JUNIORS AM - ROOM 2
April Reflections Juniors Room 2 The month of April has been an exciting time in Room 2. The bright sunshine and warm temperatures have allowed us to spend a lot of time outdoors playing on the playground, digging in the sandbox, and riding bikes! Springtime is so refreshing after a long cold winter, and the children seem relieved to be back outside again! Not only has this time of the year brought excitement for outdoor play, but also for new things in the classroom! We had the opportunity to learn all about the rain in Room 2! We discussed how the clouds in the sky are full of tiny drops of water. Those drops will get bigger and bigger and soon become too heavy for the cloud to hold them. What happens next? RAIN! After learning about this process, the children were able to reenact it during their project. They used pipettes to drop water on coffee filters. As the filters got too heavy, the water would drip down as if it were raining! Within the same week, we learned about the wind. We talked about how you aren't able to see the wind, but only see what it does! The children had the opportunity to guess if items such as feathers, cardboard blocks, and pieces of playdough would move when blown by the wind. We watched as Mrs. Hempen blew "wind" from a blow dryer on each item to see if the class was right with their guess! After this experiment, the children made a windsock for their project! The second week of April brought even more new things to Room 2! A glass case holding two cocoons was brought into the classroom, along with a small container holding numerous tiny caterpillars. The children were able to watch every day as each caterpillar made its own chrysalis! They have also been watching those two cocoons closely to see when the moths will emerge! The butterfly net has been hung, and each small chrysalis has been added to the net. We are waiting anxiously for our beautiful butterflies to appear! Not only did we gain these classroom insects, but also an incubator full of chick eggs! Each day, the incubator will turn the eggs and keep them warm, all while being easily viewed by the children in our class! Each day the children check the eggs to see if they have started to crack or change in any way. This led to our next project in Room 2. The children had a challenging activity where they had to cut out an egg shape with a baby chick inside. Cutting out an oval can be a tough task and our class rose to the challenge! They did a fabulous job of holding their scissors, turning their papers as they cut, and staying on the black line to cut out their egg! Once finished, they glued on yellow feathers to their chick! In addition to this activity, our class also learned about robins. We discussed how they look, what they eat, and where they live. Then, the children painted a robin brown on top and red on bottom! The last two weeks of April were spent talking about farms and preparing for our trip to the farm! We learned about the different animals that live on a farm (pigs, cows, sheep, horses, etc.) and used pudding to finger paint and create a print of a pig in the mud! We also learned about farm equipment in Room 2. Tractors were a big topic in our classroom discussion! We talked about how they work and what the famers use them for. In addition to this, the children got to build their very own barn! We looked at numerous pictures of barns and silos and then recreated what we saw with Kleenex boxes, toilet roll tubes, and shape cutouts! The children seemed to really enjoy this project! To sum up our farm unit, we learned all about cows-what they look like, what they eat, and where they live! Our project then, was fun and challenging all at the same time. The children had to tear black and white paper into small pieces and glue them to a cutout of a cow. This activity can be quite difficult, but really strengthens the children's fingers and hands! We are looking forward to seeing firsthand what we've been learning about in the classroom at the dairy farm!
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