Tzemach Class 2016: So Many Dinosaurs!

Hello family and friends!

We've had such a fun week back at school! I hope everyone enjoyed the winter break. The kids had so much to tell us and seemed very excited to be back. They spent a large part of Monday and Tuesday telling us all about time with family and friends, and of course all the presents they got and food they ate. We decided to spend this week wrapping up our dinosaur exploration. We didn't feel like it was concluded before break and many of the kids were still interested in learning more. They've continued to ask questions and we've been answering them through some reading and research. Just because we are moving on to something else definitely doesn't mean we're done with dinosaurs. They are quite fascinating and we'll continue to explore them and make references to them throughout the rest of the school year.

One question the kids have been asking was, how did dinosaurs become extinct? We spent some time talking about the word "theory" and what it meant. We concluded from our readings that there are two main theories as to why the dinosaurs became extinct. One theory is that a meteorite hit the Earth, causing some earthquakes and volcanoes. Of course the kids thought this idea of volcanoes was awesome! We decided it would be fun to make a little volcano of our own. We talked about the fact that volcanoes have lava inside them and with pressure and a lot of chemical reactions, the lava is forced out of the top. We decided to do a little volcano experiment to go along with this theory. We spent some time making dough to mold into a volcano. We took an empty soda bottle and, after mixing up our dough, formed a mountain of dough around our bottle. We placed it in a large pan covered in sand. Afterwards, we made our own volcano explosion! We filled the volcano with baking soda. We then poured vinegar (that we dyed red to look like lava) into the bottle and watched as lava came bubbling out of our volcano. The kids were hilarious. So much excitement!! We talked about the fact that baking soda and vinegar make a chemical reaction together that causes a lot of pressure and bubbles (kind of like a real volcano). We also had the opportunity to look at some lava glass. This is formed when magma cools very rapidly. I'm convinced that this was the highlight of their school week. It was pretty awesome!

The second main theory of dinosaur extinction is ice. We talked about the idea of the Earth becoming very cold and icing over. We discussed how this would effect all types of life, even our plants, trees, and bugs. We put some dinosaurs in ice and froze them overnight. We then let the kids use tools of their choice to excavate the dinosaurs from the ice. It was basically a wet cold mess, but they loved it! We even saw some great team work. Some kids realized that certain tools worked better than others for chopping up the ice. When they were done, they were quick to share their strategy with others who were still working. Once we got our dinosaurs out of the ice, we figured out which type they were and discussed their size and food preferences. We also discussed which tools worked, which didn't, and why we think some worked better than others. We learned that some plastic toys and sticks from our nature area were not very helpful in cracking ice. However, our wooden blocks and rocks got the job done! I wish I could have captured some of their reactions when they finally excavated their dinosaur...they were priceless!

We've had a really fun time exploring dinosaurs and we've learned a lot! For next week, we will be starting a new exploration on hibernation. The talk of snow this weekend is part of the reason this subject came up. Also, one of our students brought in a book about polar bears which ended up playing perfectly into our discussion of snow. My mom also sent me an article full of pictures of snowflakes under a microscope. We were amazed to see the differences in design and shape of all these flakes. All of these small things together got us discussing winter and the cold, which lead to us wondering about animals that live outside in these conditions. This is part of what I love about teaching 4 year olds. You never know what exploration will come up next! We're excited to see where this one takes us.

Love,
Ms. Rachael

Approaches to Learning:

Reason about events, relationships, and events.
Demonstrate growing ability to predict possible outcomes based on prior experiences and knowledge.
Demonstrate increasing ability to use prior knowledge to understand new experiences.
Try to solve problems encountered in play.

Social & Emotional:

Interact easily with familiar adults by engaging in conversations, responding to questions and following directions.
Participate in group life of class.
Display emerging social skills of trying to take turns and talk with others during play.
Develop friendship with one or two preferred children.
Express fears and concerns to familiar adult.

Language & Literacy:

.Complete a thought or idea when communicating with others.
Classify objects and information by observable attributes into predetermined categories.
Begin to use classroom resources such as books, charts, photographs and graphs to gain information about topics of interest.
Contribute to small group or whole class stories, rhymes or poems.
Begin to understand the relationship between oral language and written language.
Contribute to small group or whole class dictation activities.

Mathematics:

Sort and classify objects by one attribute.
Identify the positions firth through tenth using concrete objects.
Represent simple joining and separating situations through 4.
Compare sets of no more than ten objects using the terms "more than" or "same as".
Integrate mathematical ideas into personal representations.
Investigate solutions to simple problems.

Excavating dinosaurs from the ice. We are great problem solvers!...