1. We turned the boxes over. There were small boxes and large boxes. So we climbed inside the boxes to see if they were small boxes or big boxes. Some of the boxes broke when we climbed inside because they were too small. Other boxes were very big.
2. We compared hands with each other to see whose hands were bigger and whose hands were smaller. We also compared the size of our shoes.
3. We stood up and compared who was taller. It turns out that Miss Debbie was the tallest in Miss Julie's classroom and Miss Suzanne was the tallest in Miss Jeana's classroom.
4. We compared hair to see who had the longest hair and who had the shortest hair. Miss Julie had the longest hair in her room. Miss Jeana had the longest....wait, what? Miss Jeana cut her hair?! She doesn't have the longest hair anymore! One student in each of her classes now has the longest hair.
After the last Large Group in Miss Julie's classroom, we decided to use the boxes and make a fort. We had to plan and problem solve. What can we use to connect the boxes? Do we need windows? We need more doors - where can we put them? We broke apart boxes to build the fort and connected them with very wide masking tape. Packing tape would have worked better. But the problems often created more language opportunities. Some children crawled inside the fort and asked for tape to make the connections stronger. The children came up with idea that we needed to use the measuring tapes and measure the size of the boxes. Others determined that we needed flashlights to see inside the fort. They had to figure out how to move through the fort so there wouldn't be a traffic jam. We had a great time. This would be such a fun activity to do at home!
