Light, Shadow and Birdhouses

We began morning meeting today by introducing the new teacher in our class, Nissa. She will be student teaching in our room on Wednesdays. Then some children described what happened in school yesterday and Rebecca asked the children what a shadow is. Mason said, "It comes from the light" and Ashley said that it's "a reflection of your body." During this discussion, Tate noticed a reflection of the class on the glass of the french doors and we discussed whether or not this was a shadow. After morning meeting we had French with Deb who sang songs with us and read us Goldilocks in French.

During freeplay, 2 of the birdhouse committees met to paint their houses. The "long house" birdhouse committee (Alexander, Sasha, Sam, Oliver and Isabel) decided to paint it half pink, half blue. They mixed the exact colors they wanted, instructing Rebecca when they needed more white or more colored paint. The playground birdhouse committee (Eli, Evan, Tate and Ava, with a guest appearance by Ashley), mixed their own purple paint for the ice cream house and tower and blue paint for the pond.

Elsewhere in the classroom, Evan splatter painted at the easel and was soon joined by both Luca and Jake who were intrigued by his technique. Eli and Ashley worked together for over 10 minutes on a floor puzzle and completed most of it and Matthew, Tate and Ryan Q. went around the classroom putting out fires and checking for emergencies. 

We then divided into two groups. The children who come Monday/Wednesday/Friday had the opportunity to explore light and shadow. We talked about flashlight safety, turned off all the lights and used our flashlights around the room. Eli shone his flashlight on the fan and watched as the light strobed on the turning blades of the fan. Soon many children joined in to try this for themselves. Ryan, Luca and Mason shone their flashlight through colored blocks to change the color of their flashlight. Many of the children explored shadows using their flashlight on the sheet. At one point Jake said, "I can't caught the shadow because it moves too fast."

During lunch the Sunflowers class signed up for jobs for the very first time!