Thundercake !
It was hard to get out of bed this morning with the gentle sound of the rain hitting the mud kitchen outside our bedroom window. But alas we did and it was a wonderful day.
As the children arrived today there were smiles … those great big smiles were sometimes wearing a raincoat and new rain boots. I have rarely seen a child that wasn’t over the moon for rain gear. I think there’s something magical about rain boots and raincoats. I even told Holly I can remember my yellow raincoat with the blue lining from when I was a pre-teen. I am sure you guys are much too young to remember the famous yellow raincoat but EVERYONE in school had one. If you think about it there is even a certain smell of a raincoat that is unique .
In our family time today we talked about the weather. A couple of the children said they had a hard time sleeping and got scared and moved into mom and dad’s bed. I asked them what they wanted to do for the day. I gave them the option of taking out the Christmas activities we started with yesterday or having some ” rain ” oriented fun. They all chose rain. This is what a child emergent curriculum is. Listening to and watching what the children are interested in and as a teacher finding ways to weave all the little kindergarten readiness skills we look for into what THEY want to do. My mind immediately went to a children’s book called “Thundercake.” It’s about a little girl at her Babushka’s ( grandma’s house ) and a storm is rolling in. The grandma has the little girl so busy gathering the ingredients for a “thunder cake” that she doesn’t have time to get scared. Grandma also teaches her how to tell how soon the storm will arrive by counting the time between the lightening strike and the roll of thunder. Their goal is to get the ” Thundercake ” made before the storm hit. Spoiler : They did !
At one of our tables I set our different hues of paint colors that you might see during a thunderstorm. We had small bowls of white, black, bright blue, light blue and a medium shade of blue .
We discussed how many of the clouds today were gray but we didn’t have a gray paint. How could we make it ?
” Maybe we can mix them all together .”
” That will make brown yucky.”
” I know .. I know… you can only mix two colors together. Maybe purple and blue .”
With some free exploration the children were able to find the right mixture that made gray.
My goal is always to plan a cooking experience once a week ( thats an indicator of a high quality early learning environment ) and usually they fall on Wednesday . As the children played I thought to myself ” We have thunder but we have no cake. LETS MAKE CAKE ! ” Several of the children joined me in the kitchen to bake a cake. The cabinet just happened to have a tie dye cake so we did a little color mixing again. We measured and counted. We talked about the egg and how we would not be using the yolk of the egg . We worked on being patient and waiting our turn to stir .
And then of course, they ate it.
Since it was raining and the outside play area was soaked we did a little gross motor activity downstairs. KEEP THE CLOUD FROM HITTING THE GROUND ! : )
Days like today I just want to press repeat.