New Year and New Fun!

Happy 2013!  The new year brings more new and exciting opportunities for fun in learning.  Explorations of and investigations into all sorts of topics will lead to exciting projects and brain power!  Come along for the ride.  Follow the Sunny Sea Friends and dive on into our ECC ocean.

This week the children will "kick off" a literacy study with a field trip to Barnes & Noble. An exciting Author study will accompany it.  We'll be reading books and participating in activities surrounding the literary works of Ezra Jack Keats, Leo Lionni and Laura Numeroff, to name a few.

The children's favorite books (coming in this week) will give the class the opportunity to sort and graph books with similar themes, by the same author, fiction or nonfiction, etc.  If you haven't already, please help your child to choose a favorite book (by any author) to bring to school ASAP.



Although we only had a couple days together last week, there was a lot of BIG learning going on.  Here a few fun pics of the exciting explorations and heartfelt activities.

 The children are learning about "The Fruits of the Spirit" in class everyday.  The fruits aren't coconuts, cherries, watermelons, or bananas....the fruits are Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self-control. There is a song to help the children learn about these virtues and the children love to sing it and practice role playing scenarios where they can show each to one another. On Thursday after dancing and singing to our "Fruits of the Spirit" song and talking about ways we can show others love (the greatest virtue of all), the children cutout and decorated hearts as symbols of love, dictating and printing their own words to describe what love means to them. Our hearts will be sent to Newtown Connecticut to add to the "Hearts of Hope". Because of the sensitive nature of the reason behind this project, one that is inappropriate for discussion with four year olds, we simply talked about spreading our love around the world by sending the hearts to people who need a little extra love. The children were happy with that knowledge.

More fun in learning....

cutting mint leaves straight from our garden to add to water and drink as part of Fun Friday's snack

creative building 

Polar bears and shaving cream along with building sponges and colored rocks make for fun winter  exploration.

Ice, cold and smooth, until you put salt onto it. The salt makes it bumpy and makes tunnels and colored water looks really cool when it travels through them.

Shaving cream is really cool to write in too!


Aside from fun, open-ended exploring the children were busy conducting science experiments during Fridays exploring as well!  First they got to create a snowflake out of pipe cleaners. Next, the children had to measure out 8 inches of string using inch cubes. After they tied the string to their snowflake they then came over to the laboratory station! Now for the fun part :) With the help of a teacher, they poured boiling water into quart sized jars and added 1/3 cup of borax to make the solution. After stirring and watching the borax dissolve the children lowered their snowflake into the mixture while suspending it from a pencil laying across the top of the jar. Three days later the children should have tiny crystals growing on their string to look like snowflakes. We can't wait to see them on Monday!  

Stay tuned for this week's exciting pictures and news! 

It's good to be back!