|
|
|
The Kinders have been losing teeth left and right! It’s always a BIG deal in the Kinder room when someone has a new loose tooth! Since there has been so much excitement surrounding teeth, it inspired me to transform our Kinder room into a dentist office, but not for regular patients….. for DINOSAURS!  Our Kinders were split up into three dental teams and were assigned a dinosaur patient! Once they put on their dentist uniforms, which consisted of a medical mask and a dentist smock, they got straight to work! Our dentists had three tasks to complete: 1. Scrape the Plaque 2. Apply the Tooth Polish 3. Repair the Rotten Tooth I offered our dentists a variety of loose parts such as tooth picks, Q-tips, cotton pads, and clay to use as their tools and provided them with cups of water and white paint! “We're taking the plaque off!” “Look at that plaque!” “He’s splitting on me!” “I’m turning the green tooth into white!” One of our dental teams decided to offer different flavours to their patient! This conversation inspired us to add colours to our teeth polish! This trend became very popular amongst our other dental teams! “Do you have bubble gum? Yes we do” “Ours chose bubble gum polish. We need pink!” “It actually looks like bubble gum because it’s white and pink!” “We need mint tooth paste now!” “What flavour of fluoride would you like? Strawberry” “Mine wants blueberry!” Our dentists were very professional as they interacted with their patients! These were some of the conversations that I overheard: “When was the last time you brushed your teeth?” “We forgot to tell our patient, if you don’t brush your teeth your teeth will fall out!” “Brush everyday!” “Dino is waiting patiently” “Open up little one!” “He has cavities so I need to write that down… ‘cavities in mouth’” Some dentists created new assignments for their team, such as adding braces, cleaning the tongue and extract a wiggly tooth! “He asked for braces. We're taking off the guppy stuff before” “I’m cleaning it’s tongue!” “He has to get a mouth guard or braces right?” “He has a wiggly tooth! Look your tooth came out! Thank you! Congrats!” I was so impressed with how kind and caring our dentists were to each of their patients during this process! They even made them special gifts to show how much they cared! “Ours is a baby and it’s scared” “He’s gonna have treats on his spine because he was such a good boy!” “Now I need to make a heart to feel brave” “Here you go Borus!” This experience fostered confidence, empathy, imagination and teamwork, all while practicing our fine motor skills and new vocabulary!
- Vita
0 Comments
Last week the Kinders celebrated Earth Week!  Our first task was to clean up any trash that covered our schoolyard! We put on gloves, grabbed a garbage bag and went straight to work, diligently scanning our schoolyard! A handful of hardworking, enthusiastic Kinders made it their mission to pick up EVERY SINGLE piece of garbage that they saw! Look how hard they worked! Can you spot the differences between these two pictures? Since the Kinders were so passionate about this project, we’ve decided to do a weekly litter clean up! Once the schoolyard was cleaned, we decided to connect with nature by getting our hands dirty. I gave each Kinder a recycled yogurt container and explained to them that we would be PLANTING. I poured soil into a container and allowed the Kinders to explore this material while they filled up their cups with dirt! “It looks like Oreos!” “It smells good!" During this experience, a few Kinders noticed that there were holes at the bottom of each yogurt cup and asked: “Why are there holes?” “Doesn’t the soil go through?” We explored these questions by testing out some theories: “When you shake, a little comes out!” “It’s thick. That’s why it doesn’t go through!” Once our cups were filled with dirt, each Kinder was able to choose a vegetable or flower seed to plant. The differences in the size, shape, and texture of each type of seed really captured their interests! The Kinders placed their plants in a warm, sunny area on our plant shelf and have been watering them everyday!  Whenever we notice a new sprout pushing through the soil, we excitedly announce that a new plant baby has been born! The parent of that plant baby proudly parades around the room, showing everyone what they have grown. It has been such a successful earth week. I can’t wait to continue these projects that help foster an appreciation for nature!
