Spring Breathes Life to the World

After a long Winter sleep, Spring is officially just days away, and we are anticipating the seasonal changes that wake up the Earth.  When the Northern Hemisphere warms up, we expect to see plants bud and bloom.

Today we dissected old flowers from a bouquet.  As we took apart petals, stems, and leaves, we found interesting flower parts like where a flower keeps her eggs!  And, how the pollen is dusty, and sneaks down the tube to find the hiding eggs.  We also talked about different functions of the plant parts: petals are usually brightly colored to attract birds and insects to the nectar, stems hold up the flower and act like straws to suck water up to the top of the plant, and plants need to share pollen so the eggs can grow into more flower seeds.

We pretended to be "flower fairies" to help the garden grow.  Plants grow in order: roots down, shoots up, leaves, buds, and sometimes flowers and fruit.

We used toy butterflies to pretend to drink nectar from our flowers, and carry pollen around.  The flowers and leaves helped hide the butterfly eggs so we can "hatch more baby butterflies" (AKA- caterpillars).

Our Friend "Bride" decided to decorate the tree by adding flowers, and it was exciting to see Spring bring out her blossoms!

Outside, we continued to learn about Spring weather (even though today was very cold!).  The mountain snow will be melting and filling our rivers with fresh water.  We loved simulating a full spring brook with this flowing, specialized, water table.

When the bucket fills enough to tip, it makes a big wave that sends our boats over the waterfall and fills the next bucket.

The anticipation of the bucket flipping is intense!  Well worth the wait, it's exciting to see the wave of water work in a cause and effect method.

And let's remember that air warmed by the Sun doesn't just sit around, it moves!  Spring can be a very windy time as warm air rises high and cool air whooshes low.  What better way to play with wind than by chasing bubbles in a breeze?

Welcome Spring and all the fun, interesting, and colorful aspects you bring to the world!  We might be young at Harmony's House, but we notice you Spring.  In fact, we are learning all about Spring with our whole bodies and all of our senses.  Life just couldn't be more exciting!

We Get Wet!

There isn't such thing as bad weather at Harmony's House.  Just wrong clothes!  When you come to play here, remember we are an all-weather preschool and dress for the weather!  :)

Kids learn to have fun in all kinds of weather.  Isn't it wonderful not to require sunny days to be happy?  We practiced opening and closing our child-sized umbrellas.

We put on our rain gear: rain boots, rain suits or pants and rain coat, and umbrellas.  This helps keep our clothes (mostly) dry underneath.

Then we are ready to scoop, pour, measure, dump, float, sink, and splash with the best!

What can you do in the rain?  Hear it patter, feel it fall, catch a rain drop on your tongue, take a duck walk, catch a bowlful, make mud cookies, and stomp in those puddles!  Have fun this week in the wet, wet weather!

5 Ideas for Spring Sensory Bottles

Sensory bottles are mesmerizing and fun!  Here's our most recent collection at Harmony's House.

1.  Golden sun- add one bottle of gold glitter glue, a few pebbles to aid mixing, and warm water.  Shake and watch the glitter swirl and move.  Spring comes with more sunlight and warmer days!

2.  Rainbow spots- add multiple colors of water beads, just a sprinkle of each color to water.  (We left air in the top of this bottle to allow for better swirling.  Instead of shaking this bottle, swirl it around like a tornado and watch the rainbow spin!)  Spring brings out the colors in the world.

3.  Bug safari- fill the bottle half full with rainbow rice and add a few toys insects.  (We used small bug erasers.)  Shake up the rice, roll the bottle around, and find the bugs!  We counted four butterflies, dragonflies, ladybugs, and bees hiding.  Springs wakens the insect life!

4.  Blue skies and glitter rain- add one bottle of blue glitter glue, purple beads, chunky iridescent glitter, and water.  The beads help the glitter mix better but can also be observed falling slowly through the solution.  Some glitter floats up, some glitter sinks, just like water moves between the Earth and sky in the water cycle.  April showers bring May flowers.

5.  May flowers-  trim desired silk flowers and leaves, add flat beads as you fill with flowers, and push down with a straw to pack the flowers into the bottle to reach desired fill.  The beads move around the flowers with a rainstick sound, but they also look like beautiful jewels hiding in the flowers.  Flowers are some of the best parts of Spring!

It's Raining, It's... Spraying

We tried out spray bottles at the Art Area this week!  It was super fun when it worked.  One problem to troubleshoot for the future is finding smaller bottles.  These were spray bottles from the cleaning section at Walmart, which meant that they were inexpensive to purchase but also that they are too large for the school friends' hands because they are designed for adults.  After squeezing the trigger, the children's hands weren't large enough to fully release the trigger and it would get stuck.  But the spray was exciting and made interesting art!  We figured out that if you spray close to the paper, the color was concentrated and dripped more, but was darker.  If you sprayed from farther away, the color was lighter and looked more like clouds.

More about Spring weather to come... Stay tuned!

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!

March Explore Table

To celebrate St. Patrick's Day, AND, baby K's birthday... we made a Rainbow Rice Explore Table! The leprechaun gold is hidden throughout!  But to make it even more fun, you can make "cupcakes" with real candles with the rainbow rice.  Baby K's friends had so much fun at her party cooking up rainbow cupcakes!  Happy Birthday baby K, and thanks to all her friends who came to play!