The Touch and Feel this morning was full of animals....some that live on the farm and some that don't. The tricky part was to figure out which animals live where! We sorted like animals and animals that lived in the same place....talked about big animals and little animals. It was a great introduction into our theme for the week: farm animals.
Ms. Michele came today with lots of fun things. First, we went on an animal walk. We walked around the courtyard sidewalk looking for animal cards. When we found one, we had to name the animal and describe how they walked. For example, the first card was a rabbit....and rabbits hop. We had to hop until someone found the next card. We leaped like frogs, ran like cheetahs, crawled like ladybugs,, and flew like bats. There was so much giggling....and a little competition to see who could find the next card.....it didn't take nearly as long as Ms. Michele predicted to walk around the courtyard. Next it was finger fun. We warmed up our fingers with a soft silky mixture of baby powder. The kids LOVED the way it felt, but it was everywhere!! They were covered in powder! Hidden in the baby powder were some block letters that the kids found and identified. The last finger fun was more "work". There were several different fine motor tasks that the kids completed and shared. Finding items hidden in putty, putting items in a small slotted top, using tongs to place fuzzy balls on a fish template, and picking up packing peanuts to put in a container were just some of the activities she had. Some were much more favored than others....but everyone took a turn at each station. Our fingers were super tired when we were done.....and we left a trail of powder as we headed off to the playground.
Our story was Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown. This story talks about some things that the farm animals do while the people are not home. They play in the hay and walk in the fields. Then when it starts getting dark, they all head back to the barn to go to sleep.
Our language activity today was sorting animals that live on the farm and animals that don't live on the farm. The kids did a great job identifying the farm animals....and they could even tell where some of the other animals lived. For example, zebras live in the zoo and lions live in the jungle, and alligators live in the water.
We skipped art today in favor of our most favorite science activity....milking a cow! First, we talked about how we get milk from cows. Not from their feet....not from their tails....not from their ears....but from their udders. Udders are near a cows stomach.
Next, we watched a video where Farmer Jack taught us how to get milk from the udders. The kids were super interested....and one child even shared a story about how they had actually milked a real cow before!
We headed down the hall, to the tile floors, to practice milking a pretend cow. We used rubber gloves filled with water as our cow udders. The kids squeezed the udders....just like Farmer Jack....and out came "milk". Now, just like some cows are easier to milk than others, some of our pretend udders put out more milk. These were the favorite ones....as the kids realized they could squirt each other with the water! Our little farmers in training definitely need more practice!!
For lunch, it was interesting to see the kids talk about who had milk to drink....and how that came from cows.....udders! Chocolate milk threw them a curve ball....but we all decided that even though there were no chocolate cows.....it would sure be super cool to see!!
Love the milking cow experiment! What a fun day!
ReplyDelete