Happy Crazy Clash Day!
As you know, one of our favorite activities lately during free choice time is the magna-tiles. The more the children play with the magna tiles, the more they work together to build large structures. Cooperation and working together are valuable social skills that will benefit the children throughout their lives!
As we celebrate National Lutheran School's Week, we are thankful for so many things about our school! Lutheran schools not only provide a great education, but we have the opportunity to talk about Jesus whenever we want!
Here at Zion learning about Jesus is not limited to Jesus time. We learn about showing Jesus' love when we solve problems between friends. We learn about Jesus' desires for us when we discuss our choices. We learn about Jesus' forgiveness when we forgive someone for hurting our feelings. We learn about Jesus' power when we learn about our world. We are able to learn about Jesus and His precious gift of salvation all through the school day!
Our estimation jar changed just a little today. The friends practiced estimating and writing their names and a numeral as they signed in with their estimation.
Our friends checked the radar and the five day forecast only to find out that there is a tornado on the way! We discussed what we do during a tornado to stay safe, and our friends went to hide in the basement (the writing center.)
As we continue in our weather project, one of the friends told a story about a time she was in a tornado. The other friends discussed time when they were in tornados too. We discussed the different parts of the tornado, and we learned that tornados have strong wind!
"When I had a tornado, we had to eat a snack in the basement."
"I had to play games in the basement for a long time!"
We then discussed some items in the classroom that could blow away if we blew on them. We predicted which items would blow away and which ones would not. Before predicting, one of our friends said, "Well if there was tornado wind, all of it would blow away!"
We tested our predictions, and all of our predictions were correct!
It is important to attach new information to children's prior experiences. This creates a brain synapse that connects the new information to the prior experiences making the new information more meaningful and more readily retained.
We also tested our own 'wind' further. The children each had a special tornado straw which they used to test if classroom items would move when the children blew on them. The children predicted what would happen to each one, and tested their prediction. Allowing the children an active role in the scientific process can help to foster the love of learning!
Furthermore, the children are exploring concepts such as cause and effect and heavy and light!
Even if your child had the opportunity to do this activity yesterday, we extended the learning today by exploring what happens when we blow softly as compared to when we blow hard.
Differentiation during science explorations happens in the questions that teachers use to guide student learning. Some examples of questions to guide student learning include:
- How did you get the LEGO to move so far?
- Why didn't the block move when you blew on it?
- What will happen if you blew softly on the LEGO?
We also worked on our wind socks!
We hope to be able to go outside tomorrow, but for today we had fun with indoor recess.
During Jesus time we learned about the feeding of the 5,000. We thanked Jesus for providing for our needs! Through His death and resurrection, Jesus provides for our greatest need- the need for a Savior.
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