Dear Parents,
We’ve had a busy and eventful week and haven’t let the single digit temperatures
keep us from exploring and learning new things. We managed to go outside for
recess Monday and Tuesday and the children loved playing in the snow. A few
snowmen were built right outside the doors to the building and were there to greet
parents when they arrived at Plato. We brought snow inside and put it in our
sensory table. The children enjoyed playing with it, scooping and measuring it, and
building mini snow mountains and tunnels. We covered our sensory table before
heading to lunch and then later in the afternoon predicted what we’d find when we
uncovered it. Some of us predicted snow and some of us predicted water. What we
found was slush mixed in with dirt, leaves, and twigs. We were surprised at how
the clean looking snow contained so much debris.
Hopefully by now all of you have received a surprise in the mail. The children
were so excited about our stealth operation of creating cards for you and then
taking a field trip to the post office to mail them. They had so much fun decorating
their cards and as you probably noticed, an abundance of glitter was used.  We
picked the best day weather-wise to walk to the post office and it was an exciting
adventure. The only thing that I hadn’t planned on was the crowd of people waiting
to mail holiday packages and the one employee trying to handle it all. Your
wonderful children not only waited patiently in line with me for fifteen minutes,
they also entertained everyone in the post office. They told the woman behind us
what school we were from, how many of us there were in our class, who was
missing that day, what grade we are in, and what we were mailing.
We have continued our bear exploration this week and have been learning about
polar bears. We discovered that although they appear to have white fur, each hair
shaft is pigment free, transparent and hollow. They reflect visible light and give the
appearance of white fur. We learned that polar bears live in the Arctic and looked
at that region on a globe. When the students realized that the North Pole is also
there, it caused a lot of interest and comments such as “That’s where Santa lives!”
We had read that polar bears keep warm on land because of their thick fur coat and
they keep warm in the water because of their thick layer of fat. It can measure up
to five inches thick. To demonstrate how their layer of fat/blubber protects them,
we did an experiment. The children put their hands in a bowl of ice water and
described how it felt: cold and super cold! Then I had them predict what it would
feel like to put their hand in ice water wearing a glove filled with fat/blubber. After
we made our predictions, we put our hands in a Ziploc bag within a Ziploc bag full
of shortening and put them back in the ice water. They described the sensation with
the shortening as warm or hot (and squishy). It gave us a good understanding of
how polar bears are built for cold temperatures and have adapted to their arctic
environment.
Even the cold temperatures couldn’t keep us from the library this week. We went
Monday to use the Tumblebooks program on their computers and it went
smoothly. The children really enjoyed getting to pick books to listen to and follow
along. Thank you for sending in headphones/ear buds. If you haven’t yet, we will
be going again in January and I will send home a reminder. We also went to the
library today and checked out books. Some books we’ve enjoyed reading together
this week: The Biggest, Best Snowman, The Smiley Snowman, Panda’s Christmas
Gifts, The Animals’ Santa, Snowman Magic, and The Snowman and the Snowdog.
I’m looking forward to seeing you all next week at the Holiday Program. Stay
warm and have a great weekend!
Ms. Leslie