Polar express!

Our Journey on the Polar Express this Holiday Season!












Well, it all started with reading a book on the couch with friends about things that move...There was a picture of a train and one of our friends said..."look at the train!" There were lots of oooooos and aaaaaas and from there the suggestion was made to make some trains....Next comment...Lets Make a big train!!!! We asked if anyone had heard the story of a big train...The Polar Express?" And that's how it all got started....they all exclaimed "lets build it"! How could a creative room like ours say 'no' to a thought like that! :)

We commenced our project by asking friends to draw a rough sketch/blue print of a train of their dreams. Putting friends in deep thoughts, we ended up having many ideas of what our train would soon look like. We then printed out a few pictures of cardboard trains from the Internet. Our friends got so excited in creating a mix match of ideas from the different pictures and making a final design. They also brainstormed the colors to go up on the train!
























Looking at the printouts from the Internet..now this is funny...one friend said loudly, "lets google it!" Great way to be a media consumer and then use ideas to become a creator!
























Our final blue print of the train with chosen colors, cabooses, a smoke stacker, and the conductor place. Now it was time to begin putting things together..












Our planning of other details like windows, doors, decorations, wheels and other engineering aspects were ongoing. After we got our big refrigerator boxes our hands-on-train project went with full flash and flare. We painted the engine and the other cabooses as per the decided colors. Friends also rearranged the classroom as a team to make room for our humongous train and friends decided where the train will fit the best.
























Painting the engine body and roof...we made two groups of 7 children each and each team got 15 to 20 minutes of painting time...
















































Painting the cabooses...we similarly worked in two teams to paint the three cabooses as per our final blue print...
























It was interesting to see some paint with brushes while some used their hands to spread the gooey paint around while enjoying the cold texture...












Friends got involved in various stages of planning, brainstorming, discussions, designing, coming to consensus, and finally the implementation/execution part to bind it all together.

Since children wanted a big train, we were in search for more boxes. We got one extra sturdy box- courtesy of a parent, and friends were like, yeah now we can make our train longer...well they also wanted a kitchen in the train...After all, hot chocolate was on the menu :) the children requested that we cut a door here so that it can get connected to the other caboose...believe it or it, this was the best door for them in the whole wide world - as mentioned by a child :)












Soon it was time to put the train together and cut out the doors and windows to the engine and other cabooses...our 'execto knife friendly' teacher Rosemary nailed down through all the cutting...












Placing the train against the wall, adding the cabooses, and the big kitchen caboose which was called the ginger bread house caboose since it looked like a house with roof, and creating seating arrangements since friends wanted all children to be able to sit on the train all together just like the polar express movie...












Soon, One of the major discussions that came up was how is our train going to run with. The answers that came up were steam, coal, water, juice, gas, electricity. This was a great learning Moment to introduce the concept of solar energy. We asked them who knows what solar energy is, and guess what, we didn't have to tell them what it was. They taught each other through questions and answers. For example, a friend asked what is solar energy. Right away another friend replied its the sun! So we chose to go 'solar' by adding metallic sheets on the roof to catch suns energy! Some brainstorming related to the same...












Teacher Richa brought some shiny gold and silver wooden panels and asked if this could be of some use. The children right away said that they can be solar panels and wanted those up on the train too...they chose to place it on the front roof of the engine and as a tunnel over the caboose...

Golden Solar panels on the roof...M said that since suns rays are gold, these look that they are catching the rays energy...












Solar panels as tunnel over the caboose...












Solar panels on the roof of the kitchen caboose...












Wheels came next... Wen we asked them, "Are train wheels the same as car wheels?" Common response... "no"...the children replied..trains run on tracks so the wheels have to be metal...The children also agreed there are big wheels and small wheels so the train can go really fast... Since metal is shiny our friends decided to use silver paint, glitter, and shiny gems...












Our wheels and smoke stacker are sitting to dry!












Now with the wheels and smoke stacker in place, the train was ready to roll to the North Pole...oh but wait....a little about the decorations the children chose. Friends agreed we needed lights because the polar express runs through the night as well. Xmas lights worked perfectly. Friends agreed since this was a train headed for the North Pole where Santa lives; Christmas decorations would be great to decorate the train. Friends helped by first selecting their own choice of decorations and then glued them with teachers help onto the train. From Christmas ornaments to ribbons to bells and tinsel...the Polar Express is certainly a sight to behold!

Choosing decorations...












Placing them where they liked...












The beautiful star crown on our polar express put up by our friend L :)












Our friends agreed that there was room for everyone including our polar bear mascot...friends brainstormed names for the bear and also took great care of his basic needs like food and shelter...












M bought some fish from him home one morning and said that polar bear must be hungry, we need to feed him some fish...












Finally they put polar on the roof of the entry door since he was the mascot and the train keep taker...

Friends now call themselves engineers since they build the train! The proof is their signatures on the polar express!

Friends signing their names where they like...












The last touch was to put up the train number as decided by friends. The highest vote went to the number 150 and that's what we numbered our train. The friends said if we don't have a number, people wont know which train to board! So they created the number boards...




































Now that the train was all ready to hit the tracks, friends got involved in a lot of imaginary play...

