Exploration With Gak

The Rainbows had a lot of fun playing with the Gak that they helped to make on Tuesday. Everybody had fun making footprints with the colored animals and the children were intrigued by the many different shapes that the footprints made. Sorting the animals by color in the Gak was another fun way that they explored with the slippery and wet material. As Audrey was trying to get some of the animals to stand up in the Gak, she noticed that certain animals stood up easily and certain animals kept falling down. We began to examine why this was the case and we discovered that some of the animals legs were thick while others were thin. I showed Audrey the difference by standing up a giraffe which had thin legs and a rhinoceros which had thick legs. Right away she noted that the giraffe immediately fell down and the rhinoceros was still standing. She had me show her the difference between thick and thin numerous times. Then she began to repeat the words "thick" and "thin" while standing up the animals accordingly. Sophie, who was sitting across from Audrey, also began to repeat the two words to herself. What a wonderful "teachable moment!"