a penguin experiment

The idea for this experiment came from Chelsea
over at Preschool - What fun we have!

Do you ever imagine
diving into an icy ocean like a penguin?
{AND staying warm and toasty?}

Personally, my fantasies tend to be more on the sunny beach side...
but, the children in my classroom have a special place
in their hearts for arctic mammals
{like penguins, polar bears, and seals}
so we decided to give Chelsea's experiment a try.

First, we plunged our bare hands into a tub of ice water.
{No one was able to keep their hands in long enough for a photo!}

Then, we put on rubber gloves
and gooped our hands up with A LOT of animal fat.
{The gloves saved us all from a seriously huge mess!}

With the fat caked on our hands,
the icy water suddenly felt much warmer...
almost tropical, really.

Not only was it a fun sensory experience,
the children made their own meaningful connections
between fat and warmth.
{I barely said a word!}

hello friends!

What started out as a small blogging break,
quickly turned into a looooooooong holiday/crafty/lazy hiatus!
I've missed you!!!

Here's a little peek at my biggest distraction...

Yes, it's a sweater! {My first sweater, FYI.} AND, it was knit on size 4 needles. I can't even begin to explain how much time I've obsessively devoted this project. {It's my biggest excuse for not blogging.}

Anyway, the children are back at school this week. {It's been so busy, I've barely taken any pictures!} Busy AND cold. Today is warmer, but below zero weather kept us cooped up inside for most of the week.

Since we couldn't go outside to play in the fresh snow, we brought the snow inside!

I'd seen this on other blogs, and had always thought,
Bringing tubs of snow inside is cute and all, but it's not for us tough Montanans.
If real Montana kids want to play in the snow, they get bundled up and go OUTSIDE!

Anyway, playing with snow inside turned out to be a HUGE hit!

In hindsight, I should have filled bigger tubs,
but I had no idea that EVERYONE would want to get in on the action!

As a solution, the children ended up scooping the snow
onto their own trays.

Overall, it was a delightfully wet and wild experience.
{Thankfully, most of the kids chipped in on the mop-up!}

Happy Friday, everyone!
Enjoy your weekend! Here's where I'll be! :)

black light fun

It was pretty much like a Montessori
RAVE
in the cubby room this morning.

I covered up the windows and replaced the regular light bulbs
with black compact fluorescents.
{purchased at Home Depot after searching all over town}

What better way to start a Monday morning
than drawing with highlighters under a black light!

Our clothes were glowing, the paper was glowing,
and the fluorescent markers were nearly electric.

After everyone had a turn to draw,
we busted out the Putumayo World Music
and danced with silky neon scarves.

It was awesome.

I think fluorescent play dough would be REALLY fun under a black light.
{Next time!}

sweet and scary

The idea for these scary {and sweet} spiders
came from Jennifer at Ramblings of a Crazy Woman.
She is one busy, crafty lady!

Each child painted a section of an egg carton.
{We used brown, purple, and black paint.}

The children selected googly eyes
and glued them onto their spiders.

Then came the tricky part,
we had to WAIT for the paint to dry.

Whew! It was intense!
Have you ever watched paint dry?!!!

When the paint was almost dry,
I poked 8 holes in each spider with a corn cob skewer.
Then, the children counted-out 8 pipe cleaner legs
and pushed them through the tiny holes.

Aren't they spook-tabulous?
I love the way the indentations on the bottom of the
egg carton make the spiders look like they're smiling. :)

FYI: I did this as an afternoon project with a group of five 3-4 year olds.

apple graphing

A concrete first-experience in bar graphing:
APPLES!!!

Earlier in the day, I had gathered an assortment of apples.
Some were from the store,
and some were picked from the trees on the playground
{A few even had bites taken out of them by worms and birds!}
I gave each child an apple,
and asked them to think of different ways we could sort them.
When a child thought of a way,
I wrote it down on strips of paper.
Then, each child put his or her apple on the chart
above the appropriate label.
We counted and made lots of observations...
it was really fun!

Some of the ways we sorted the apples:
color {red, green, red and green}
sticker or no sticker
size {small, medium, large}
stem or no stem
shape {sphere-shaped, ovoid-shaped}
bites or no bites

Here's a photo of the blank bar graph I made.
It worked so well, I think I'm going to make a more permanent version
out of poster board or laminated paper.
I wrote the numbers on the left side
and drew lines across to separate the rows.
I cut up several strips of paper to write the labels on;
if you had a laminated graph,
you could write the labels with an erasable marker
and wipe them off when you were done.
Actually, you could to that with the numbers, too,
depending on what scale you wanted to use - 1's, 5's, 10's, etc!

Hmmm... I wonder what we'll graph next?

freckle juice!

