Spring week at Pirate Pete Preschool started out with St. Patrick's Day. We had to take advantage of a fun holiday as we kicked off the week before spring break!
We started our week out by making "glow jars" to imagine ourselves in spring and summer catching lightening bugs. This was so cool, you might want to try it at home. All you need to make it are glass jars and glow sticks (both from the dollar store). Empty the glow stick colors into the jar and (if you wish) toss a little glitter in for the 'lightening bugs'. Close the lids, shake the jar and hit the lights! AWESOME!
After we created our lightening bug jars, we moved on to make scenes for spring and rabbit masks in honor of our hopes to see a warm spring soon. (Cross your fingers folks!)
Remember the first day of this week was St. Patrick's Day and sure enough, we had some tricks played on us! Any time we left the room on Monday, when we returned, the room had been ruined! Tables were overturned, toys were everywhere and even green streamers were strung about! The biggest surprise was when we found proof the leprechaun even had used our bathroom! Gross! What a silly day!
All St. Patrick's Day tricking aside, we had great Star of the Week presenters again and worked hard on our letters of the day. We are already about half way through the alphabet! 
Because Monday was still St. Patrick's day, we created 'treasure boxes' with letters on them and labeled 'gold coins' with the same letter in either upper or lower case. The preschoolers had to put the gold in the correct treasure boxes as they practiced letter recognition. This game can also be played with cars and garages or animals or people and their shelters at home.
Another great game we played was patterns in file folder games. Patterns are all around us and the more you help kids recognize the patterns in their surroundings the more successful they will be with creating their own patterns in games with manipulatives at school or with their toys during free play at home. 
The magic of the circle rug shared stories this week about staying strong and working hard to reach your goals. We also sang lots of songs like Tooty Ta and My Mother is a Baker by Dr. Jean and Friends and we had a terrific time with Leprechaun Hunt music as as we counted by ones and tens on Monday.
We went out into the long hallway to jump like frogs onto lilly pads and crawl through tunnels in order to stretch out our spring legs. Then, we used our small muscles in our fingers to trace a flower maze with string. Next time you have a maze (with wide enough spaces) instead of just using a crayon, follow the path with glue and then lay down some yarn. It works different small muscles and improves fine motor coordination.
We made books about butterflies in the spring and practiced cutting and writing to assemble them. 
Then, we learned about clouds and absorption.
We first learned about this awesome experiment from Make a Messterpiece when they talked about weather and the cycles of water in the air and how the clouds fill up with rain, etc. First, fill a glass half way up with water then place shaving cream in the glass to fill the rest of it up. 
As you talk about how moisture absorbs into the clouds, add some food coloring then wait and watch it "rain" inside the glass. Wonderful!
Another absorption lesson we had this week was about how flowers "drink" water. We took white flowers and placed them in a vase with blue water. 
When we get back from spring break, we will see how blue they have turned. Each day leading up to break we checked the flowers to see if we could see any blue and only a little bit showed, we hope to have totally blue flowers on March 30th when we return to school. 
Then, to show a faster way things absorb, we placed sponges into tubs of water and asked the kids to squeeze out the water as hard as they could and then press the sponge onto the paper on the table. They did a great job sqeezing but quickly learned the sponge still held some of the water; it absorbed!
We talked about butterflies (baggies and cereal of any kind) and more about clouds and made our own cloud paintings with shaving cream and glue. 
Try it, just mix the two ingredients together and then paint. When it dries the clouds will stay puffy. (It also works well with making snowmen too.)
Parachute play is the best for making wind and sounds of thunderstorms. So, we used the parachute to move wind quickly and slowly and then bounced clouds away with it too. This is always a memory maker and something terrific for getting some wiggles out when it's too chilly to head outside. This spring (and summer) get an old king size sheet and play parachute outside, throw stuffed animals, cotton balls, anything you are willing to have tossed around, laughter is a guarantee!
Other projects and free play with hand shaped pots of flowers and puppet shows put on by teachers were great ways to relax at school this week, but the best treat was our trip to World Fest in the auditorium where the children were able to see live entertainment from around the World! Palatine High School welcomes spring with this great display of talent each year and we were lucky enough to get to check it out! China, Mexico, Africa, Rio, India and more presented dancing, singing, etc. to our students!
When we came back from our field trips, we played with playdough, graphed flowers and talked about all the cool things we saw at the "show".
Lastly, we went on a bug hunt in the hall for giant bugs we could sort by similarities and differences. Then, we also sorted smaller bugs to graph and learn which number is larger, 5 or 1. 
Getting the visual cues for this is huge, most young children start out learning how to count but not knowing what those numbers mean and the values they each individually hold. By graphing these, we can show them a picture of how much you get with the number 5 verses how much you get with the number one. 
What's Coming Up?
We are currently on Spring Break until Monday, March 30th when we will resume school.
Our Fall 2014 Program is full and we are now excepting only Spring preschoolers for our afternoon session.
The Pirate Pete Preschool Website is having some technical difficulties so please just use the blog as your place for preschool information at this time.
We will be learning through Fun and Games when we get back from break and then later all about things we can be when we grow up.
