The SEE Cafe is Open for Business!

We had such a fun filled week! The classroom was transformed into a cafe complete with cooking station, server station, and fancy tables for our restaurant. Before the cafe opened, we had to "train our staff." We talked about who works in a restaurant and what their role is. The children also practiced walking with a tray - slow and steady!

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the fun really began! The teachers cooked up the most delicious waffles and the children took turns being the server. The guests were given a choice of waffles with blueberries, strawberries and/or whipped cream.  On their order sheets, the servers checked off what their guest ordered and prepared the correct order before bringing it out to the table.  The children were absolutely adorable and took their job very seriously! 

After the excitement of the cafe was over, the children were presented with different foods that look the same but are very different. For example, sugar vs. salt and lemon applesauce vs. regular applesauce.  First up was sugar vs. salt. The children were encouraged to use their senses to try and figure out which was which.  The children determined that it looked the same, felt the same and smelled the same. When it was shaken, the children reported that they both sounded like maracas! So our final sense, taste, was used to solve the mystery. Sure enough, our sense of taste was our most useful sense in helping us figure out which was which.  Again, our senses were helpful in helping us figure out which apple sauce was sour and which was sweet. Just like before, our sense of taste was the most useful!

To wrap up the week, the children made ice cream using some very simple ingredients: whole milk, vanilla and sugar plus ice and salt to make the magic happen (aka the chemical reaction!). To practice their new recipe following skills, the children first gathered all of the utensils (measuring cup, 2 ziplock bags), then all of their ingredients and finally, their recipe.  After the ingredients were added to a ziplock bag, the ice and salt were added to the second ziplock.  The ingredients bag was sealed and placed inside the ice "bath." Next step: shake, shake, shake and shake until you can't feel your hands any more (the teachers took over when it got too cold using oven mitts to complete the chilly process - perfect for a snowy morning). Final step: test your creation! It was a big hit in the classroom!

Home Extension Activity:

If you didn't have a chance to visit a restaurant, now is a great time to do so! Your child will be able to see a real restaurant in motion and he/she will be able to place an order with the practice they're had! Also, if you find yourself snowed in tomorrow, why not mix up a batch of vanilla ice cream?! You can also use cream, instead of whole milk, to make an even yummier creation. You can also mix in your toppings before you shake it all up! Yum!

Upcoming Dates and Reminders:

April 3: April Tuition is due

April 17-21: SEE closed for Spring Break
April 25 & 26: School picture days! Stay tuned for more info!

Pictures from the Week:

Cookin' up some yummy waffles!

Coffee beans were added to the sensory table to make the classroom smell like a real cafe!

Taking an order!

Explaining all of the waffle options

And the ice cream taste test! Everyone agreed it was yummy!

Have a great weekend!
Stay warm and enjoy the last bit of snow that's on its way!
Joanna

Bread Week!

This week was all about bread! The children were also introduced to more kitchen tools and the baking process. The kiddos were cooking up pizzas in the pizza oven and also using it as an oven for cookies, muffins and cakes. Yum! The children enjoyed using the chef hat, oven mitts, aprons and kitchen timer while baking their favorite treats! The timer was a big hit!

Bread week began with explorations of different types of grains. Mrs. M brought in her kitchen grinder and the children had an opportunity to grind up wheat.  The children also got to look at, feel and smell wheat flour, rice flour and oats as they compared the different types of grains that created each flour. When asked about their bread knowledge, the children could easily name different types of bread while some of the children associated bread with meals. For example, one kiddo called out, "spaghetti and meatballs!"

Later in the week, the teachers whipped out the bread maker and made a very yummy loaf of cinnamon raisin bread. The children enjoyed the bread for snack on Thursday. While making our second loaf of bread, we discovered that baking, unlike cooking, is a science. If you don't measure ingredients just right, your recipe will not turn out right. Which is what we discovered when we forgot to add sugar to our bread recipe (it definitely wasn't as full and puffy as our first batch on Wednesday!). But we still gave it a try and it wasn't so bad!

