Dear Blossom Families,
The Blossoms are indeed body experts! There are, without a doubt, several future doctors, nurses, and researchers among us. Thank you again to Mr. Ells, Mrs. Suhr, and Mrs. Harrison for coming to share their expertise with our class! It helped bring the learning to life for our class.
For February, we focused on finishing our body study, discussing nutrition, and learning healthy habits. We spent the first two weeks talking about the circulatory and respiratory systems. For the circulatory system, we built a ‘blood-pumping heart as a class to watch how the heart works. We learned how fast the heart beats and tried to out-beat our hearts. We also had a healthy-heart day and exercised together to work out our hearts.
When learning about the respiratory system, we built our lungs to demonstrate how they work. We also had some fun with our breathing, and we used all of our breath to blow bubbles outside. We also learned to make art from our breath rather than using a paintbrush. We then took a day to know what a calming effect our breath can have on us and learned some new breathing techniques.
Halfway through February, we switched gears and took some time to learn about nutrition, healthy habits, and manners. We started by writing a healthy food recipe, which we got to revisit later in the week as we played restaurant and made our recipe to try for ourselves– delicious fruit parfaits! We also decorated plates with our favorite foods and learned about food groups.
For healthy habits, the children wanted to focus on going to the dentist. They had a lot of questions like, How are our teeth strong? And Why does candy give us cavities? We played Dentist Office for our dramatic play and had a Going to the Dentist Day. We also ran a classroom experiment that taught us how the foods we eat can affect our teeth before talking about the many other healthy habits we can do daily.
We ended our February study by talking about manners. We wrote thank you notes and had a Fancy Friday to practice our manners. With this Fancy Friday, we also chose the manners we wanted to emulate and wrote a classroom book as a reference.
For March, we will be studying Oregon Animals. We’ve already had a lot of interest in the animals around us, with the children asking about red-eye birds and falcons. We are so excited to go more into depth about the animals and learn about the creatures that live in this state with us. As always, if anyone knows our field of study, we welcome you to take time in our class and share. We love to have you!
Please ensure that you are labeling your children’s items when brought into the classroom to help us keep organized and ensure everything goes home to the right place. This means coats, gloves, and any other miscellaneous items. Thank you!
“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.” – Anatole France.
All the love, Miss Madeline and Ms. Stephanie
