Breathing the Air...

On Friday our Mother Goose lesson was all about breathing in the air...

The kids started out the morning working on the page labeled with the word "grass" in their Nature Collection book.  

"After winter the grass in brown."

The kids wrote the uppercase alphabet on flowers in their literacy workbook...

They also cut and pasted flowers according to the positional words and directions given in their math workbook...

During circle time the kids searched the theme poster for items that are living.  We discussed if every living thing needs clean air to breathe or not.

The kids took a big deep breath after each verse in the song "Big Deep Breath" from our Nature Detectives CD.

Mother Goose provided us with this science experiment card.  I asked the kids if they thought air weighs anything.  They all responded with "no."

First we hung two fully inflated balloons from each end of a hanger.  We could see that the hanger was balanced, so each balloon weighed the same amount.

Next we hung one deflated balloon, and one inflated balloon from each end of the hanger.  The kids were amazed as when they could visually how air actually does have weight!

Next, we were excited to see a butterfly had emerged from its chrysalis over the night!  What perfect timing, being that we had just learned about things that fly in the air!

The kids were concerned with the red fluid that was released from the chrysalis.  They thought it was blood.  I informed them that this was meconium...it is perfectly normal for a butterfly to expel this fluid when it is emerging from its chrysalis.

We fed the butterfly some sugar water in the morning, but then decided to release it in the backyard.  I really would have felt bad to hold on to it for a few days...I definitely did not want a dead butterfly on our hands.  The kids named it "Sprinkles" and then said their goodbyes.

Sprinkles flew high up into the trees right away!

Next we did some exercises and then running races...

I asked the kids to feel their breath after we completed our exercises.  They could tell their breathing changed quite a bit.  We concentrated on taking deep relaxing breaths to help us calm down our breathing.

Next, Mother Goose provided us with this "Air Detective" sheet.  We used our five senses to explore the air around us...

Listening to the air.  We could hear the rustling of the leaves in the trees!

We could see the leaves moving from the wind!

We used our sense of smell to smell the air.  The air didn't have much of a scent, so I encouraged the kids to smell the flowers instead.

Some of the kids thought certain flowers were stinky!

Not much to taste, but we tried.  Ha!

Mother Goose provided us with these small cinch bags for the kids to make an air freshener/potpourri bag with items from nature.  I honestly thought the kids would not like this project very much, but they LOOOOOOVED it!  The kids were SO EXCITED about these little bags!  It made me so happy!  Nearly all the kids were so excited to show their parents at pick up time!

I allowed the kids to pick some flower petals for their potpourri bags...

It is exciting to find new treasures in the yard.  J found a half eaten walnut leftover from a squirrel.

Mmmmm!  Smells refreshing!

These were our books for the day.