I finished reading Freckle Juice with the kindergartens this afternoon. This is a great chapter book to read aloud to children who are making the transition from picture books to chapter books. It's not too long... only five chapters, and there are a lot of illustrations.

Here's the gist of the story: Andrew wants freckles, so he won't have to take as many baths. He buys a secret freckle juice recipe for 50 cents from Sharon, a conniving classmate. The ingredients are all normal household items, but when mixed together, they're disgusting.

I would know because today, in honor of finishing Freckle Juice, we decided to give Sharon's recipe a try!

We made it outside - I was anticipating a lot of excited shouting and the slim possibility of some urping, too. Here's a photo of the ingredients in a cooler: onions, lemon wedges, mayonnaise, mustard, pepper, salsa (a substitution for ketchup), olive oil, salt, vinegar, and grape juice. At this point, I was confident that no one was going to be brave (crazy?) enough to try whatever concoction we ended up with.

Here's an action shot of the olive oil going in. Mayo and grape juice give the mixture that lovely lavender shade... blech!

Some final stirring. Remember how I thought there was going to be shouting? I was completely wrong - the children were nearly silent with concentration. It could have been with fear, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't because they actually WANTED TO TRY THE FRECKLE JUICE!!!

Like a broken record, I kept insisting, "You don't have to try it." It didn't work. I tried, "It was just an experiment. There's a yummy snack waiting for us inside." No luck.

I even tried, "Freckle juice is a hoax! Do you really think I got my freckles from drinking that stuff?" (I was reluctant to go there because it felt a little like going into "Santa's-not-real" territory.) They pretty much rolled their eyes and politely explained that my freckles were probably the result of inconsistent sunscreen use. Seriously!

They wanted their freckle juice. That meant I had to try it, too. So, I need your help. Has anyone out there made and tasted Sharon's secret recipe and lived to talk about it?!! If so, please tell me that we're all going to be okay. I haven't felt sick yet, but it's only been 7 hours...

melting ice

The idea for this game/science experiment came from Laura at My Montessori Journey.
It was the perfect activity for a hot, September afternoon!

Since we don't have a color printer, we couldn't print out the original direction sheet from hummingbirded.
Instead, Christy (my fabulous co-teacher) typed up the directions, and I drew the quirky little pictures on the side. :)

The children split up into groups of two.
I gave each group
a dice,
a dish of water,
and two ice cubes.
Everyone shared the shaker of salt.

Not only was this activity a fun counting game AND an ice melting experiment, it was an exercise in cooperation... and it was a riot!
(In a good way!)

If a child rolled a 1,
he held the ice cube in his hands
for 10 seconds...

If a child rolled a 2,
he had to drop the ice cube
down his shirt...
(miraculously, I never rolled a 2)

If the child rolled a 3,
he blew on his ice cube
for 10 seconds...

If the child rolled a 4,
he dropped his ice cube on the table...

If the child rolled a 5,
he sprinkled 10 shakes of salt
on his ice cube...

if the child rolled a 6,
he counted to 10
as his ice cube floated in water.

If you're wondering how to get your
ice cube to melt the fastest,
try to roll a lot of 2's.

7 out of 7 kindergartners agree,
dropping an ice cube down your shirt
is the most efficient (and fun) way to get it to melt!

apple tasting

The first two apples we tasted
were picked from the playground....

The children made observations about their
color, size, taste, and texture.

I recorded their observations,
and then they voted for their favorite of the two.
~We decided that there was no
right or wrong answer;
it was just a matter of
personal taste.~

The next two apples we tried
were from the grocery store.
~We looked at their stickers,
and discovered that
one was grown in Washington
and one was grown in New Zealand!
(both a LONG way from our playground!)~

red delicious & granny smith

our results
~The children had a tough time choosing a favorite!~

The last apples we tried were of
mysterious origins...
one was from a playground tree
and one was from the store.

We used our apple tasting skills to determine
which was which.

the results...
~The sweetness of the pink lady apple
was pretty much a dead giveaway :) ~

*I did this apple tasting experiment with the kindergarten students this afternoon. These 5 and 6-year-old students are part of the regular mixed-age classrooms, but everyday they meet to do something special together for 20 or 30 minutes. If you're interested, I'll try to share some of these games and projects that we do. This one went over huge - anything with food usually does! Even the pickiest of picky eaters got in on the action! :)

a winter's day experiment

Two jars...
1 filled with snow,
1 filled with ice
We made observations...
"The jar is cold AND wet!"

We made predictions...
"I think the ice will melt first."

We watched the experiment unfold all morning long...

'and what was our ultimate discovery?

Even the purest, freshest-looking snow on the playground is still really, really dirty!
But, don't worry, this new information did not stop the children from feasting on it all afternoon...

because if snow in Montana is too dirty to eat,
then what's the world coming to, you know?