The Week in Review
January 20-24, 2014
Over the past couple of weeks the children have been
working on their self-portraits. We provided the children with a mirror, white
paper, and black felt tip marker to create their self-portraits. The following
week we read “The Colors of Us” and “All Colors of the World” to get the
children thinking about their skin colors. We worked on mixing white, yellow,
red and brown to create a color close enough to our skin tone. This week the
children painted their self-portraits with the skin color they created
The transparent geometric shapes, sunlight and self-standing
white board provoked their interest in how light travels through objects. The
children explored the geometric shapes in a variety of different ways such as
taping the geometric shapes to the window, taping the shapes to the white board
and holding the geometric shape while moving their body closer or further away
from the whiteboard. The children observed how the shape appeared on the
whiteboard if they taped it to the window. They also noticed how the placement
of their bodies affected the size and color of the geometric shape.
Before winter break the children were very interested in the
idea of balance. We were working on building balanced structures with unusual
materials. We wanted to see if the children are still interested in building
balanced structures so we provoked the children’s thinking by having them build
on unusual surfaces such as carpet and the Lazy Susan. The children noticed
that were more successful with placing a plank or board on the carpet before
building upwards. The children discovered that their structure was able to
remain standing if they built it in the middle of the Lazy Susan.
