Spring Breathes Life to the World

After a long Winter sleep, Spring is officially just days away, and we are anticipating the seasonal changes that wake up the Earth.  When the Northern Hemisphere warms up, we expect to see plants bud and bloom.

Today we dissected old flowers from a bouquet.  As we took apart petals, stems, and leaves, we found interesting flower parts like where a flower keeps her eggs!  And, how the pollen is dusty, and sneaks down the tube to find the hiding eggs.  We also talked about different functions of the plant parts: petals are usually brightly colored to attract birds and insects to the nectar, stems hold up the flower and act like straws to suck water up to the top of the plant, and plants need to share pollen so the eggs can grow into more flower seeds.

We pretended to be "flower fairies" to help the garden grow.  Plants grow in order: roots down, shoots up, leaves, buds, and sometimes flowers and fruit.

We used toy butterflies to pretend to drink nectar from our flowers, and carry pollen around.  The flowers and leaves helped hide the butterfly eggs so we can "hatch more baby butterflies" (AKA- caterpillars).

Our Friend "Bride" decided to decorate the tree by adding flowers, and it was exciting to see Spring bring out her blossoms!

Outside, we continued to learn about Spring weather (even though today was very cold!).  The mountain snow will be melting and filling our rivers with fresh water.  We loved simulating a full spring brook with this flowing, specialized, water table.

When the bucket fills enough to tip, it makes a big wave that sends our boats over the waterfall and fills the next bucket.

The anticipation of the bucket flipping is intense!  Well worth the wait, it's exciting to see the wave of water work in a cause and effect method.

And let's remember that air warmed by the Sun doesn't just sit around, it moves!  Spring can be a very windy time as warm air rises high and cool air whooshes low.  What better way to play with wind than by chasing bubbles in a breeze?

Welcome Spring and all the fun, interesting, and colorful aspects you bring to the world!  We might be young at Harmony's House, but we notice you Spring.  In fact, we are learning all about Spring with our whole bodies and all of our senses.  Life just couldn't be more exciting!

5 Ideas for Spring Sensory Bottles

Sensory bottles are mesmerizing and fun!  Here's our most recent collection at Harmony's House.

1.  Golden sun- add one bottle of gold glitter glue, a few pebbles to aid mixing, and warm water.  Shake and watch the glitter swirl and move.  Spring comes with more sunlight and warmer days!

2.  Rainbow spots- add multiple colors of water beads, just a sprinkle of each color to water.  (We left air in the top of this bottle to allow for better swirling.  Instead of shaking this bottle, swirl it around like a tornado and watch the rainbow spin!)  Spring brings out the colors in the world.

3.  Bug safari- fill the bottle half full with rainbow rice and add a few toys insects.  (We used small bug erasers.)  Shake up the rice, roll the bottle around, and find the bugs!  We counted four butterflies, dragonflies, ladybugs, and bees hiding.  Springs wakens the insect life!

4.  Blue skies and glitter rain- add one bottle of blue glitter glue, purple beads, chunky iridescent glitter, and water.  The beads help the glitter mix better but can also be observed falling slowly through the solution.  Some glitter floats up, some glitter sinks, just like water moves between the Earth and sky in the water cycle.  April showers bring May flowers.

5.  May flowers-  trim desired silk flowers and leaves, add flat beads as you fill with flowers, and push down with a straw to pack the flowers into the bottle to reach desired fill.  The beads move around the flowers with a rainstick sound, but they also look like beautiful jewels hiding in the flowers.  Flowers are some of the best parts of Spring!

Play-doh Plates (the Tectonic Kind!)

This week we dug deeper into the idea of Our Earth, kind of literally.  First we used a book to see illustrations of the Earth and interior layers.  We learned new vocabulary like "crust," "tectonic plates," and "magma" (melted rocks that the tectonic plates float on).

Next we used play-doh to form tectonic plates and discover three ways the Earth makes mountains.

1.  Fold mountains- a real world example of tectonic collision is the Himalayan mountains, and these types of mountains are identifiable by their jagged peaks

2.  Volcanic eruptions- when a tectonic plate moves over a hot spot and magma pushes up onto the land, we call it a volcanic eruption (like the Hawaiian islands)

3.  Dome mountains- sometimes the magma pushes up but does not find an outlet, and it cools forming a rounded mountain

Lastly, we observed how when tectonic plates fold, collide, go under one another (subduction), the Earth makes layers.  When lots of heavy mountains are on top, and really hot magma is underneath, the layers in the middle are changed through pressure and heat.  This is how we get different kinds of rocks.  In summary, geology rocks!  Especially when reenacted with play-doh.  ;)