Gifts From the Earth Week II !

Gifts from the Earth Week II was filled with a flurry of activity! We delivered Harvest Feast Invitations to many of our Parker Friends!  (I hope you found yours in your child's cubby)  We brought our Food Drive Donations to the Eighth Grade Students, who will combine it with the school wide collection for the Regional Food Bank!  In correlation with our imminent "soup making," the children engaged in a variety of fine motor activities depicting vegetables.  We also concluded our study of Native Americans this week.  We made popcorn for snack, and in lieu of our traditional story time, we gathered around a pretend camp fire each day to "hear" stories and sing songs to the rhythm of our handmade shakers.  In addition, we practiced each day for our Harvest Feast/Grand-friends Performance!  Most importantly, Ann assisted the children in baking nine loaves of Pumpkin Bread for our Harvest Feast!  Don't forget to send in a Vegetable for our "soup pot" on Monday!  The children are very excited to host you for lunch on Tuesday!

Looking Deeper:  Exploration and Learning through Play

This week I would like to guide you through a closer look at "cooking"!

Cooking is always a favorite activity among the children. This may be true because cooking is familiar; it serves as a bridge between home and school as many of the children frequently cook with their parents.  Perhaps it is because they get to eat the yummy things they cook.  Or maybe it is because there is something magical about cooking!  It looks one way at the beginning, then you mix all this stuff together and it turns into something different and delicious at the end!  In reality, cooking is a wonderful vehicle for teaching Science, Math and Language Arts skills to young children!  These activities call for identifying, sorting, ordering, measuring, counting, timing and observing, while at the same time providing exercise of small motor skills. 

Legend has it that Native Americans invented popcorn!  So we made popcorn this week as one of the final activities of our Social Studies based study of Native Americans.  As the subsequent photos illustrate, making popcorn was incredibly fun and exciting!  Additionally, making popcorn was the basis of a very interesting Science lesson!  As we began, each child examined their popcorn seed. We talked briefly about the way it looked and felt.  We pointed out that it used to be part of the cob it grew on, similar to the Indian Corn we have had in our classroom for the last month.  We talked about how the seed would become popcorn as we learned the safety rules for using a popcorn popper!  The conversation went something like this:

Teacher:  "When I plug in this popper it is going to get very hot, so we must stand back with just our hands on the table.  What do you think will happen when we put the popcorn seed into the popper?"

Children:  "It will get hot!"

Teacher:  "Yes it will get very hot, and as it gets hot it will get bigger and bigger!  Finally it will get so big that it will ............."

Children:  "POP!"

Teacher:  "That is exactly right!"  When things get hot they expand, that means they get bigger, and when our popcorn seeds get as big as they can get they will pop open, and that's when they become popcorn!  So let's watch for the seeds to pop and the smoke to come out of the holes on top of the popper, we call that steam, and it is very very hot.  You can also use your nose to smell, and your ears to hear the corn popping, and when it is all finished we will have a taste!

The children's faces tell it all; "This Science lesson is fun, interesting, exciting and delicious!" Baking pumpkin bread incorporated Science, Math and Language Arts!  The children were very excited to bake Pumpkin Bread with Ann this week.  Ann reviewed the printed recipe with the children, and began each part of the process by naming the ingredients, thus exercising and extending their emergent reading and vocabulary skills.   Additionally, she had them count each of the cups and teaspoons as they went into the bowl.  This cooking activity also appealed to multiple senses, as the children smelled the cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves, and tasted the chocolate chips before adding them to the bowl.  Cracking the eggs, (and we used a whole dozen) took great focus and the children gave it their undivided attention.  The photos clearly illustrate that the children were totally engrossed in each step of making the pumpkin bread!  Look closely and you will notice that all of the children are paying close attention to the task at hand regardless of whether they or their friend are performing it.

The interest and excitement was palpable when our bread emerged from the oven.  When we returned to the classroom we engaged in a final "pumpkin bread" conversation.  It went something like this:  

Teacher:  "Did our Pumpkin Bread look the same when it came out of the oven as it did when it went into the oven?"

Children:  "No."  

Teacher:  "How was it different?"

Children:  "It was wet when it went in, and it was hard when it came out?"

Teacher:  "So it was sort of liquid when it went into the oven, and it was solid when it came out of the oven?"  

Children:  "Yes and it smells really good!"

Have a fun and restful weekend!

We hope to see you at the Harvest Feast!