Why is the brain soft?

As we entered the classroom we noticed a lot of decorations filling the ceilings and the walls. “That” time of year has come and we can tell that all of our friends were excited for it! We were also looking forward to another thrilling day at school! We had our usual morning routines with a series of activities and crafts. As we packed away, our teachers noticed some of our toys were broken. Our teachers sat with us to talk about what had happened.

Nimo: What do you think the word “fix” means?

A: You have to make something

Ad: We use tools to fix the if it is broken

Ak: If something is broken we need to fix it

Y: If it’s not broken then we don’t need to fix

Nimo: What do these broken toys tell me?

T:No gentle hands

K: Not playing nicely

We then talked about how toys have a way of playing with them, for example we shouldn’t play dodge ball with legos because it can be dangerous and for the same reason, we shouldn’t throw sticks at people. We can be creative with our play, however we have to make sure it is not only safe for us, but for everyone else nearby.

Ke: If someone brings a toy that is dangerous, mommy tell the children to play it safely

Kn: Don’t break the sticks

L: If we play with the toys, we don’t throw

Ak: If we don’t break things, teachers don’t need to fix, and that’s one job teachers don’t need to do.

K: We also have to be safe with Candy

We all got ready to head off to the park, but right when we stepped outside, it started to rain! It was cold today so we didn’t want to risk getting sick, so we headed back to the classroom to have an early snack. After our snacks we had music time! Today Maryna is out so we didn’t have Ballet class, so instead we had Nimo’s Music class! We sang a few Halloween songs, and we arranged our Hello song into a Halloween version and asked our friends what they would like to be for the spooky day.

Ak: My one starts with “S” he’s an animal, not a person and he’s blue and black.

We all tried our best to guess but we couldn’t think of a blue and black animal that started with “s”. Nimo got it when Ak gave us one more hint, it starts with “Sti…” the answer was Stitch!

Ak: Who wants to be Stitch too!? My mommy find on Amazon so you can be stitch with me!

Ad: I’m going to be the flash
Kn: Oh, I know! He very very fast ninja!

L: I want to be Red Ninja, and Taiga is Black Ninja

Y: Superhero, but I don’t know the name

Ka: Usagi Keisatsukan, in English it’s… Bunny Police Officer. She’s from Zootopia

Kn: I watch Zootopia all the time!

R: A police car and a fire truck

Ki: An Elephant, I also have a witch

M: Ninja, A Red Ninja!

Kn: Mine starts with “g”, and he walks like this

Ka: Grandpa!

Kn: Yes!

C: Mine starts with “t”

Ki: A dinosaur?

Ka: T-rex

A: Triceratops!

C: Yes, a triceratops!

Ke: It starts with “s” and another one is “f”

Kn: Superman?

Ke: yes

Ka: Fireman!

Ke: Pinpon!

T: It starts with “Prin….”

Flowers: Princess!

T: Yup! I’m going to be Snow White!

A: I’m still thinking

For our next activity, we read a little bit of Dr. Suess’ Cat in the Hat as we talked about rhymes. As Nimo read the book we listened closely to words that rhymed. Our favorite song this week was, “Down By The Bay” and so Nimo wanted to practice rhyming a little bit.

For our dancing time Nimo played Papurika on his Ukulele and we danced to the music, but when the music stopped we had to freeze. We wanted to see how many friends could make it to the end! We love freeze dance so much we ended up playing the game three times before we got back together for circle time. We did a short meditation session to calm down and we began with our Question of the Day. R volunteered to read the Question of the Day with a little help from his friend C. R did a great job and read the Question out loud which was, “Is your Brain red?”. Nimo first grabbed the friends name plates who said yes and put them into his jacket and pulled out a random name. He then asked this friend why they thought the brain was red.

Ke: Because there is a lot of blood inside.

L: I think it’s red, so the brain is red

T: Because it’s too much blood inside

 Nimo did the same for “no”, and asked them what color they thought the brain was and why.

 Kn: White, because… *shrug*

Ki: Blue because it’s old

Ka: Pink because it looks like a maze

Ad: Pink because our brain used to be pink, it’s gonna be pink forever

Y: Pink *shrug*

C: Gray because everyone’s brain used to be gray

We all took a look at a picture of a real brain on the Ipad.

Ak: It’s silver color!

A lot of us turned away as the real brain looked a bit scary.

Nimo wanted to talk about a wonder that C had on Tuesday which was, Why is the brain soft, and not hard.

Nimo: How soft do you think the brain is?
Ke: Like raw meat

Ka: Soft Ice Cream

Ak: Bread
Y: Jelly

A: Soft like a cloud!

Nimo: What protects the brain?

Ke: The skeleton

Y: The skull

Nimo: Why do you think the brain is soft. If it’s so important why isn’t it hard like rocks?

A: If something happens to our brain, it will miss it’s job

Y: The brain gets squashed, we might die.

Ka: If it’s hard we cannot think

Ak: I think so too

Nimo showed us a small experiment that might give us a clue on why the brain needs to be soft. He got two containers, one hard container and one soft container. Nimo also had a jar full of bouncy balls which represented things we learned. Everyday we learn so much and so inside our containers, balls were being added. The hard container got full very quickly and we didn’t know what we could do. If that was our brain, we can’t just go and get a new one. The soft one however, expanded as more knowledge got added into our brain. It kept getting bigger and bigger. Our brains need to be soft because it’s always changing and getting bigger!

We never have enough time in the day, before we knew it, we were already at the time we would be finishing up our lunch. We played one last brain game before lunch. It was the memory game, but just with the name plates. We had to memorize who’s name was in the pile and Nimo took one name and we had to guess who was missing.

And just like that our last full day for the week was finished. Tomorrow is a half day so we can only stay until 12pm, and starting next Monday is Fall Break for a week!

Hope everyone has a lovely evening and we will see you again tomorrow!

Love,

Flowers