Make Your Own Mermaid Cove

This has been a hot spot for play lately.  We provided a box with flat stones, natural seashells, blocks, ocean animals, and a variety of mermaids in shell seats.  The "water" was simply a blue and silver silky scarf tied around the table.

The children have set the stage, played, and reimagined stories and scenes over and over again.

Sometimes our mermaids befriended nice turtles and dolphins.

Sometimes the mermaids needed a spot to chill out and have a snack.  And sometimes they had to escape to safety from an invading shark or orca whale!

It's a beautiful thing to behold when young children develop creative thinking skills, scientific knowledge of living things, language, and role playing with a small box of simple toys.  <3

Sharks are Fish Too

During our Ocean studies, we learned about how to classify animals as fish via several activities.  This "shark anatomy" project took about two weeks to complete!  The first day we learned that fish are animals with scales, so we put on bubble wrap mittens and painted "scales" all over this paper.

Once dry, Ms. Harmony cut out the paper in the shape of a shark.  Over the next few classes, we gradually added fins, gills, and bones by studying our shark toys and from pictures in books.  A fish is an animal with bones, gills, fins, and scales.  (They also lay eggs!)  So this means that sharks, sting rays, and even sea horses go in the fish group too!  But "jelly fish" and "star fish" don't because they don't have any bones.  Isn't that silly?

Friend "Hammer" noticed that some of our stuffed animals in the House Area had gills too, just like we had put on our shark model!  He was pretty excited about that and found other animals that had gills too.  It was awesome to see the kids apply knowledge from Greeting Time, Small Group, and Circle Time to their own observations during Work Time.

One additional way we talked about classification was to sort these toys into ocean MAMMAL groups and ocean FISH groups.  We examined the toys for clues like blowholes.  We knew that an animal that comes up to the top of the water for air has lungs, not gills.  They are like us.  We also had learned earlier in the year that mammals are animals with fur or hair.  This meant we could classify animals like seals, whales, and dolphins in the mammal group because of either the presence of hair or blowholes.  (Once sorted, Ms. Harmony also reminded them that all of the animals in the mammal group had live babies, and all* of the animals in the fish group lay eggs.  *Actually there are some sharks that have live births, but there is no need to get that technical with kids ages 2-5!

The gills on the ray and shark were a dead giveaway that they went in the fish group!  :)  Ms. Harmony tried to be tricky by saying that since the shark had teeth, maybe we should put it with the seals and dolphins... but the kids caught on and reminded me that some fish have teeth, and others don't.  That's not important when deciding if the animal is a fish or not!  These kids are so bright!  You can't get anything past them!

What do teachers do after the kids go home?

We build epic pirate ships.  Out of cardboard and duct tape.  Naturally!  ;)  They also get up to sneaky shenanigans like stealing treasure chests, hiding them on the playground, and blaming the pirates!

Friend "Hammer" asks, "Who stole our treasure again?"
Ms. Harmony: "The pirates!  And they hid the treasure on the playground nearby their ship!"
Friend "Hammer:" "That can't be right.  Cuz pirates aren't real."
Ms. Harmony:  "Hmm.  Well I wonder who it was then because our treasure is REALLY missing and we REALLY have a pirate ship parked in our playground!"

Mr. Smarty Pants was trying to game the system!  Hah!  He still had fun playing along and finding, re-hiding, and finding again the treasure chests.

What did our treasure chests contain?  20 gold doubloons perfect for counting, beads, jewel bouncy balls, a sea creature, and sunglasses.

The school friends are so helpful with the toddlers.  They helped them find their boxes, open them, and appreciate all the treasure inside.

Toddler "Kite" loved her treasure box.  She dumped and filled it over and over.  :)

Preschoolers as Scientists

"Let's do what scientists do!  We'll study something, look at it up close, touch it, smell it, listen to it, and think... then write down what we've learned.  We can record our ideas with words, pictures, or tracing."

This was our Small Group prompt on Tuesday.  The children were each given a clipboard, pencil and sheet of paper.  They could choose a magnifying glass, and from a variety of star fish, sea shells, and shark teeth from the basket.

Some things we learned during this activity is that only the swirly shells sound like the ocean.  Flatter shells, starfish, and shark teeth do not.

We used a lot of descriptive language like: smooth, spiky, rough, tooth-like, sharp, spiral, striped, and so much more.  The students were encouraged to write or draw these words.

We even learned where the starfish mouth was!  Imagine eating from your belly button!  Starfish have a mouth right in the center of their bodies.  Tracing the starfish was challenging as well.  All of the starfish that we used had five legs.

 Here are some samples of the notes the children made.

Toddler "K" (age 2) "traced" her star fish by drawing circles around it.  She made some squiggles which she indicated were the words "starfish."  Ms. Harmony helped her write out the letters so another adult could read her words.

Friend "K" (age 5) traced her starfish and shark tooth independently.  She also drew her representations of seashells and labeled her diagrams.  She sounded out the words she wanted to write and wrote the letters herself.  If she was uncertain about a sound, Ms. Harmony would help her identify the correct letters like, /sh/ and /oo/.

Ocean Inspirations

We have been working with the idea of "Ocean" in so many ways, especially in the Art Area.  Ms. Harmony loves her "Melissa and Doug" art easel because it allows two children room to paint side by side.  I love it when the school friends say, "Come paint with me!  You can be on this side!"  And two by two, they work with blue, green, and white to make ocean waves, drops, seaweed, and good conversation.  :)  It is wonderful to see how the conversation, artistic strokes, and preschool humor influences each friend in turn as they work on their paintings.

They were literally jumping up and down laughing while they painted these.  :)

Check out these masterpieces!

You can see amazing things up close you know.  

 Today we added jelly fish creatures to our Ocean Scene.

This is how we did it: we used a plain paper plate cut in half to be the hood part.  Then we mixed a small amount of white school glue with water.  Next we painted bits of tissue paper onto the plate and let it dry.  Once it was dry, we taped bits of curling ribbon on the bottom to be the stinging tentacles.

 

Fish Getting Hammered

It's not what you think!  Because Friend "H" loves hammers so very much, today we used hammers to paint fish for our ocean scene!  (Learn more about Letter Links here.)  It was just WAY TOO fun!

We put fish shaped paper in a box.  Then the children chose which color paint spots they wanted.  Ms. Harmony dropped in the paint and covered the fish with wax paper.  Then the children hit all the paint spots with a hammer.  They loved watching the spots change from small to big, colors mix together, and of course, the gross motor action of this kind of art!

Take a look at these little beauties!