Week 14: Robots and Water Exploration
This week in the Early Learning class, the girls were introduced to a number of new provocations at centres, as well as a new person. We are excited to welcome Sarah, a Linden alum, as a student teacher in the class over the next couple of weeks (as well as for a week in February). She will be working with the girls, asking them about their learning, and teaching some lessons. This week, she got a glimpse of what we do together. There was water exploration, many BINGO games, cookie making practice, literacy work, collaborative centres, learning about coding, and lots of talking about our feelings. I hope you enjoy learning about the girls' experiences from the week.
P and G experiment with water tools at the Discovery Centre. The girls squeezed, poured, spilled, sucked, funnelled, measured and transferred water between many containers. Afterward, P shares with the group that she was making a cake but that it got messy. The girls had no problem pitching in during our clean up time and wiping up any spilled water.
G and M get to spend some time in art free-painting with watercolours because they have finished up their most recent project, the Winter Moon Watercolour. The finished pieces are on display in our classroom!
K works on placing the BINGO balls in the correct places by matching the letters and numbers up. Her ability to read any 2-digit number is fantastic.
I mentioned to the girls that next week, we will be baking gingerbread cookies (and decorating them!). This week is practice time, using gingerbread play dough. P focuses on rolling out the dough to the right thickness and then cutting out a variety of cookies. By the end of centres, she is ready for the real deal next week.
G and M work together again this week, but this time it is in CERES class. Together, the girls taped down a pathway on the floor. M gives G, who is pretending to be a robot, specific instructions to walk along the pathway. This class, we are learning that people are MUCH smarter than computers, and that people are the ones who tell computers what to do.
K is busy at work from the moment she comes into the classroom in the morning. Today, she sorts her words by three new starting blends: /sp/, /sm/, and /sk/.
P works with Sarah to match the BINGO balls up. She is practicing reading 2-digit numbers by first reading both numerals, and then repeating the full number aloud.
A spends this morning's Learning Centres learning about the properties of water. She is exploring how much she can add before it overflows, and decides to use different tools to fill up the variety of containers on the table.
Because G looks so relaxed, you might not guess that "she has scarlet fever and needs to be taken care of by her doctor". G and K role play this scenario at the Drama Centre.
P takes a step back to examine the "playground" that she has created at the Math Centre. She notices that she needs to add a few more materials to the design.
A figures out what her first initial would be in binary code. She uses the legend to colour in the boxes in the right pattern, and the finished product is a binary bracelet.
K looks like she's enjoying working through our weekly literacy centres. One of today's centres is a challenge - putting together words of the same word family, and reading them through. She is very proud of herself as she finds most matches and is able to read most of the words.
A explores a new literacy centre - working with magnetic letters on the board. She carefully lines them up underneath the numbers that she wanted to organize first.
After practicing the shapes of the most recent letter sounds, G decides to use the remaining time at this centre making one of her favourite people's names out of play dough.
A is excited about being responsible for creating the December calendar for the class. She spends two days working on it and is very proud when it is finally complete and able to be used during Math Calendar.
K delicately runs her play dough tool around the edges of the CN Tower that she wants to cut out. She realizes that she might need to roll her dough out thinner when we make real gingerbread cookies so the cookies cut out easily.
After making a handful of cookies, G chooses to make a cake and also "bake it". I love the extra designs she has added to her dough with the different tools at Art and Light.
The train is ready to leave the station. P pulled all of the chairs together and then invited her friends to join her on the ride.
Don't be fooled by these grouchy-looking faces. This week we have been talking about feelings and emotions, and the girls have been thinking about all of the different that our bodies, or other peoples' bodies, can feel. Today we took pictures while representing each feeling and will be putting these up in our classroom to help us communicate better with the people around us.
We had some free time this afternoon, which isn't something that happens all too often, and G and A chose to build together. I am so impressed at their communication and collaboration, talking through the placement of the different pieces without any issues.
Sarah gifted the Early Learning class a Buddha Board after noticing how much the Grade 1-2s have enjoyed using theirs. A was eager to try it out this morning after finishing her morning work. It is so cool how the water just evaporates and leaves a clean slate for someone else to create on.
This morning we have a special Learning Centres time together with the Grade 1-2 class. After learning at different centres, K, M, and A end off their time building together with LEGO.
The girls were excited to head out for our Outdoor Learning time today because they had a burning question in their heads - would the puddles around the park and in the ravine be frozen because the temperature is so cold today? K's prediction was that they would be frozen. The girls enjoyed a chance to test their predictions, and they discovered that even through there was some frozen ice, the puddles had not frozen fully through yet. Another thing that they learned was that ice is VERY slippery!