Levers

Group Meeting:  We reviewed what we had learned about inclined planes last week.  This week at the art table, the children may choose to participate in an art project using an inclined plane.   The children will put paper into a cardboard box.  They will squirt small puddles on paint on the paper.  Then, they will add marbles.  The children will tip the box making an inclined plane.  This will cause the marbles to roll through the paint making a beautiful abstract painting.

Painting with inclined planes

Story:  Our story for today was Chicken Chickens by Valeri Gorbachev.  Two little chickens are visiting the park for the first time.  They wander around looking at all of the play equipment.  The other animal children invite them to join them, but they answer "we're just little chickens".  At the slide, two frogs invited them to go down the slide.  One frog says, "don't be chicken chickens".  A kind beaver tells them that it is okay to be frightened.  He helps them by sliding down the slide with them.  After the story, the children discussed that it was not polite to call people names such as "chicken".  They did think that the beaver was a very nice friend in offering to help them slide.  Ask your child to name the inclined plane in the story.  We also found a lever.  Can you guess what it was?

Small Groups:  The activities for this week are listed below along with the schedule for today.
Activity #1 (Red Group) The children used scissors to cut a circle.  Then, they followed the spiral on the circle to make a snake.   This is a good fine motor exercise.
Activity #2  (Yellow Group)  The children used primary colors of paint to explore mixing colors.  After they had mixed them, they added white and black to see what would happen.
Activity #3  (Green Group)  The children played a game with rhyming words.  They were given cards with four pictures.  Three of the four pictures rhymed, one did not.   They had to identify the picture that did not rhyme.

Large Group:  We are learning about levers.  I gave them a description of a lever along with a demonstration of a few levers.   We will explore levers all week.  The children used our Stomp Boards as levers to launch bean bags into the air.

Stomp Boards as levers

Snacks:  The morning class had graham crackers, frosting, and juice brought by Adde.  The afternoon class had cheese sticks, carrots, ranch dip, and juice brought by Ashlyn.  Thank you!