What is Melanin?

Happy Monday! We’ve had an amazing day in Flowers class!

MORNING ACTIVITIES

This morning, the sandwich team created a menu sign for their restaurant, which included prices that are quite expensive. We might need to adjust them before opening day so that our customers can afford to come to our shop!

We also tried doing a map puzzle of the United States. It was really difficult with many pieces, so we asked Cameron to help us!

GR’S PARTY

Today was a very special celebration! We asked Gr to get a book for Cameron to read to us while we waited for two special guests to arrive. Gr picked, Guess Who! (It’s a Small World).

After reading, Gr went to the door to check if our guests had arrived, and they had! We knew that they were Gr’s mommy and daddy, but what are their names?

Ei: Ja!

Th: Br!

We thought that we are celebrating Gr’s birthday, but why are we celebrating in March, when his birthday isn’t until April?

Hi: Because he is going to America soon!

Gr confirmed the news that he will be going to America later this month. Upon hearing the news, we had some things we wanted to say to Gr. 

Ve: I love you!

Cl: I love you!

Ta: I love you!

Mi: I’ll miss you from America!

Beatrice: Why are you going to America?

Gr: Because it’s my home!

Mi: Is your home here too?

Gr: Yes!

Vieda: What are you planning to do in America?

Gr: Kindergarten.

Ri: I love you!

Re: I love you!

Gr: Thank you! I love you too!

Gr told us that he’ll be moving to Florida where it is very warm with coconut trees!

All the teachers, including some Petals teachers and Shelley and Maryna all had wonderful things to say about Gr and wished him luck! Ei then presented Gr with a special card full of pictures of the children in our class, so that Gr can remember us!

Next, we celebrated Gr’s birthday by giving him a card and crown, and signing happy birthday to him before he blew out the candles on the cupcake his parents prepared for us!

Gr and his parents prepared a game for us to play! We split into two teams and were challenged with making a H, B, and G out of LEGOs! Each team completed each letter with one team’s letters very neat and straight, while the other team’s were creative and stylish!

After the game, we received a surprise egg with something inside, which we get to take home! We then sat down for our snack and a delicious cupcake from Gr!

What a great party! Thank you, Gr! We will miss you a lot when you leave, but we know that you’ll make many new friends at kindergarten! Let’s treasure the remaining time that we have together and keep making happy memories!

CIRCLE TIME

We had so many friends who brought something to share today!

Cl: This my mommy and me drawing. This is an airplane. This one is going truck. I am driving. This one is Cameron and Axel and Vieda!

Mi: Did your mom help you?

Cl: No.

*

Sh: That’s my police car. We took all one day to make it!

Re: What’s that?

Sh: Lights!

*

Be: Yesterday I was playing with my friend and she gave it to me.

Mi: Is that a toy?

Be: Yes.

*

Th: I bought this lego flashlight!

Ke: How you make it?

Th: I bought it at the LEGO store.

*

Yu: I buy slime.

Gr: Where you get it?

Yu: I got from teacher.

*

Ke: I make this in England.

Where is England?

Ke: Inside England is London.

*

Re: This is yesterday me and El, mommy gift to me for Hinamatsuri.

Hi: Where is El?

Re: Here!

Hi: Is it your house?

Re: It’s my house, table!

Thank you for sharing today, everyone!

QUESTION OF THE DAY

Ei: Do you know what melanin is?

This was a tricky one for us! Most of us thought that the word was melon, which we know about, but we were unsure about melanin. Everyone except for Ei!

Ei: I watched something on my mom’s mobile that told me about melanin. If you have darker skin, that means you have a lot of melanin. If you have less melanin, your skin gets lighter. And animals have melanin too! It can change the color of fur. Melanin gives the zebra stripes and a lion a golden mane!

Wow! Great job Ei! We saw a diagram of our the layers of our skin and the different things going on there! We could see something called a melanocyte, which produces melanin.

Re: Skin looks like a cake!

The layers did look like a cake, but not a particularly yummy cake!

We learned that melanin gives us the color of our skin, hair, and eyes!

We took a look at a chart that showed eye colors brown, green, and blue each with different levels of melanin.

Hi: How about black? Down with more (melanin)?

We decided that black eye color would have even more melanin than brown!

We know now that melanin can affect the color of something from light to dark, but how can we explain the blue and green eyes? We were asked to think of things in nature that are blue.

Mi: I can see the sky is blue.

Ar: Blue ocean!

We learned that the reason for the sky’s blue color is the fact that our sky (atmosphere) scatters blue light from the sun more than other colors. The ocean is blue for this same reason. Blue light is scattered, while others are absorbed.

People with blue eyes don’t actually have blue pigment or blue melanin. The lack of melanin reflects blue light, just like our sky!

So why do our bodies make melanin? Is there any reason?

Ei: Can that be our homework?

We all agreed to make that our homework for tonight! We’ll keep building upon that later this week!

Have a wonderful evening! See you tomorrow!

Love,

Flowers XOXO