What Can One Little Person Do?

At our Friday assembly last week, our kindergarten classes performed the song, What Can One Little Person Do?  We had been reading about and discussing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to help the children have an understanding of the importance of Monday's holiday in celebration of Dr. King's birthday.  We shared this song at assembly as a gentle reminder to all of Lower School that each and everyone of us makes a difference by helping one another.  We want to share it with you as well!

Twister en español

Plantas

Following up a unit from last semester, students have been learning the words: planta (plant), semilla (seed), flor (flower) and árbol (tree). Our most recent activity was painting a semilla, a flor or a árbol with acrylic colors. It was the children's choice but most of them decided to paint a flor. Some photos below.

Venn Diagrams

In the weeks before we left for winter break, we were engaged in activities using Venn Diagrams.  Abby introduced the concept to the children by comparing the family traditions that we were learning about as we explored Celebrations of Light.

The students then had a chance to interview one another in pairs, to see how they are alike and different, and record their findings on a Venn Diagram using words and pictures.  It was so wonderful to hear the excitement as they discovered the many things that they have in common and the ways that they are unique.  They were also very excited to see which part of their diagram had the most information in it.

Our next activity was to work with partners again and compare phone numbers.  Several wanted to write down their partners' phone numbers so that they could call each other!

Our concluding activity was to work individually and compare Jan Brett's book, The Gingerbread Baby, with Karen Schmidt's book, The Gingerbread Man.  This proved to be more of a challenge than I had anticipated.  Fortunately, the books were on hand and could be reviewed to help them come up with ideas.  They were able to find similarities in the books much more readily than to identify ways that each book was different.  It was a great exercise to go back into the stories and find unique features from each.

Reactions Experiment!

Today Kindergarten students tried another chemistry experiment: "Reactions and Jumping Raisins".  It was pretty exciting to see what can happen when you combine certain substances like vinegar and baking soda.  The reaction between baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) and vinegar (dilute acetic acid) generates carbon dioxide gas which produced the "explosion" that happened in our first experiment.  

Next, we added the raisins.  What would happen? As we observed the raisins, we noticed that they initially sank to the bottom of the glass. Next, they "magically" rose to the top of the beaker, and then sank again.  They were jumping up and down! What was happening?  The raisins sank to the bottom  of the beaker due to their density, but because raisins have a rough, dented surface, they are filled with air pockets. These air pockets attracted the carbon dioxide gas in the liquid, creating the little bubbles on the surface of the raisins.

The carbon dioxide bubbles increased the volume of each raisin. With a greater volume, the raisin displaces more fluid, which then applies more buoyant force, pushing the raisins upwards. At the surface, the carbon dioxide bubbles pop and the raisins’ density changes again. Then they sink back down to the bottom. The whole process is repeated, making it look as though the raisins are dancing or jumping!

Friday morning assembly

This morning we had a wonderful assembly presented to us by Yale's a cappella group, Out of the Blue.  The children were just enthralled with it, bouncing and clapping to the beat.  Later in the day as we talked about singing a song at our next assembly, they asked if we could "sing it like they did at assembly."  That's a sure sign of approval when they want to duplicate something!  Please check out this link to read more about Out of the Blue's visit.

The Science of Polymers

Right before break, the Kindergarten students learned about the chemistry of polymers.  They took hydrophylic, or water loving, plastic alligators and placed them in water for a week.  At the start of the experiment they were about 11 cm long.  I posed a question to them; "What do you think will happen to the alligators in the water?"  There were many hypotheses, such as "They will melt!", "I think they will change color."  After a week in the water, the students were very surprised to see that the alligators absorbed the water and became huge!  Some were as big as 35 centimeters!  We also grew "water jelly crystals" that even changed color since we added food coloring.