I liked in Junie B. Jones when...

Each day we set aside time to read a chapter or two of a book.  I started out with the Junie B. Jones series as it is well-liked and has engaging story lines.  Each chapter there is a black and white picture, but most of the imagery takes place in our own heads.  We talk about characters, settings, and plots and revisit our favorite moments often.  We even reference parts of the stories during the day, laughing about what Junie B. did or reenacting a moment with our friends.  

Someone mentioned making our own Junie B. Jones book, so we started small.  I posed the question to the children about choosing their favorite moment and writing about it.

When she was on the crutches.

When she screamed, "Where's the stupid smelly bus goin' to?"

When she got squished on the bus.

When she liked the fruitcake.

When she went in the baby's bedroom and said, "I'm gonna be the boss of that baby!"

When she went to the crutches.

When she had a fire.

When she was in the baby's room and said, "I'm gonna be the boss of that baby!"

When she screamed, "Where's the stupid smelly bus goin' to?"

When the teacher took the fish stick.

When the grandma brought in the fish.

When she got left in school.

We turned this into a book showcasing everyone's interpretations of the same question.  If the interest is still there, we might make our own Junie B. storyline!

"It looks like guacamole!"

During and after making our leaf rainbow, we had questions.  Each day we would discuss our questions as a group to figure out what we might have already known about them.  I mentioned what I knew, but we would often go to the internet to help understand as much as I/we could.

Why do leaves turn pink?

How do leaves change color?

How do they change shapes?

What do they do when they’re grown up?

What are those black spots on them?

Where does the water go in the leaf?"

In discussing the anatomy of a leaf, we understood what the vein, stem, and points were in the leaf, but had a harder time with the idea of the blade of the leaf.  The blade is the flat "skin" of the leaf.  We then saw leaves with missing blades and used that example for our understanding.

This is an example of a leaf with the blade starting to disappear and veins holding it together.

Another question we wanted to know about was where the water went when it came through the stems.  I explained how the water was distributed and then we did an experimentation of our own.  Soft, fresh leaves were floppy and moist.  Moist leaves had water in them.  We gathered some of these leaves and tried to wring them out.  That did not work, so we smashed them.

"It looks like guacamole!"

It is very hard to "see" the water in the leaves, but it is a lot easier to see it on white paper.  What was very exciting was the milkweed leaves we found. As soon as we pulled them off the plant it started to leak.  We broke the leaf down to the vein and saw the liquid distributed all the way through!

This is a leaf with a disease.  We cannot catch this disease.  This disease does not kill the tree, but other diseases might be able to.  

By analyzing the different types of leaves, we come to an understanding of how plants work.  Veins are an important piece of a leaf.  It brings water to the blades.  The blades change color because the tree is preparing for winter.  The packages of color called chlorophyll break down because tree needs to focus on protecting itself.  Leaves will come again when the sun is stronger and the weather is not so cold.

As always, thanks for reading!

"How do leaves turn pink?"

 This question came to me from a Kindergartner on Thursday.  It couldn't have come at a better time.  After discussing/drawing rainbows, watching the leaves fall, and using them for recess creations, I knew taking a closer look at them would be the next step.

I took a walk that night and collected leaves from the neighborhood.  My thought was to start with the idea of discussing leaf color.  It is the season!  

We spent meeting time using our senses to describe the leaves I found.

"They feel fluffy."
"It is as smooth as my pants."
"I see lines in it."
"This leaf is soft in the middle and starts to get crunchy at the tips where it is brown."
"It smells good like outside and I like the smell of outside."
"It kind of smells like apples."

From there we discussed my idea of sorting the leaves by color.  As soon as I mentioned my idea, someone asked me about making a rainbow.  A big rainbow!  As big as our rainbow table!  We went to work sorting leaves.  After looking at them as a group, we saw there were mostly 8 colors.  The leaves started with green, then yellow, orange, red, and brown.  How did they do this?  What made them change color?  I started the conversation of trees preparing themselves for winter, so the packages that create the green color (chlorophyll) we see start to break down. This can be easy to see in the patterns around the edges of the leaves.  This will take more conversation as time goes on, but there is a "kindergarten friendly" explanation here.














During our sorting process we found leaves like this.  How did this happen?  What made them like this?  We put them in a separate "I don't know" pile.  Leaves like this provide examples of unique color changing to explore sometime later.

After sorting we realized we needed more colors.  Our yellow pile was full, but our light green and light orange was pretty empty.  We went on a hunt.  We knew from experience that our playground was full of leaves so we started there.  Outside we found many brown leaves.  It was a lot harder to find what we needed.  We ran around and searched each corner.  At one point, there was a gust of wind and the leaves came to us!

We came back and sorted more.  I carefully measured paper to cover the rainbow table and get the right shape.  We made a plan to make lines on the paper as a guide and a chart was made to help us when we were ready to glue. The "leaf rainbow" was not like a normal rainbow you see in the sky.  This rainbow shows us the way leaves change color.  Starting out with green, they turn yellow, red, and then turn crunchy and brown.

Following the guide, we got to work.

During this process we got a chance to take a close look at leaves.  We have started on a reference for colors, shapes, and general make-up of the common leaves we might see in our neighborhoods.  This time we categorized by overall color.  What about sorting by leaf size?  Shape?  Amount of veins?  Stem length?  And what are the purposes of each attribute?  There are many things to talk about when it comes to the world around us and simple things like a leaves.

Go on a walk through your neighborhoods and take advantage of the great learning opportunities in nature!

Down by the Bay

I am guessing by the title of this post, some of you already know what I am going to talk about!  I know we have been talking about it a lot in the classroom.  

One day during meeting time, we were joking about rhyming words (making up silly nonsense words) when I started to sing "Down by the Bay."  Only a few children knew what I was talking about, so I went into detail.  We have been experimenting with rhyming words and singing about it helped us think of these words in a different way.  

We sang over and over, and played the song on the radio.  We got used to the usual lyrics so we started to think of more.  One day we made a list of all the different types of lyrics we could think of and even drew quick sketches to help us remember.  This led to the thought of creating a book for the classroom because it is a great option to help us remember the lyrics.  

Some of our favorite lyrics have been:

Have you ever seen a bear combing his hair?

Have you ever seen a goose kissing a moose?

Have you ever seen a snake baking a cake?

Have you ever seen a mouse painting a house?

Have you ever seen a grandma eating her pajamas?

Have you ever seen a lizard getting ready for a blizzard?

Have you ever seen a bee with a sunburned knee?

There are no right or wrong answers, so even nonsense rhymes work too!  It can get hard to think on the spot of a quick rhyme and we are always testing out new ideas.  Take the time to sing along with your child sometime.  It is great practice!