One couldn't get more busy especially when the project of 'The Body ' is ongoing. Our body is incredible and there is so much to learn about it. This week we were focusing on the bones, blood, and heart and watched related videos and did many activities!
We saw a few hand and arm X-rays on the iPad and were surprised to see that our forearm has two straight bones from the elbow joint to the hand. We all had predicted only one. Additionally each finger has three tiny bones and we all tried to wiggle our fingers and arms to see how our joints help these special parts move!
Later, friends chose either just hand or forearm to make their own x-rays!
D chose to do his arm, so he traced it and worked to follow the image he had seen on the iPad.
K used tiny pipe cleaners to make those tiny finger bones and two long bones going from hand to elbow...
G with L's help in tracing made her hand X-ray...
M tried to put every joint on his finger X-ray...
L also got a real X-ray of her sister when she had swallowed a pebble. It was fun for friends to spot that round pebble in the X-ray as well as check out the rib cage, spine, and hip bone.
During that week L got a cool book on the body and it had a model in the middle. The blue and red wiring made them curious to learn all about blood circulation in the body. Since they wanted to do the heart, blood circulation was a great concept to add.
Friends checking out the book and the model skeleton with model organs in it.
D checking out the bones in her spine with mommy :)
L and A pretending to be doctors checking themselves...
Checking friends...
Checking Teacher Rashida! I've got to say, I never had so much attention before -- two doctors at my service :)
It was interesting to hear their feedback after my checkup. L said, "Teacher Rashida, you need to eat a more carrots to make your eyes healthy."
Friends' check ups continued all morning...one appointment after another. Doctors in Purple Room were sure busy that day!
During the week we also watched a video on how our heart functions. The most fun part of the learning was about the four chambers and how blood flows in, cleans itself, and finally flows out to the different parts of our body. However, it is interesting how quickly they got that concept and we were all talking that day about ways we can keep our hearts healthy. Some friends were upset to know that the hearts they draw for mommy and daddy showing how much they love them doesn't not look at all like the real heart. We mentioned about how drawing a real heart was tough, so the shape we draw is an easier SYMBOL for heart and love. That did comfort them and got their smiles back!
S checking out the heart in the book.
Next we got into blood, learning all about how our heart pumps fresh blood to the body. We learned about different things in our blood and made our own version of blood to play as a sensory activity.
We used red water (plasma) and put red blood cells (the tiny soft balls), white blood cells (ping pong balls), and platelets (tiny cutout pink foam) in it.
Friends played and enjoyed sucking blood in and out of safe syringes!
The Circulatory System...
We also learned about blood circulating in the body and how deoxygenated blood denoted as blue goes in the heart for cleaning, purifies itself, and gets pumped out by the heart to all parts of our body. The fresh blood is the one with oxygen and denoted by red. We created a similar kind of circulatory system on our body collage!
Adding lungs...
We will keep adding different organs to our collage as we keep learning about them!
Letter R...
For letter R, we colored our letter with rainbow colors. We discussed the colors in the rainbow and even made a Rainbow scene...
M working his way to make a rainbow and clouds...
S' rainbow...
A said that a rainbow cannot come without a sun, so she added that to her scene...
We also read the book "Rainbow Fish" and everybody wanted to make one with shiny scales that they could share...
It was Teacher Richa's birthday and as a classroom we made a heart card with our whole heart!
It was also our friend A's birthday who celebrated it with us - the entire preschool team. That was definitely a wonderful morning surprise. It was also his last day at school since the family is moving to a different city.
We enjoyed his birthday celebration and later friends made a farewell card for him showing how much they are going to miss him. A promised us that wherever he gets a chance, he will stop by to visit us :)
Near nap time, friends are now making an effort to read to the group pretending to be a teacher. Here, since we were learning about the body, S is reiterating what she had learned during the past two weeks about the body in form of a story to her friends. I wish I had a recorder at that time and could have captured her every word. It was incredible to see her confidence as more and more friends joined in as well as her teacher posture that did not give up till the end!
I will keep you updated with more surprises to come!
Keep seeing you'll around!
Hugs,
Teacher Rashida
