WEATHER we go here or there...

Whether we go near or far this week in outdoor destinations, we had another great time in Pirate Pete Preschool!  We are getting closer to the end of our star of the week presentations and the preschoolers continue to surprise us with all the information they are willing and able to share during these times. 

We are still talking about our great big world only this week we expanded from the weather around us to the world of outer space. We started out the week reading a book by Eric Carl and creating our very own caterpillars.  

Most of the preschoolers chose to use hands and fingerprints in paint for the parts of the body and legs while others who did not want to use the paint chose to draw the body of the caterpillar. Either way, this was about understanding the parts of a caterpillar more than it was whether a child chose to paint or draw on their own.

After looking at something close to home like the caterpillars and butterflies, we decided to then take a trip to outer space. We looked at various pictures from outer space and remember the word constellation from last week. After that the preschoolers made their very own galaxies.  

These are very simple to make and all takes is half a bottle of water and half a bottle of baby oil. We added a little bit of watercolor paint to allow a better difference to be seen between the water and baby oil and when the children shake them, the water moves and flows as if we were flying through space.

After making our galaxies in a bottle, the preschoolers were asked a survey question of who would like to fly to space. Usually when the teachers ask these questions most of the children say yes but when the children added their votes up on a graph at the front of the room, we found the votes were nearly the same for yes and no. We ended up having only two more children want to go to space than the rest who didn't want to go. This was exciting to see the children really making their own decisions and not just going with the crowd. 

After graphing our choices of space travel, the preschoolers explained how people travel through space in Rocket ships! The preschool teacher instructed them to create a rocket ship out of various colored squares to spell their names. Once they completed their names on their paper, they added a triangle for the top of the rocket ship. This was a great activity not only for spelling and practicing spelling their names but many preschoolers chose to build their rocket ships out of one color or a pattern of colors; and it was great to see this higher-level thinking. 

The next adventure (once we arrived back from outer space) was to go into the wilderness and look for things in the wild. We knew we would need to bring along something to help us see better-binoculars! So the preschoolers were able to decorate them in preparation for our big adventure! They had a blast looking through them and deciding what to put on them and want to draw to make them their very own.

Once everyone decorated their binoculars, we lined up to go on our adventure. We crawled through tunnels and went around the room gathering objects we may find in the wild like feathers and rocks and other animals. 

The preschoolers we're so excited and inventive as they crawled and climbed in search of items around our preschool room - it really did turn into the jungle!

When the afternoon preschoolers came in we talked about the weather as a review for this month. Then each preschooler there was given multiple water bottles to create various weather scenes to give them tangible tools to aid in this review. They went from station to station creating sunshine in a bottle, snow in a bottle, and partly cloudy in a bottle.

While the partly cloudy was my favorite, the children wanted it to 'rain' again, so we watched it rain in jars again and asked the preschoolers to remember the steps in creating this magical science experiment we have come to love.  After that, we cleaned up our rain in a jar projects as we moved onto a sorting game. 

The teachers created a grid on the floor of all four seasons.  In each box were items and pictures of things that would belong in each of the four seasons. But, the teachers said there were 'mistakes' in some of the boxes.  They told the children they needed their help to make sure all the boxes held the correct items used only for the specific season listed.  

In a true test of what they know, the preschoolers needed to look in each box and find the items that did not belong. Then they needed to gather those items and place them in the correct seasons box. For example, snowflakes found in the summer box needed to be moved to the winter box. It was really amazing to see how much our preschoolers have learned and were able to demonstrate during with this activity.

At the start of each day, we dress Pirate Pete for preschool; it is probably one of the children's favorite parts of our little routine. Pirate Pete is supposed to be dressed for the weather outside, and as the weather has been changing the preschoolers have been doing a nice job of figuring out what Pirate Pete needs to wear. With that in mind, the preschool teachers found an app where the preschoolers were able to dress characters based on the various seasons. The preschoolers were so excited to get individual time to dress a character like a Pirate Pete for spring, winter, summer, and fall.  

On Wednesday the preschoolers had more worldly adventures as they played a beanbag toss game with jungle animals to improve hand-eye coordination.

While some were playing the beanbag game, others made masks to take home of lions. Masks are always a favorite among the preschoolers and these were terrific because we attached popsicle sticks to them so the children could raise and lower them at their own comfort level as they roared around the room.

The morning preschoolers were given for pictures of weather items representing each season, then they were asked to cut them out and sort them by winter, spring, summer, and fall. The children did a terrific job sorting these images and reviewing the seasons and weather information we have been going over this month.

We have been talking a lot about clouds in our weather and seasons discussions and while we have had it rain in jars many times this month we took a different approach this week. The preschoolers were able to learn about how clouds absorb water using cotton balls and droplets of water. The preschoolers watched and helped the teachers soak cotton balls in the water to see how long it would take for the cotton to be waited down with water. This was a great visual for them to understand the why behind the rain. 

