Fruits and Vegetables

Hello family and friends!

We have had a great week of exploring in the Aalva class. After learning so much recently about the fruits and vegetables that gerbils like to eat, we decided to do a spin off on healthy foods. We've spent a lot of time talking about what's good for our bodies and conducted some science experiments along the way. Our main focus was on fuits and vegetables. We've talked about why they're good for us, where and how they grow, as well as the different parts of the plants they grow on.

Early in the week we introduced the kids to a bar graph. We talked about why it's called a bar graph as well as how to compare its results. After spending a day talking about different types of fruits and vegetables, we made a bar graph of our favorites. We compared the voting results for cucumbers, carrots, strawberries, and bananas. Each child was given a small piece of paper that they decorated in any way to represent themselves on the graph. They then told everyone their favorite produce and glued it on the graph. After all the pieces were glued, we counted and compared the results from each column. We found that the favorite produce in our class was strawberries - which was perfect beause that just happened to be the fruit for snack that day! :)

Another thing we did this week was a sink or float science experiment. We picked out several fruits and vegetables and tested their ability to sink or float. We took this opportunity to talk about being scientist. We discovered that we are scientists everyday even in the smallest ways! We discussed that scientists first need to ask questions about the world around them. Next, they make a guess as to what the answer to their question will be, their hypothesis. Finally, they conduct the experiment to find the results, or conclusions. After talking about the steps a scientist uses, we conducted our own experiment. Each child had a clipboard with a chart in hand. Before conducting the experiiment we wrote our guesses in the hypothesis column. We wrote an "s" for sink and "f" for float. After dropping each piece of produce in the water, we wrote the results that we found, then compared them to our hypothesis column. We were all surprised at many of these results! It was a great time of discussing what surprised us, what we noticed, and what we would like to ask more questions about. I encourage you to try this out with some produce at home. You may be surprised to find out what sinks and what actually floats! The results from this experiment are hanging up in the hallway if you'd like to check them out.

Another science experiment we did this week was dissecting fruits and vegetables. We started by reviewing what it meant to be a scientist and then pulled some produce that we were curious about. We ended up cutting apart apples, bananas, grapes, carrots, and an avocado. For all of these, we cut them in half both vertically and horizonally. We talked about the difference in their appearance between these two cuts. We also talked about some things that surprised us and some things that were new to us. We passed each cut around and allowed the kids to investigate them further. We smelled them, pocked them, and examined them. Here is a short list of a few things the kids found interesting and new during this process:

Apples seeds are held in small pockets inside the apple's core.
When you cut an apple horizontally you can see the shape of a star.
Grapes have seeds! There are some grapes with seeds and some without. They also grow on vines.
Carrots have small rings inside them and grow inside the dirt.
Bananas have little tiny brown seeds!
Avocados have one big seed. (There was a debate on this fact before cutting it open. Half the class felt confident that there was only one seed and others were convinced that there were a million little ones hiding in there.)
Avocado flesh is both yellow and green. The skin is very crunchy!

Along with our dissecting, we also had a little taste test. We decided to pick some fruits and vegetables that we hadn't eaten at snack yet this year. We taste tested raspberries, blackberries, tomatoes, and avocados. As we ate each of them we discussed how they tasted, smelled, looked, and what they felt like. In describing them we also talked about any similarities and differences that we noticed. Through all this we found some produce that we really enjoyed and some others that we didn't like too much. However, we all agreed that it's important to try new fruits and vegetables since they are so good for us. You never know what you might end up enjoying! The kids have really jumped on the apple bandwagon this week, which kind of surprised me. We eat apples so often that I assumed they would be more interested in something new. That was their favorite to dissect and they've been asking some questions about them and the different types that grow. This worked out great because Michelle is acutally going apple picking this weekend. She said she'd bring back some different types for us to sample next week .We're really excited to taste some different varieties and see which we enjoy the most!

Here is a short list of some standards we worked on this week:

Approaches to Learning:

Show creativity and imagination using materials in representational play.
Demonstrate increasing ability to identify and take appropriate risks in order to learn and demonstrate new skills.
Demonstrate an increasing ability to organize actions and materials in the learning environment.

Social & Emotional:

Recognize effect on others of own behavior most of the time.
Develop strategies to express strong emotion with adult help.
Participate in group life of class.

Language & Literacy:

Make relevant comments or appropriate responses to story events or characters.
Begin to identify significant words from text read aloud.
Begin to distinguish between real and make-believe in stories read aloud.
Begin to ask questions about the causes of events they observe or hear about in books.
Explore books independently.

Mathematics:

Use emergent mathematical knowledge as a problem-solving tool.
Investigate solutions to simple problems.
Use appropriate vocabulary to communicate mathematical ideas.
Understand and use positional words to describe the location of objects (up, down, in, over, under, behind, on top of and in front of).
Organize and represent data with real objects.

As a reminder, I won't be doing a full blog post on our short weeks of school (next week) but I will send out an email of what we did along with any reminders that we may have. Also, we mentioned during Open House that the gerbils will be available to take home on any long weekends or breaks. If you would like to take the gerbils home please send me an email, let me know in person, or sign-up on the calendar outside of the classroom. They will just need food and fresh water throughout the breaks. Here is a list of dates through December:

September 25-28 (next week)
October 9-12
October 16-19
November 26-30
December 22-January 4

Thanks for such a wonderful week! Here's a little glimpse into our many adventures this week...

Car racing on ramps!