This week went by quite fast. We had a lot going on and there was lots of learning happening.
We were lucky to have a long list of visitors this week in the Jasper room. Jen, Sue, Paulette and Marisa came to join in our play and exploration one day and Rory’s mom, Gillian came and spent a day with us as well. During Gillian’s stay, a small group and herself explored how different natural materials rolled down ramps that were at different heights. They tested small rocks, tree cookies and other materials throughout the morning which led to Rory building a huge “ramp testing area” in blocks to friends to test their ramp theories the next day. It was fantastic to have Gillian become a part of our classroom for a day and see how Jasper room functions! During one of our team talks, we started discussing different ways to fly. This lead to us discussing Wyatt’s future vacation to Jamaica. The kids had lots of questions about Jamaica, so we decided to invite Paulette into our room to tell us more about her home country! The kids were so excited to have their questions answered and didn’t want Paulette to leave!
We had lots of messy paint experiences this week, starting with a book provocation using the book “The Dot” by Peter H. Reynolds. The kids got creative by making works of art made with perfect circles to create their own dots. The next day, Sebastien suggested that he wanted to throw things into paint as hard as he could, so we created a target zone where friends could dip cotton balls into paint and throw them as fast as possible into the target zone. This was a great hot and made for a wonderful end painting. Late last week during a lunch time, the discussion of how we get milk came up. We discussed how milk comes from dairy cows and that there are dairy farmers that harvest the milk by milking the cows utters. This gave us the idea to create a milking scenario at our water table using rubber gloves, water and an overhead bar. We filled the gloves with water, added buckets and tied them up. The kids immediately connected it to milking cows and the experience ended quickly. To try to experience again, we added a small amount of corn starch to the gloves of water to give it a more realistic, thicker and whiter milk feeling. This is a great hit! Once the gloves were empty, the kids wanted to add tubes and funnels to continue recreating the milking experience!
Spring is well on its way and our play yard is in its thaw zone. Please start bringing in splash pants and rubber boots to help combat the muddy yard. We would also like to let you know about a change in our daily routine. Previously we were having lunch all together at 11, however we have decided to push back our lunch to shorten nap times. Kindergarteners will now be eating at 11:20 and the rest of the kids will be eating together at 12:00. We have tried this new schedule for a week now and it was been working out really well. Lastly, we have been working extremely hard to provide an amazing project based program in Jasper room. Our initial idea of “Actions” started in November 2015 and it has been going strong ever since. We have explored a vast variety of different ways of to move and transport things. We wan to challenge you to take a look at our program webs and check out a few of the exciting things that have been happening here in Jasper. If you have any questions and want to understand our process more, please feel free to ask!
Have a fantastic weekend, see you on Monday!
