Winter, Transportation and Symmetry

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With the blast of cool winter weather the children came back to school after holiday vacation bundled up in winter coats, hats and mittens with cute rosy cheeks and little red noses! This was the perfect setting to begin our new "Winter" theme. We read non-fiction books about the reason for the seasons as we examined the globe and found our very own state of Florida. The children examined pictures of the seasons as we pointed out characteristics of each season. We discovered that the seasons are a continual pattern each year of Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall. We have been talking about the first month of our new year, "January!"

"People blocks" are a favorite activity for all as we match pictures of our classmates to their names. Then we line them up and of course, the "ladybug"of the day is first in line and the "dessert" is the caboose!  The children often engage in dramatic play and conversation while at play!

"The Mitten" by Jan Brett was a perfect introduction to our class discussion of "pairs." In this book about a boy and his special pair of mittens the children learned about the importance of pairs, especially if one of the pair was missing! We brainstormed many pairs that we knew of such as shoes, eyes, hands, socks and MITTENS! Then the boys and girls practiced cutting a traced pair of mittens.

After cutting the out the pair of mittens we used both hands to squeeze little dots of paint to decorate one side of our mitten. Then we placed the other mitten on top very carefully to make sure it was perfectly covering the other mitten. Next we tickle, tickle tickled all over the mitten. When we pulled them apart and laid them side by side the were exactly alike. As a matter of fact, they were "SYMMETRICAL!" The colors, shapes and patterns were identical on both mittens!

In the Exploratorium the boys and girls have been busy exploring transportation vehicles. Wearing fire hats the children placed fire truck wheels in red paint and drove them up, down and all around a big, white banner paper making beautiful designs with their tracks.

After comparing and contrasting the characteristics of the "square" and the "rectangle" it was quite challenging and fun to use pattern blocks when creating various types of transportation vehicles. The children used small and large diamonds, hexagons, squares, rectangles, triangles and pentagons to create these colorful vehicles.

Other activities that the children enjoyed were building trains and playing with the cars, trucks and buildings on the city rug.

 

One of the highlights of our week was our special "mystery reader" in the library. She read a contemporary version of "Jack and the Beanstalk" and our reader was one of the authors of the book. In this book we traveled with Jack to the beach, to the bottom of the ocean and then to a chocolate castle in the clouds. We learned with Jack not to take without asking and to always say please!