A Week of Discovery!!!

This week, we added another step to our math sign in.  On Monday the children had to find out how many blocks they could stack before the blocks came tumbling down.  James David is being very careful as he stacks and counts his blocks. 

After Matthew stacked his blocks, we asked him to find the number on our number chart. Then he wrote his answer to place on our sign-in board. It was fun to see how excited each child became as their friends cheered when their tower of blocks went past 10!

Sammie and Jack are completing the first step in another math activity.  We asked each child to take a handful of rocks, count them, and write that  number.  Once again, this question involved multiple steps in order to arrive at an answer. It was interesting to see how each child interpreted the meaning of " handful".

Max touches and counts each rock, showing us he understands "one to one correspondence" (one object for one number).

Anna used a different strategy to make sure she was counting each rock only once.   As she touched each rock, she moved it away from the main group.  Different strategies but each one works.....there is usually more than one way to solve a problem and this is a good "life" lesson for the kids.

Our leader for the day  has the job of adding a tally mark to our Texas Ranger Tally, either under the wins or losses column.  This activity provides the kids with a fun way to increase mathematical thinking.  Each day we count and compare wins to losses or perhaps we'll count how many games have been played all together.  Nolan Ryan would be pleased---we're developing new Ranger fans too!

We couldn't resist taking this picture of Charlie . He had a small scratch on his forehead   and wanted a bandaid.  When Charlie realized he could not put it on himself, Lukas came to the rescue and moved all those curls out of the way!

Robin brought in a Yonana machine which turns frozen fruit into soft serve ice cream.  Sophia and Max are giving their upper body a workout as they push the bananas through the Yonana machine. Sophia and Anna are mixing a special Passover Granola into their ice cream.  We want to thank Sophia and her family for this fun and healthy snack!

This week, we continued our unit on the desert. We read a book about desert packrats. The children made packrats and their homes. Their homes are called middens and they have several entrances and rooms.  Take a look at the bulletin board outside our door to read a very cute story, composed by the class, about a packrat named Charlie.

Heidi invited us to come and see the blooms on the cacti growing in Gan Shalom. Matthew, Anna, Sammie and Max made several observations about the cacti.

This week, we also studied rattlesnakes. The children learned many interesting facts about rattlesnakes from Gail Gibbons' book, All About Rattlesnakes . The children drew their snakes and then they made an AB pattern to represent the snake's scales. Laura used red and purple markers to make her pattern.

A simple paper towel tube added to the sensory table provided the boys with a morning of fun!  Jonah and Lukas decided to use the roll to help them build hills out of sand. They are using hand -eye coordination as they hold and position the roll, so they can pour sand to make their hills.

Freedom was one of the most important concepts that the children learned from our study on the holiday of Passover. All the classes were given butterfly larvae.  Matthew and Laura were very serious as they watched the first of our butterflies emerge.

We put the butterfly's temporary home on the rug, so all the children could see two more of the butterflies hatch.  We checked the butterflies daily as they completed their life cycle.

All the classes met in Gan Shalom to "free" our butterflies. Rabbi Robbins joined us to say some special blessings over our butterflies.

All the children watched in amazement as we opened the butterfly carrier!

Since our butterflies had just hatched, Harriet had to help them out of their temporary home.

One of the butterflies landed on Sharon's badge. Was it attracted to the shiny badge?

Another one landed on the plants.  The children were so excited to see the beautiful colors on the wings of the butterfly.

Our last butterfly was not ready to fly, so the children decided to pick it up and put it in the plants. We know that the children enjoyed this experience of releasing the butterflies to freedom!