The snowy month of January provided the opportunity for many fun indoor activities for the three-to-five-year-old group. Baking chocolate chip, cookies proved to be a very enjoyable as well as educational experience. Each child was given a part in the preparation of the cookies which were later eaten for the morning snack. Making snow ice cream was also a fun activity.
Before Christmas Paulette Peterson and Martha McNamara had begun a unit on the five senses. In January the focus was on the sense of hearing. A soundmaker game was played to help to discriminate different sounds. The sound makers included a mariachi, tamborine, xylophone, telephone, cash register, keys, wooden sticks, water pouring and paper crumpling and tearing. The children were taken to a darken room and then asked to sit quietly to listen to the sound makers and then asked to guess what sound they had heard. A flashlight was shown on the ones who had their hands up to guess. The game proved to be a fun way to learn to “listen.”
Bernadette Magrath brought her Hermit crabs to school to visit for awhile. The children have had fun feeding, holding and watching them crawl in and out of their shells.
Potato printmaking and drawing on foil turned out to be very popular art activities.
A trip is planned in mid-February to go to the Planetarium — weather providing.
Originally published in The Paper, March 1977.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Archival transcription note: Printed mariachi, tamborine and darken room retained; no instrument inferred.
Original source: SD_Times1977_03.pdf, printed page(s) 7; PDF page(s) 7.
