Are You Prepared?

So they say that kids learn through play - I'd say I definitely agree with this statement.

Yesterday we started the last phase of our weather unit - hurricanes. We talked about what creates a hurricane, what happens during a hurricane, how to prepare for a hurricane, etc. We looked through the National Geogrphic featuring hurricane Katrina. We watched videos from The Weather Channel's Kids website, and even started an episode of Sesame Street that dealt specifically with hurricanes. When I found the Sesame Street video online, I wasn't sure how the oldest kids would react, but was excited that I found something on Buddy Boy's three year old age level. Turns out, ALL of the kids loved watching the video. At one point the power went out at Sesame Street and Doodle Bug (who's 9) was so surprised and said "Oh no! The power's out!" They were getting into it - it was awesome. The video is almost one hour long, we just watched part 1 (which is 15 minutes) and the kids are looking forward to watching part 2 tonight.

Anyways, our science activity for the next few days is to track a fictional hurricane named Sam across the Atlantic Ocean (so far it's sitting right over the Bahamas with category 5 winds). The kids are pretending to work for the National Weather Service and are issuing alerts to residents in the Bahamas, Cuba, and the US if necessary. They've done VERY well and plotting the coordinates, determining what category the hurricane is, and deciding together what alerts should be issued to neighboring countries. I'm quite proud!

I promised the kids that after we finished some math, writing, and our science that they could outside and play in the sprinkler. So as we finish up our science, the girls are getting all giggly and squeely and say "Hey! We can use our wagon as an evacuation bus! You guys pack up your kids, pets, and purses and wait at the bus stop (our two garden benches). Then we'll turn the sprinklers on and pretend that the storm is coming." They even created a short weather report to issue to the town's residence informing them of the storm. They were getting SO into it. It was great. They played 'evacuation' for almost 2 hours. Gosh I love them.

So, you know you're kids understanding something when: 1 - they teach it to their friends/younger siblings, or 2 - they immitate what they've learned through play.