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!

Polar Habitats

Polar habitats... brr!  The name just sounds cold!  Today we started learning a bit more about Antarctica, where the south pole is located.

We used penguins, snowflakes, "snowballs" and tubes in the Explore Table.

We also put together this floor puzzle of the animals that live in the polar regions of the world.  After completing the puzzle, we used our magnifying glasses to find different animals.  Even though both poles have ice and snow, penguins are only found in Southern continents, and polar bears are only found in Northern ones.

Some animals, like whales or terns, migrate between the two poles.

It's fascinating stuff to learn about these places in the world that have the LONGEST winter ever!

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.  :)

Frosty Fun with Circles

Sometimes random things that aren't really toys, make for great fun.  A basket of "white circles" appeared on the shelf this week in the Toy and Puzzle Area.  The "white circles" were cups, empty spools of varying sizes, and 10" cake rounds.

The children chose to use them like ice and snow to make penguin houses.

Here is a multi-level iceberg!  Very clever!

Icy fortress anyone?

The open-ended nature of these random "white circles" led to an explosion of creativity in the classroom.  Indeed, as so well expressed in the Mandate for Playful Learning in Preschool, "Play builds knowledge by offering countless opportunities for sustained attention, problem solving, symbolic representation... memory development, and hypothesis testing" (Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, K., Michnick, R., Berk, L., Singer, D., 2008).

Polar STEAM!

Weather at the Poles is cold, cold, cold!  But the polar adventures at Harmony's House have been downright steamy!

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 polar animals.

(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-
Penguin Movements:  Although, penguins are birds, they do not fly.  After reading a book about penguins in Circle Time, we tried out what it would be like to move like penguins.  To experience having short legs, we tied bandannas around our ankles and attempted to walk around.  We also hopped and pretended to slide on our bellies and swim.  The students learned about the various ways penguins, as polar birds, move around.

Finish the story:  During Small Group, Ms. Harmony read the first part of this book Little Polar Bear.  Then she invited the children to use their knowledge of these Arctic animals and the environment around the North Pole to finish the story in their own way.  After devising our own ending to the story of helping little Lars to find his way home, Ms. Harmony read the ending that the author chose for the little polar bear.

TECHNOLOGY/TOOLS-
Ocean Jello:  Many polar animals use the ocean as a method of survival because it is a source of food.  The fish, squid, penguins, seals, walruses, and whales find their feasts in the ocean.  To discuss the subject of animal feeding habits, we mixed up a small box of blue jello during Small Group.  In addition to talking about the phase change from liquid to solid and feeding habits of the animals, we also learned the names of cooking tools such as "liquid measuring cup" and "wire whisk."  After the jello set up, we enjoyed eating it with Cool Whip "snow" on top!

Puzzles and Magnifying Glasses:  This puzzle had a map and pictured animals found at both the North and the South poles.  After completing the puzzle in Small Group, we used magnifying glasses to search for the different animals.  We determined that penguins are only found in the southern hemisphere, while the Arctic circle has a wider range of animal diversity, and yet no penguins.  Further discussion about how the students interacted with the magnifying glasses can be found in this post.

ENGINEERING-
Polar Landscaping:  The children were invited to use loose parts such as stones, flattened marbles, cotton balls, felt, and Arctic animals to create these animal homes.

ART-
Black and white collage:  During Small Group, the students tore pieces of black paper while we discussed why animals that live at the poles often have black skin (even if its under white fur!) or feathers.  This color is best for absorbing heat from the Sun!  Polar animals also often have white fur or feathers for camouflage purposes.  Once the paper was torn, the school friends glued it onto white paper in collage fashion according to their personal preferences.

Pipette Icicles:  "What is an icicle?" Friend "K" asks.  That was a great question that we attempted to answer through an art experience.  Icicles are made when water melts, drips, and then refreezes.  We used pipettes at the easel with diluted grey and blue paint to see how liquid drips down.  More can be read on this activity here.

MATH-
Iceberg Number Recognition and Counting:  Ms. Harmony prepared these "icebergs" with numbers 1-10, star foil stickers, laminant, and blue painters tape.  First the children put the numbers in order.  If they weren't sure which number they had, they counted the stars to find out.  Then we tossed a beanbag on the icebergs.  Whichever number it landed on, the child hopped (like a penguin) to the iceberg and shouted out the number.

Snowflake geometry and shapes: This was one of our most recent awesome experiences!  The children learned about a new shape called HEXAGON that has six sides.  Snowflakes, although 100% unique, share a common trait of having six sides.  The school friends used large shapes to design their own "snowflakes" all over the rug during Circle Time.

We have really enjoyed the STEAM power through our studies of animals at the North and South poles!