Welcome to the Frog Blog!
The "Frog Room" is the toddler/preschool mixed age classroom at the Nonotuck Community School in Florence, Ma. The goal of this Blog is to use words and pictures to share what is happening in the Frog room and to point out emerging curriculum themes as they happen. Since our curriculum is jointly negotiated between the teachers, children, and parents we often wind up going in directions that we never imagined! Enjoy!
For March, we were inspired by the arrival of spring. We were also looking ahead to our upcoming curriculum exploration of life sciences, particularly, our study of animals that hatch out of eggs.
So far, we have shared a lot of documentation that focuses more on the "non-fiction" aspects of our Science curriculum. Since Three-Year-Olds are fairly rooted in the imaginary, we used a bit of science fact to inspire a bit of science fiction, specifically, an exploration of space; the final frontier! We raided the local library for image heavy books about the US space program. The book 'Exploring Space With an Astronaut' by Patricia J. Murphy was especially well received. The Frogs spent a lot of time poring over the photos of Astronauts working and living on the international space station. They asked a lot of questions about what they saw; " Why are they floating up?", "Why do they have seat belts?", Why are they wearing those helmets?", and the inevitable; "Can I have a helmet like that?" Well, with a little creativity, some recycled milk jugs and soda bottles, and a bunch of silver spray paint, Yes you can!
After learning about how Astronauts need to have oxygen tanks to breathe in space, it was decided that we needed to build a few of those, too...
Once we had the outfits right, we needed a little atmosphere. First, we made "Moon Mud"...
One of the ongoing challenges that we as teachers (or parents, for that matter) face is balancing the desire to participate in engaging activities along with the children with the need to document said engaging activities. This dichotomy was especially apparent during our recent, Science focused curriculum. We teachers were so taken in by wondering along with the kids, we almost forgot to stop and document our process. Now we have a backlog of stories from the last few weeks that really deserve to be heard. So, Here's where we do our best to catch up before we start posting about our current slew of projects!
We chose to focus on applying the scientific method by setting up a variety of experiments exploring different concepts,- such as density, phases of matter, chemical reactions, and, physics- over the course of several weeks. Before we carried out each experiment, we asked a question, gathered a list of theories based on the children's observations- or in some cases imaginations- then put those theories to the test;
For one of our earlier experiments, we filled the sensory table with water and a variety of containers for pouring and filling. After the children had filled all of the containers to the brim with water we asked, "What do you think would happen if we put these on the front porch and left them there all night long?" Here are a few of the hypotheses that the Frogs offered up;
"They're going to melt!"
"They might get tipped over!"
"They are going to turn into ice!"
Keep in mind this happened in mid-February in New England...
What do you think happened?
Another experiment that invited a lot of lively speculation, was a variation on the classic "Will it sink or will it float?" game...
To prepare, we gathered a clear container, rubbing alcohol, water, corn syrup, vegetable oil and food coloring. We also collected a variety of small, relatively waterproof objects. We added food coloring to the water and rubbing alcohol to make it easier to tell the two apart. Then came the fun part! We gathered all of the Frogs together for circle time, then asked "What do you think will happen if we pour all of these liquids into this container?" The general consensus was that the liquids would get all mixed up. We slowly poured each liquid into the container, and watched as each liquid quickly separated into it's own layer, making distinct stripes! We then asked each child to select an object from our collection. We went around the circle and asked "what do you think would happen if you dropped that into the container?" at first, almost everyone predicted that their object would either float on top...
Some objects started to sink, then stopped in the middle!
We asked the kids what they thought happened, and they were stumped! Then we tried to explain the concept of density, with mixed success. We think the majority of the Frogs preferred to think it was magic! Of course, if we can teach them that Science is kind of magic, maybe we can inspire them to keep asking what makes that magic happens.
For this month's installment of our mural, we decided to offer stamping as an option. First we put out some stamps that echoed our "Outer Space"curriculum theme... Then we gave a nod to that red-centric holiday that falls during the middle of the month...
The heart-shaped stamps were visually a bit more dramatic than the space alien ones...
We are getting ready to shift our curriculum focus to life sciences and ecology next. We plan on tapping our maple tree again in a week or two. Who knows? Maybe next month we'll paint with maple syrup!
In our last post, we took something that was a liquid, turned it into a solid, then used it to add to our ongoing mural project. To expand on that process, we followed up with another art project that involved turning a solid into a liquid, then back into a solid!
The idea for our "recycled crayon" project came from this book. The title not only serves as a metaphor, reminding adults to sit back and let the artistic process unfold with young children, it is single most important rule to follow in order to produce perfect rainbow crayon melts-trust us!
First, we put hundreds of extra crayons into our sensory table for the children to peel and sort.
Next, we put the peeled crayons into a heavy-duty zippered freezer bag, and let the Frogs crush them with rubber mallets.
Instead of muffin tins, we sprinkled our crayon bits into oven safe, silicone ice cube trays...
Then we popped them into the oven at 250 degrees, where they sat until they just started to melt.
As soon as we could see the wax turning into a semi-liquid, we turned off the oven and, (this was really the hardest part) We did not move the ice cube trays until they were completely cooled.
Once the wax was cool and mostly solid, the Frogs were excited to examine how the crayon bits had changed up close and with all of their senses.
Mmmmmm...waxy!!!
They were a little difficult to get out of the ice cube trays, so we popped them into the freezer in order to shrink the wax a bit.
Out they came, with a few minor breaks. (The heart shaped ones broke far less than the fish and the stars.)
Voila! Multi-colored, fun-shaped, crayon bits, all in the name of science!
For January's installment in our monthly mural project, we decided to incorporate our exploration of the states of matter-ie. solid, liquid, gas- by painting with a liquid that we turned into a solid.
Me- "OK...what else?"
Jack S.-"A helmet!"
Max M.- "Wings!"
Max H.-"A thousand legs!"
Max M.-"Ears!"
Jack B.- "Hands!"
Ping pong ball, Cork, Plastic Astronaut & Wooden Clothespin
