 We had a beautiful long fall, for which I am very thankful. They said it was coming, we knew it was inevitable, and here it is- the wind the snow the cold. Hopefully this is a short stint and next week will be a bit warmer. The children went outside for recess today but it was too cold and windy at lunch so we had an inside day. Be sure to bundle up for the Santa Claus parade tomorrow morning.
Do you remember Jack? As part of our pumpkin unit, we adopted the ugliest, bumpiest, wartiest pumpkin ever seen but the children loved it. They named it Jack and spent time running their hands over the warts, studying it with magnifying glasses and generally observing it. But then came the day, after Jack had been on the science table for about three weeks, that someone noticed a soft spot. And then another one. And then a bit of...ugh!..mold! There was black mold on the warts and some around the top as well as a speck growing on the soft spot. So Jack had to go. Before we threw him into the garbage can we remembered we had not tested the question we had asked on Halloween about whether or not pumpkins could float. So we got out a large tub, filled it with water and threw him in. You can watch that experiment in the video titled "Float or Sink". After a day of lounging in the tub, Jack was put back on the science table for a few days and we were amazed to see the mold grow quickly. There was some black mold and some thick white/gray fuzzy kind. But why was he getting moldy? How did mold grow? We made some hypotheses (scientific guesses), we put him back under the knife and chopped Jack into pieces. Parts of him were put into two jars. We made sure that each jar had mold. One jar we poked holes into the lid and labeled Aerobic (with air) and the other we put a lit candle into and screwed the lid on real tight so the flame would use up all the air and we labeled it Anaerobic (without air). We predicted, remembering that we had earlier guessed mold needed air, water and 'food' to grow, which jar would grow the most mold. Then we left Jack to do his thing. And boy is he doing his thing! He grew a baby! We are thrilled! We will watch the two Jacks for the rest of the year and compare and contrast what is happening in each jar. Team Awesome is making plans to help the baby pumpkin plant grow and grow and grow. Hmmm.... sounds like another experiment.  Another Fresh Air Friday goes into the books under the chapter titled 'Awesome'. Mrs. Farber and myself had an animals in winter role-play lesson all prepared and we tried to direct the kids but they were so excited and distracted by the frozen puddles that our chatter went in one ear and out the other for most of them. Some of the children did build winter shelters that hibernating animals would enjoy but most spent their time walking on, slipping, sliding, stomping, skating and busting the ice. They were happy, busy and engaged so although the lesson was a bust and will be tried again at another time, the afternoon was a success. We are all looking forward to our next afternoon outing.
So when the kids came in this morning they were all like... And then at recess they were like... But by lunch it was like.... |
