What a great, busy day we had today! This morning we used paper plates and a flashlight to learn how the earth turns on its axis and then revolves around the sun to make day and night as well as a year and at the end of the day watched a few clips about what this looks like from space. This is a complicated abstract idea but with the hands-on demonstration, in addition to the short videos, most of the children understood the basic concept even if we can't remember how many days are in a year. The plates and flashlight were left on the science table for the kids to use this afternoon and a few of them reenacted what they had learned this morning.
To compliment the idea of a new year we read 'Squirrel's New Year's Resolution' by Pat Miller and shared our intentions for 2014. The responses ranged from being nicer to their siblings to cleaning their room but my favourite was the resolution to pick flowers for mom every day. Keep an eye on your flower beds this spring.
Before lunch we took a walk outside to look for signs of winter. We used all our senses to see, hear, smell, taste (we made sure the snow was clean!) and feel signs of winter and then compared them to the signs of fall we had seen. Because many signs of winter are unable to be glued to paper, we took pictures of them and will complete our poster next week. I consider myself lucky to be reminded by the children on a daily basis how much joy there is in little things. They were all so thrilled to eat snow and describe how it tasted, to run in the snow and think about whether it was easy or hard, to look for prints in the snow that might belong to a dinosaur and to stand still for a minute to listen to what winter sounds like. They were enthusiastic to be outside and breathing the cold air into their lungs and looking to see if it made clouds as we breathed it out. And spotting a large flock of tiny birds flying overhead just as we were deciding whether all birds hibernated, flew south or did something else through the winter months caused the children to shout and jump and run after them in excitement and changed our minds about all birds heading for warmer climes at the first hint of snow. The next time you're outside, just for a second, appreciate some signs of winter and capture a bit of the pleasure we felt just being outdoors today.
To compliment the idea of a new year we read 'Squirrel's New Year's Resolution' by Pat Miller and shared our intentions for 2014. The responses ranged from being nicer to their siblings to cleaning their room but my favourite was the resolution to pick flowers for mom every day. Keep an eye on your flower beds this spring.
Before lunch we took a walk outside to look for signs of winter. We used all our senses to see, hear, smell, taste (we made sure the snow was clean!) and feel signs of winter and then compared them to the signs of fall we had seen. Because many signs of winter are unable to be glued to paper, we took pictures of them and will complete our poster next week. I consider myself lucky to be reminded by the children on a daily basis how much joy there is in little things. They were all so thrilled to eat snow and describe how it tasted, to run in the snow and think about whether it was easy or hard, to look for prints in the snow that might belong to a dinosaur and to stand still for a minute to listen to what winter sounds like. They were enthusiastic to be outside and breathing the cold air into their lungs and looking to see if it made clouds as we breathed it out. And spotting a large flock of tiny birds flying overhead just as we were deciding whether all birds hibernated, flew south or did something else through the winter months caused the children to shout and jump and run after them in excitement and changed our minds about all birds heading for warmer climes at the first hint of snow. The next time you're outside, just for a second, appreciate some signs of winter and capture a bit of the pleasure we felt just being outdoors today.
