New Year, New Look!

While the school friends have been with their families over Winter Break, Ms. Harmony has been busy giving a few of the Areas a makeover!  After hours of brainstorming, planning, shopping, building, and gathering materials, Ms. Harmony is very excited to share it all with the school friends.  One of the objectives of this makeover was to provide open-ended, curiosity-invoking, play provocations for the children by incorporating REAL or recycled materials.  Fewer lights, fewer electronic sounds, less plastic.

One tinker station in the Toy and Puzzle Area now houses an Asian tapestry, pitcher, vase, and statue.  While appreciating art and decor from another culture, the children will be invited to use tiny spoons to move gems between vases, pitchers, pots, and trays which serves to develop fine motor, mathematical, and socio-cultural abilities/knowledge.

The second tinker station has animals from the Arctic.  Children have opportunities to use spools, gems, rounds, blocks, and snowflakes to build an original setting and a story over and over again.  They also become familiar with the animals living in this region of the world, and might talk about the animal food chains, habitat preservation issues, behavior, and adaptations.

The Explore Table has been filled with rice, scoops, adapted scissors, polar animals, reusable ice cubes, and sequin balls.  This provocation is specifically designed to facilitate discussion about animal camouflage.  Finding the white furred animals in the white rice (AKA "snow") is difficult, both for school friends and for animal predators!

The Book and Block Areas have been updated to include comfy rugs, providing increased comfort for working on the floor and interesting textures in the room.  The Book Area also has new throw pillows and star lights, pictured here in the dark room to get the full effect!  :)  

Updates will likely continue during 2021 as we continue to move toward more authentic materials and experiences for the children.  This is just the beginning, and what a great beginning it is!

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

Fun Fall Must-Haves for the Block Area

Keep the Block Area fresh by changing out the accessories periodically!  Here's what we've added recently:

• Real logs or branches
• Silk leaves

• Pinecones
• Wicker plates

• Forest animals
• Rocks 

Finding Fall?

The forest animals are going to start getting ready for winter soon!  One of the best ways to spot forest animals is by going camping.  We made a cool tent in the Book Area, stocked up on flashlights, and made animal dens.  So cool!

We hid animals around the room and used binoculars or flashlights to find them.  Bears make sure to eat lots of food during the summer and fall to prepare for winter.

Deer are busy eating too.  Food is hard to find in the winter.

Friend "Sandwich" asked, "Which pinecone is the spikiest?"  Great question!  He and Toddler "Koala" tested them out and then used them to make some animal dens.

Flashlights are also great for helping you find your belly button... in case yours is missing.  ;)

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!