Dear Honeybee Families,
We had a really good busy week in space. Mike and Ava shared their old school overhead projector, and we’ve been playing in our space projections. I think a lot of the kids were very cautious and needed a lot of reassurance that they were allowed to touch it and move the parts on the screen. Then they slowly experimented and realized how to move the parts on the light table and the way that the position on the table affects the image projected onto the wall.
We talked about the International Space Station and watched a tour by astronaut Sunita Williams. I bet your child would love to watch this with you. Our favorite part is tooth brushing and the sphere of water. I think we might be understanding gravity now that we’ve seen Suni’s hair and the way she floats around the space station. The Honeybee’s were very interested in how astronauts eat in space, and Suni showed some of their foods. We used a tiny model of the space station and showed how it orbits the earth. We are still playing with our rocket, and some of the honeybees have constructed telescopes. This week I’ll bring in a telescope for us to play around with. I can leave it at school and wait for a clear day with the moon.This week we’ll also watch a video of how the Soyuz rocket returns to Earth from the International Space Station.
We played with several different sensory bins this week, our black beans with planets, flowers, a rocket ship and Hedgie the Hedgehog… and with kinetic sand, space vehicles, and astronauts. We loved the big media bin with water, pipes, and pouring tools. We’ll do that again this week.
We celebrated two Honeybees turning four this week. Birthdays lead to finger math during circle time. Speaking of big math, the 100th day of school is this week! On Wednesday full time kids will have been in school for one hundred days. If you would like to bring in a collection of TEN small items in a jar or bag, we’ll gather our collections together to create 100 objects. We’ll also count out some tiny snacks in groups of ten… and eat them. Tiny crackers… pretzel rods..I’ll let you know exactly what before Wednesday.
We harvested the lettuce from our hydroponic planter and ate every leaf. Our salad was so very well received. It will continue to grow, and we’ll make another salad.
Friday is Valentine’s Day, and your child is welcome to share a valentine with each of their classmates. They can be made or bought. You could even have your child to write their name and put one in each bag. We’ll have Valentine/ Friendship Day bags on top of each cubbie on Friday morning. Our one big rule is no candy or food, and the kids will not open their bags at school. They’ll go home when we “garden” your child at the end of the day.
Our Pet Show was a sweet success, and I’d like to try to find ways to do show and share like this a few more times. We’ll read a few more Jack Ezra Keats books during February.
Lauren and I are looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow.