This brought us to our experiment with yeast.  Did you know that it's the yeast that causes bread to not only to rise but it also gives bread those teeny tiny bubbles? To sum it up, yeast "eats" sugar which gives it energy to bubble. By mixing dry yeast, warm water and sugar together, we created, "activated yeast." If you add activated yeast to your bread recipe, the yeast begins to bubble which creates those tiny bubbles inside of a loaf of bread, equaling a bigger, fluffier loaf of bread!  To make a long story short, the children got to observe activated yeast and watched the bubbles form. But the bubbles didn't begin until we added the very important ingredient: sugar!

Finally, the children ended the week with a bread taste test. Everyone got to try cinnamon raisin bread, matzo - a flat bread similar to a thin cracker, Naan - an indian bread which is mainly flat but slightly puffy and a sandwich wrap - flat like matzo but flexible. The favorite of the class was the cinnamon raisin bread with matzo as the close second! Who knew bread came in so many different forms?!

What's up Next?
Bread week snuck in before we turned the classroom into a cafe! Next week, the classroom will undergo a transformation into a cafe for the children to prep, cook, and serve their cafe guests.  Stay tuned for all of the fun!


Home Extension Activity:

Since our classroom will be turned into a cafe next week, consider taking your child out to a restaurant or cafe to see how a restaurant runs.  Who do you see working in the restaurant? Who cooks? Who serves the food? Who takes the money? What does the menu look like? What types of food do they serve? You child will be ready to run our classroom cafe with their new knowledge!

Upcoming Dates and Reminders:

April 3: April Tuition is due

April 17-21: SEE closed for Spring Break
April 25 & 26: School picture days! Stay tuned for more info!

Pictures from the Week:

Baking pizzas in the pizza oven!

Watching the bread maker spin the ingredients together!

Have a great weekend everyone!
Joanna

Is Flour a Solid or Liquid?

Asking whether or not flour is a solid or liquid sounds like a very silly question! But when you think about it, flour can also take the shape of the container it is in and it can be poured! So doesn't that mean that flour is a liquid? As you suspected, nope! Although flour can be poured and takes the shape of a container you put it in, flour is in fact a solid.  Flour is a powdered version of it's original state, raw grains. It was fun to engage the children in this conversation because they all knew that flour and liquids (aka water) are very different yet they act similar. After some testing, the children confirmed that flour and water are very different!  This was also a lesson on volume and measurement. 

This week kicked off our bakery science unit.  The classroom has been transformed in a bakery with a prep station and waffle station. The preparation station is home to cookie, pie and cupcake making. The waffle station is full of authentic ingredients for children to make pretend waffles with. The children learned about the different tools that are used in a bakery and different types of ingredients used to make yummy treats. 

To wrap up the week, Ms. Tiffany presented the children with sandwich ingredients and asked the children to give her step-by-step directions on how to make a jelly and fluff sandwich.  First, the children told Ms. Tiffany to put the jelly on the bread, so as told, she took the jelly jar and put it on the bread. The children got a huge kick out of it before they brainstormed how to give Ms. Tiffany the right directions to make the sandwich correctly. After, the children were invited to the snack table to make their own jelly and fluff sandwiches.  Everyone enjoyed the yummy snack!

What's up Next?
Next week, the classroom will undergo another transformation into a cafe for the children to prep, cook, and serve their cafe guests.  Stay tuned for all of the fun!

Upcoming Dates and Reminders:

April 3: April Tuition is due
April 17-21: SEE closed for Spring Break
April 25 & 26: School picture days! Stay tuned for more info!

 Pictures from the week: 

Rolling dough and making cookies in the prep station!

Making yummy jelly and fluff sandwiches for snack on Friday

What's more fun than mashing fruit loops to
make a colorful rainbow for St. Patrick's Day?!

Decorating aprons to wear while baking in the prep station!

Waffles anyone??

Whipping up a cherry and blueberry pie!

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone! Have a great weekend!
Joanna

We Think Robots Are Pretty Cool, But How Do They Work?

This week wrapped up our studies on robots. The children enjoyed learning more about their parts including gears and sensors.  To kick off the week, the children created mazes for the hex bugs.  The hex bugs were named "Ducky" and "Branch" and the children had a blast cheering them on. We learned that hex bugs figure out where they are going by using sensors to find their way.  The hex bugs were also used to create "cup-bots" that worked to make art.  After the cup bots were created, they were set loose on a large piece of art paper to create robot art. 

