MIXING

Green Room Summer Camp 2017

Week 1

Because the Green Room children are a mix of children from other classes at the CYC and a handful of new children, this week was spent getting to know new friends and reaquainting with old. Children came up with rules that would apply for the summer by working with their parents to write a rule down and then compiling their ideas in a giant web. It turned out all of the rules could be put under the category of "Kindness" with sub-categories of myself, others, and the CYC. Each child's rule was read at the morning meeting and it was discussed where on the web it should be placed.

Water Table- Most days in the summer the water table is available as a center. The Green Room is fortunate to have access to an outside space just adjacent to the back door. Children gather around this table and many good conversations and negotiations are had. Two hand mixers were part of the materials available for the campers to use in the water table along with basters, cups, spoons, boats, and funnels. Toward the end of the week bubbles were added for the children to stir up.

Play dough-

This is a classroom staple and most kids love to work with it. Small groups came together and measured out the ingredients according to the recipe and stirred them together. Children took turns stirring by counting 20 stirs for each child before they passed it to the next . Campers chose the colors pink and green for the two batches made.

Trail Mix-

Each week a cooking project is planned. In this simple mix children were able to count out 20 pieces of an array of small snack items. Trail mix is a classic mix where bits and pieces are still distinguishable and can be separated out. This activity will be a basis for when the children combine ingredients to make solutions which are mixtures that cannot easily be separated out. Children used child friendly chopsticks to pick up each piece of snack mix, exercising their fine motor skills. Words like "less than" and "more than", "I only took about 14" were heard.

Bubbles -

After reading a recipe on how to make bubbles, children gathered the supplies and proceeded measuring the 8 cups of water, 1/2 cup of dish soap, and 1 Tablespoon of glycerin. The object of mixing this solution was to keep from stirring up too many bubbles, so children carefully moved the spoon around to incorporate all of the ingredients.

To go along with the bubble solution, campers crafted their own bubble wands using pipe cleaners and beads. In the end it was thought the store bought wands worked better. An extra batch of bubble mix was prepared to sit and age for the following week according to the instructions in the book, How to Make Bubbles.

Mixing Compost -

One of the lunchtime routines children do is to clean up after lunch. Lunch trash gets sorted into a landfill can, a recycled container, and a bin to be composted. To learn about compost children were taught anything a worm can eat can be composted. Mrs. Wiest brought from her home compost pile some compost rich with worms. The campers started a compost worm farm of their own near the Green Room back door. The mixture for compost is anything organic or plant based, so children added leftover bits from their lunch to feed the worms. One child brought extra "worm food" from her home scraps!

 

Teacher's Corner

Lesson Plan

Early Learning Standards

Writing W1 W2 Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose informative/explanatory texts in which they name what they are writing about and supply some information about the topic
Each child was asked to write a story about mixing. They were told it could be true or fiction. The teacher wrote their words and they illustrated the story. After all were completed the children shared their stories with the class.

LanguageL1.d Understand and use question words (interrogatives) (e.g., who, what where, when, why, how)
After writing a web using the children's ideas showing what they already knew about mixing, a list was generated with the parent's help, of questions that the campers might want to explore in the area of mixing. Many questions were about what ingredients were in favorite foods and others were about mixing paint.

Counting and Cardinality K.CC.B.5Count to answer “how many?” questions about as many as 20 things
Because the amount of children in the class is 18, this became one of the natural meaningful ways for counting. Children counted how many were there each day and counted off before going inside after recess. Other ways used to count up to 20 were incorporated into the schedule, were to count how many stirs each child got when cooking play-dough or mixing a bubble solution, counting out 20 pieces of trail mix, and counting 20 beads to use in a bubble wand.

 

 

 

 

Copy right 2017 Vera Wiest