals in God's creation daily.  The kids were very fascinated by porcupines, so we decided to make porcupines out of play dough and toothpicks. This led to a lot of great discussion about spiky prickles.

Our December Nature Curriculum includes a study on coniferous trees.  We collected a ton of pine cones, so the next logical step was to turn some into snowy owls.  We read the book "Owl Babies" by Martin Waddell and used our fine motor skills to pull apart cotton balls and push them into the nooks and crannies of pine cones.  A couple of google eyes and pipe cleaners later, voila, baby snow owls!

Art Study:  A Starry Night

Candy Cane Science

The kids were given bowls of baking soda and cups of red vinegar (with peppermint extract).  They used droppers to transfer the vinegar into the bowls.  They soon found that there were candy canes hiding in the fizzy foam. This lesson kicked off "Science Project Friday."  The kids really look forward to it every week.

Graphing Fun

We spend a lot of time in January learning how to create and analyze a graph.  We did a living graph answering the question "How did you come to school today?" (mittens, gloves, or bare hands).

How do you like your hot cocoa?  We discovered that all but one child likes their hot cocoa with marshmallows.

We also made snowmen glyphs. Each child recorded their answers on a data sheet.  Then we transferred all of the information from the data sheets onto a graph.  Once everything was on the graph the kids were able to easily answer my questions using great math vocabulary.

 

Making Snowflakes with the big kids

We have high school students visit our class room throughout the year.  They read, work in small groups, do art projects or just play with the kids.

Penguin Play

Will it slide?  After learning about penguins and how they move, we decided to do a science experiment to find out if various objects would slide down a sheet of ice.  First we made a chart that listed the item and if we thought it would or wouldn't slide.  Then, as we did the experiment we were able to go back and see what we predicted.

After the experiment, we smashed the ice with a wooden mallet. 

I finally got a light table!  I always wanted one, so I treated myself.  For penguin play, I covered the table with opaque plastic to diffuse the light some more.  I then placed small penguins, glass beads, clear blue plastic cups, cotton balls and yogurt containers on the light table. That's it.  This center kept them engaged for over a month.   

Lego Man Rescue

When the kids came to the table I told them that their Lego Men left the classroom and got stuck in ice.  It was their job to rescue them.  First, we brainstormed how to get them out.  Our list included...fire, the microwave, warm water, a hammer and (with a little guidance) one child said to use salt like on the sidewalk.  We agreed that it wouldn't be safe to use fire or the microwave, but warm water was doable, as was the salt.  No hammers, but a plastic butter knife was a great chisel.  They worked diligently until every last Lego Man was saved!