Chocolate Milk

Hello family and friends!

I don't know about you, but I feel like this week has flown by. It was our first full week back after the holidays and we've been staying busy. At the end of last week, we gave the kids a choice of what they wanted to learn. We pulled some ideas (from our large list of things the kids wanted to learn about that they wrote at the beginning of the year) and allowed them to vote. They had the choice of chocolate milk, koala bears, and legos/blocks. You should know that the night before giving the kids this choice, I spent the evening researching legos and blocks. I was absolutely convinced that this would be the topic of choice! I was so very wrong. The kids voted to research chocolate milk! I've learned my lesson on assuming I know what they're interested in :) I've had several parents come to me this week and tell me how excited the kids have been about our research so far. I've heard that some of you have already received a full run down of the whole process of chocolate milk from cow to store. I can't tell you how much it means to hear you say those things. It makes my heart so happy to hear that the kids are interested in learning and enjoying what we're doing each day! I'm hoping that continues for a lifetime!

To start off our exploration of chocolate milk we made a KWL chart of what we already Know, what we Want to learn, and finally, what we've Learned. The kids knew a good bit about milk but they had a lot of questions too. We spent a good bit of Monday morning talking about facts and asking question. Some questions we were able to answer by asking our peers, but most of them were recorded on our chart. We also spent some time gathering facts from books. We found tons of books from the library about dairy farms, cows, and milk. We borrowed both fiction and non fiction and spent some time reading them aloud, picture walking with partners, and even studying them together during reading workshop. We have all of the library books on display in the classroom if you'd like to look at them. We've started putting fiction library books on the book shelf next to the window in our reading center and the non fiction in a basket in our science center. We talked with the kids about the importance of book care (especially those borrowed from our library). We also talked about how to recognize library books to keep them separate from our classroom books. The kids have really taken on to caring for these library books! Through our research with the books, the kids were able to already answer some questions that they had but also found that they had more questions to ask the more they learned...which we love!

We also found a quick video that was able to walk us step by step through the process of milk. We learned about the special machines that take milk from the cows, into cooling tanks, and finally into a truck where it's transported. We also saw the process of pasturizing milk and the importance of doing so. This caused the kids to question what would happen if you put milk in the microwave, which lead to us doing exactly that! We decided to turn that into some taste testing and compared both cold and warm milk. We made a chart of which we liked best and compared the differences. This also got us talking about the different uses for warm milk. Some said that parents warm milk for babies. Other said it's great for hot chocolate. We also learned that there are tons of recipes out there that call for warm milk. This lead us into a discussion of cooking, which we will definitely be doing some of next week!

The kids also thought it'd be fun to do a science experiment with milk (there will also be more of these in the week to come). We decided to make color explosions. This is something you can easily do at home and the kids loved it! They begged to keep doing it, but sadly we didn't have enough milk for an all day science experiment :) We started by covering the bottom of a plate with whole milk. Next, we took food coloring and made different colored drops in the middle of our plate. Then, we dipped one end of a q-tip in dish soap and stuck the tip into the middle of the food coloring. What happened was a sudden burst of the colors all throughout the milk. We learned that the fat molecules in milk run away from the soap and when this happens it pushes the color dye all over the place. It was almost like a little mini firework in our plate! The kids ended up having some questions about fat in milk which got us talking about the differences between whole, 2%, and 1% milk. We'll be bringing some in to compare the differences throughout our study.

I've been so impressed with the kids enthusiasm for research this week and I'm looking forward to the week ahead as we continue our study! Through all of our research, we've been incorporating reading, writing, and math skills. The beauty of inquiry learning is that these always seem to fall into place in the natural learning environment. We've also been taking time to do some assessments with the kids as we approach November. We will be making parent/teacher conferences available in the next month, but we will keep you posted with specific details as the time gets closer. Also, Rabbi Meir mentioned that it would be a good idea to give a brief description of our morning routine, which I think is a wonderful idea because I'm realizing I may not have given details in our first blog post. Each morning, either Michelle or myself go to pick up any children from pre care. We aim to do this sometime between 8:30-8:40 every day. From there, we have each table set up with different activities. These activities are changed daily for variety and focus on skills such as fine motor, social, writing, reading, and math. We feel that the tables give the kids predictability for the morning and also help them transition from home to school before we officially start our day off with morning meeting. We also hope that this helps you as parents during the transition of drop off time. If you have any thoughts about the early morning time, please share them with us.

Here is a list of some standards for this week...

Approaches to Learning:

Demonstrate growing ability to predict possible outcomes based on prior experiences and knowledge.
Demonstrate increasing ability to use prior knowledge to understand new experiences.
Try to solve problems encountered in play.
Demonstrate an increasing ability to organize actions and materials in the learning environment.

Social & Emotional:

Interact easily with familiar adults by engaging in conversations, responding to questions and following directions.
Participate in group life of class.
Display emerging social skills of trying to take turns and talk with others during play.
Demonstrate with adult guidance simple techniques to solve social problems.

Language & Literacy:

Classify objects and information by observable attributes into predetermined categories.
Ask "how" and "why" questions about things in books and their environment.
Begin to use classroom resources such as books, charts, photographs, and graphs to gain information about topics of interest.
Combine some letters with pretend writing.
Progress in understanding how books are viewed.

Mathematics: