April 29 - May 3

This week our focus was bugs and underground.

We collected bug outside and drew a representative picture of them. We collected mostly worms and ants, but it was fun to watch them squirm around. The questions we asked ourselves while collecting were: Where did you find the bug? Was it wet or dry? Was it underneath something?

We also took a close look at soil. We learned that soil is made up of dead plants, dead bugs, and small, medium, and large rocks.

Lastly, we worked on our colors by coloring a bug book. Each bug had a different color and the kids enjoyed learning the names of these new bugs.

For our art project on Thursday we made our own underground critters. They were complete with pain, googly eyes, feathers, and sparkles! Quite creative!

We will still continue to talk about bugs over the next week or so, but we are moving on into our Sunderland Community mini unit. We will talk about all the places and things that surround our school.

We learned a new game at Circle Time this week. It was the I have ______, Who has _________? game. Each student was given a card and has to say out loud "I have (the red triangle), Who has the (blue diamond). We go around the circle until all shapes have been named. It was a great review for shapes and colors.

If you visit our classroom, you will notice that we have hung up our Hyacinth paintings and our Seed growth pictures. Check them out! Children did a great job of drawing the changes that their pea plants underwent over the last few weeks.

We will be sending home plants this week. Your child should come home with a flower plant and a pea plant to plant in your yard or to keep going indoors.

April 22 - 26; Welcome Back Week!

This week, we eased back into our normal school day routine.

We finished up our seed counting books and created a new book about shapes!

The shape book was a great reveiw for our afternoon group and help some of our morning group learn some new colors and shapes.

We completed our second plant observation this week. Our pea plants are growing, growing, growing. We talked about how they have changed over time and now have two drawings to track the changes.

Our upcomming unit is bugs and underground so we've been reading some fun stories that have bugs as the characters. During group time, the bug math manipulatives were a huge hit. We counted them, sorted them, matched them, and created patterns with them.

Check in activities included some bug puzzles, rubber worm sorting, and legos. Next week we will dive into our underground and bug unit a little deeper, literally!

April 8 - 12

Sorry I missed posting about last week!

This week, we continued talking about spring, plants, and seeds.

We reviewed the life cycle of a plant and children cut out their own life cycle pictures to glue in order on a colorful sheet of paper. The key words we learned were:

Seed
Seedling
Flower
Fruit
seeding

We practiced our counting by counting pumpkin seeds. This helped us with our number recognition as each number was printed on the page. We will put our books together this week, so you can look forward to reading them at home with your little one.

Preschool scientists recorded their very first observation this week. They observed their bean plant and drew a representative picture to accompany their actual plant. We will continue this weekly for a few weeks to chart the growth and change in our plants.

On Thursday, the morning class made flower prints for Art's Night. I cut some of the (many) toilet paper rolls we received as donations into various patterns. Cutting one side allowed us to use them like stamps.

Five Little Speckled Frogs has been our most recent song. You can look it up on YouTube if you're inclined to learn the beat. I'm sure if you ask however, you preschooler could sing the whole thing for you!

Five little speckled frogs
sat on a great big log
eating the most delicious bugs
Yum, Yum
One frog jumped in the pool
where it was nice and cool
Now there are four speckled frogs
Croak, Croak

...and so on!

Thank you to the many parents who were so helpful during Art's Night. I appreciated the timely drop off and pick up of your preschoolers, along with your enthusiasm and participation. It was a great show and the kids
did a spectacular job! They really stole the show!

Next week we will start our underground and bug unit! Creepy, crawling, crazy, goodness awaits us!
Mrs. Reid

March 25 - 28

Time is flying! I can't believe this is the last week of March!

Reminder: April 11th is Arts Night

This week, we continued our spring theme and began to talk more in depth about seeds and plants. We graphed how we thought watermelon grow. We then looked at some pictures of watermelons growing (on a vine of course) and watched a science discovery video about how watermelons grow.

We even learned the song “Down by the Bay”

                Down by the bay

                Where the watermelon grow

                Back to my home, I dare not go

                For if I do, my mother will say

                Have you ever seen _____________________

                Down by the bay!

