Learning all about opposites
It was a really cold day today and there were so many activities for us to do, we stayed inside and were warm and productive. We had so much fun! We arrived at school and the one table was covered with plastic and on top of it was a large piece of white paper; the entire length of the table. We noticed two containers with paint in them; one was red and one was pink. We were not sure what was going to take place at the table, and after our morning circle time we went to the table and started a group project.
So let’s tell you what we did in our morning circle. After packing away all of our toys from free play, Shelley asked us to sit in a circle on the mat. She closed her eyes and started to count 1….2….3….4…..She told us to tell her to stop when we were all sitting together in a circle. She didn’t have to count much as we shouted STOP when she was on number four. She started off singing one of our favourite songs called “Open them, shut them”. We sang the words and co-ordinated the correct actions. Then we asked her if she would sing the upside down way. She taught us a new word which is “opposite”. She explained what the word means by asking us questions e.g. “What is the opposite of hot and we said: “Cold”. Aaaahhhh, now we knew what opposite meant. Then we learnt that the opposite of sleep is wake and the opposite of small is big! Shelley said that we would sing the same words but do opposite actions. We could all say the word “opposite” really clearly. So we sang the song and then of course, laughed so loudly at the end. We then sang our “Hello” song and everyone sang the words perfectly. It was a great feeling to hear everyone singing proudly.
We had a chat about communication with facial expressions and gestures and we knew what Shelley was saying when she put her finger to her mouth……..shhhhhhh; when she waved her hand, she was saying goodbye etc.
She showed us an angry face; a happy one; a surprised one and last but not least, a scared one and this led us into a discussion about what makes us feel scared. Sometimes we like to copy our friends and say what they say and we are being encouraged to have our own thoughts in these discussions as we can learn more when this happens. Shelley then asked us what makes us feel scared? There is some documentation on the wall in our classroom about the discussion that we had.
Our group project is creating an art work using colours that remind people of love which are pink and red. Shelley said that there are other colours which people use for love but for now, we will use these colours. This is our work in progress as we will continue working on it for a few days. Today we used rollers and paint and pasted hearts and confetti on the large piece of paper. We will complete it next week as this week is a short week and then put it up on display. She didn’t talk about art with us yet, but she is thinking about teaching us how artists create something on a piece of paper or a canvas; they give it a name and people go to an art gallery and look at it and see different things in the painting. She has some pictures which she will show us to help us understand.
We had three activities to do today. The second one was baking. We made a present for someone…….we can’t say who it is for but we can say that it is delicious. We used cornflakes, sugar, butter and honey. Shelley explained many things to us today. She asked us what the ingredients were and wanted to know if we knew where they came from. She told us that if we shake cream, we can make our own butter; she told us that she was a bee collecting pollen and nectar from the flowers and then she took it back to her hive to make…………honey (we tasted the honey…yummmm); she showed us what happens to butter when you heat it up and we learnt about solids becoming liquids; we spooned the mixture into special cups and then put it in the oven. The smell coming from the kitchen was so good. The last two things we will quickly share with you are that we made a card after cutting out a picture that reminds us of our mums; and we dramatized a story from Shelley’s memory and we all helped pull the heart shaped pumpkin out of the ground. A busy, busy day it was!
Love Shelley and Darren