This week we learned about food and talked about "Eating a Rainbow Every Day."
After story time, we talked about foods that represent each color of the rainbow and practiced making a rainbow to remind us what to eat during the day. For example; Red Apples, Orange Cantaloupe, Yellow Bananas, Green Broccoli, Blue Blueberries, and Purple Eggplant.
The morning science lesson on Monday was about the affect salt has on our food and our diet. This is an easy experiment you can try at home too. We took two glass containers (a vase and a pitcher) that looked different so we could talk about the eggs in them. We placed an uncooked egg in each container and asked the children what was different. They told us they thought because the containers were different, one egg was floating and the other sank. Then, they guessed why the water looked different and finally why we talked about how one had salt in it and one was just a regular glass of water. Lots of terrific discussion, ideas, thoughts and brain work went into this experiment.
We made books this week about food and the preschoolers practiced reading them to their teachers and looked for the word that was not correct (CHICKEN not CHICK).
We are learning about My Plate and how to divide our food choices up each meal by food group. The afternoon preschoolers had the challenge to look through magazines and find pictures of each type of food group and glue them on the My Plate print out to practice how to divide their food each meal and still get all the nutrition they need.
We had a lot of fun learning what foods they enjoy eating and what foods they did not want on their plates!
Later, we set up another absorption challenge with celery and talked about how great it tastes with peanut butter and raisins! We are going to check in on our celery next week to see if the color changed and which color changed the celery the most.
The parachute came out in the afternoon this week with a math matching game as we looked images of food on the screen and moved to the color slice on the parachute on the floor.
The morning and afternoon sessions worked on and talked about their favorite fruits, vegetables, proteins, and dairy products. It was great to see choices laid out so we could talk about the various items listed in order to ask them to color the one they liked to eat the most.
The morning and afternoon sessions both played a game allowing them to create their own burger with Burger Chef on the iPad
by grinding the meat, adding in salt, eggs, seasonings, etc. and forming patties, flipping the burger and assembling them as if the children were in the kitchen. Since we cannot handle raw meat, this was great!
Please encourage your child to help you at home with meal preparations, this just might help them to be more willing to try new foods if they help to prepare them.
We also played with Edu Kitchen and created fruit Popsicles, sorted the dishes from the food after a meal, and organized food by size. 
Having a preschooler at home, we use both of these apps when talking about food and both are engaging and informative to help with math skills. 
The morning teachers worked on spelling the word FOOD and helped the preschoolers hear the "oo" sound in food and related it to Boo, and Pool, etc.
Then, we passed out glue and some sweet food to practice spelling this word of the week by creating the word food with food!
Before snack in the morning, we created our own desserts to bring home and share with family as a treat during food week. Each preschooler was given a plain sugar cookie to decorate and bring home. The children were able to choose what color they wanted to make their frosting and what toppings to place on it as well. 
We also talked about how important safety is in the kitchen and only true chefs are careful with knives and children should always ask before touching one. We practiced safe skills as some preschoolers used plastic knives to spread their frosting.
Later, we played food BINGO and listed to hear which fruit, vegetable, dairy or protein would be called by the teacher. 
Of course, with it being food week, we used food as our playing pieces. After that, we helped package food from a grocer all together in order to send it off to the grocery store to sell. 
Mrs. Stary loves to tell stories so this week she told the morning and afternoon preschoolers all about the Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle (her favorite author). One of the other teachers made the pieces for our story and the preschoolers helped count and sort the food the Caterpillar ate before turning into a butterfly. 
Many children get the terms for our meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) mixed up so we worked on organizing pictures of food from each of these meals into their time frames of the day. We were also able to talk about some foods that are eaten for lunch or dinner and the preschoolers shared when they ate these foods in their homes.
We sorted and graphed different types of fruits and each preschooler was in charge of deciding how many of each fruit to place on their graph. Some chose to keep the same amounts, while others wanted more or less of a fruit on their graph. Allowing them to choose helps fuel discussion as well as an interest in this type of math activity.
Lastly this week we rotated between skittles graphing (the take home treat for the afternoon preschoolers), play dough pizza making and playing restaurant. 
We also played ice cream cone patterns and took turns trying to complete the assigned patterns with the appropriate colored ice cream cone. 
What's Coming Up?
Next week we should be back to a normal week schedule with the topic of the Arts in full swing. Storytelling, writing, dancing, singing and creating art in many forms will be a blast and we are very excited!Friday, May 2nd will be the Palatine High School Cinco de Mayo Celebration, you may want to check out the PHS website for details on this family friendly event.
