Before that week I spent a weekend in High Tatras, in Horny Smokovec. I took some pictures of snow and packed some snow to take it to Bratislava :) I like telling children about my trips, because it helps them to talk about their life, they are more open and it helps bonding. I think it's very important for them to be able to share personal life with others, it develops their social and emotional skills, makes group a Group.
So we started the week from a riddle: Where was I this weekend? I gave them hints like "there is a lot of snow now" or "I had to climb up and later I slid down on a sled" or "I had to wear warm winter shoes and winter suits", finally they guessed that I was in the mountains :) Then we watched the pictures, children were describing them and we sung a part of a song about 4 seasons:
"- Hello winter what's your color?
- I am white, I am white, snow is white, ice is white, white is my favourite colour, white is my favourite colour!"
We played a short "Colour Game" - I asked: What else is white? Milk is white! Sun is white! etc. - first children where shouting "yeeees! noooo!" but because I don't like shouting in my classroom, we decided to show "yes" through putting our hands up and "no" through holding them on our knees. You can play that game with any colours you want - you can mix the colours or play only one colour at a time.
I asked children the most important question: Is it possible to bring snow from Tatras to Bratislava? Of course almost all children knew that it would melt, some had an idea to put it into a fridge :) I showed them a jar with water and told them how I wanted to bring snow to Bratislava, since I heard that there was no snow anymore in here. Children looked at the water in a jar, they realised it's dirty and that they must not eat the snow. By the way we also got to know how snow is made: in the clouds, where are pieces of dust, water gathers around the pieces of dust and when it's very cold, raindrops freeze and turn into snowflakes, get 6 arms and fall on the ground. We sung a well known (by our children) song: "Snow is falling on the ground":
("Frere Jaques" tune)
Snow is falling, snow is falling
on the ground, on the ground,
wintertime is now here, wintertime is now here
look around, look around
* we saw pictures of mountains and we realised they look almost like triangles,
*we had an exercise with "shape snowflakes" (what shape is that? find another one? which one is bigger, which one is smaller? - you can simply practise it with your children, just cut out those shapes and ask them to find pairs)
* we had a very difficult worksheet:
* but we tried to make it easier with card game: "Find matching card" with similar shapes on the cards - that game was easier than the worksheet and gave children more fun (healthy competition and high-fiving those who found a pair :)
* on the beginning of circle time we often repeat shapes (square, triange, rectangle and circle) - we have them hung on the board, they are in 4 colours (yellow, green, red and white) and I ask them both: "what colour is square?" or "which shape is white?" or I just show the shape and children say the name.
On another day we focused on the shape of snowflakes. We saw pictures of snowflakes taken by Wilson Bentley (http://snowflakebentley.com/) and we pointed out that it's almost impossible to find two identical snowflakes. Later we made artworks - string snowflakes - you can see them in classroom. More snowflake artwork ideas you can find in internet :)
Note: Children weren't very happy when I showed them flour glue which I prepared for our artwork, some of them were quite afraid to put their fingers in it and during work they were wiping their hands all the time. It is very good for their sensory development to touch different substances (even dirt), the more impressions they get, the more developed their senses are :) We also don't want our children to grow to be mysophobic, so they need to know that a little bit of dirt doesn't kill us.
Sometimes, if you have some extra free time, bake with your children and let them mix the dough with their own hands or make some flour glue (it's non-toxic!) and make some paper-mache masks on a balloon. And let your children play in mud - if you don't want them to destroy nice clothes, dress them in daddy's old T-Shirts :)
The last topic part was "winter clothes". We had a Bag of Secrets, where we could find different clothes, children were deciding if they are made for winter or not. It was interesting that when I showed them a spaghetti-strap top, which in my mind was for summer, they noticed it can be worn under T-shirt in winter :) clever children :) so we practised our winter clothes vocabulary, we filled a worksheet about it and on another day we checked the words in Velky Obrazkovy Slovnik. Maybe that's not a lot, but remember that everyday we go outside and we practise that vocabulary in the best way - in real life experiences.
Some of the words we used last week: boots, circle, dust, gloves, hat, mittens, mountains, raindrops, rectangle, scarf, snow, snowflake, square, tights, triangle, warm socks, winter, winter jacket, winter suit.
That would be all, I will write soon about the plans I had for this week, but unfortunately I got sick and I need to stay at home for few days.
Enjoy your time with children! Greetings :)
Irena
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