Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! Love, Harry Potter, Karate Kid, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Minnie Mouse

I'm starting a home preschool!

I'm so excited to be a teacher! I've been playing school ever since I was a little girl, and now I'm finally going to have a real classroom! With 8 boys and 1 girl! I'm still hoping to recruit some more girls. (Otherwise, poor Elle.) But I do kind of specialize in boys. (I have three of my own.) So I don't mind a bit. I'm unofficially calling it the Science Discovery Preschool. My school will emphasize science, naturally. But what will make the school really great is that I use a project approach to learning. I am very committed to that.

I'm already having fun preparing materials for my classroom. Thanks to Merritt's cousin (who is a general contractor), I am now the proud owner of a set of homemade Montessori baric tablets. The wood is beautiful to look at, interesting to touch, and smells earthy. Baric tablets are very sensorial. Students sort the tablets by weight (light, medium, and heavy). As an extension, students can sequence 6 different tablets by weight. A blindfold is optional. Thanks Brian for gifting me the wood and the time it took to make them. I am seriously in love with these. It makes me happy just to look at them. Amber, I hope you can find a way to make this activity for your classroom too. It would be fun to swap stories about how the children use them. Cheers!

Baric tablets extension:

The student sorts six different tablets by weight from lightest to heaviest. Here is the order: cedar, pine, walnut, cherry, hickory, wenge. The student uses a balance to check. Alternatively, the tablets could be numbered on one side.

 Baric tablets classic:
The student brings the tablets to the table or floor with a mat. Here is pine, oak, and wenge (3 of each).

 

The student mixes up the tablets on the mat then closes their eyes (or is blindfolded). Alternatively, the student can mix the tablets by stacking them to build a tower on the mat.

 The student holds each tablet in the palm of his hand then sorts the tablets by weight into 3 groups (light, medium, heavy).

 

 The student opens his eyes and checks that the tablets have been sorted correctly (the colors match).

The tablets are then returned to the shelf, ready for the next person to use.

Oregon Vacation

Happy Birthday Tessa

Tessa is already one-year-old. She loves water and baths more than any kid I've seen. Hence the rubber duck cake. Tessa practically swims as soon as I put her in the bath. She lays down and starts waving her arms and kicking her legs. She'll come up for a breath of air, then go right back down into the water. After her bath, she takes a morning nap with her rubber ducks.

Her favorite book is Eric Carle's Ten Little Rubber Ducks. I recently took her to a pond near our home so she could meet some real ducks. I'm hoping to take her to the ocean this summer. So she can meet the other animals in her book. For now, we just fill her water table with bubble bath and rubber ducks. She is a happy girl. She spends hours each day playing in her water table. I change her clothes about three times a day because she's always getting wet.

It's so fun to see her learn new things. She's really learning fast now, doing new things every day as she explores her world. I took a moment to remember her birth. I still remember the first time I held her in my arms. Happy birthday, Tessa. I love you, darling girl.

Baseball: Go Collin!

I saw my oldest son play a baseball game for the first time this week. Youngest kid on the team. Coach asked him to pitch. He was excited. I was nervous. All the other kids had been playing ball for a couple of years. This was Collin's first game ever. I wasn't even sure he knew the rules of the game. Coach's kid opened the game. Third inning Collin stepped onto the mound.

He began to warm up. And I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The pitches were coming in hard and fast right over the plate. I asked Merritt: Is this really our kid? Where did he learn how to pitch like that? And I started to get a little teary-eyed. Another parent walked over to me and asked: Where did Collin learn how to pitch like that? I said: I don't know. In the three innings that he pitched, he only walked two players. Needless to say his team won the game.

Every time Collin got off the mound at the end of an inning, there was no smile and no celebration. His teammates would cheer him and put their arm around him. But Collin remained serious and focused, like he had a job that needed doing. I was impressed by his maturity.

That night, he came home and we were all so proud of him. But he headed to the back yard and pitched into the fence over and over again until it was too dark to see. It's like this little boy had suddenly found what he was born to do. I watched him fall in love with the game that night.

When I went to tuck him into bed, he was wearing his baseball cap and had his baseball in his hand. I said: Are you going to sleep with that? He said: Yeah, mom. I gave him a kiss and he closed his eyes and went to sleep, baseball in hand. It's a day I'll never forget. 

Tessa Is Growing Up

Tessa looked so grown up today pushing her little stroller around her bedroom. And she started pointing at things this week. She points to where she wants me to take her. She points at things she wants. She points at things she is curious about. I just love it. I just love her. The boys and I just can't get enough of her. She'll be one year old this month! I can't believe it.

