Summer is coming, we finally got the chance to do the theme of ice cream, which had been requested by our children since the Christmas. I promised our children I'd buy a ice cream maker and produce our own ice cream at our daycare.
make real (very real) ice cream
Our ice cream recipe was super simple, only 6 ingredients (egg yolks, heavy cream, milk, sugar, salt and vanilla extract). When I read the nutrition fact labeled on the store-bought ice creams I was surprised how many ingredients in there and at least the half of the ingredients I even could not pronounce.
counting eggs -- a math game before we started
separating egg yolks from the whites
separating egg yolks from the whites
slowly churning the ice cream in the maker
It was too soft to serve once the ice cream was churned in the ice cream maker, I did not know about this. Our children were a little disappointed for they could not have their ice cream on the same day after putting so much work into it.
ice cream is done (not ready to serve yet)
Transferring the ice cream into the containers and freeze
Each child had a ice cream like this on the next day before they went home with parents. What a moment to see those happy little faces glowing with excitement and satisfaction !!
I had one myself, it was heavenly.... so creamy and so real......I probably will not buy any more ice cream this Summer.
final product (with chocolate syrup and waffle cone)
making a pom pom ice cream
We made pom ice cream together on Friday. We had our children use the alphabet sticker to spell out their first name on the "cone".
Sometimes it is not easy to have those energetic little ones move from one activity to another smoothly. Here is a good idea to draw their attention: use colorful stamps to do finger arts. With teacher's help and children's imagination, we can together create a lot of good things.
Spelling the child's own first names is an important skill he/she needs to master before kindergarten. We played a small game this week to exercise this skill. We let children used the alphabet stamps to copy the their names printed on the paper and then decorated the paper with their favorite stickers.
There is a simple science behind this project. The sound vibrates the string and the wave is transferred to the other side of the phone. As the sound travels through the string, it becomes different from what we hear from each other through the air. Our children love this "distorted" sound and think it is fun.
This week our theme is train. We do not use train often nowadays, but it was the most important transportation tool in last two centuries. During the height of the industry, commonly referred to as the "Golden
Age" from the late 19th century through the 1920s there were more than
254,000 miles of railroad in service. Sadly, as the 20th century
progressed rail began to lose its luster.
Children are always attracted to trains and railroads for the power, the movement and the sound. We set up a train set of Thomas and friends this week, our children learned to play with it very fast. The large train set is wonderful for group play.
About 6 weeks ago, we bought five caterpillars from internet. They came with a jar and looked tiny. They moved around in the jar and became bigger and bigger. After a long cocoon stage (about 12 days), they all turned into beautiful butterflies. We fed them with sugar water and made them a flower bed on the bottom of the container. We wanted to keep those butterflies but their lives only last for 2-3 weeks so we released them this week at our backyard.Our children were very excited to observe the life cycle of real butterflies
We read the story " the crow and the water jug (乌鸦喝水)" together this week. Our children loves this story and had me read many times. So I decided to do an experiment to visualize this story. In this experiment, each child was given 8-10 little rocks to put into the water jug, they kept adding rocks one by one until the water reached the top of the jug. It was really fun and an good opportunity for our children to learn to wait and take turns.
Fine motor skills are the coordination
of small muscle movements which occur e.g., in the fingers, wrists and hands, usually in
coordination with the eyes and are controlled by central nerves. In our program, we incorporate many activities that build toddlers' fine motor skills and help encourage them to develop new ones.
This week we did stringing, a fun activity for children to exercise their fine motor skills. We provide younger children with bigger string blocks. For older children (>2.5y), we gave them colorful beads to string necklaces and bracelets. Every child brought home a hand made necklace for Mom.
This week was very special. We were together to celebrate the Mother's day of this year.
(My Mom is in China right now, I need to remember to give her a call after I finish blogging. There is a quote I love the most about Mom: "Mom is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnecessary." I want to thank my Mom for helping me become an independent woman. She is the excellent role model for me to learn about being responsible, caring, honest and hard-working. Those are the values I will definitely pass on to my own daughter. I wish my Mom good health and wish one day my daughter will tell me I am a good mother too.)
This was probably the first year for most of children in our group to understand there would be a special day for Mom and we would show our love and appreciation to Mom on that day. We had a group discussion about "Where did you come from?" Some kids said they were from Mom, one said he was from Dad, one said he was from both. Very cute answers.
We had children decorate a picture frame with paint and glitter, then put in one of their best photos we took at our daycare, and finished it with a pink heart saying" I love my Mom 2012", which made it a perfect gift for Mom on the Mother's Day.
Our project of this week is to glue a pink pig on a stock paper. Look the different versions our children created. ( Can you believe they are just 2-3 toddlers)
Children like to learn about things around us, such as houses and buildings. They wonder how things being built up and what we call each part of a building, e.g. window, door, roof...They just have so many questions for us...
This week our theme was Construction. First we read the story "the Three Little Pigs". Our children learned there were some materials that are more suitable for buildings, e.g. bricks, rocks... I prepared some building materials for our children to feel and touch, let them discuss which one is stronger and more durable...
I demonstrated a drawing of a simple house and a pink pig to our children and had them name each part of the house while I was drawing.
We also read a simple blueprint together, we worked together to find the doors, windows, attics, etc. on the blueprint.
To understand how buildings being structured, we used spaghetti and marshmallow to make a building together.
We watched a short video on youtube, a musical version of "the Three Little Pigs", very fun and comical.
