Tzemach Class 2016: Exploring Dirt in the Woods

Hello family and friends!

It has been a fun and messy week in the Tzemach class! We've been having so much fun playing in the dirt and learning all about it. This week we spent a whole morning playing in the woods. On our adventure we were looking for different types of dirt. We dug up some samples to bring to our science center and also collected some awesome pieces of nature to enjoy in the classroom! The woods play was so much fun and the kids were in heaven. We all put on our boots and literally walked in the middle of the creek. They were pouring water and mud out of their boots and laughing about it the whole time. Some of them fell in the water and thought it was the best thing that's happened at school all year! It was a great time of watching them show compassion and building friendships as they helped one another climb up the creek banks and out of the water. Some of us even found some "sinking sand". The other kids came to his rescue with long sticks for him to hold as they pulled him out. It was sweet and hilarious! We also did some tree and vine climbing. As we walked through the different area of our woods, we had conversations about the different colors and texture of the dirt we encountered. We also made note of all the smells, sights, and sounds that we experienced. I wish I could have shown you the classroom when we got back! The kids were stripping down faster than we could stop them to put on clean clothes and were dumping water and mud from boots all over the floor. It was well worth the mess! We had a great time and we can't wait for our next woods day!

As we've been talking about different types of dirt, we decided to do a little experiment to further explore the different elements of dirt by making a sediment jar. While in the woods we dug a fairly deep hole and filled a mason jar half full with the soil sample. We then added water to the jar and covered it with a lid. We shook the jar for awhile to mix the soil with the water and then let the jar sit for the day. Throughout the day, we noticed that the soil began to settle and the water rose to the top. We discussed that as the soil settles, it divides itself into layers. We discovered that the largest sediment settled to the bottom first (these were our pebbles and rocks), followed by sand, silt, clay, and random matter or decay (such as sticks and pine needles). This has been a great way for us to get a different perspective on soil and it's many layers. The kids seemed to enjoy watching the jar throughout the day. We left magnifying glasses out near the jar to encourage the kids to document the process as they watched it. We'll be keeping this jar in our science center for awhile since the kids have enjoyed watching and documenting the process.

While we were in the woods we also collected a large amount of nature. We've made painting with nature before but we thought it would good to give the kids an opportunity to make 3D artwork with our woods findings. We dumped out everything we had gathered and put some clay out. We let the kids use their imagination and motor skills to create art. I love what they created! We made people, bugs, snowmen, magic wands, transformers, just about anything you can imagine. They took their time and got into this process. As each child worked, I walked around and asked them to tell me about their 3D artwork. I documented what they said so you can talk with them about it. These awesome pieces of work will be put on display in the hallway soon, so keep an eye out! We will also be adding pictures of our woods adventure and our dirt painting on the bulletin board with the artwork.

Aside from all our dirt fun, we had the opportunity to have some of the kindergarteners come to our class and read books to us. They have been working on writing their own fiction books so they were very proud to show them off. Our class loved it! They were engaged in the stories and thought some of them were hilarious. We love when we find opportunities to do things with other classes. It's a great way for us to learn from one another and make some new friends. We're hoping to have a few more of them come back to read to us again next week!

Love,

Ms. Rachael

Approaches to Learning:

Demonstrate increasing ability to identify and take appropriate risks in order to learn and demonstrate new skills.
Demonstrate eagerness and interest as a learner by questioning and adding ideas.
Demonstrate delight or satisfaction when completing a task, solving a problem, or making a discovery.
Show increasing ability to maintain interest in self-selected activities and play despite distractions and interruptions.

Social & Emotional:

Demonstrate self direction by making choices among peers, activities and materials.
Follow classroom rules and procedures with reminders.
Use classroom materials responsibly, most of the time.
Recognize effect on others of own behavior most of the time.

Language & Literacy:

Show interest in informational texts about familiar objects.
Begin to identify significant words from text read aloud.
Begin asking "how and why" questions when looking at texts.
Incorporate information from informational texts into play activities.
Begin to use classroom resources such as books, charts, photographs, and graphs to gain information about topics of interest.
Classify objects and information by observable attributes into predetermined categories.
Make connections to prior knowledge, other texts, and the world in response to texts read aloud.

Mathematics:

Organize and represent data with real objects.
Associate at least two measurement devices with their purposes.
Compare lengths of two objects.
Represent simply tow-dimensional geometric shapes.
Sort and classify objects by one attribute.
Compare sets of no more than ten objects using the terms "more than" or "same as".
Count orally forward to twenty and backward from three.

We love the woods! And dirt!...