Ramps

The last couple days our kiddos have been using a plastic baby carrier as a ramp for Hot Wheels cars. They have been varying the depth of the incline to vary the speed and distance traveled. For the most part, they have done all this on their own. They are also realizing that different cars travel differently.

I have asked a few open ended questions - like "Why does one car go faster/farther than another on the same ramp?" And "Why does the same car go differently when you change the ramp?" They aren't quite able to articulate the reasons, but they have observed the differences.

Connections Conference

Today, two coworkers and I went down to Anacortes to the Skagit Valley Connections Conference for early childhood educators. The presenter was Lisa Murphy, AKA The Ooey Gooey Lady. She had lots of good ideas regarding play based learning, and how to articulate what is happening while the children are playing in an intentionally prepared environment. Play based, as she said, does not mean they are all naked with paint flying thru the air. It does mean that playing with, for example, blocks is a learning opportunity - spacial concepts, balance, shape comparisons, social interaction, etc. and every aspect of our day needs to be intentionally planned for these things. But, it also means that we need to be willing to diverge from our lesson plans when something arises. If a child brings in a bird nest, but the weekly theme isn't birds, examine and discuss the nest anyway. That is all any of the kids will be thinking about until they have a chance to investigate.

She also provided lots of ideas for fun science activities that they can participate in. Like the non-Newtonian fluids flubber and ooblick. These suspensions are super fun to explore because of their unique properties. She also demonstrated making gases that make balloons inflate and film canisters to pop (which my class thought was great!), as well as using homemade bubble juice to explore surface tension. Again, learning is happening thru play, not "lessons."

There were lots of ideas that the three of us thought were great. Now we need to ponder the best way to accomplish adding them to our classes. Lisa warned us all not to go running into class on Monday and throw all these new things at the kids. We need to add them slowly, one at a time, so the newness doesn't cripple them! Here's to playing together!

Playdough

Today, the kids in my class (all three of them...it was a holiday, you know) played with the new batch of play dough I made on Friday (after the boy got sick on the batch I had made Thursday). This isn't your normal play dough...it is chunky. I found a reference to adding rock salt to the play dough in place of a portion of the table salt (theteachertom.com). I replaced about half.

We have been discussing what it is in the dough that makes it chucky. Many suggested ice. We discussed that ice would make the dough squishy as it melted (I need to get an ice cube and sacrifice a chunk of dough to observation). Crystals, beads, and diamonds were also suggested. Earlier today, we did some salted watercolor art (watercolor on fingerpaint paper, then sprinkle table and rock salt on it...see what happens). While we were looking at the play dough later, I asked if the chunks looked familiar. One of them realized that they looked like the rock salt. We will see if they remember that tomorrow :)

So we spent our time flattening, smooshing, squishing, cutting, pinching, and rolling our new chunky dough. In other words, we had fun.