Ruth Ann's Class Blog

Let me begin by apologizing for the lack of a post on Thursday and Friday. I did post on Friday but it seems that once again the Twilight Zone has claimed a victim! I'll try to recap it. On Thursday we finished dying cloth with strawberries. On Wednesday we cut berries and placed them in old hose. First thing Thursday morning we removed the berry hose and heated the "strawberry soup". We added a large amount of salt to help set the color and let the mixture to cook. About 11:00 we decided our mixture was ready, turned off the heat and dipped cloth. We stepped back and watched the magic! We decided to leave the cloth in the mixture overnight to see if the color deepened from light pink to red. It did not. I have 6 magnifying glasses for our detective work. I sliced strawberries in half lengthwise and placed them on plates. Each detective looked at them through their magnifying glass and noted their observations. They observed that each berry had numerous spots in colors of light brown and green. Some berries had dents and the spots around those dents were smaller. They also observed that leaking juice was red, not pink and each of the berries had green leaves still attached. I told them the spots were the strawberry's seeds and because they were on the outside of the berry, it is not technically a fruit. Fruits have their seeds inside. Our last activity Thursday was to paint strawberry pictures. Anyone who knows me knows there is always a twist. I added strawberry scented soap to the paint which thrilled the class. Supposedly the dry paint would become scratch and sniff. Friday morning told me the children needed to apply the paint thicker to achieve the scratch and sniff effect. I don't really have the class until after fruit break on Fridays so we chose to make our freezer jam for our class activity. We followed a no cook recipe I found online. The children had to mash and measure strawberries. They then had to measure sugar and stir it in with the berries. Fruit pectin was boiled in water for 1 minute and added to the berries and sugar. They were supposed to stir until the sugar lost its grainy texture but I don't think that completely happened. My disclaimer is that I will only guarantee a lovely color in your child's jam. Texture and flavor are a "wait and see" situation. If you haven't already, put your child's jam in the freezer. Wait a few weeks and then give it a try. Today the children did add more paint to their strawberry pictures. Time will tell if this technique works. We began a weather unit today to accompany our study of Europe (England, more specifically) which begins later in the week. Temperature and thermometers were the topics today. They children looked at the thermometer located outside our room and then came back in to look at my giant, teacher manipulated one. We discussed how to read one and why there are two sets of numbers on them. The word "mercury" raised many questions and I must say when I finally told them is was an element and that still didn't satisfy their curiosity, I had to resort to the "you'll learn about that later" line. I don't mind going where their questions lead but chemistry might be considered outside the boundaries for teaching preschoolers! We also began working on our Art Festival project. If you should happen to ask for specific details on our project, the children have been instructed to say only "hoops and loops". I will say we still need more t-shirts to complete our work. Prepare yourselves to be amazed.