January Learning Theme

Hello and happy new year friends! Barnacles and Bees is kicking off 2021 with a great start and we are excited to share our learning theme for the month of January.
This month we are focusing on different animal senses. Last week we talked a lot about the sense of touch; how animals like raccoons, for instance, depend heavily on their sense of touch to move about the world. We also learned that raccoons in particular have such an acute sense of touch because they keep their hands wet. The moisture on their hands allows them to feel objects with more sensitivity. We did an activity where we had the kids close their eyes and try to guess the objects they were holding. We asked them to use descriptive words and use those clues to determine what they were touching. They had a great time pretending to be raccoons and enjoyed learning about how the five senses all serve a purpose in nature. 

This week our focus is sight. We will be talking specifically about wind and the winter sky. Wind offers an abundance of observation opportunities for us to work on using our sight. We will be talking about how to use our sight for safety purposes as well; looking for fallen branches, talking about the causes, and how animals keep themselves safe too. This a great opportunity to include a safety reminder for the kids, while also having them use their observation and listening skill. 
Another fun activity we have planned for sight  is hiding wind chimes throughout the learning area for the kids to find. Once they find the hidden objects, we will have a discussion about what wind is, and how we can notice it in different ways while in the outdoors. We’ll have the kids talk about what it looks like when the wind is calm, and when it is strongest. We’ve made a wind scale for the kids to look at ranging from calm, to hurricane, and have a scientific discussion planned as well. We are excited to see how the kids react to this theme after responding so well last week. 
It’s important to Barnacles and Bees that kids are not only in touch with nature, but also with themselves. These types of learning activities help introduce the elements of the outdoors while having to use observational and listening skills at the same time. This following poem about wind, written by Christina Rossetti, is one we plan to share with the kids this upcoming week. We hope you enjoy it too!