Art - Colourful Houses

Having started our new unit, We Decorate Our World, the children have been exploring and learning so much about decorations from different cultures and how decorations help people tell their stories.We began our art activity with some pictures of colourful houses from Italy, Mexico and Brazil. 

"Why do people paint their houses into different colours?" the children were asked.

Sofia - "Because it's beautiful!"

Mila - "They think it's pretty. It's like decorations!"

Max - "Because people can recognize their houses."

The children chose the colour they liked to paint their own house. This time we tried a different technique to paint. We use a small piece of cardboard to spread the paint out on the paper.

The children picked and glued their decoration on their little houses. They all enjoyed decorating and designing their unique house.  

This is Damon's house! I can find Francine's house as well! 

Before rest time, we read the story book, "The Big Orange Splot" by Daniel Manus Pinkwater. The story reinforced the idea that the way we decorate our houses actually helps us express ourselves; moreover, decoration tells our stories and represent ourselves!

Science - Which One Will Erupt?

This afternoon, the children were asked to make their scientific guess about which powder mixing with vinegar would erupt. 

First, I introduced the three powder for this experiment, salt, flour and baking soda. The children had a chance to taste salt and feel the three powder with their hand. As well, they had a chance to smell vinegar. 

We needed to add one spoon of powder into each yogurt container.  

Then, we added a spoon of vinegar into each powder.

It was time to see which one erupted!

At the end, we all saw what happened when vinegar mixed with baking soda. Look! A big bubble!

The children enjoyed this science experiment so much that we repeated this activity three times this afternoon! The children learned to follow the steps to conduct an experiment; as well, we learned to make our scientific guesses - hypotheses.

Math - Share a Pizza

I can cut like this!

This afternoon, the children were given rulers, makers, scissors and a piece of circle paper. "How can you cut and share this pizza with 4 people ?" The children manipulated the tools they had to solve the problem. We tried folding the paper, pretending to cut with a plastic knife and using a ruler. 

  

Slowly, we used ruler and makers to draw and to divide the circle into little pieces. Before we cut the circle, the lines we drew helped us cut better!

I helped the children to put down numbers on the slices they cut. We counted the pizza slices and gave each doll a slice.

At the end, we tried to share a pizza with 8 people! That was a lot of slices to cut. The children were really proud of themselves when they achieved this task successfully! 

Art - Snake Pattern

This Friday, we used Q-tips and paint to create patterns on the snake. Before we started, Anamaria helped the children to recall the shapes and lines they know. As well, we practiced using our fingers to dot the contour line of the snake. 

Let's pretend that our fingers were Q-tips! 

The children enjoyed using Q-tips to create little dots carefully. This activity not only encouraged the children's creativity, but also enhanced their fine motor skills.

Math - Counting Bears

It was an interesting afternoon counting with the boys. They were asked to choose to their own 5 coloured bears. The boys all had different colour combinations, which took us a while to get ready.

The boys were curious about the total amount of the bears they took out. As a result, we gathered all the bears in the middle and count together.

"What color is the most popular that most children choose?" 

Here, we lined up and sorted the bears by colour. What a great way to visualize the relation of the amount of each coloured bears! Each boy was in charge of counting one colour and report the result fro the group.

The children practiced predicting, counting, reporting data in a playful way through this activity.

Science - Magnets

This afternoon, the children were given a tray full of different objects to explore with magnets.

The children were asked to sort the objects into two groups, attracted and not attracted by magnets.

With various shaped magnets, the children manipulated and learned about magnetism. This invisible force can pull/attract or push objects. It was very interesting to see the children had their own ways to explore magnets!

wood is not attracted by the magnet.

Look! I hang it up.

I can carry so much stuff!

This got pushed up in the air!

Halloween Decoration Craft

This Friday, we decided to make little spiders for Halloween decorating!
As Halloween coming soon, all of us noticed that our room and many houses in the neighbourhood were decorated for Halloween!
What a good pre-assessment for our next unit, "what is our purpose?" (central idea: people use decoration and this helps us learn about each other)!

We painted the spiders black!

The children all chose their own colour for the lags of their spiders!