Still Looking Closely

I was waxing on about looking closely back in October, but it bears repeating. It's something that we ask our kids to do every day and all the time. We want them to look closely at a math problem so that they can have the "That doesn't make sense!" moment when their calculations took them down the wrong path. We expect them to look closely at their friends to read their faces and try to understand what is going on. We encourage them to look closely at their science experiments to try to figure out what their results mean. Each day when we are outside, we examine the snow, the sky, the plants, and the ground for signs of the living world around us. They help me to look closely too when I get too much in my head, thinking about the next read-aloud or my math lesson. "Tracy look at this!" pulls me back into the moment and gives me the chance to celebrate their observation skills.

Cheryl's PreK Reflections

Preschoolers naturally notice the little things, but it is such a fun skill (looking closely at things) to honor and nourish. We kept our "owl eyes" out this week to celebrate our study of sight in case you were wondering why your child was making circles around their eyes at home!

Eyes literally lit up as we spotted "definitely bunny tracks" or "coyote tracks for sure!" in the snow. We observed the many beautiful differences in our skin tones and colors after reading "All the Colors of The Earth." Tracy lent us a picture puzzler book which got our eyes playing tricks on us (wavy lines in an ocean looking like they are moving if you stare long enough) and at "Grateful Thursday" snack time we mentioned how grateful we are to all have our sense of sight. Cabin fever may be in full swing, but nothing a bunch of balloons (inside and ice colored ones outside) and counting pretend marshmallows in our hot cocoa cups couldn't vanquish.

I love how our preschool goes out no matter what the weather (almost) so that so much fun learning and focus can happen at circle time! All were quite serious while observing whether our snow melted inside just like the little boy's snowball in "The Snowy Day."

Our Theme: Science Experiments

With a blindfold on my face and my nose tightly plugged, a student placed a bit of ice cream in my mouth. It felt cold, but I couldn't get any true read on the flavor. As soon as I let go of my nose, the flavor came rushing in - black raspberry so clear it was shocking after the lack of flavor.

We got to be both test subjects and testers this past week for lots of different experiments. We took measurements of everyone's splits to see if we have gotten any more flexible after a few weeks of daily stretching (Spoiler Alert: We did!). We identified objects by just using our sense of touch.

All this testing was lots of fun, but we also worked this week to figure out how to share our results with an audience. We talked about graphs and clear sentences. We discussed our conclusions and started to come up with more questions. Many groups started to mount the writing from their experiments onto tri-fold boards. We'll be sharing all of this next week with our school community.

More Art Lessons

This week Rick helped to teach the kids about shading and shadows. It was a nice extension of the last lesson, and everyone was curious to try another way to make two-dimensional shapes on a paper look three-dimensional. They talked about how the shadows change depending on the location of the light source. It was one more chance for us to look closely and do our best to record what we were seeing.