Green eggs and pink eggs in Petals Class

Today was an egg day. You may wonder “What is an egg day?” Well it is a day when you look at eggs, touch eggs, compare them, empty them, read about them, examine them and eat them. When we arrived at school this morning, we saw two bowls on one of the tables, filled with a yellow liquid. Some of us recognized that it was egg. We sat together at the table and looked at some eggs. We held one egg in one hand that had a small hole in the top and the bottom; and in the other hand we held one without any holes. Shelley asked us if they felt the same or different. We thought that they felt different and we explained it by using the words cold and warm. The one egg felt cold and the one felt warm. Shelley herself wanted to understand what we were talking about and she held them too.

   Her feeling was the same. She realised that the one with the holes in it felt warm and the other one, felt cold. She knew that one of them had egg inside and the other one was empty. The empty one felt warm and the one with egg inside felt cold. We didn’t know that one was empty and one had egg inside it.

We looked at a really large egg too. When comparing these two, we realised that one was large and the other one was small. Meg told us that inside the egg, there was the white and the yellow was the yolk. We couldn’t think about what there really was inside an egg other than the egg that we eat viz. scrambled, omelette or fried, which we mentioned to our friends and teachers. We looked at a book about eggs and learnt that chickens come from eggs. And in fact, there are many other animals that hatch from eggs e. g. snakes, crocodiles, turtles, frogs, butterflies, birds and even creatures that live in the sea.

We looked at delicate eggs that were covered in tissue paper and decorated with jewels and bows. We knew that these were Easter Eggs which is why we are focusing on eggs, at this time. We are also going to learn about new beginnings, which relates to our conversation about which animals hatch from eggs but for the following week, we will be doing preparations for Easter. We will try to include all of our thoughts about eggs next week while preparing for Easter.

       So, there were two bowls of egg mixture on the table and what were we going to do with them. How about reading a book and then we can decide what we would like to do with them. The book was called “Green Eggs and Ham” and it was about Sam, who was adamant that he did not like green eggs and ham, even though he had not tasted them. He said that he didn’t like them anywhere! After refusing to try them in a house, with a mouse he eventually capitulated and said he’d try them.

What a surprise he got, and so did we! He really liked green eggs and ham and so it was natural for us to ask our teachers to make the eggs green. Some of us said that we didn’t like green eggs (like Sam did in the beginning) so we kept one bowl with the original mixture which was bright yellow. We added green food colouring to the mixture and it really turned green. Before we cooked it, we cooked some    pieces of ham. The ham popped in the pan and we waited excitedly for the eggs to be ready. A few of our friends said that they didn’t want to eat green eggs and there were more than enough of us who liked them, so we didn’t have to worry about their being left overs. Meg then suggested that we make the second mixture pink and this appealed to some friends who didn’t want to eat the green eggs. They loved the pink eggs and ham. It was a great morning, filled with us seeing how you can change the colour of food and yet, it tastes the same; experimenting with getting the egg mixture out of an egg without cracking the egg; comparing eggs that are full with eggs that are empty; watching ham pop in a pan; seeing different coloured eggs and different sized eggs that different animals hatch from; learning that a mummy chicken carries the baby inside an egg, in her body; realizing that large creatures hatch from large eggs and small creatures hatch from small eggs……….this is a really fun learning time for us. Our teachers thought that we wouldn’t eat our lunch because we ate so much green and pink eggs and ham, but we all had pretty, large appetites at lunch time.

   We had a visitor come to school today from Korea. Ethan and his parents, Martin and Anita Biswurm, came to visit Shelley because she taught Ethan when he was three years old, just like most of us are. He is now 16 years old and is so tall. It was fun to welcome him and his parents to Petals Class and to listen to his fun story called “Bossy Baby”. He read the story on his iPad not from an actual book. We asked him where he lives and where he got the story from and we also told him some things about us e. g. our names and where we come from. Shelley said that one day when we are 16 years old, we can come back and say hello to her. Ethan said that Shelley looked smaller than when he was in her class; that’s because he grew bigger and she stayed the same!

Hisami played the piano and we sang “It’s a small world after all”, “The wheels on the bus” and “Do, re mi”. We played a matching with pictures from nature which included plants, flowers, fruit, vegetables and insects. We revisited our cherry blossom drawings and Hisami asked us if we wanted to add anything to our original drawings. Meg wanted to add yellow for the stamens and many of us wanted to do a whole new drawing; and so, we did. Thanks for a fabulous morning and have a wonderful weekend enjoying the last of the cherry blossoms.

Love, all the little eggs in Petals Class.