The train driver/conductor...












All aboard...












H taking down the menu being ordered by a customer to cook in the train kitchen...












Please check out our flicker web page to see many more of their fun involvement and Interactions with the train!

Well well well, now since the engineering part was done, ETHICS came into picture! :) :)
Friends said that we need to make some rules and also open a ticket station!

Parents, please climb abroad next week to get the highlight of what happened next!

Until then, keep seeing you'll around,

Hugs,
Teacher Rashida.

Fun during the later half of October!

Hello Purple Room Families,

The second half of October was just as busy as the first. The children love to fill each moment with excitement! What could be more exciting than a trip to the pumpkin patch, creating a pumpkin patch at school with corn stalks, hay bales, and pumpkins, creating a scarecrow, baking and eating pumpkin seeds, carving jacko lanterns, exploring sensory with pumpkins, dressing up, and trick-or-treating?! Yes, we did all of this -- and may be even more -- just in a matter of two weeks!

Pumpkin Patch Field Trip...

The cheesy moment...


Hay ride...



The beautiful flower field, sometimes known as a "flower rug" because of its woven texture...



Getting set for the train ride...




All aboard the choo choo train...



The movie show where we learned about the pumpkin's growth cycle...



Bee maze...friends loved to touch and feel the big boards and asked us to read every word on it :)



We also checked out some cool corn hair in different colors. Who knew there could be so much variety in one crop? Friends were making hypothesizes as to why one is gold and the other reddish and some both...



Going through the pumpkin-picking rules and learning the right way to hold it...



Whooooa!!! The hay jump was a hit. Even I tried it once and it was super fun! Just imagine the fun they had!



What a Perfect timing to work on letter P...

Collaging letter P with Puzzle Pieces and Poms Poms after Painting it with glue...



Love the way friends had their unique styles and put their knowledge of colors, patterns, space, and materials to use!



Friends got involved into Painting huge circle of Paper which turned out to be an entire different Project than what we had originally thought of. As you read in a previous blog, they became snowpeople in October!

They decorated the painted one as a boy snowman and...



...this one as girl snowman. The documentation for this work is up on our classroom windows.



Friends also decorated gourds...



After we finished the pulling out seeds from the pumpkin and washing it, with supervision some friends confidently tried the pumpkin cutter tool to learn how it works...



It was fun to explore the cool pumpkin with warts/popcorn bumps. It was a different texture. Some friends described it as bumping bump, some loved touching it, while some said, "eeeeekk!" We talked about respecting preferences/choices, and that it is great that they all tried feeling it at least once to know what they think about it.



Soon we ended making popcorn pumpkins as the children said they could use popcorn to make it feel just like the real one above. So we added some orange food color and dark corn syrup to bring the color and bind it. Later friends added the brown pretzel stem and the green twizzlers as leaf to add details!






Later friends made 3 dimensional structures using the colored rice-foam Packing Peanuts. They used a little water to stick the pieces together to make different creations...



Further for letter P, friends loved doing the acrylic Painting on canvas...






We enjoyed our cooking project of baking Pumpkin Pie...



And of course eating it...



...and licking it to the last crumb :) :)



Science through experimentation...

What else could be a better way to learn science than experiments...

Here we learned about dissolving. Four liquids - water, milk, oil, and vinegar, were put to test and friends added hypothesis whether the pumpkin candies will dissolve in or not...



The experiment lasted for three days and the findings were based on our observations.
We found that they dissolved/ disintegrated in all the liquids with time variations except for oil where the candies didn't budge; they stayed intact even after three days. We read a bit about the properties of these liquids and friends brainstormed what they already know about oil water milk and vinegar.



Halloween fun with icy gloves...

Friends filled disposable gloves with water and their choice of color and even added bugs, eyeballs, and other fun stuff inside the glove. We put them in the freezer and the next day...






We ripped the gloves off to see a frozen hand with spooky things inside. Now they had to work on taking out those things. They used different techniques -- hammering, water droppers, or just waiting for the ice to melt..friends were even trying to keep a track of how long it took for their ice to melt for their treasure to come out.



Almost getting there.. We saw ice melt into water. Some children tried using droppers to drip the melted water over the ice to make it melt faster. We had mixed opinions about whether it helped, but it was fun to try and good fine motor practice along the way.



Another experiment was about gas expansion. When we put vinegar and baking soda in a Ziploc bag, the bag blew bigger and the locks opened when the bag couldn't hold the pressure of the gases inside. It all foamed out!



Dancing raisins in sparking soda water was also fun to watch. When we poured the soda water over the raisins, they plumped up and floated up. In a while they sank down, then again they floated up. As a result we called them dancing raisins. Here we talked about density, weight, and sinking vs. floating.

One of our friend J got a pack of raisin that day for lunch. Guess what...he performed the same experiment all by himself in a glass of water, but with different results. It was a learning moment as we talked through our raisin experiment again.



Other activities included working with magnets where friends made letters and their names with magnetic cards and other metal materials...



Structures with magnets...



Painting on tortillas...



Exploring evaporation of water...






November comes in with new projects in hand. We're excited to see what comes next!

Hugs,
Teacher Rashida.