Dear Families,
The B3s have been interested in the way colors affect eachother since the beginning of the year. Lately we have begun to more methodically approach this interesting phenomenon by allowing each child to create their own palette of paints and see what happens when differents colors are blended together. Some children approached this by carefully swirling together colors on a paper plate and others chose to mix directly on paper. It was interesting to see the cause and effect of various hues combining and we noticed that all the colors blended turned into a greenish muddy color that was very strong and hid what was underneath. “Mine got squishy-squashy.” “You can’t see it anymore, it’s hiding under the mud.”
We plan to try and save our experiments next time and make our very own library of self-designed colors.
We also continued thinking about Tookilkee and his igloo. I like to open discussions with open-ended questions,”Who would like to share something they remember about this book?”
“He got built inside.”
“How would he get out?”
“He put a block on his head and then it got dark.”
“He had a knife!”
“He cut the door.”
“The window was from the sea.”
I asked the children if they wanted to make an igloo like Tookilkee. “Yes!” We went into the rice room and imagined that our wooden blocks were snow. It was amazing to hear the children discuss how to create the igloo, problem solving as a team and becoming more and more excited and for some, frightened, as the walls grew taller. When our last block had been used, we had another problem – there was no roof!
We looked around the room and decided the rice table-top might work. We estimated measuring with our arms and then placed the “keystone” on top. “Tookilkee” used a long stick to carve out the door and everyone cheered when she crawled out safely! The children each wanted a chance to be inside their igloo and see what it felt like:
“It’s good.” “It’s not dark.” “Mrs. Cooke, there’s lots of windows in our igloo!”
We have left the igloo up -please come see it with your child and ask them about the process of making it. They were all very proud of this experiential learning and the accomplishment of making such an amazing structure.
After making our big igloo, each child attempted to create a small igloo with Model Magic. It was very interesting to observe all the different ways the children tackled this prooblem of creating a hollow shape where someone could “hide” and be protected from the cold. Some pulled their lump of clay into many little bits, remembering the way Tookilkee had lined up lots of blocks before starting and emulating our approach in the rice room. Other children simply made a depression in the clay and then attached small bits of “snow”on the surface. The children talked as they worked, giving one another suggestions on how to create this simple, but intricate structure and cheering eachother on! I am so proud of the warmth and encouragement they offer one another and realize that the collaborative work we do so often pays off in this kind of collegialty and group processing even during individual work. Learning is a social endeavor!
Please remember that we will celebrate Valentine’s Day this week with cards for all and a party on Thursday.
I hope you all enjoyed the snowy weekend!
All the best,
Sarah