March 11th - 15th - Eric Carle

We continued to talk about Eric Carle's books this week. We moved on from out favorite "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and read his other books, "The Mixed Up Chameleon", "Mister Sea Horse", and "10 Rubber Duckies". We graphed our favorite book at the end of our Eric Carle author study and "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" took the cake!

After hearing "The Mixed Up Chameleon" we watched a video in the library about camouflage. Kids saw many different animals that use camouflage to blend in to their environment. Once back in our classroom, children took their own Mixed Up Chameleon (an overhead, clear peice of paper with a chameleon print) around the room to change it's color and make it blend in. They took their scientist job very seriously as the graphed how many times their chameleon turned red, blue, green, orange, or yellow. We talked about which color they turned the most and which color they turned the least.

We continued to discover what camouflage meant when we did yet another science experiment. We tried to make a colored bingo chip blend into water by adding colored water to our chip with an eye dropper. I think teachers down the hall could here "My chip is camouflage!!!!". Great fun!

After reading "10 Rubber Duckies" the scientist tried their hands at some duck counting. Using stamps, preschoolers learned number recognition by counting their ducks and stamping them with the corresponding number stamp.

We also worked on letter recognition, formation of letters, number recognition, and number formation this week with our Handwriting Without Tears program. A.M students worked on letters, while the P.M students (who already know almost all of their letters) worked on numbers.

On Thursday, we read "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?". Although it is not an Eric Carle book, he did illustrate it! After hearing the book read aloud, I asked the students to place blobs of paint onto a white piece of paper. We folded the paper in half to turn our small blobs of paint into one giant blob, the I asked students the million dollar question - "Preschoolers, Preschoolers, What Do You See?" Teachers then recorded their answers onto their art work. We hung them on the wall for visitors to see.

I sent out an email as our upcomming unit of study will be seeds and plants. Here are some things I am looking for if you happen to have them at home and are willing to donate:

- Toilet paper rolls
- Paper towell rolls
- small terracotta plants
-potting soil

Looking forward to a fun week in preschool talking about spring (although the impending snow storm makes me second guess this - BUT Wednesday is the first day of spring, so onward!)

Mrs. Reid