April Showers...

The first week of April might have been only two days but we sure did get a lot done!  We learned now that we are back from spring break the seasons have changed from winter to spring. We discussed the amount of flowers that will start to appear and the phrase 'April showers bring May flowers'. So in true preschool form, we decided to make some fingerprint flowers in hopes of seeing those flowers appear sooner rather than later this year.

While some of the preschoolers went to make fingerprint flowers, another group talked about the April showers. In this science experiment, we place shaving cream on top of the water's surface and then place a few drops of blue food coloring or blue watercolor paint on top of the shaving cream. Once the shaving cream (cloud) absorbs the blue drops, the blue then soaks through the clouds to be seen dripping through the cup of water making it look like rain in a glass. 

Since the warmer weather also leads to more physical activity we decided to check some of our preschooler's physical capabilities through an active game. The preschoolers each chose an egg out of the basket to open and the preschool teacher read an action listed inside each each to each child. That child then needed to do whatever the piece of paper inside the egg told him. For example, the preschoolers were asked to balance on 1 foot, jump on 1 foot, hop with both feet together, throw a ball, catch a ball, and more. 

With the changing of the seasons, we also talked about the many places people might go in their community as we get out and about again. Be sides the park, we learned about the library, the post office and the grocery store. The preschoolers wrote letters and then placed them in envelopes with a stamp and then mailed them in our little mailbox. 

Other preschoolers wrote out grocery lists and then found those items in the grocery store.  Some pretended to be shoppers while others worked the check out counters.

Lastly, while the last group signs their name to their library card and then pretended to check out books. 

The fire station is another place in our community so the preschoolers practice being firefighters and raise to get himself dressed in uniform just save the day.

When the afternoon preschoolers came in, we again talked about spring and flowers starting to bloom then the preschoolers were able to draw their very own gardens. 

After they drew the garden of their dreams we ask them to put on smocks and paint with flowers. Some chose to make stamps out of the flower petals while others would drag the flower around on the page just like a paint brush. 

We later read a story about animals and discussed the fact that many animals are coming into the world this time of year. The preschoolers were asked to sort animals by where they live. For example, some animals live in forests while others the desert, some the ocean, and a few in the Arctic. 

The afternoon preschoolers also had a big task in front of them. We needed to 'rescue' some animals that had been frozen in ice in the Arctic. Preschool teachers had taken some of our plastic animals and put them in a bowl with water and then froze the the bowl of water in our freezer. The preschoolers were able to take water bottles and squirt the block of ice holding the animals in order to release them to play with and sort. 

Then, after talking about icebergs, the preschoolers jumped on icebergs across our circle rug to get to safety. 

On Wednesday, our morning preschoolers decided to go on a little bit of a camping trip. Since spring is now here we talked about how camping is a place you may want to go once the weather warms up. The children were given bags of various items and asked to decide if those items were found in the woods camping or not.

While some of the children were sorting camping items found in the woods versus items not found in the woods, another group of children turn one of our small parachute into a tent and heard a story with their teachers inside it. 

Preschoolers then gathered back as a large group and acted out various actions done by animals found in the woods. Some of the animals they chose were bears and snakes. Eventually, however, one of our preschoolers decided he was a farmer and worked with the preschoolers on collecting his ducks and birds that were on his farm. 

We took a field trip in the morning out to one of the gymnasiums with our huge parachute. The preschoolers were then able to spread out and played a few games with the it. 

The first game we played was sharks and minnows. The children all sat with the parachute and placed their feet underneath it while a teacher and preschooler crawled underneath the parachute to tap other people's feet. Once a child's foot was tapped he crawled under the parachute as well (becoming a shark instead of a minnow). 

Then we set up the parachute to raise high and turn it into a giant tent.  This is always everyone's favorite part and many of us parents probably remember this part from our childhood as well.

Once we were back in the classroom, the teachers decided that since have been talking about April showers on Monday the preschoolers made rain sticks. We placed rice and beans inside paper towel rolls and the children were able to decorate the outside of the paper towel roll while we sealed them up with duct tape. 

Then, we brought the rain sticks to the circle to use making rain with our weather songs.

Rabbits are another animal we start to see this spring so a preschool teacher showed our morning children how to make a boo-boo bunny out of the washcloth. The children were told this is something they can store in the freezer and take out when they fall down and get hurt (like an ice pack) but some wanted to bring it home to 'snuggle.'

One of our teachers then showed the preschoolers a great new app she found by Disney; Nature Explore.  When our screen didn't work out to show the children, she held up her iPad and allowed them to take turns coming up to feed bears and turtles while we growled to make a bear appear in our classroom!  We will be using this one again as we talk about animals and hopefully next time a giant animal can appear on our big screen!

When the afternoon preschoolers came back to class, we reviewed the placement of various animals in their correct habitats.  As we move forward this month, we will talk about animals often and these types of activities will be repeated in both the morning and afternoon sessions as a way to have checkpoints to see what students remember from day to day about what animals can live where in the world.

For those students who master initial animals (like whales verses zebras, etc.) we will bring about more specific ways to classify animals while to help with differentiation.  This is one of the benefits to our program; allowing many teachers to specialize their lessons based on individual needs of the children in our preschool.

While one group of children sorted animals for review, the other group worked on animal classification puzzles and groupings on iPads with their teachers.  These activities are great to reiterate conversations had in school about animals and how they are alike and different as well as allowing the children to recognize shadows of animals as they try to match the shadow with the animal so they can recognize more differences animals have in body shape.

The children are learning songs to sing during our preschool graduation program in May and we started with '5 Little Monkeys (also known as Monkeys and the Alligator)," then moved on to Dr. Jean's, "Cool Bear Hunt."  We will be practicing these songs and more in order to find out the 'crowd favorites' of each preschool group so we know which ones they want to sing come the day of our graduation program.

The children enjoyed talking about arctic animals this week so the teachers found an adorable penguin project to work their fine motor skills.  While the teachers thought it was a cute little penguin, the children were so focused on placing their cotton balls into the water bottles to 'fill up the penguin's belly' the room could have heard a pin drop!  Our classroom has never been so silent during arts and crafts time!  It was amazing!

Before heading home the children sorted goldfish by color into bins and analyzed who at each table had the most and least of each color.  What a busy two days indeed!

What' Coming Up?

Progress Reports went home on Wednesday to show families what we see in school.  Please remember these are lists of items we may or may not see at school only and sometimes children show parents one thing and their teachers another or vice versa.  Be sure to sign and return your child's progress report this coming week so we can hold them for safe keeping to re-evaluate the children at the end of the school year to look for improvement.