4's Class

A Tree, Frog, Blocks, Weather and Helping!

...................... wonderful two days packed with learning, cooperative play; sharing and helping each other...

We hung up photos of block designs and challenged the children to make the same design. They were very proud that they could do it! This task takes a different set of skills to accomplish when compared to spontaneous or planned building. We will build on their abilities.

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 We worked on the Life Cycles of living things and talked about different stages of growth. So many new ideas and words!                                                                                           An Apple tree ....seeds, seedlings, young tree, mature tree, buds, blossoms, fruit

Today Morah Nechama taught us about 
the stages in a Frog's life:

.....amphibian, eggs, tadpole (two stages), frog-let, frog

               

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Today Jacob made a wonderful parade of animals which he carefully constructed. He didn't want to take it down. Even though we explained all the reasons why we needed to disassemble it, Jacob felt very hurt and frustrated. Spontaneously Dalya came up with three different ways to solve the problem including protecting the animals while we had lunch and rest time. Others chimed in with more ideas. Jacob's friends constructed this fence around the animals. He felt so much better!

In our class, we see that each day offers many opportunities for the children to step out of their own experience by noticing friend's feelings and offering help.  

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During Morning Meeting our Calendar Assistant, Elet, went outside and reported back that it was "windy and very blue."  We looked up the temperature and charted the results on the calendar.  Monday it was 59. Tuesday it was 50 degrees. Today it was 52 degrees. 

                                   

On Tuesday we asked if it was cooler or warmer than Monday, they all said "cooler." 

50 is less than 59.  One child added, "if the number is less, than the day is colder." 

Using concrete items to count, we have been working on the concept of  "more than" and "less than". For example: are there more boys or more girls here today? By counting the number of children signed-in, the children understand and answer correctly.

It is amazing to us that the children are beginning to understand and generalize the concept -- even when applied to abstract concepts such as degrees of temperature/colder/warmer! Wow!