I am Unique! Let's Celebrate!

We have worked for a few weeks now to create these likenesses of ourselves, and celebrate all the wonderful ways that we are individually different.

The first step in this project was to look at the "Shades of People," to understand that people aren't really different colors like red, blue, or green... but that we are different shades.  We each started with a blank body cutout, and a palate of brown, white, red, and yellow paint.  

The children were challenged to mix the colors with brown to find the shade that matched their own skin color.

The following week, we looked at each other's faces.  While we all have eyes, noses, and hair, our individual features are very different.  We selected eye colors and sizes from blue, green, and brown buttons.  The children decided if they wanted to add noses or mouths from the art materials.  They also selected hair from yellow, brown, tan, or black yarn.

The final week we cut out clothes from colored paper.  We designed our own outfits.  Everyone enjoys different colors and styles.  

This is the culmination of our month-long study of "Self."  Each child has a poster with their art and interests surrounding our Parent Board.  Truly, there is MUCH to appreciate about each child, and how much each child brings to Harmony's House.

Homes and Families

 

Families are the biggest part of our small friends' worlds, especially now when so many are quarantined, churches are closed, and activities are postponed.  But even when it's not Covid season, family members are the most influential people for a child during the early years.  Children learn the unique culture of their individual family, that they belong to something bigger than self, and that they are loved.

We have been bringing home and family play to the classroom with our Calico Critter homes and vehicles.  A lot of these plans replicate family activities or traditions, like Friend "Koala's" family picnic at the beach!

The children often have very specific ideas about how to arrange furniture, what to include in the house, and which critters they want to make into a family.

It has been so cozy and fun to listen to the children talk about their own families and create new stories for the critter families.  We will continue to build on the ideas of self and family in the upcoming weeks because these children are so important... to their families, Harmony's House, and the world!

Create and Learn!

Our school friends have been expressing their creativity in so many ways!  It's amazing to see them build their brains in SOOO many wonderful ways!  One subject we talked about was "shades."  We started with blue paint, and then explored what happened when we added black and/or white paint to the blue.  We talked about how the blue would get darker, or lighter, but didn't change into a different color really.  Dark blue and light blue are shades of blue.  Each masterpiece of blue shades was truly a masterpiece!

 

We used balls and ramps to create different tracks.  It was so fun and educational to explore what happened when we changed the angle of the ramp by raising or lowering the end of the ramps.  The balls speed would change and we found natural ways to talk about force, gravity, height, and distance.

     

But sometimes the ramps made dog homes too.  :) Because open ended materials are useful that way!  Why not?

Our Explore Table has been filled with fuzzy sticks, dry noodles, and colanders.  We navigated fuzzy sticks through the holes, in and out, to make silly hats!

Friend "Alarm Clock" wondered why sometimes you could see the fuzzy sticks and sometimes you couldn't.  We noticed that if we threaded the fuzzy sticks from the outside of the bowl, versus the inside, the fuzzy stick would poke out the way she wanted.

Play offers so many opportunities for young children to talk about "big" ideas from art and physics, and practice "big" skills like threading and weaving.  It's no wonder that play is one of the fastest ways to learn new information and skills for children!

A-MUSE-ing Rocks

During July, we built on a student interest: rocks!  Each child at Harmony's House has a rock collection at home, so we brought that interest alive in the classroom as well.  One small group activity was to use magnifying glasses to study an assortment of rocks.

We talked about things that we noticed and recorded our observations for parents to appreciate.  Some of our rocks were geodes, cooling slowly after having lots of heat and pressure.  This made crystals form.  Some of our rocks were full of bubbles (holes), made by volcanoes.

Other rock samples were magnetic, and we found one other rock besides hematite that was also magnetic.  We found rocks that were flat (sandstone), rough (desert rose and scoria), and smooth (apache tears and agate).

Some of our rocks were special because they were fossils!  Fossils are rocks that are remnants of something that was once alive such as a plant or animal.  We know about dinosaurs because of fossils!  So we naturally played with dinosaurs too.

Our Explore Table was filled with kinetic sand, rocks, dinosaurs, and aquarium plants.  The wonderful thing about the kinetic sand was that it would show us how dinosaurs made tracks that could be preserved.  We could also pretend that a dinosaur was hatching from an egg.  Finally, we could bury a dinosaur and see how the body left prints behind.  Remnants of bones, eggs, tracks, and even dinosaur poop helps us learn about how dinosaurs lived long ago.

In the Art Area, we used toy dinosaur skeletons to again talk about fossils... but we also used them to see whether the dinosaur walked on two legs or four.  The prints turned out great!

No childhood can be considered complete without rocks and dinosaurs.  What a fun unit this has been for our miniature geologists!

Toddler Masterpieces

Blue and purple have been the colors of choice at the art easel this month.  We mixed, swirled, splashed, and dabbed...

Toddler "E" even enjoyed the sensory experience of painting her hands.  The benefit of having a small group of friends is that there is time and space to do kid stuff... like paint yourself, and the teacher doesn't get stressed.

Paint washes off, but these experiences and memories will build the brain the child will have for a lifetime.  That is totally worth it.

Train Engineers, Pilots, and Doctors! Oh My!

The best way to discover new passions is by trying them out... right?!  That's just what we've been doing during February.  Last week we shared about our work as construction workers and builders.  We continued to explore even more careers in the classroom.  

 We tried on train engineering for size.

One day for Small Group Time, we talked about different medical instruments and pretended to be veterinarians.  The children continued to work as vets and/or doctors throughout the week.

We loaded passengers and flew Little People to new destinations.

We put toothbrushes in the paint and brushed away at the art easel.  Dentists make sure we are doing our brushing just right.  *Bonus: this week was the first time Baby "E" painted and didn't try to eat the paint!  Way to go "E!"  You're growing up!

Friend "Sandwich" brought his fire equipment and did a show and tell.  He explained that helmets are for protecting your head, the extinguisher sprays out the fire, and the megaphone has a siren.  We used his equipment and materials from Harmony's House to build apartment buildings and houses, then rescued people, and put out the flames.

Toddlers "Kite" and "Koala" worked together to build many a road.

Thank goodness we all have a few years before we grow up and decide on a career.  There are just too many to choose from, and we had way too much fun working with these ideas to pick just one!