Imagine

After having so much fun learning and exploring simple machines, we read the books,  What Do You do with an Idea  and  The Most Magnificent Thing . The first book makes the reader question what they would do with a new idea and the second about a little girl that sets to work bringing an idea to life. This got us thinking about how things were invented. How someone had to have an idea for something before that something was created. We set to work with various materials, tapeing, bending and fastening. Some children had an idea of what they were creating before starting to build, while others decided what their invention was once it was completed. Some of the inventions had practical purposes, “This blows leaves away. It’s also called a "Stamp it." "When your leg isn’t acting right you use it like this", (makes motion as if walking with a cane.)  While others were completely unique. “It’s a remote that puts on movies for grown ups on a special TV that tells them abo

Earth Day is a wonderful opportunity to start conversations about ways we can help keep the Earth healthy. We read some books, had some great discussions about recycling and made some beautiful artwork. We supplied watercolor pencils and paper and just asked the children if they wanted to paint the Earth.  They are hanging in our studio if you want to take a look. 

We dropped a paint covered marble in the middle of a piece of paper in a long, shallow box with a child holding each end of the box. We asked "how can you make the marble move?" With a little bit of team work the pairs of children applied what they had discovered while building ramps on previous days. One child needs to tip the box up while the other tips their end down.  They also discovered together how they could make the marbles go side to side. This activity turned out to be as fun as the paintings are beautiful.  Look for them hanging in our red room.

One day recently we noticed the children lining the wooden blocks up and pushing them down domino style. We thought it was a a great time to introduce real dominoes to the class.  Everyone had a great time setting them up and then watching them fall.  Dominoes are considered a lever which is a "simple machine". We got some books from the library and set out to learn more about other simple machines. We learned that ramps are also simple machines.  We have all these different sized tubes in our resource room just waiting for an opportunity like this. The children experimented will different angles and soon figured out that the higher one end is the faster the object will go.  We also provided toilet and paper towel tubes and tape and some of our friends built marble rolls.  In our studio we set up a provocation that invited the children to create ramps.  What a great time we had exploring cause and effect and gravity. 

We set out loose materials like keys, sea glass, shells and angel tears and invited the children to  create patterns.  This is a simple yet very popular provocation that the children love. We supplied paper and colored pencils and the children also drew patterns. 

Back in November we talked about where we live. For our Spring Celebration performance the children became very excited to learn the " My Florida Alphabet" song. Exploring this song in some depth has given us a great opportunity to revisit a subject that we touched upon earlier in the school year. That subject was "where we live".  We live on the planet Earth, on the continent of North America, in a country called the USA, in a state called Florida, and in a city called Gainesville. At the time, we didn't really get into what other things live in Florida. We share this great state with a huge variety of other living thing; plants and animals. We have rivers, springs, lakes, creeks, and are surrounded on three sides by the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. We have an abundance of water birds, fish, and wildlife that call these water "habitats" their home.  Humans and many other land based creatures also call Florida their home.  Our class has had m