Kindergarten at Home - Day 28 - Tin Can Telephone (or, Paper Cup Phone!)

Telephone Etiquette.  The assignment for today was to practice talking on the telephone using basic telephone etiquette, and to practice reciting your phone number.  I decided to take it a step further, and made cup-and-string phones after we practiced with real phones (they played with my vintage rotary-style telephone and my modern Bluetooth handset that is a replica of a vintage phone.  I rarely us it - I bought it because I was nostalgic for the way I used to talk on the phone.  It's not hands-free... kinda defeating the purpose of the Bluetooth technology, but hey, it's fun!)

To make the homemade cup phones, we used Kite String and two disposable cups.  First, poke a hole through the center of the bottoms of each cup; then, connect them by feeding each end of the string through each cup (tie a knot at the end after feeding it through the hole in the cup); stand apart, keeping the string taught; then, one person can talk into their cup while the other person listens in their cup!  The sound will follow along the string!
First, we tried a short string, then tried a longer string.  We also tried turning a corner with the string, which does work, but not well.  I'm sure we could play around with it and look it up to see what the best method for keeping the sound on the string while turning a corner would be, but the kids just wanted to play, so I'll save that science lesson for another day after some research.

 Language Arts: Zig-Zagging Zany Zz's, Zealously [while in the] Zone!

Art: What can fit in my pocket?  I had her try to think of different objects that could fit into the pocket she sewed the other day, then to draw them, cut them out, then put the paper version of the object into her pocket.  She decided she should trace each item so that they would be the accurate size.  Later, we played a game where you had to guess what object she was describing that is in her pocket.

Technology Studies: Typing letters on the keyboard - practicing finding and typing N-Z.  Daddy got to help with this one after he got home from work.  [We've been doing school outside this week, so, as you can see, we haven't updated our Days of the Week board behind the computer!]