February is a Great Month to Share Love

This month at Harmony's House we are remembering Black History and celebrating Valentine's Day!  Every month, every day, is a great time to love others and be kind, but February gives us a special opportunity to think about ways to show it.

Loving others requires noticing hidden qualities that make people unique and special!  In this fun box, the students will be invited to shift, smooth, and organize the pebbles to find the hidden heart.

Speaking of hidden things, can you spot the tiny letters hiding in the Explore Table?  These are fun little things to find, especially when we find our friends' and family members' letters!

Sometimes people are lonely around Valentine's Day, or feel unappreciated and under-represented.  Our Toy and Puzzle Area offers the children a chance to "mend the broken hearts" by counting and matching quantity to number.  

A few days ago, Ms. Harmony was reading to a school friend at her home, and she excitedly said, "Look!  She has a hijab!"  Impressive word use, but even more cool was that she shared her positive feelings about someone who was a different religion and culture than herself.  Ms. Harmony added this puzzle of a young girl wearing hijab to help children feel more familiar and comfortable with diversity.

Let's talk about ATTRACTION... magnetic attraction, that is!  One of our tinker tables has a tray of magnetic, and non-magnetic things to explore.  Even some of the sensory bottles have magnetic surprises inside to discover.  Other bottles just have fun Valentine's tidbits.

Let's make play-doh Valentine's together with our cinnamon sticks, heart cookie cutters, L-U-V letters, red glitter, and stampers.  <3  With such a beautiful set up, this table will surely be irresistible to our little love bugs!

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!

Celebrating Heart Day!

We did a little bit of art... cookie cutter stamping and LOTS of stickers courtesy of J. Sumner!  (Thank you!)

We mended some "broken hearts" by matching quantity with number and completing the puzzles.

We enjoyed YUMMY sugar cookies with our own decorating designs.

Toppings of choice were strawberries, M&Ms, sprinkles, and frosting.

We rolled out play-doh hearts for days!

We found letter hearts hiding in Valentine's crinkly paper and rose petals.

Happy Valentine's Day!

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!

Snow What Fun!

Our first day of the 2019 Spring Session was super fun!  For Small Group, we put together a floor puzzle of polar animals.  Then we used magnifying glasses to notice which animals lived at the North Pole and South Pole.  Did you know that penguins only live in the southern hemisphere?  We used the floor puzzle, the wall map, and a globe to look at North and South poles, and to talk about the animals found there.

Some of the awesome dialogue about this activity included where the light was coming from when they used the magnifying glasses.  We noticed that wherever we moved the glass, a small spot of light followed.  The magnifying glass was catching the light from the room and shining it onto the puzzle.  We also observed that the magnifying glasses have a "small bump" that makes things look extra big!  These powers of observation really helped us notice where different animals live on the map.

Work Time was filled with creativity and fun as well!  Friend "S" used popsicle sticks and a paper towel tube together.  She poked holes in the tube with a pair of scissors.

Friend "B" and Toddler "K" connected a bunch of vehicle pop-blocks and measured each other.  When you connect all of the pop-blocks, it's the same height as friend "B!"

The Explore Table was full of South Pole discoveries!  The styrofoam packing peanuts are in the shape of the letter 'S' for "snow" and "south."  They make a great noise when you crunch them up, and are so much fun to toss and shower the penguins with snow!  The baby penguins are small enough to hide under the styrofoam too, so we had to sift through it all to find them.  The ping pong balls were "snowballs" or "eggs" depending on the plan.

Friend "S" worked at the Alone Table to connect Squigs to the mirror.  Friend "B" also did this plan and talked about it at Recall Time.  She mentioned that when they stick together they sound like"squish."  :D

There were so many other things that the school friends worked on while they were here!  Ms. Harmony will have to share those photos in a later post.  We don't want to overwhelm our readers with too much awesome-ness!

To finish up our day, we read a book about penguins and noticed that they had very short legs.  We tried out what it would be like to walk with super short legs by tying a bandanna around our ankles on going on a Penguin Parade.  :)  It was not a very fast way to get around.  We also pretended to sled on our bellies, hop, and swim like penguins to find a faster way to travel!

P.S.  Our sweet Baby Buddies had their own class downstairs and practiced taking naps and doing floor time.  :)  Baby "E" and Baby "E" are about one week apart.  How fun they get to play together while big sisters are learning and playing upstairs!