Christmas is Coming!

And we've been preparing to celebrate this holiday!  These are some of the ways we are getting ready for Christmas.  We like to use these village blocks and magnetic Christmas tree to create a complete Christmas village.  

We've engaged our senses with a variety of textured ornaments, Christmas ducks, finger puppets, chimney tubes, sparkly trees and gingerbread boys, and even cinnamon pinecones.  One of the most enjoyable results from this provocation is hearing the children invent stories about Santa going down the chimneys, snowball fights, gingerbread boys outrunning reindeer, and more.  Additionally, the children engaged their fine motor skills by threading fuzzy sticks through the ornaments and hung them on the Christmas tree.

We've worked with green and white paint at the art easel, determining what happens when these colors are mixed.  

One of the BEST part of the Christmas season is driving after dark and seeing the lights!  Night time field trips for preschoolers are impractical, so we turned off the lights and turned on our glow sticks to play with lights.

Some of our friends have become more interested in letters.  Ms. Harmony planned a Small Group activity where each child was given a large letter 'C' for Christmas with a pencil, a fuzzy stick, and a ball of play dough.  One friend in particular, loves the letter 'C' because it is the letter the starts her name!

The children were encouraged to trace the letter with their fingers or pencil.  We talked about how the letter 'C' has a curvy shape.  We tried to form this shape with the fuzzy sticks and/or play dough.

Some of our friends were even able to hear the /c/ sound that 'C' makes and thought of their own 'C' words: candy cane, Christmas tree, carols, and cookies!

Christmas is coming, and we are almost ready!  Songs, lights, smells, letters, and stories... so many ways to fully experience the joyous holiday.

Why is it Winter? SPACE holds the answer!

In following Friend "Sandwich's" zest for Space learning, we built a unit all about space!  And we connected it with our prior unit about winter.  Winter on Earth looks cold and bare.  Trees are sleeping and their leaves have fallen, sometimes it snows, and we have to wear extra clothes to keep warm.  Winter in space looks like Earth tilting, or leaning, away from the Sun's warmth.

We have worked in our Explore table (pictured above) to learn names of planets, "catch stars," and taking samples of space rocks with "rovers."

We built, and rebuilt, our own rovers.  Their job is to take pictures, rock samples, and other information while exploring the moon or Mars.  We read about rovers in a book, and then used our imaginations to take ours on space expeditions.

At the Alone Table, we used stars to make pictures, or constellations.  We also had a Galaxy bottle to shake up and watch the shooting stars.

This bottle is 1/2 mineral oil, purple and blue glitter, and 1/2 water with blue and red dye.  Shake it up and watch the magic happen!

Space is art-mazing!  We used foil, star stickers, and glue to make these space pictures.  Our dialogue went beyond the practical process of the art (peeling stickers, squeezing glue, ripping or crunching foil): we discussed nebulae where stars are born, asteroids "the space rocks," and constellations.

Astronomy is such a vast topic, and there is so much to do with preschoolers on the subject!  Winter is a perfect time to study space.

Happy New Year! We're Back!

We are kicking off the Spring 2020 semester right!  Our new explore table is filled with rice, pom poms, glitter balls, scissor catchers, and scoops!

We've been exploring cars, ramps, roads, and races too!

And our Alone Table work is fascinating on the light box!  Each child had fun building with the transparent legos, "snowballs," and animal figurines.  Winter is such a fun time of year at Harmony's House!  Welcome back friends.  :)

DIY Cheapest Lightbox Ever!

Light tables are amazing to play with!  Shapes and colors just seem brighter, clearer, and more magical on the light table.  But they are often SOO expensive!  Here's how we made ours for Harmony's House, for less than half the cost of buying one new.  :)  You might already have some of the materials at home.

What you need:

• 1 clear plastic box with lid- I used this box because it was transparent but the lid was almost completely free of bumps and ridges, and better for building and playing
• 1 can of white spray paint
• about 4 button lights (more or less depending on your preference)  
• batteries for your lights

What you do:

1. Spray paint the interior bottom and sides of the box.  Why white?  It will reflect all wavelengths of visual light, and minimize light escaping out the sides and bottom of the box.
2. Lightly spray paint the interior side of the lid.  You want the most light to come out the top of the box to illuminate your light table toys, but you don't want to be blinded looking directly into the lights.
3. Install batteries into button lights.
4. Determine how many and where you want to place your button lights inside the box.  (I used four lights, evenly spaced from the four corners of the box.)
5. Turn lights on, click lid into place, and start playing with toys!

Spring STEAM

The year is chugging right along!  We have welcomed Spring at Harmony's House with STEAM!

What is STEAM?  STEAM is an acronym for Science, Technology/Tools, Engineering, Art, and Math.  This is a summary of the STEAM opportunities that the students of Harmony's House have experienced during their studies of Spring. 

(While so many of these activities could fall into a few STEAM areas, Ms. Harmony has tried to evenly assign the lessons across the subject areas.)

