Day 26: What grows in the dirt?

Starting out with the touch and feel pool, carrots and dirt were explored! Tiny carrots with green stems and leaves and big, fat carrots with not tops.

During our story time, we read "The Carrot Seed" about a little boy who plants a tiny carrot seed. His mom, his dad and his brother all said that his seed wouldn't grow, but the little boy never gave up. He pulled the weeds and water the seeds for many days. Finally, a huge carrot grew just like he thought it would. After reading the book once, we read it again while pretending to be the different characters. I love the way the kids were just mesmerized by the story when I read it the first time...it was quiet, their eyes were on the pictures, and they were all leaning forward!

After we read our book, each child held a big, fat carrot while they dictated sentences about a carrot while I wrote the words down. Joseph: A carrot grows in dirt and a garden. Tucker: A carrot is orange. Evan: You can eat a carrot. Beau: My carrot broke! We will make our carrot idea web to put in our "Down on the Farm" tomorrow.

I read about an experiment in which you hollow out the top of a carrot and put water in it, then wait to see what grows. We have all of our hollowed out carrots in a jar together, with the kids' initials on them as it is VERY important to which one belongs to which child. We doing what scientists do by asking a question (What will happen when we put water in the top of the carrot?); making a hypothesis and recording our results with pictures and words. I think we will all be surprised at what happens as I have never done this experiment before.
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Due to Mr. Emmanuelli's efforts, the kids watched the videos of their two plays ("I Can Do It" and "The Three Little Pigs"). They were so excited while they watched themselves! ("That's me!" , "That's you ____!") Their faces lit up, especially when they saw themselves as the wolf.

We all read our '100 Days of School' entry together today as time was running short and then wrote in our writing journal. The kids either copied or traced the 'C' letter since it was the first sound in carrot. I modeled how to draw a carrot and the kids drew their rendition.

Today was "Ms. Michelle Day"! I was able to get a few pictures of the kids acting out animal movements and crawling through a tunnel. I really need to get a tunnel! They split into two groups, with one group coloring and one group pounding pegs into a 'board'. Ms. Michelle told me that this activity worked on hand strength, strength of the radial portion of the hand (thumb and two fingers), as well as bilateral integration. All of these help our kids to hold a pencil, increase pressure on a pencil, button up those buttons, and use scissors. A big tub of packing foam pieces hid a bunch of little objects that they got to find and describe.

We ended the day with our show and tell time. Beau had his 'Lightning McQueen' car and he showed us how it changed colors in cold and warm water. It was magic!

Tomorrow....."The Enormous Carrot" book! That should be fun acting out!!