Preschool - Learning About the Body & A Photo Shoot Ruined!

Today for preschool we continued our unit on the Body. I took the kids to the library and got about 15 books with stories and pictures about the body. Some were cute, some had real pictures of bones, some talked about what fun things our bodies could do, some were silly poems. They were a hit. One book in particular I had was about bones. It had realistic drawings of skeletons, an actual picture of a skull with teeth and a vertebrae, x-rays of the pelvis and ribs. The kids were totally enthralled. For a good 15 minutes I had them hooked. We felt our own bones and each others, they liked the bumps on the back of each others spine, find their own hip bones and tried to count their own ribs. Glad they were all just 4 and 5 years old, because they all just pulled up their shirts to feel their ribs, boys and girls alike. I decided it was best to let it go rather than address modesty at that moment in time. I was also glad I could claim a pregnant belly and that my baby was hiding my ribs so I didn't have to share. Cute kids. We started the day with free play time outside where they could use their bodies to run and kick balls, twirl in circles, rake leaves and jump in the pile, feel the cool breeze on their skin and a few light sprinkles of rain on their skin. The colors were gorgeous and I had a great idea at the spur of the moment. Later in the lesson I had some pictures to compare their eyes to a camera. Instead of showing boring pictures, I'd grab our camera and take great pictures in the autumn leaves of the kids playing! Then throw the memory card into the laptop and they could get a slide show of themselves as the pictures as we talked about which was better, a camera or their eyes. Brilliant!! I got the camera and went to town taking tons of fun pictures, 109 to be exact. I was so excited and so were they. When we got to the slide show part of the lesson, I popped in the memory card and well, we had a really good lesson. Most the pictures were blurry, unfocused and it was hard to make out a good image on the faces. Last night we did a family photo shoot in the overcast, just before dusk hours in the leaves and Brian had adjusted the settings on the camera. I just expected it to be in auto mode and never checked. I'm so sad. The pictures could have been amazing! I have a few, but not that many great ones. Oh well. That will teach me to point and shoot without checking how the pictures are coming out.

One other funny thing...we played the game "I spy with my little eye" and everyone got a turn to be the clue giver. The hardest one took us a while. The starting clue was that it was bright. Okay, so we guess the lamps, any and everything shiny in the living room, the brightness on the ceiling, and everything else you could come up with. Hugh finally gave in that it was the light coming out of the lamp. Can you do that? I can't actually see light, I learned this in physics class, you can only observe it's results or something like that. I do remember there is no real light, just an absence of dark. So, I guess Hugh won the game. His was definitely the hardest to guess...an untouchable phenomena