Cousins Book Club: Charlotte's Web

 

We had our first cousins book club on Friday night. I already can't wait until the next one. We had such a great time. We started with a discussion of the book. It was really fun to hear the comments made by the five cousins: Collin, Hannah, Luke, Josie, and Mae.

They shared their favorite parts from the book, and discussed what it means to be a good friend. Next, Miriam had prepared a garbage can full of pages torn from recycled magazines. The kids rummaged through the trash to find words that describe a friend. We glued them to our own version of Charlotte's web. 

Clean up was a breeze because Miriam had also made a sticky tape web using a hula hoop. Kids picked up the trash on the floor and threw it in the web. The kids took a break and played outside while Josie helped prepare the "pig slop" surprise.

She stirred up some ice-cream, chocolate syrup, strawberries, bananas, and Oreo cookies. And Miriam slopped into each kids' bowl with a ladle. The kids ate the slop like pigs...no spoons allowed. They slurped up the slop then ran to the bathroom to see how messy their faces looked. Lots of laughter there. 

We ended the night watching the movie Charlotte's Web. At the part where Charlotte spins her first web, Luke went over to the shelf and picked up the jar I had brought with a real spider in it. He held it tenderly and with respect, almost reverence and awe. My favorite quote from the book comes from the part when Fern's  mother is talking to the town shrink. Dr. Dorian says, referring to the words in the web:  

“I don’t understand it. But for that matter I don’t understand how a spider learned to spin a web in the first place. When the words appeared, everyone said they were a miracle. But nobody pointed out that the web itself is a miracle.” 

Nature is a miracle we don't often take the time to appreciate. But it's why I love science. I am in awe of nature. I hope my kids learn to appreciate the ordinary miracles that happen all around them.

 

Happy Easter

What Makes a Ball Bounce?

I got to be the teacher this week at the preschool while Sherrie was out of town for spring break. I had such a great time. I fell in love with all the the new kids I met in just two days. I've told many people how wonderful our neighborhood preschool is and they have been curious to see it. I thought I'd post some pictures so anyone interested could see the school and the kinds of things we do at the school. I teach here once a week, but I usually just have the younger group. I subbed this week for the older group. Whenever I teach, the highlight for me is always the spontaneous science that happens. I love doing science with kids.

Today a boy brought a bouncy ball to talk about at circle time. (Children often bring "science" to talk about at school.) When I asked him why the ball was science he said, "Because it does this." And he bounced the ball. I said, "Oh, you think this is science because it bounces." I reminded the students that when we think like scientists we ask questions and try to find the answers. I said, "I wonder if there is a question we could ask about this ball." The kids didn't ask a question but they started spouting out hypotheses. "It bounces because it's made of rubber!" And, "It bounces because it's hard!" To which another student responded "But rocks are hard." And he clarified, "It bounces because it has air."

I explained that they had a good hypothesis: "Some balls bounce because they are rubber, and some balls bounce because they are filled with air. I think the question you want to test is: What makes a ball bounce? Should we add that to our question board? We'll keep thinking of what makes a ball bounce and see if we can find ways to test our hypothesis."

Serendipitously, when we later got out some balls for play at outdoor time some balls were full of air and some balls were flat. I commented that this reminded me of their ideas about bouncy balls. The children began to test the balls to find which balls were the bounciest and which balls were not. After some time for testing, the kids helped me sequence the balls from bounciest to least bouncy. Then they stood in a line and all dropped the balls at the same time. I took a picture of this for our class science journal. At closing circle I announced that their hypothesis was correct! Balls full of air bounce and balls without air don't bounce. But why? How does air make a ball bounce? Hmmm....we will keep thinking. And we sang our science song: Observe, Question, Hypothesize, Investigate, then Share!

The photos I took today reflect our two current study topics: 1) spring planting in the school garden, and 2) outer space (since the asteroid hit Russia and a comet is approaching next week). You will see those current interests infused in the learning activities we provided for the children these past two days. I am so glad to be a part of this great school. I have learned so much from my mentor and friend Sherrie. Enjoy the photos!

3-piece alphabet puzzles and flower graphing.

 

Bubble-making in the sensory table.

 

 

Making "My Garden" books.

  Birthday party dramatic play (with Dr. Seuss books).

 Reading to a sneetch. The kids really love The Lorax book since they've seen the movie.

Building magnet robots.
 

 
Building rocket ships.