On A Mission to Help Rapunzel

As we were talking about towers, we turned into builders and made our very own towers. For this project, we used popsicle sticks and yoga mat small squares. First, we tried to make a base for our tower and then asked Vieda to glue them together using hot glue. We added more popsicle sticks and was in awe how beautiful it looked like until we tried to make it stand! Oh no, the tower fell! It did not collapse, nor did it stand still. What should we do to make it stand? Vieda told us that we could think of ideas and try them with the tower, which we did. We took some yoga mat squares and glued them on the base and added more until it became stable. Our older friends came up with the idea of copying Tokyo Tower. Some asked Vieda to make slits on the yoga mats to put the sticks through them. They said, “If there’s a hole, our tower will not fall!”. Some of our towers still fell even with the slits so we thought of adding more yoga mats and sticks on the sides and it worked! We glued some sequins on the tower and ta-da --- our beautiful tower! We took them today so, please enjoy looking at them😊

 FREE PLAY ACTIVITIES

            Our hands were full building towers with colorful blocks. We tried to build towers that were as tall as ourselves! Each time our tower became tall, we stood next to it and were so proud that it was almost as tall as us. Our tall tower fell down several times and made a huge sound as the blocks hit the floor. We did not give up and kept on building tall towers. We also had fun hammering blocks with nails on cork boards and completing puzzles.

            After snack time, we had so much fun in water play! Water play gave us a refreshing feeling and prepared us well for our circle time discussion.

 MORNING ASSEMBLY

            We enjoyed another book from our Pete the Cat collection. We read My Four Groovy Buttons and had lots of fun singing and working with numbers! At the end of the book, we all laughed when we heard that all that was left was Pete the Cat’s belly button😊 This led us to an interesting discussion about our belly buttons and how it connected us with our mom when we were in mom’s belly. Ma said, “Oh my mom is pregnant!”. Rh also said, “My mom was pregnant, too!”. L shared that, “My sister come from my mommy’s tummy!”. R was so eager to share that, “There are two ways that babies can be born. One is the doctor can cut up the mom’s belly and another is when the mommy pushes so hard and then the baby comes out from here.” We were so interested in which way we came out from mom’s belly. We want to ask our mom and dad later about it.

            Do you remember the princess that we talked about yesterday? S had so much to share with us when she heard the word, “princess”. She used her hands and arms to share and then she smiled and shook her head when Vieda said, “A tall and short tower?”. R came and we learned that S knew about another princess and a frog prince! A said, “Rapunzel!”. Here are the things we remember about yesterday’s topic:

            Hi: Rapunzel don’t climb on my hair.

            Ad: Because it hurts!
           Vieda: What is our mission?

            Ak: How can we put the princess from the top to bottom without using hair.

            Rl: Chop her hair. Dad said that we can chop her hair then use the remaining hair to climb. She becomes bald but she can wear a wig.

  Amazing ideas! We continued sharing our ideas about our helping Rapunzel come out of the tower. Just the same with how houses and buildings are built, a person called an architect draws the plan before the builder build it.

            Vieda showed us a real blueprint of an apartment building. We were surprised to see lots of lines and numbers on it. We could not understand what they meant, but we realized that drawing a plan before building something is very important.

            So, we divided the class into 3 groups and started brainstorming to make our mission possible!

 GROUP ACTIVITY

 Group 1 (A, K, Sa, L, An, Sh, K)

            Our group came up with things to make to help Rapunzel. The suggestions that came up were, make a slide, steps, and a rappelling step (similar to the one that the firefighters use) A said, “This is a slide, and it goes on a hole. If you go inside, it will slide you down to the very bottom”.  Sh talked about the steps and said, “You know firefighters love this thing. You go down with ropes and then step on them”.

 Group 2 (Ra, Rh, A, Y, and Ay)

            We took turns drawing our idea and explained what it was.

            Ra She can jump and grab.

            A: Ladder

            Y: Tower and lamp

            R: Pool and lots of pillows

            R: zipline

            RL: We need something in case she falls.

            Y: sliding on the zip line

 Group 3 ( Ak, M, H, R, Ma and Ky)

            Our group had several ideas and were not able to decide which one to use.

            Ak: We need another tower so we can have an elevator. If there’s no elevator, they can’t go down. I don’t want an escalator because it’s so slow.

            Ky We need a rope.

            Ak: If Rapunzel goes down the rope, she might bump. If she’s tired, she might fall down the rope because she will stop.

            M: My idea is to make an escalator.

            Ky: What about jungle gym. Put the rope in the jungle gym then Rapunzel can go down.

            Ak: Some other people are inside the tower. So, when they get off the elevator, they still know what number they are. These people think that their floor is the toppest. But Rapunzel is on the most top.

            M: I think I can make a mountain next to it so, she can just go down on the mountain.

            Ak: The rope they need to find a thick rope. They will need help to find a thick rope so it’s not good. I think it’s not good.

            H: Rapunzel needs a rope.

            Ak: Rope is super duper hard to find because the rope has to be the thick one and the thick one is hard to find.  It it’s not thick one, the rope might break if Rapunzel gets on it.  What if we put these little things where they can put their hand and feet?

            R: Rope here.

            M: Oh, I know! Let’s make a tunnel inside and look! (put Rapunzel paper model inside the large tube.

            Ak: No! But it’s the case as jumping from the top of the tower!

 Our group will gather again tomorrow and start building the things we talked about today. We can’t wait to pick what kind of structure we will build to make our mission possible😊

 See you all tomorrow!

 Love,

Flowers