Our big, big world...

We started out this week with another great Star of the Week presentation in both the morning and afternoon preschool sessions.  As we near the last month or so of school we will be finishing up the Star of the Week poster presentations.

Once we heard the presentations, we started talking about the big, wonderful world we live in and looked at a variety of animals both domestic and wild and when we came to the snake, the children became so excited we decided to create snake paintings using crayons and watercolor paint.  

If you remember from childhood, the magic of crayons and watercolored paint is pretty cool; once you draw with the crayons, the wax from them stands out as you paint over it.  So, the children made scales and helped the teachers draw snakes on their pages before adding the paint.

After painting snakes, we looked into the new favorite app this month; Disney Nature Explorer.  We fed a bear some fish, and then tracked down it's cubs as well as those of a lion.  Again, the children were so excited at the idea of tracking they played with the magnifying glasses during free play with imaginary tracks.  

This sparked the idea to have the children create their own footprint 'tracks' and create trails around the room.  We looked up various types of animal tracks and asked the children to guess which animal made what tracks and then when the children went to the tables to trace their feet, some also created other footprints based on the ones we saw as a large group.  It was a great spur of the moment change that really supported their interests at the time!

As promised, last week the afternoon preschoolers made penguins and they were so much fun, we made them with the morning preschoolers on Monday.  This time, the children added a few yellow pompons to their water bottle bellies to look like some of the penguins we saw before we created these little birds.

Besides birds that fly in this world, we learned about a few other little creatures who fly.  We made butterflies out of our finger and handprints and counted ladybugs by sorting the correct amount out on leaves based on numbers the children saw on each leaf.

After lady bug math, we refreshed the discussion about the seasons and time of year we are in now and the idea of searching for them in the coming warmer days.  To do this refresher we passed around items that represent each season and listened to a seasons song while taking turns standing in the front of the class when the season their image represented was called.  

We heard the phrase, "winter, spring, summer, fall; the seasons of the year," repeated to help them remember the order of the seasons in a year as well as visually use the pictures they held to represent each season and remember which is warm, wet, windy or cold.

Once the afternoon arrived, we took full advantage of the warmer spring weather and broke a rainbow piñata outside for our large motor start of the day.  Inside, instead of the typical candy and toys, rainbow confetti filled the air! 

We had a terrific start to our day talking about our big, big world with this activity as it sparked a discussion about rainbows and rain with the afternoon children.

The fun continued with discussion about what animals lay eggs then asked the preschoolers to find eggs in the preschool room.  Each child was instructed to find two eggs and check them for sticker prizes.  Many jumped at the chance to cover themselves in the stickers immediately while others helped their friends find two once they met their assigned quota.  Great teamwork! 

Spring time talks continued as we learned about worms and how helpful they are in our gardens this season of the year.  That said, the teachers wanted to bring a treat to the table for the children to create and bring home to enjoy.  We gave the children cups and chocolate pudding then had them scoop the pudding into the cups themselves.  Each child was given 2 Oreos in a baggie and was instructed to squeeze them while in the baggie until they were crushed up to sprinkle into the cups.  

Then, since this was a discussion about worms, we added gummie worms!  The children laughed at the thought of tricking the people at home into thinking it was real worms and dirt, we hope they had a few laughs with people at home as they munched on their snacks!

After all that egg hunt and spring time talk, we also looked at the life cycle of a chicken and asked the children to repeat the steps in the life of a chicken.  The children did not disappoint!  We were very impressed with how much they remembered as they placed the correct items on the egg cycle given to them at the tables.

For some math on Monday in the afternoon preschool, the children were given various nests and stones to represent eggs and asked to place the correct number of 'eggs' into each nest.  Then, we asked the children to self check each other to work together in order to match the amounts of items with the numerals at the table.

We practiced reading animal names and colors by using pictures of animals in colors that matched sentences about those animals.  The children then would match the animal to the sentence.  For example, a sentence might say, 'the FROG is GREEN,' and the children would be able to 'read' the sentence because they recognized a green frog in the pile.  Activities like this are what build confidence in future readers!

Remember we are talking about our big, big world and what is bigger than space!  So on Wednesday, we talked about space for a while and learned the word-constellation.  We used some apps that allowed us to see what constellations are where in the sky by holding them up and moving them around the room.

Then, the children were given small pieces of paper and hole punchers and were asked to create their own pattern of constellation on the paper by punching holes in it.  Once the children had all their holes punched, we turned out the lights again and held up flashlights to the cards to see the constellations on the ceiling.  What a great time!  

When we talked about weather again we reminded the children about how rain works with our rain in a glass experiment then asked them to use water color paint to make umbrellas to hang in our room to decorate for spring showers.  

We then continued our discussion about rain as we made rainbow bracelets by repeating the pattern of the colors of a rainbow together at the circle and then at the tables.  Each color was only passed out to the tables after everyone added the correct color to their string.  It was a terrific way to review the rainbow color pattern from circle time.

