If You Had Animal Feet...
Friday welcomed us with lots of rain. Au asked if he could be the park leader when he was choosing his job. Before the teacher replied, he said, “Oh it’s rainy outside. No park? Yes park? Ah no park!”. Yes, we know how much we love park time, but we cannot have it on a heavy rain like today.
Ch counted our friends when everyone arrived at school and with a surprised face said, “There are only 6 children and 2 teachers today!”. We missed our friends, and we hope to see you all again next week!
For our morning table activities, we worked on adding decorations on our chandelier. We took out some collage materials and foam shapes to decorate tissue rolls. U suggested, “Maybe it’s going to be beautiful if we could hang our pictures below the tissue rolls”. Ch added, “I want to put lots of just sparkles on one tissue roll, and a mix of everything on the other one.” as he decorated two rolls. Au took the empty sheet of foam shapes and wrapped around the tissue roll. He glued some sparkles on it and said, “This is taxi. Beautiful, yeah?”. On the other hand, No was so interested in our crafts that he immediately asked if he could make two. As he finished his two crafts, he asked, “Can I take one home today? I really want to have this at my home. We have 100 tissue rolls at home, but we don’t have these ones (sparkles and buttons)”. When clean up time came, we noticed that we had some sparkles and buttons on the floor. It was a bit a lot to put away, so we all helped by putting away the collage materials and sweeping the floor as well. In a short time, we were able to finish because as U put it, “We did teamwork so we could do a lot of things in a short time!”. We enjoyed playing with dinosaurs, cork blocks, and computer keyboard, too!
STORY TIME (Albert, the Dog Who Liked to Ride in Taxis by Cynthia Zarin)
Just before Vieda read a story, we saw the back cover picture and started sharing our ideas what we thought the story is all about.
U: A wild lion who doesn’t have any friends.
Ch: It’s about a horse.
No: A dog who wanted to see a friend.
Au: This is taxi. This is lion.
U: It’s a wild dog with no family.
Ch: It’s a dog walking on the street.
N: That’s a lot of taxis. (counted) Six!
Ch: Six taxis and there’s six of us, too!
(Albert at the airport)
U: It’s corona.
No: We can stop corona. We can wear a mask.
U: Or we can wash our hands.
K: We can go to another country. Airport
CIRCLE TIME
Last week, we talked about the bottoms of our feet called soles. We were eager to share what we remember from last week.
Ch: These are soles of our feet!
U: This space in our feet.
N: It’s called arch.
U: That’s why we have this on our shoes.
Vieda: Do babies have arches?
K: No because they don’t walk yet. Arches are for walking, running, and jogging.
Ch: You walk a lot; you get bigger arch. Arch also helps us from slipping.
U: Animals have different feet, sharp nails, and different shapes of feet.
Ch: Some walk on one foot. Crows hop and some birds have one foot on the back of their legs.
N: Camels have flat feet, and they walk on the desert.
U: So, they don’t sink in quicksand. It’s sticky and you sink into it. Long time ago, people kill animals and turn them into clothes.
Amazing ideas! It seems like animals’ feet are different because their functions differ as well. Unlike people who have the same number of feet, we are aware that it is not the same with animals. Some animals have different number of toes as well. Before we move on discussing more about the differences of animals’ feet and the reasons behind them, we took a short guessing game.
A short story called What If You Had Animal Feel?! By Sandra Markle, showcased some animals and their incredible feet, and what they do specially for the animals. To make our reading fun, our teachers covered the page that shows the animals, and we were left to see just their feet! After we shared our guesses, we would lift the paper up to see what the animal was. Look at our discoveries!
(1) Kangaroo
Our guesses - (N) “karasu”, (U) wild dark fox, (Christopher) kangaroo, (A) kangaroo
(2) Housefly
(U) spider, (N) eagle, (Aus) “aspookas”, (K) It’s sharp, (Ch) giraffe
(3) Cheetah
(K, Y, Ch, and U) cheetah, (N and Au) jaguar
(4) Gray wolf
(N and U) giraffe, (Ch) hippo, (K) giraffe, (Au) “basco shoes”
We learned some interesting facts about these four animals and their feet, too. Kangaroos’ hind feet are super big which help them to jump around 30 feet in just one hop! To have an idea how long 30 feet is, Nimo and K held a tape measure for 30 feet. Oh my! 30 feet is almost the length of our Flowers’ classroom! That is such a big leap for kangaroos! If we had kangaroo feet, we could reach the tallest shelf in the supermarket super easily!
Just in time for our circle time, we saw a little fly on our ceiling. Its feet are on the ceiling, so it looked upside down, but it was not falling on the floor. We learned that their tiny claws are good for gripping. And its foot pads have gluey substance that makes them stick to where it lands!
And cheetahs’ feet have foot pads, and they are called paws. They are as tough as tire treads which keep them from slipping when they do super fast runs! Their nails are also tough which act like cleats. No wonder, cheetahs run so fast! And if we had cheetah feet, we’d always be on time for buses (and perhaps, train!).
Like cheetahs, gray wolf’s feet are also called paws. Their toes stretch apart that makes its paws bigger as if it is wearing snowshoes because the weight spreads out. Lucky for gray wolf, it can walk on snow on barefoot because its paws do not sink in as deep. Thanks to gray wolf’s paws, running and walking on snow is easier! So, if we had gray wolf feet, we could play in the snow without having to worry about wearing snow boots!
Our hearts pumped with excitement just the thought of having animal feet, even just for a day! Which animal feet would you like to try? Let’s learn more animal feet next week.
Stay safe and dry on this rainy Friday!
See you all next week!
Love,
Flowers