Winter

Happy New Year everyone!  I can't believe that we are already into January!  I hope you all enjoyed your holidays.  This month we will be learning all about the winter season.  It seems super appropriate to start our Winter theme on a day when there are record lows in Charlotte.  How convenient for all of us teachers!

All of the kiddos were super excited to be at school this morning.  I want to welcome sweet little Ethan to our class.  We are very excited to have a new addition to our classroom!  As usual, we started our morning off at the touch and feel sensory pool playing with snow!  It was really cotton balls and pillow filling, but we pretended that it was cold as we shaped and molded it into snowballs. We counted how many snowballs we saw and talked about the color of snow and how we could use our snowballs to make a snowman.

Morning circle was full of some new material for Ethan and a great review for Ryan.  As always we welcomed everyone with our "Hello" song followed by calendar concepts targeting the days of the week, months of the year, weather, numbers, and personal name identification.  We also reviewed our schedule so that all of our kiddos know what activities to expect for the morning.

 Following morning circle, we have open center time.  Ryan and Ethan warmed up to each other playing with trains, tractors, and pretended to cook with each other in the kitchen.  They also enjoyed building blocks together and playing with the favorite ball run.  During our open center time, I am always prompting language with whatever toys seem to interest Ryan and Ethan most.

After about 30 minutes of open centers, we usually head outside to the playground; however, due to the weather conditions, we stayed inside today and started our Reading Circle a little early, which involves more structured language activities.  Our book today is Winter by Nicola Baxter. This book talks about how as the days get shorter and the weather gets colder, winter arrives.  It explains that with winter we have to wear warmer clothes. Sometimes it gets so cold that water freezes and turns to ice and when rain freezes it turns to sleet and snow.  Ryan and Ethan learned about different activities that can be played during the winter and how to warm up with soup and hot chocolate after being outside!  The book also mentions how animals sometimes struggle to find food and water during the winter months.

After we read the book, I taught Ryan and Ethan a new song, Five Little Snowflakes.  Using five numbered snowflakes and a sun that I made out of construction paper, we sang the following song:

One little snowflake with nothing to do.

Along came another and 

Then there were two.

Two little snowflakes laughing with me.

Along came another, and

Then there were three.

Three little snowflakes looking for some more.

Along came another, and

Then there were four.

Four little snowflakes dancing a jive.

Along came another, and

Then there were five.

Five little snowflakes having so much fun.

Out came the sun, and 

Then there were none!

Ryan and Ethan loved using the snowflakes to act out the song and it was a great activity to target number identification.  They laughed so hysterically when the sun made the snowflakes disappear, I wish I had caught it on video!  We are going to be singing this song throughout January, and then I will send the snowflakes and sun home with you all to use at home once the month is over.  

For art today, we made our own winter scene, by tracing our hands and arms onto brown paper, cutting it out (I did the cutting :)), gluing it onto paper, and then painting snow all over the ground and our bare, brown tree.  We reviewed what we had learned from our book that it is cold in the winter and that the trees do not have any leaves.  We then made a graph with the words "Hot" and "Cold" and talked about what kinds of things belonged in each category and taped these pictures in the appropriate column.  

As our science experiment today, we used two containers full of water (one with hot water and one with cold water) and dropped ice cubes of primary colors that I dyed with food coloring before freezing them.  We reviewed the concepts of "hot" and "cold" feeling the difference between the two temperatures, and we reviewed the colors of the ice cubes.  The food coloring in the ice allowed Ryan and Ethan to watch as the cold ice melted in the water.  Then we dropped some ice cubes into a tub of warm water and watched how much faster the ice cubes melted.  We also mixed the different primary colors of ice to make new colors.  The yellow and blue ice cubes mixed together to make green, and the red and blue ice cubes mixed together to make purple!  So many science experiments going on in just one simple activity!  Then just for fun, we brought some of our dishes from our play kitchen, and the boys thoroughly enjoyed playing in and pouring the water from one container to another.   

We summed up our winter theme today with a short YouTube video...

Whew!  What a busy day!  So many fun activities to do surrounding the winter theme.  My blog was longer and more specific than usual today as we get Ethan and his family acquainted with our schedule.

But, to start something new in the New Year...I want you all to ask your children the following questions about today's activities so that they can start to learn the meaning of temporal concepts first, second, last, etc. This practice will also help you model the appropriate past tense of verbs when they answer  the questions about their day.  I will give you a brief, one-word answer that you should be getting from your child...
1. What did you do first today at school?  Played with snow (cotton) in the touch and feel pool?
2. What did you do last today at school? Ate lunch and watched a short YouTube video about winter
3. What did you make for art? Made a winter tree.

Stay warm! Can't wait to see Ryan and Ethan again on Thursday!