It's building time!
We have had a fantastic time exploring the subject of buildings. The past few weeks we have investigated the following questions:
- What do the buildings in our neighborhood and others look like?
- How many buildings are on our campus?
- Is a building always a house?
- Who builds buildings? What tools do they use?
- What are buildings made of? What makes them strong?
The children have thoroughly examined the story of the Three Little Pigs. They even compared our traditional story with two other stories, The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs & The Three Javelinas. During our examinations we noted the difference between straw, sticks, and bricks. We talked about wise decision making and how different materials are used when building houses in the desert. The children also practiced the storytelling process by learning to place pictures of the story's events in order. This helps develop listening and cognitive skills because they have to listen and remember the story in order to retell it correctly.
We examined the buildings on our campus and discussed their purpose. We even counted windows and doors while comparing them to the familiar shapes of squares & rectangles. We looked at a hand drawn map of the area and noticed the similarities between the map and what we see when we walk around campus. Learning how to compare objects is a very important skill and one that we have worked hard on developing. We even charted the differences between single family homes and apartments on the board.
We love to build towers, do you? It's so much fun that we decided to examine those towers we were building to see if they were structurally sound. We compared different blocks and how they stack together and counted the number of blocks it took before it fell over. This was important to know as we then examined other ways to build a tower higher without it falling, such as, wider bases or interlocking blocks.
We had a little special visit this week from the Tooth Fairy. This visit kicked off a little side study of healthy habits for us. We've talked a lot in the classroom about responsibility and taking care of ourselves but it is always good to repeat these discussions (especially during cold/flu season). The Tooth Fairy taught us about brushing our teeth and our tongue. She was very nice and made us laugh while we learned about what kinds of food are good for our teeth. The next day we discussed bacteria and viruses and how these germs spread. We talked about washing our hands, covering our cough, and general self care throughout the rest of the week and look forward to more discussions on the topic over the following weeks.
As always, we have had a fun time learning and I look forward to sharing our future adventures with you!
Here are a few of the Objectives we've covered with this study so far:
- Regulates own emotions and behaviors - Social Emotional
- Establishes and sustains positive relationships- Social Emotional
- Participates cooperatively and constructively in group situations - Social Emotional
- LIstens to and understands increasingly complex language - Language
- Uses language to express thoughts and needs (expanding vocabulary) - Language
- Remembers and connects experiences - Cognitive
- Demonstrates positive approaches to learning - Cognitive
- Demonstrates phonological awareness (Alliteration & Rhyme) - Literacy
- Demonstrates knowledge of the alphabet - Literacy
- Demonstrates emergent writing skills - Literacy
- Uses Number concepts and operations - Mathematics
- Compares and Measures - Mathematics
- Demonstrates knowledge of physical properties of objects and materials - Science
- Explores drama through actions & language - Arts