SCIENCE-
Rain in Turtle Town:  In the Explore Table, the school friends learned about meteorology (clouds and rain) with cups poked with holes, adhesive and cohesive properties of water (the blocks stick to one another and to the sides of the Explore Table when they are wet), balance, and buoyancy.  It was very challenging to build boats and buildings for the turtles because the foam blocks float on the water, but the turtles sink, and everything is differently weighted based on size and shape.  There was so much dialogue happening here about science:  "Why do the blocks stick together?"  "I think I need to build on something flat."  "How can I make a tunnel?"  "The turtles are sinking!"  "It's raining!  Why is the water falling out?"

Water Cycle Experiment:  To better understand how water moves between the Earth's surface and its atmosphere, we did this hands-on simulation of the water cycle.  After reading two nonfiction books about clouds and watersheds in Circle Time, the children knew that clouds were made of water and ice, clouds rain or snow on mountains, and water/snowmelt runs down into streams, rivers, lakes, and eventually the ocean.  But how does it get back into the air?  In our simulation, we used a sponge to represent a cloud.  When full of water, it began to precipitate (drip) onto the Earth (tub of water).  Finally, we used a small cup to help the water evaporate up into the clouds.  After pouring small amounts of water into the cloud/sponge, it became saturated and was ready to rain again.  The children LOVED squeezing the cloud forcefully so that it made a rainstorm.  One child noticed that after the big rush of rain, the sponge still dripped a bit and remarked, "Look it's sprinkling after the storm!"

Animal Life:  Birds are building nests to prepare for their young.  Many animals have babies in the springtime when the weather is warming up and food becomes more abundant.  This Small Group activity explains how we made our own bird nests after studying and describing real nests.

Plant Anatomy and Physiology:  Doing a plant dissection with children is super fun and informative.  They ask great questions, and learn the names and functions of the plant parts in a hands -on way!  Read this post to find out more about this project.

TECHNOLOGY/TOOLS-

Popcorn Popping:  In Circle Time, we used an air popper to replicate the Earth's environment during springtime.  Outside, the Sun shines on our part of the world and warms up the air.  More sunny days, and longer sunny days, make the weather warm.  We have noticed that flowers are popping out on trees all over the place now that Spring is here!  Like the real weather outside, the popper warmed the air, and the seeds that we "planted," until they popped!  The yummy popcorn looked just like the flowers on the trees!

Wind Socks:  When studying Spring weather, we learned that air moves when it heats up or cools down.  Wind also blows with direction.  Using a wind sock can help a person know which way the wind is blowing.  We made our own wind socks and used them outside to help us visualize the wind's movements.

ENGINEERING-

Flower Gardens:  We used Gears! Gears! Gears! to "grow flowers" for Spring.  Ms. Harmony gave the students a few materials at a time so that the children had an opportunity to figure out how the gears worked, which accessory pieces connected to which, and how to build vertically as well as horizontally.  Each child explored the gears at his/her own pace and used the materials in different ways.  It was exciting to hear the change from "I NEED help!" to "I did it!" when they figured out how to connect, turn, and build.  

Flower Garden Amusement Park:  One day during Work Time, the children came back to the Gears and planned to make a flower park for the CareBears and animals.  They connected all these gears, "planted flower," and put the animals on top.  When the gears began to turn, the animals would spin around and around with them!  It was amazing!

ART-  
Black and White Color Mixing:  The children were given a bit of black and white paint and asked to predict what color they would get when these colors were mixed together.  One child guessed grey, while another thought it would be blue.  We then proceeded to mix the two colors on the "sky" and they discovered that the blue paper would show through where the paint was thin.  They also noticed that when you add more black, the paint was darker.  White paint made the mixture lighter.  The children used varying shades of grey to make rainclouds.

Spray Art and Lightning:  To create these awesome art pieces, we used spray bottles to make it "rain" at the art easel!  After the "rain" was dry, the children were offered cotton balls and lightning bolts.  They enjoyed gluing them onto the paintings to create thunderstorms!

Rainbows:  When light shines through water, it bounces around and separates into different colors.  We applied colored streamers to Contact paper and then hung it in the window to see the light shine through!  It made beautiful stained glass windows for us.

Tree Sculptures:  At the Alone Table, the children were invited to use these "branches, leaves, and fruit" to design and build a tree sculpture.  Each child's tree was unique depending on whether they wanted to sculpt with all the branches, just a few, lots of fruit or leaves...  However it ended up, the tree sculptures were beautiful to behold.

MATH-
Building with Shapes:  In a previous blog post, these rainbow blocks were discussed as a learning opportunity for playing with light, colors, and shadows.  They also allowed the children to dialogue about patterns and shapes.  Some of the children's language included, "Give me a rectangle."  "Let's make a pattern in the wall.  Square, rectangle, square, rectangle.  That's a pattern."  "We are out of [insert shape], what should we use next?"

On a different day, the children looked at the shapes to make a stained glass window for the floor.

Numbers in the Frog Pond: The Explore Table had numbered lily pads for the frogs.  Some children used the lily pads as places for sorting rather than quantifying.  Others looked for the lily pads that had the biggest number because they wanted to have the most frogs.  Either way, this Explore Table led to a variety of math conversations!