When the last teachers for the morning session arrived on Wednesday, they wanted to talk about how we get around to all the places in this big big world so they worked on some fine motor skills with the children as they traced the letters of their names with glue and asked the children to pick up sequins to added on the lines of glue adding some sparkle to train cars that each held a child's name written on it.  Once that was complete, the children brought their train cars to the circle to put in numerical order by counting to 20!  This train is being hung in our room now as well.

The children had a great time with our last activity of this day, the bus story.  To continue their math lesson, the teachers brought out a giant bus they made for the children to 'ride' in a story they wrote about a bus driver bringing students to school.  

The children took turns being the bus driver and the students getting on and off the bus, all the while counting the people seated on the bus as the story went on.  Some children asked to help work at the general store the bus driver passed on her way to school, so the children added parts in for that as well.  We will be using this bus again in the morning and afternoon sessions because it was such a hit!

Once the afternoon preschoolers arrived on Wednesday, we started off with more spring animal discussions which lead to the talk about rabbits.  The children used two paper plates to create a rabbit by cutting the first plate in half and attaching it to the second.  Some children wanted to add bows like famous rabbits while others just added eyes and a nose.  The key to this activity was making sure the children were able to add the parts of a rabbit's head to the right placed on the face.

Once this was complete, the children traced the path for some animals to take on paper.  This is always a good check for fine motor control which improves writing.  By staying on the dotted lines, the children are making the same movements needed for writing letters and numbers but are more inclined to do these activities because they seem more of a game than a chore.

We couldn't sit at the tables all day so we hopped up for some large motor fun by following rabbit footprint trails by hopping on one foot or two across a path laid out in the front of our room.  

We again worked our fine motor skills by using hair gel in baggies to draw pictures, letters and numbers with teachers.  These are such easy 'games' to make at home when all you need is a Ziplock baggie, hair gel or conditioner and Q-tips.  

Again, once we sat for a few minutes we were up and moving again to practice the 'Cool Bear Hunt' song by Dr. Jean.  The afternoon preschoolers are really catching on to it quickly!

Our last day this week started out reviewing weather and came to fit in perfectly with Thursday night's rain storms.  We learned that we see lightening and hear thunder and then made thunder and rain sounds with the parachute followed by added some bean bag sized 'hail' to the storm.  The children needed to shake their parachute as hard as possible in order to have all the 'hail' bounce out.  We had about 5 'storms' blow through preschool because so many children kept requested we do it again!  

We looked at photos of the weather changing over time with the seasons changing and talked about how our surroundings can change from snow to mud to heat by reading the story, Going on a Bear Hunt.  In this story the children helped by making the sounds of the grass, the mud, the snow, etc.  It was a terrific introduction to our rain storm with rhythm sticks. The children were asked to follow our lead and rub the sticks together then tap them on the floor going faster and faster until they rub them together again to have the room fill with the sounds of the rain going in and out.

When the next group of teachers arrived, we talked about a big animal that lives in the big world, a giraffe.  We spoke about the ways to identify a giraffe and then taught the preschoolers how to create one.  They used four fingers to create a head then cut out the giraffe head and used that to finish the image.

Then, the children were given pictures of giraffes without the spots for math and asked to roll a dice and place Cheerio spots on the giraffe thus adding and later subtracting these spots.  If it were up to the children, they would have played this game for a good 15 minutes!

Alas, the bell had to ring and those teachers had to go so our next group came in and reviewed details about the big big world we live in by talking about various continents in the world and showing the children some maps and images of just how big the world is as they then talked about the placed items from various parts of the world in containers.

One of the places we talked about was that of Italy and where pizza got it's start.  To review reading and number recognition skills, the children were given pizza order forms and asked to place the correct amounts of ingredients on their pizzas. 

The afternoon children came in on Friday to review what we discussed about eggs then decorated them with stripes and dots using creative tools what would allow for dots to be made by people who chose to add dots to their eggs. 

After working on eggs, we reviewed the rabbit information and upped the challenge by asking the children to create a rabbit head and all it's correct parts of the head using their hands and ink pads.  Friday's are great days for reviewing what was covered during the week and to check for continued and more long term understanding of various concepts.

We did also review some of our weather and seasons information by talking specifically about wind.  We asked the children about the story of the three little pigs and what items were used to build homes.  Then, we continued to ask what knocked down two of the homes and why.  As the children talked about the wind, we addressed the weather of the previous day and the wind that was mixed with our storms.  Then the children were given 'straw,' 'sticks,' and 'bricks,' and were asked to build structures then try to knock them down by creating wind and blowing them over.  They soon were able to see the bricks are used in our homes to keep them strong in our storms.

Our last wind activity for the day in our big world was that of kites.  We talked about what kites need in order to fly (wind) then created some to hang in our room to represent our spring season.  They turned out great and you will see in them hanging in the background of photos next week.

What's Coming Up?

We have another full week talking about our big, big world and will continue this general idea as the month of April moves us forward.

Please be sure to have signed the back of your child's progress report and returned it to us for safe keeping.  We will be sending a reminder note home soon to those who need to bring them back.