Saturday, February 20, 2010
Happy Birthday Lily
This week we got to celebrate Lily’s birthday. We presented her with a handmade card and sang happy birthday. We ate yummy treats and got to play outside with our friends. We are so glad that Lily is a part of our classroom community!
We continued learning about what animals do in winter. We also began discussing ways that humans impact animals and how we can help animals during the winter time. We went on a nature walk to collect data about the ways humans impact animals. We noticed that buildings built by humans decrease the amount of nature left for animal habitats. When humans leave trash on the ground it can hurt animals. We also noticed ways that humans help animals by putting up bird feeders and by preserving nature areas.
We discussed ways that squirrels adapt to winter weather. For instance, squirrels store up acorns and other food to eat during the winter months. We did a mapping activity where we hid acorns around the classroom and marked their locations on a classroom map. We are learning how to read and use maps for a variety of purposes.
We spent time engineering and designing structures out of a variety of materials.
We had a Lego Club meeting this week. Several engineers had noticed that there were some problems with Lego usage in our classroom. Lego structures were getting broken and pieces were missing. During the meeting the engineers decided to reorganize our classroom shelves and give each engineer a larger, more easily accessible space on which to store his/her Lego structures. We decided that we would try having engineers save their Lego structures for as long as they want, as long as the structures fit on each engineer’s “save spot”. We will meet again in a week to see if these solutions are working for everyone.
Of course we also spent time outside enjoying the beautiful sunshine and enjoying our special friendships this week.
View more photos from this week in our Feb 16-19 Photo Gallery