We are thankful

What are you thankful for?

SB: I am thankful for our class.

JJ: I'm thankful for my sister at home.

KaA: I'm thankful for sheeps and bears.

EP: I'm thankful for Mom and Dad.

KiA: I'm thankful for Mommy giving me popcorn.

GH: I am thankful for my families.

KB: I am thankful for cookies.

AW: I'm thankful for Panda Paws. [our class pet hamster]

CM: I'm thankful for my daughter, Rebecca.

JN: I am thankful for so much love.

And we're all thankful to be friends together in our community!

Happy Thanksgiving!

A "Rocky" Day

Another rocky day in class!

A piece of granite... Will it sink or float?

A pumice stone...Based on our experience with the other three rocks,
everyone predicts it will sink.


Let's put it in...

It floats! Why?

It has been another busy week in the Early Learning Center! In preparation for our field trip next week to the Seattle Children's Theater, we have been reading books by Laura Numeroff such as, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, If You Take a Mouse to School, If You Give a Pig a Pancake, etc. Besides being delightful fiction, the recurring themes are providing us the opportunity to analyze the stories. After we read one of the books, we return to it for discussion about character, setting and finding the problem. In this series, we are discovering that some of the characters are seen in more than one book, the settings are familiar and the problem is the same: the animal character wants more, MORE, MORE of everything! The series is providing great reinforcement for developing these higher level thinking skills. As another form of reinforcement, we are looking forward to baking cookies tomorrow to take with us for lunch when we go to the play!

We're having a fantastic time learning more about rocks. We focused on Igneous rocks this week, especially volcanic rocks. We watched a volcano video which made a fiery impression, then moved into other related "hot topics" such as vents in the earth, Mt. St. Helens, and Mt. Rainier. Of course we examined various igneous rocks, admiring their mighty heft and many popped bubbles on the surface. Then today I brought in some natural pumice stone that I gathered on the shores of Lake Atitlan, a big highland lake in Guatemala surrounded by perfect cone volcanoes. We brought out a bowl of water and did a sink and float experiment. We began by asking the question of each rock: Will this sink or float? The children formed a hypothesis or prediction. At first, most of the children hypothesized the granite would float. By the second rock, we were evenly divided, and with the third, a black volcanic rock, everyone predicted that it would sink. Then I pulled out the pumice, which we had already handled and examined, noting how light it was. They all predicted that it would sink. As I placed it in the water, the children became so excited to see that it floated. Now to analyze the "why!" There were lots of ideas, and finally we put together that all that air in the pumice must have something to do with the floating... maybe like a beach ball with air trapped inside? We will have this experiment set up next week for every child to perform individually, to see if the results are the same! "Independent researchers will verify the results."

I think the next natural extension of our study is to make a class field trip to lovely Lake Atitlan, paddle out in hand carved tree trunk canoes, called cayucos, to collect our own pumice floating on the blue waters. Whose names will be on the sign up sheet for this one?

Meet the Newest "Bear Cub!"

A new member of our class arrived on Tuesday afternoon --- a 5 week old Panda Hamster! This breed of hamster gets its designation from the fact that they are black and white, just like their namesakes. This morning, two of the Explorers came to our class to talk about how to care for hamsters, as their class has a long-hair hamster named Chub-Chub. We learned that we have to use quiet voices around the hamster, to make sure she always has food, water and fluffy bedding. She likes to chew, so having a special hard stick is important so that she keeps her teeth worn down, as all rodents have teeth that continually grow throughout their lives. She likes fresh vegetables and some fruits, so if your child wants to bring in ends of celery, or other crunchy veggie chunks, we know someone who would love them! We have decided that we need a little hamster sized "getaway"--- a wooden house that is dark inside to place inside the cage, a see through plastic "running ball" for classroom exercise and a chewing stick from the Pet Store. After many creative naming ideas, the Bear cubs have decided to name our hamster "Panda Paws." We are excited and proud to be so capable to care for our very own class pet!

Stone Soup!

We loved making and eating our own "Stone Soup" so much that we wanted second and third helpings! It was perfect for a windy, rainy, blustery autumn day snack!

This week we are studying rocks, and becoming more and more fascinated by this "heavy" subject that is constantly underfoot. We each unpacked the three big rocks we brought to school at the beginning of the year, showed and passed them around for our friends to see. We spread them out on a large table and used magnifying glasses to investigate how they were the same and different. Integrating rock discovery and investigation throughout the curriculum, we had smooth stones to count and design pattern pictures, more for construction, gradation and seriation and we truly immersed ourselves into the experience that "Math rocks!" To refine our motor skills and increase attention spans, we scrubbed rocks, which requires an involved cycle of activity. In Literature Circle we are reading fiction and nonfiction books on rocks. Of course, our featured classic story this week was "Stone Soup," on which we based our cooking project...Preparing food together offers us opportunities for more fine motor development, real life math and science, as well as reinforcement of social skills. We noticed that the title of our special book began with "s" sounds, so we thought of more words that began with s's and made a long list, as part of our language arts and literacy work. What educational and yummy activities we love to do!