- Vita Our Kinder group is a very passionate bunch! To help us work through intense emotions such as sadness, frustration, and anger, we made “Calming Stones” with polymer clay!  Before beginning the activity, we sat together and I passed around my own “Calming Stone” that I brought from home. I explained that when I feel scared or nervous, I feel the smooth stone in my hand while I breath IN..1..2..3.. and OUT..1..2..1... Everyone then closed their eyes and envisioned themselves in a calm space, noticing the colours and shapes that they see. Once the Kinders had a sense of what made them feel calm, we brought out the clay and went straight to work! “I chose galaxy colours!” "Cheetah makes you calm because of all the colours... White, blue and pink." Everyone had their own unique way to shape, form and design their calming stone! Some Kinders chose to roll or squish their clay in their hands, while others chose to use carving tools to add little details. I was so surprised to see how the shape of each worry stone varied from one another! "I'm doing all this [squishing the clay] because I don't want it to be hard to use” “I call mine Bacon!” “This is my cinnamon bun” “I made a donut ring!” “I made designs on it!” During this process, I also asked, “How will your stone help you when you’re feeling upset?” These were some responses: "I'm going to use it when I feel scared to go to school” "Mine means 'are you feeling brave?' Are you feeling ok?’” "It's a cake! It's going to make me think of what cake to have for my birthday!” "I'm going to make a snake stone! It will remind me to dance!" The Kinders became very attached to their “Calming Stones” and loved keeping them close throughout the day! We are planning to apply this mindful practice to our everyday life in the Kinder room!
- Vita  One day, the Ladybug group was playing outside when suddenly, one child exclaimed, “LOOK! A SPIDER!” Everyone rushed towards our spider spotter and saw a HUMUNGOUS spider dropping to the ground! Our eyes widened with wonder and excitement as the spider slowly ascended up a thin strand of thread all the way back to the ceiling. While the spider was climbing, our curious group of Kinders started asking some thought provoking questions like, “How does it move?” “Where is it going?” "How come it doesn't fall?" . The Kinders also used this time to discuss what to name our new friend and eventually settled on “Mr. Skinny Leg Spinner” and “Mr. Skinny Legs” for short. That afternoon, the Ladybugs were very eager to tell the Caterpillar group all about “Mr. Skinny Leg Spinner”! With all the hype and excitement surrounding "Mr. Skinny Legs", more and more questions started pouring out of the Kinders and the educators! This inspired us to post all of our questions under our “I Wonder” wall in the kinder room! Over the next few weeks, we plan on investigating the questions that we have about our creepy crawly friend! I can't wait to discover what we will learn!
- Vita Have you ever wondered how such heavy objects such as boats or jet skis can float in the water? How no water gets inside? Or how people can sit inside a boat and it not be too heavy? Well, the Laduybugs spent the morning exploring this concept by using materials such as popsicle sticks and aluminum foil to create boats that would be able to float in water! Each child was given as many popsicle sticks as they wanted, and a few pieces of aluminum foil to start and very quickly they all started to brainstorm what made a boat strong enough and safe enough to be in the water. "I need glue to put the sticks together to make a floor for my boat" "I'm putting these things on the side like bumpers to keep the water out" "Look, my boat has ears like Shrek" "I'm going to make this nice and strong here so it doesn't break" "I'm going to make mine into a jet ski!" Once the boats and jet skis were ready to go, we moved on to the fun part... the children got to put their boat to the test by adding rocks inside to see if it was strong enough to stay afloat! We started with smaller, lighter weighted rocks and slowly added more and more to see how far we could push it. By the end, some children had their whole pile of rocks safely inside without the boat sinking! "This rock is nice and light, so it will float" "I think it will sink because that rock is SOOOO heavy" "Let's see if this boat works, I put stuff under this one to make a floor" "Isn't that cool? I used up ALL my rocks and it still floats" As we tested the boats in the water, we discussed what worked and what didn't work with some of the designs and brainstormed what we thought made a good boat and from our experiment we came up with the following:
1. Boats work better when they have a strong structure for the floor, it helps keep the heavy objects secure 2. Boats need to have high enough sides so that water doesn't pour over into the boat causing it to flood 3. Absolutely NO holes will be able to be along the bottom of the boat near the water, or else it fills with water and sinks 4. With a good structure, boats can hold a lot of weight. Some of the boats we tested had SO many rocks on it and it didn't. What a great activity to kick off the summer season... Who else is ready to test this theory on a real boat this summer? We sure are! - Amberly Over the past few weeks, the Ladybugs have been captivated by the ants that are scurrying around!  It all started when one child pointed to a box labeled, “Ant Works, a space-age habitat for ants” that was stored in one of our cupboards. He asked if we could bring it outside and search for ants and so we did! Once we went outside, everyone wanted to join in! The Ladybugs worked together as they searched for the ants, safely captured them and monitored their health. One child noticed that one of the ants in our enclosure had a broken leg... He exclaimed, “We need to rescue it!”. Any injured ants were immediately released back into the wild. Another day, we brought out our new bug kits, so that each child had the opportunity to work independently if they wanted to. Some of the children decided to create a bug-friendly habitat inside their bug kits. “I’m going to get more grass” One child exclaimed, “Look! There’s a magnify glass!” when she realized that a magnifying glass was connected to each bug kit. She then used that magnifying glass to closely study the ant that she found! “I see an ant! It’s so brownish!” Another child used a small net and scooped up a big pile of grass. He said, “I’m going to sort through this to find an ant”. To learn more, we looked at some insect books and made some notes and drawings! “I know how worms hide!” “Ants go underground” “I know what that is! A butterfly!” “How do you spell 'ant village'?” “I have room to write what I see” ‘I’m going to find these!” Afterwards, we decided to walk to a neighborhood park and look for insects along the way! Before we left, one of our entomologists exclaimed... “I’ve got my suitcase! It comes in handy. I have extra paper if people run out”. He sure was right! Someone lost their pencil a few minutes into our walk and needed a replacement ASAP! On our journey, we ended up finding one red ant, one black ant, one beetle and an ant hill! We also saw some flowers and one child shouted, "The bees will fly from flower to flower!". Once the grasshoppers, caterpillars and ladybugs start populating the school yard, I know that these Kinders are going to be in a buggy paradise! - Vita Over the past few weeks, the Caterpillars have become so immersed in imaginary play! I’ve seen them pretending to be Pokemon, teachers, ninjas and princesses! One day, we decided to dress up as scientists to investigate the great outdoors! Each kinder was given a test tube and tweezers to collect samples from the earth. I also gave them the option of using a clipboard outside to document their research. Some of our Caterpillars wanted to act as independent scientists, while others formed a team! Once all of our scientists were ready, we went outside to explore the school yard!  Each scientist had a different approach in conducting their research. Some of them immediately started collecting samples, while others focused on making detailed checklists! “I made a clipboard! Googles, check! Clipboard, check!” “This is a circle, this is a stick and this is a rock” “I found a stick so I x’ed it out!” “Look at all the things we discovered! We still have a lot to find.” As we continued to explore, it was so interesting to see the items that each scientist decided to collect! When describing their unique finds, they used very descriptive language! "I found a purple rock and put it in here!” “Those are the most delicate, most breakable rocks in our whole life” “I found a fluff!” When we arrived at the far forest, we stumbled upon a HUGE, broken branch! Many scientists hypothesized what happened to this branch and how it got there.... “A beaver chomped down this tree!” “A wood pecker chomped down the tree! I see another!” “Someone came by and used an axe because they didn’t like the tree” “Maybe a wolf ate it!” After this busy morning, our scientists starting getting pretty hungry, so we decided to save our samples and continue this investigation later. The next week, we brought out our earth samples and I gave each scientist a pipette and a magnify glass! I also gave them the option to add new elements like water, coloured water, baking soda and vinegar to their materials. There was a lot of shaking, mixing, observing and investigating involved in this process! During both of these experiences, I saw SO MUCH teamwork and communication among the scientists! I wonder what our scientists will investigate in June!
