Sink and Float

using base 10 blocks for counting

For the past couple of weeks, we have been working on properties of water.  We have explored density, surface tension and sink and float.  We have made boats out of wood, foil, paper and recycled items.  We have worked hard at sinking our boats with pennies or other heavy objects.  We have made boats in different sizes and shapes to see what worked best.  We have made hypotheses and drawn conclusions.  We discovered that foil floats if it is flat but sinks if it is crunched into a little ball.  We experimented with rocks and pumice, marbles and rubber balls, slices of bread and balls of bread and we even tried different sizes of pumpkins and silvers of pumpkin.   We learned that having a sail didn't make any difference when it comes to whether a boat sinks or floats.  We'll be continuing with our study of water for a while, we're not sure yet where it will go....maybe forms of water or uses of water? There are lots of possibilities!

The firetruck comes to Seabury!

We continue to work on math concepts everyday.  Now the children rush in the door in the morning and go straight to the math tables.  Circle time has to wait until after math and that's just fine!  We love that the children love math!  We are using the unifix cubes to count using one to one correspondence.  After the children had filled their graph using the cubes, they decided to measure the room with the cubes and then use measuring tapes to measure the cubes.  It took everyone in the class to build that long line of cubes and at least 10 measuring tapes to measure it all.  At the teacher inservice on Friday, I put out a plea for more cubes and viola! we now have enough to go from one end of the room to the other!

We had an unexpected visit from the firetruck when the Superstars invited us to join them one afternoon last week.  That was a lot of fun!

Halloween fun!

new kitchen equipment-a big hit with everyone!

first, we measured with standard units of measure using the tape measure

then, we measured using non-standard units of measure

we have wonderful moms who put on a terrific Halloween party for the kids

treats

costumes

games

cookie decorating

and more games!

fun, fun, fun

we even managed to squeeze in more work on our understanding of  water density and buoyancy

Many thanks to our volunteers for helping with the Halloween party and for supplying all the treats.  We are working hard writing our names, numbers and letters.  We are adding letters to our wall every week, this week it was the letter "K".  In math, we are working on measuring and counting.

Introducing. . .the number line!

It was a very short week with the children this week because of conferences.  Conferences were great, thankful for your insightful comments and the commitment you have made to your child's education.  Together, we make a good team!

We still managed to get lots of work done this week.  As always, math is big in the Ladybug room.  Today we started using our giant number line to do addition.  The kids loved it.  We continue to work on patterns, one to one correspondence, attributes and number recognition.

The children are working on the Winter Program during the Performing Arts specialist time.  I expect to hear beautiful music at the program!

Seeds, seeds, seeds

Sunflower seeds for the birds

investigating the inside of the pumpkin

Mrs. Van was reading us a very riveting book during our collaborative time.

after the story, we wrote and illustrated our own stories about water

marble painting is just really fun!

Last week, we thoroughly  invested the sunflowers we had in the room.  We used tweezers to pull the seeds out, we looked at them with magnifying glasses and then this week, we put the seeds in the garden for the birds to enjoy.  Maybe we'll even get a new sunflower in the garden for next fall!

The pumpkins from the pumpkin patch also gave us many opportunities for math activities.  We estimated how many seeds we thought might be in our pumpkin, then we all took a turn counting the seeds and then we added all our counts together for a final seed count.  For the record, there were 210 seeds in the pumpkin.  Two of our friends estimated 200!  They were very close.