You can fill in the blank with some cute rhymes like: A fly wearing a tie, A llama wearing pajamas, A bear combing his hair, or a whale with a polka dot tail!

We also had a blast sorting seeds! We had some cucumber seeds, yellow bean seeds, green bean seeds, and squash seeds to sort. Each student sorted their seeds (most by color) then glued them onto a sorting paper.

Planting was the real treat this week. We planted some pea plants and some flowers. We talked about what plants need to grow (sunlight, water, warmth, and soil).

The A.M students wrapped up our latest bird discussion with a painting activity. We learned how birds are ma ny different colors but that most of the birds in our area are white, black, brown and variations of those colors. We then set off to paint a wooden bird these colors.

No birds in our window bird house yet. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

The P.M students painted flower pots on Thursday as our art project. They love to paint things that have another purpose. We will plant in them soon and watch our plants grow.

I want to thank the many parents and grandparents who donated to our seed and plant unit. It feels so nice to have so many supportive adults willing to enhance our preschool program! All of the soil, seeds, pots, and wooden birds were wonderful products of generous families. Thanks again!

Onward to next week, a continuum of our spring unit. Hopefully we'll get some SPRING weather too!

Mrs. Reid

Arts Night - April 11th

Arts Night – April 11^th

Arts Night will take place on Thursday, April 11^th. Arts Night is a school wide event that happens in the evening at 6pm. It will showcase Grade K – 6 artwork and will include a school wide musical performance. This year, The Afternoon Preschool class will be singing on stage with the Kindergarten class. Because this is an after school event, your preschool aged son or daughter has the option of participating. Students participating are often encouraged to arrive at 5:30pm.

Both Mrs. Reid and Miss Kate will be present before the show to help your son or daughter into place and help to guide them onto the stage while you enjoy the show as part of the audience. After the musical performance, students will return to their classrooms where you will need to pick them up and sign them out. This is important so that we know each child has left our classroom with the appropriate adult. I appreciate your help in refraining from taking your child directly from the gymnasium.

The A.M students will not be participating in the musical performance.

Last but not least, Mr. Hines (our music teacher and leader of this wonderful night) has requested that children participating in the performance try their best to wear bright, spring time colors.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

The afternoon class has been practicing their Spanish song during music class and I hope you are able to come enjoy their work!

Thank you,

Mrs. Reid  

March 18th - 22nd Short Week!

Hi everyone! This week felt like a fast one! We began our Spring unit this week (casually

  and yes, even though we had a huge snow storm!)

We started our week off with a fun little science experiment. The Preschool Scientist are wondering... WHAT makes a peep dissolve? We graphed our predictions onto some chart paper and this is what we think...

Water: Sage, Eloise
Juice: Jack, Sean K.
Vinegar: Charlotte, Faline
Soda: Sean H., Michael, Omar
Laundry Detergent: Tessa, Aurora, McClellan, Benjamin, Caleb, Sam

I thought that overnight we would have our answer, but I guess peeps are more indestructible than I thought! We have left them all week, and there's only a slight sign of ONE peep beginning to dissolve  The scientist will check back in on Monday when (hopefully) we'll have our answer! Not exactly "spring" oriented, but it's preschool after all and we need to have some fun!

We continued to work on our letter identification, number identification, and handwriting this week. The P.M class is really gearing up for Kindergarten. They have been taking responsibility for their own number packets by getting them from their baskets at the beginning of group time and putting them away in their baskets after we're done. Impressive!

I brought in a birds nest I found in my garage along with a three sided bird house (brought to you by the fine craftsmanship of Mr. Reid!). We began talking about birds. My hope is to mount this three sided bird house onto the window so we can get an up-close view of the bird(s) inside! We have started discussing what we already know about birds and what we would like to find out by watching.

We made some tulips as part of our art project on Thursday. We will hang our beautiful tulips along with some rain drops out in the hallway on our seasons bulletin board.

Looking forward to some spring time weather.

Mrs. Reid

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