Little Miss Muffet

Little Miss Muffett
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey; Along came a spider,
Who sat down beside her And frightened Miss Muffet away.

To start our Halloween week off we opened a unit on spiders !   There are so many nursery rhymes and stories about spiders.  Today we started with Little Miss Muffet. What exactly are curds and whey ?  Lets do a science experience to find out.

▪   1. Add 4 teaspoons of white vinegar to one and half cups of skimmed milk.

▪   2.Microwave the mixture for about a minute/ or heat over a stove to warm.

▪   3. After a minute, the milk and vinegar will be separated into a liquid part (the whey) and the solid part (the curd)

▪   4. Now, when you stir the milk, the solids become a “blobs.”

5. Strain the liquid off, you squeeze the blobs into one big lump. Squeeze out all the left over liquid.

Here’s what happened to the milk. By adding the vinegar, you have created a chemical reaction which caused the milk to separate into two parts, a solid-the curds-and a liquid-the whey.The protein in the curds is what makes it act like rubber. A really simple experiment that gives you something very touchy and feely to do. It also makes a great sensory tool for little ones to play with.

Well.. who knew ?  🙂

After the science experience and the  repeating the rhyme a few times I looked downstairs to see my friends acting out the nursery rhyme.  This little tiny snippet of fun tells me so much about their development. They are retelling stories, putting events in sequential order, role playing, taking turns , someone is being a leader and helping figure out who is doing what , they are processing what emotions might be felt if a spider was to walk up and sit beside you.

On the table today were a few new things.

A Halloween themed sensory tub and a

A game to play with numbers

Speaking of numbers we also made a graph and compared who is afraid of spiders and who is not.

We read one of my favorite books for the Halloween season today.

There was also a literacy game on the table where the children could match the letters in the word pumpkin.