Super Science Wednesday - Egg Colouring

What is on every child's mind this week?  Easter!  With this in mind, we incorporated the children's excitement about Easter into our Super Science Wednesday activity.  Using an egg dye kit, we worked together to color eggs.  This lead to lots of great discussion about the difference between cooked eggs and raw eggs.  We opened up each of these types of eggs to observe the differences.

Here we are observing the reaction of the vinegar and the dye.  We could hear it fizzing.  We learned a new word....dissolve.

Observing the reaction of the vinegar and the dye. 

So many colourful choices....

We experimented with both brown and white eggs.  We observed that the dye had more of an effect on the white eggs. 

Our beautiful finished product.  We hope your egg made it home safe and sound!

Happy Easter to all!

Back to Learning Through Play

Well, we may have had a week off from school during March Break, but we were sure ready to get back to business in our kindergarten classroom.  Take a look at the great things that happened during the past week in JK/SK!

We started a discovery unit on "weather".  Each morning the students are filling in weather graphs.  We will be exploring different types of weather and began by talking about wind.  Look at our friends experimenting with the concept of "wind" as they try to blow different objects across the carpet.
 

We discovered that it was easier to blow things across the table.  The children also came to the conclusion that things shaped like cylinders and spheres would move farther as we blew on them because they roll.  We talked about how the wind blows things around outside, such as our garbage and things from our recycle box when we put them outside!  The children discussed how the wind can only move certain things and not others (e.g., houses, big trees, etc.)  We also talked about how we can't see the wind, but we can see the things the wind moves!

Another highlight from the past week was the opening our our BEACH CENTER!  One of our students suggested we change our house center into a beach.  So, off we went to work on getting this new center ready.  It took a few days and everybody contributed in some way from writing words to decorating fish for our water scene to hiding sea shells in the sand to helping make a price list for our beach snack bar sign.  It was almost as much fun getting this center ready as it was finally opening it!

Digging for sea shells at the beach and making sand castles with our friends!

Anyone ready to play beach ball?

Enjoying an ice cream cone while sitting by the water!

Check out the fish this friend caught!

We  had lots of creative building this week in our classroom.  It is truly amazing to see the structures and objects built by the children.  We are working on having the students talk in greater detail about what they have made.  We are also having the students create a paper to accompany their structures with sentences starters such as "I made __________________." and "This is a ________________."  The students are using their "best guess spelling" and the word wall to help as they write!

New Website for Letter/Sound Activities

Click on the link below to try out a new activity that we have been playing on the Smart Board at school this week.  The children have really enjoyed this game and are reinforcing their understanding of letters/sounds as they play!

Monkey Match Letter Sound Fun

3-D Shapes!

Here is a great song that we have been listening to as we learn about 3-dimensional shapes!  It is really helpful in having the children identify 3-D shapes in their surroundings!  

Building with Shaving Cream!

We started our week off by continuing exploring shapes and structures as we used shaving cream and foam blocks!  Lots of great conversation was happening at this activity, as the children discussed how to stack the blocks and tried to make the different blocks balance.  This was one of those activities that was all about the "process"!  Check out the pictures below to see our friends learning through play!

"Look at me! Look at my hands!"

These two friends discovered that by working together they could share ideas and build their structure cooperatively!

Deciding to build something that is long, rather than high!

Feeling proud of the finished product!