Happy 2011!

Welcome 2011!

As we start the New Year, we also welcome three new friends: Alessandro, Maia, and Santino to Utopia. If you see them or their parents at drop off or pick up, please introduce yourself.

Crystals

We came back from the break well rested and very interested to learn about crystals. We’ve done several experiments including growing crystals from a kit. The outcome wasn’t what we expected, but we’ll try again. Hopefully, we figured out where went wrong, and the next time will be a success.

We were very fascinated with the effect of the ice cream salt rocks when placed on top of a huge block of ice. For a more dramatic effect, we added food color. We saw how the salt made the smooth surface of ice become rough really fast. We observed too that if we didn’t remove the salt, it made the spot where it laid melt faster. It was interesting to see how the salt “bore” holes into the ice.

Crystals don’t only grow from store-bought kits. Next week we’ll be making sugar crystals and experimenting with salt crystals.

If you have books on crystals or some curio items that can be brought to school for sharing, please label them and send them with your child. We promise to take care of them, but please don’t send anything precious.

Monday Journals

Next week we will start with our Monday Journal. This is a weekly project that would allow each child to record his/her weekend activities. The challenge here is for the child to remember what happened during the weekend and to actually draw something about it. We’ll keep you posted.