The children were also introduced to gears. We had lots of gears available to the children to explore and create with.  While teaching the children about gears, we explained that the interlocking teeth of the gears are similar to the joints in our body and they help the robot move. We worked together to build a little robot to demonstrate how robots use gears to move. 

In addition to all of the cool explorations we did this week, it just so happens that one of the parents of our school is a robot engineer! He sent his daughter to school with a robot arm and hand to show the children what real life robot parts look like. The two parts were created with a 3D printer and the children were nothing short of amazed! Thank you for sharing your cool jobs with us! 

We ended our week with a robot dance party with Ms. Melissa! We moved and grooved like robots to the song, "I like to move it, move it!" Ask your kiddo if they can recreate any of the super cool robot dance moves!

What's up Next?
Onto our next curriculum unit, bakery science! The children will be introduced to kitchen "tools" including a rolling pin, whisk, spatula and measuring cups.  We will discuss what these tools are used for and how we use them.  We will begin to create our "preparation station" for all of the baking fun that's soon to come!

Upcoming Dates and Reminders:

March 12: Cookie Decorating at Whole Foods!
April 3: April Tuition is due
April 17-21: SEE closed for Spring Break
April 25 & 26: School picture days! Stay tuned for more info!

Pictures from the week: 

Building robots in the creation station!

More creations!

This robot was used to give an example of
how a robot uses gears to move

Cup-bots! They moved using the power of the hex bugs!

Go Ducky, go!

More maze building!

Exploring with gears

I hope everyone enjoyed the robot unit! Have a great weekend!
Joanna

More Robots, Piet Mondrian and a Dr. Seuss Celebration!

This was our busiest week yet!  The children began planning and building their robots, were introduced to a new artist of the month and spent two days celebrating Dr. Seuss! Phew! I can't believe it's Friday already!

We kicked off the week planning how we are going to build our robots.  The children were invited to the "planning station" in small groups to begin the planning process.  Once the children drew their robot and planned how it was going to be made, off to the "creation station" they went! The robots are beginning to take form however, we still need another week of building!

On Wednesday, the children were introduced to the new artist of the month, Piet Mondrian, a Dutch painter from the Netherlands who is best known for his distant paintings of sharp, exact lines and bold primary colors. Although Mondrian's line's were very exact, the preschoolers were able to recreate his piece, "Tableau 2" (1922) using colored squares of paper. The children were focused as they carefully chose shapes to fit on there black rectangular piece of paper. We should be completing our art soon and when complete, we will hang them on the classroom bulletin board for all to see. 

Lastly, Dr. Seuss' (and our friend Dominic, too!) birthday was on Thursday, March 2nd! We celebrated on Thursday and Friday with lots of silly rhyming, Cat in the Hat hats, colorful beans in the sensory table and lots of Dr. Seuss read alouds! 

If you would like to continue the Dr. Seuss celebrations, Diamond Middle School in Lexington (right up the street from SEE) is preforming Seussical the Musical, Jr. this weekend.  There are still ticket's available for the Sunday matinee show at 11am.  I am sure the children will be happy to see this silly show! Definitely worth checking out!

What's up Next?
We will pick back up with robot planning and building next week! We will also study what is inside of a robot's body, aka "the parts." Stay tuned for pictures of the the children's robots!

Upcoming Dates and Reminders:

March 5: Seussical the Musical, Jr. at Diamond Middle School
March 12: Rescheduled Cookie Decorating at Whole Foods!
April 3: April Tuition is due
April 17-21: SEE closed for Spring Break
April 25 & 26: School picture days! Stay tuned for more info!

Pictures from the week: 

Colorful Dr. Seuss inspired sensory table with beans!

A Piet Mondrian original

The pre-K completed their class book inspired by the story,
"Not a Stick" by Antoinette Portis

Art in action!

Silly rhyming words

Sorting robots by size

The Cat in the Hat would be proud!

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!
Joanna