Today we explored the
natural shape of a Spiral in nature (or a Fibonacci Spiral, but our young
mathematicians didn't need to get that technical to explore!) -- a guest post by Rebecca Pettyjohn
Today's Topic: Spirals
Supplies:
Homemade playdough
(I got my great recipe here)
Laminated spiral pages
Spiral cut outs (we have a great die cut!)
Scissors
Spiral whirlygigs (from www.babbledabbledo.com)
Pine Cones
Sea Shells
Painters tape
Carpet squares
Glue, scissors, wiggly eyes, and pompom balls
Our bodies!
Book:
Swirl by swirl : spirals in nature / Sidman, Joyce
What kids do:
make spirals with their hands:
And then with everyone together to make an even bigger one! The longer the line, the bigger the spiral!
Create their own animals with spirals
Use playdough to find natural spirals in pinecones,
And in sea shells
Use fine motor skills to cut spiral whirlygigs out of paper
some turned into pets on a leash....
And to roll lines into
spirals out of playdough
Explore gross motor skills
of how it feels to walk (or hop!) in a spiral shape
This very young artist was inspired to draw some free-hand spirals
Adult Challenge of the week: Use the vocabulary word “spiral” when talking to your kids
today. It is a VERB and a NOUN!
Hindsight Tip: We needed more of a variation in our natural spirals to
press into the dough. It would have been better to be more prepared (sigh, like
always) to have some other flowers, shells, or even succulents we could use to
press since it was a very popular activity!
Variations to
try:
I would love to try this Spiral pendulum! And the exploration of man made spirals might be fun too.
Possibly a pipe cleaner or wire activity for bending spirals?
No comments:
Post a Comment