Enjoy your Break!

Hello Families!

I am relaxing here before the fun Family night at 5:30!  And I'm relfecting on possible "homework" or "homefun" you can have over the break if you are looking for things to investigate.  Here are some things that the kids have been interested in lately:

Cause and Effect:  How do things relate and what causes make different outcomes?
This was inspired by many discussions of wind, water currents and cloud and smoke movement.  I searched for images on the internet to use as a jumping off point.  Then the friends drew, described and wrote about what they think is happening in the image. 

Also, today we looked at a simple cause and effect and discussed gravity, wind currents, speed and weight when looking at how my skirt moves.  We discussed this outside, but I reinacted it inside and asked friends to take photos so we could investigate and explain this more.  Here they are. 

What do you think is happening here?  Can you explain this phenomenon?

Also lately the friends have been so into their journal time!  They have been choosing a topic, drawing their ideas and then writing at least a key word or two, or a sentence to go with their topic.  Our recent topics have been how trains are made, volcanos, and the orchestra.  They have a long list of future topics and many of them are types of animals, so any animal investigation could be great!



Another possibility that the kids are getting into is the dictionary.  Many friends have used this resource lately and this week I asked Coco and Bridget W to show us how to use it.  The friend noticed strategies that children's dictionaries include to make it easy to find your word.  They were also realizing that one way that is written is the pronunciation and the other is the spelling.  This was important to know since if you write the wrong one then your whole goal of looking up a word can be unrealized!  :)  Many friends have been enjoying looking up words in the dictionary and reading the definitions.  We also play a game using the dictionary, which I'm sure your child can teach you!

And our next number we are thinking about is 4.  Friends are realizing this quantity and how it works.  Creating an addition or subtraction equation using 4 can be great practice.  The kids also are making up creative and funny stories to go with these.  For example, Logan's cat that took three out of five mice,  leaving two lucky mice.

Also any chance to try to count things by twos, fives or tens has been fun for us.  These are big concepts.  This goes with our investigation of coins and their value.  The kids are starting to realize that although a nickle is larger than a dime, it's not worth more...  Sometimes the friends get a handful of nickles, dimes and pennies and try to figure out how many cents they have.  Counting by tens and fives helps when dealing with these coins.

Well, I hope that helps if you were looking for something to inspire an investigation.    And I hope you have a lovely week off!  Love, Jennifer