- Vita I See Your True Colors! The Kinders really enjoy mixing up paints to create new shades of their favorite colors. To expand on this interest I set up a scientific approach to mixing up the rainbow. Each scientist was set up with a pallet of colored water, eye droppers, fizzing color tablets, a petri dish, and some gel crystals. The task was to exercise fine motor skills by using the tiny items to mix, move, and create new hues.  Then, I added a few drops of Baby Oil to an empty spot in the color pallet - the results fascinated the Kinders! Oil doesn't like to mix with anything! And now, onto photos of our March inservice, where we celebrated color for the Indian holiday Holi. Jasbir and I used bright, bold colorful tissue paper to decorate the Kinder room, and we allowed the Kinders to use their feet & bodies to paint on a huge piece of paper right in the middle of our room! For clean up each child had a tub of warm, soapy water. Cleaning up was just as much fun as making the paint mess! On another day, we tried "perspective painting". With an item in the centre of the table, the Kinders gathered around to paint what they saw, then compared their paintings with their friends. This was an excellent exercise in understanding - we talked about how we may see or feel things differently while experiencing the same situation. We also got some really, really great masterpieces out of it! Thanks for stopping by to see the fun things we've been up to!  Our I Spy books have become very popular in Kindercare, and we've been having a lot of fun with them, reading almost daily. In fact, we read them so much that they were no longer a challenge and we decided to create our very own I Spy book! With a variety of items found around the Kinder Room, we laid out large pieces of paper and carefully arranged things to make pictures just like the ones in our books. We printed out the pictures and put them in our very own binder, each page asking the reader to find three specific items in their I Spy puzzle. Our Kinders are very proud of this project and our book sits on a shelf in our library, available to everyone! We've also been exploring the beauty of bird feathers, after one child noticed some peacock feathers we had. I brought in a few from my own collection, and we used magnifying glasses to inspect each one closely.  Once we had fully inspected each feather, the children chose paint colors that matched the colors they noticed and began to create not only their versions of the feathers, but also the birds they came from. Some went on to paint flowers and nature scenes, others kept with the theme and painted bird after bird! I offered finger painting again on a different day, but this time with just drops of color on one large paper. White, green, blue and purple hues with a variety of "tools" created lovely underwater imagery! Finger painting is an excellent way to explore sensory, calm your mind, and enjoy a mess. Give it a try next time you find yourself needing a break from your usual routine; You may be surprised at how good it feels to dip your whole arm in paint! Wow - what a wild few weeks our weather has given us! Piles of snow, crazy cold temperatures, a few blizzards and even some rain have given the Kinders a lot of opportunity to experience and explore all our Manitoba winters have to offer. One of the first things we did after the first big snowfall was gear up and venture out into the forest to fill a few bird feeders we had found the week before.  It was quite a challenge, trekking through the super deep snow! But with a bag of bird seed on a sled and a mission, the Ladybugs managed to fill up all four empty bid feeders before collapsing into a snowbank, exhausted. For the most recent blizzard, we decided to go out right in the middle of the storm and have a "color parade". The Caterpillars used ribbons tied to sticks to create splashes of color in the very grey afternoon! On the days where we spent more time inside, we became scientists! We brought the snow indoors and made snow volcanoes, we explored the wonders of shaving cream with rainbow water, and we learned a little math with Dinosaur Monopoly & Connect Four. Thanks for stopping by and checking out the fun things we've been up to!
|
Kindercare Leader
Vita
Archives
May 2023
|
RSS Feed
© 2017 Dawn and Dusk Before and After School Program
All Rights Reserved |
|