Integrated Studies, part 1

At Seabury, I love that we are given the freedom to teach in ways that make sense for children.   Much of what we do in the Early Learning Division is hands on and messy.  We do very few work sheets, instead we rely on activities where the children can be actively involved.  The activities we do don't always need to be classified as "math" or "science",  rather they come under the heading of "integrated studies".   This project was painting with baking soda paint and then dripping vinegar on the paper. This is a science project but it's also art.  The kids enjoyed the process and asked to repeat it several times.  Did they learn anything?  Yes!  When you add vinegar to baking soda it foams up and spreads across the paper.  Will they remember doing it?  Most likely.  Can we take what we observed and apply to a different situation?  A  baking soda volcano perhaps?  Absolutely!  This project was multi faceted.  Fine motor skills were needed for the pipettes.  They needed to use just enough vinegar for the paint to move and not so much that it ran off the paper (that takes a lot of thought and control). The usual social skills were also used to ask for new colors of paint and taking turns.  It was a successful activity.