Classroom Caterpillars

The Beetles and Centipedes stayed together for circle time so we could all meet the caterpillars that came to join our classroom. We will get to watch them grow and build their cocoons to turn into butterflies. We talked about the different cycles, and how these caterpillars are in the second cycle. The third is the Pupa, and the last stage is finally the butterfly. We will continue checking in on them and learn about their life cycle in the coming weeks.

Exploring Musical Instruments

Today, after a jamming dance party, we followed up with a circle time exploring musical instruments. The kids each took turns trying out all kinds of instruments and noise makers - even a trombone, a flute, an accordion, and a homemade xylophone using glass ketchup bottles filled with water.

The trombone is big and heavy and challenging to play. The kids found that a musician needs to blow a lot of air to play the trombone.

They loved the accordion and they found it easy to play. They enjoyed dancing around with it and pushing different keys to hear all of the notes.

 

Our classroom was really loud for about twenty minutes while each preschooler moved around the room exploring the instruments.

We discussed other ideas for creating our own instruments and we will experiment and build some of our own using recycled materials tomorrow.

With the xylophone, we could practice reading music because the metal tubes are numbered. Roberta played old MacDonald for everyone to sing along.

The Centipedes were excited to listen to all of the loud sounds that they made using a variety of instruments.

Visiting Our Friends at the Kenney Home

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Intergenerational Relationships

Both the teachers and the kids at Tiny Tribe look forward to our twice monthly visits to the Kenney Home. We can tell by the smiles on the faces of the residents and the caregivers at the Kenney Home that they look forward to our visits just as much as we do!

Dorothy always comes to visit us when we are there. Anna Lee played catch with her with a blue balloon. Dorothy loves singing songs with us, especially songs she sang as a little girl. Today we sang Twinkle Twinkle, Ba Ba Black Sheep, and Ring Around the Rosie. Dorothy was singing along loudly.

Zoe made friends with Cora right away and began tossing balloons back and forth with her after watching the big kids doing it. Cora told me that Zoe was "darling". Cora has two daughters of her own, all grown up now, of course.

Layla shook hands with Mary Jane and told her it was nice to see her today. Mary Jane is a bit of a book worm and always seems to have a book or a magazine to keep her busy. The kids are a loud distraction but she doesn't seem to mind. We always encourage the kids to greet their friends with a handshake or a high five. Many of the kids offer up hugs, too, which most of the residents seem to really enjoy.

Finn and May played catch together today.  Jazz, one of the Activities Coordinators, set up a game between them and they had a great time tossing and catching the ball together.

Casper Baby Pants at the Library

 We happily boarded the city bus and headed to our local library for a really special story time this morning.... Casper Baby Pants!

 Myla's big sister and Tiny Tribe alumni, Hailey, joined us this morning. It was great to have an extra set of hands, thanks Hailey!

 Lena, and some of our other preschoolers, just saw Casper Baby Pants at the West Seattle Street Fair this weekend. We sang our favorite songs along the way.

 It was a goof thing we arrived a little early because the line was already down the sidewalk and around the block. We waited in the sunshine for the doors to open.

 We all joined in singing the first song, Broken Truck.

Poor little broken truck. (Beep! Beep!)

Ran all out of gas. (And got stuck!)

 We danced and spun and ran and stomped.

 We sang along and shared some laughs.

 It was so much fun to see music with our friends.

Beetle Pizza Making

Today for lunch we had some delicious pizzas made by the Beetles.  They all worked together to spread the sauce on the pitas, and to put enough cheese on the pizza.  Above is Eva who is diligently spreading sauce with a spoon.

Here's Zoe moving cheese from the blue bowl to the pita, she's doing such a great job at not spilling any cheese!  Having children help with household chores such as preparing snack, or sweeping the floor shows kids all of the ways that they can be useful and included in the planning of their own day.

Here's Anna Lee working on her very own pizza!  The beetles were delighted to serve the pizza that they made to the rest of their friends. 

West Seattle Summer Fest

This morning the Beetle's and Centipedes took a trip to the West Seattle Summer Fest! We had fun stopping by all the booths to check them out. The kids were showered with cupcakes, balloons, stickers and bubbles!

Finn, Carrie and Luka at Talarico's where we all ate lunch. The kids made a pretty good sized dent in their "small" pizza ;).

Before we headed back to Jena's, we had to check out at least one of the rides! The kids decided on the swings.

Finn and Austin get ready for the ride to start.

Lena, Grace, Myla and Layla all enjoyed the swings and yelled "faster, faster!"

Summer Fest Dance Party

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Ice Part 2

John had his water vessel that we put in the freezer on Tuesday to take out and explore again today.

The freezer worked to turn the water into ice.  

(They had hypothesized that the water would turn to ice in the refrigerator at first but by the end of the day on Tuesday almost all choose to move their vessels to the freezer.)

They talk about and saw all their ice from the day before had melted and we decided to check out the melting process a bit closer today.

We placed the ice on the sidewalk and drew a blue chalk circle around it.

 They came and checked on it and saw how the ground was getting wet and moving beyond the blue circle.

 After a while it had a big area of water on the ground and we traced its boarder with blue chalk.

Would it go past this line or stop?  What would happen?  John, Finn, and Austin all felt that the pool of water would keep getting bigger.

To their surprise the water stopped and the pool of water began to go away, even with the big chunk of ice still there.

By time we had Bonnie outside in the yard all the water and ice had gone away and only some dried up leave and petals that were frozen in the ice were left.

We talked about evaporation and how the water goes up in the air to form clouds and rain down on us.  I'm sure as we continue to explore water and ice we will come up with more fun ways to enjoy our science experiments.

How do plants use water?

The Centipedes started a few science experiments today to see how plants use water.

 We took an avocado seed, a potato, and an onion and placed just the bottom in water.

We will check on them over the coming days to see if anything happens to them. 

Next, each Centipede chose what to do with a white carnation.   We all agreed that flowers need water, but how does the flower use the water? We had blue, turquoise, black, red, and regular water for them to choose from. They each chose where to place their flower and then shared with us what they thought would happen to the flower.

 Luka chose turquoise and thought it would change color, probably to pink.

 Grace chose red and thought hers would turn pink.

Nolan also chose red and thought it would turn his flower a different color, he said it might turn pink, blue, purple, green or red.

Finn placed his in blue and said it would turn it green like the stem.

John also chose blue and said his flower would turn blue.

Myla chose the black water and said it would turn her flower black.

Austin chose black too but said nothing would happen to his flower.

Saige also chose black and she said it would melt.

 

By lunch time we started to see some changes, the colored water moved through stem and veins of the petal and turned the petals a light shade of the water color.  We look forward to seeing if they get darker or stay the same.  After nap we will take a closer look at the petals to see how the water travels and changed the color of the petals.

As adults we sometimes think that questions like "what will happen to the flower" are simple but the world of how and why uncovers a complex world inside the flower similar to an iodine x-ray of our tissue.  It is an amazing world out there and opening it up with science can help develop a deeper interest and desire to learn and explore.

We will watch as our experiments continue on and follow the children's ideas of what to try next and explore their growing understanding of the natural world.