Then, there were other preschoolers who went to the rainbow making station. Using light and water reflections through a prism the preschoolers were able to see how and why we see rainbows after it rains while the last group worked on building tornadoes in a jar. This is something many of us probably do with our water bottles at home. We were able to get a nice big tornado in a jar as the preschoolers took turns whirling the jar and watching the tornado be created inside. 

Since wind is very common this month we performed science experiments by using a fan and asking the preschoolers to decide if something would be blown away with the wind the fan creates or if it would be too heavy for the wind and fall to the ground. This forming of a hypothesis was a blast for the preschoolers as they learned to make comparisons with objects in terms of their similarities and differences. 

Springtime is here and therefore we have been talking a lot about flowers. We talked a lot about what flowers and other plants need to live. The preschoolers now understand they need light and dirt and water. Given these things, the preschoolers helped plant flowers in small pots to be replanted at home later this spring.  While we don't recommend to plant anything before Mother's Day, after that these flowers should be able to go into the ground and grow throughout the summer. One thing to keep in mind is to ask your preschooler to help you water them to keep them alive until that time. 

We continued our discussion about flowers and made flower necklaces to wear. Some of them were able to create patterns with the different colors given while others only wanted one color flower on theirs. The preschoolers were given the freedom to add as many or as few flowers as they wanted because this was an activity based on fine motor skills to improve hand-eye coordination by threading the string through the flowers.  Anyone interested in patterns worked at a higher level by adding that math component.

As we remembered the flowers need water to grow, we made clouds with raindrops as well.  The preschoolers did a terrific job adding different colored tissue paper to the raindrops as well as puffy cotton to their clouds.  These can be hung at home as a reminder of April showers bringing May flowers.

Just like in the morning group, the afternoon preschoolers talked about rainbows as well. We reviewed the colors in the rainbow and then for a fine motor activity for preschoolers were given pipe cleaners and beads to thread to create rainbows. 

Many of the preschoolers chose to keep the bead color and the pipe clean color the same. For some however, practicing the act of threading beads at all was enough of a challenge.  This means they merely put any bead on the cleaners. They really were proud of a colorful rainbow they added to a single pipe cleaner as opposed to the ones most of the children did sorting them by color. 

Later, the absorption cloud science experiment we did in the morning was done in a different way in the afternoon. The preschoolers were given cotton balls and a bowl of blue water and asked to place the cotton balls on top of the blue water. We watched them in the water as we saw the blue absorb onto the white came to understand the concept of clouds filling up with rain. Then, preschoolers used various tongs to squeeze out the water out of the clouds to repeat the absorption activity again. 

In the morning we did a another wind exercise using kites during our math time. Each kite had a different number written on it and the preschoolers needed to thread the correct amount of beads being placed on each kite string.  So if the kite said '5' then the child would string 5 beads on to that kite's tail. 

After making kites we practiced our cutting skills by working on framing out pictures of nature; like flowers and butterflies etc.  Our morning preschoolers have really improved their cutting skills since the start of the year. This year we have been practicing cutting on wavy lines and zigzag lines as well. This is a skill they will want to keep working on that home over the summer.

We worked on making flowers using our coffee filters and markers too. First, the preschoolers color using markers on the coffee filters and then drop its of water on them at the tables. This causes the ink from the markers to bleed making a tie-dye effect on coffee filters.  This lesson in absorption dries rather quickly and we are able to create the flowers efficiently; it is due to this simplicity that you may want to try it at home.

We are still continuing our animal discussions, so the preschoolers were asked to practice the ABC's of animals in their habitats. Children were given pictures and asked to guess what letter the image and started with. If it was a picture of a dog they would sound out the 'duh' sound and then guess letter D.  They then could flip the card over to see if they were correct. This was a fun game to play as the children tried harder images and sounds. 

Once we finished our habitat and animal alphabet game the preschoolers got some wiggles out dancing together at the circle. Now that the warmer weather has arrived many of the preschoolers have been eager to get up and moving so we have increased the amount of large motor games we are playing in school.

Once the children were nice and tired out from jumping and dancing around we had some relaxing story time to settle them back down before snack.  

When snack time ended we learned how to make elephant trunk puppets using noise makers of sorts made from streamers and elephant cut outs.  The children learned how to insert the 'trunk' in order to make a live action elephant puppet with a movable trunk!

The children brought their trunk blowing elephants to our latest circle time bulletin board to see if they could blow the wings of the butterflies on that board.  

Next we played animal yoga to get up and moving again by stretching and moving like animals in the wild.  Again, our preschoolers have a lot of energy these days so the more we get up and moving the better chance we have with holding their attention with other activities later.

An example of this would be our snake project.  After discussing how snakes move, the children made their own snakes with pipe cleaners and beads to create snakes flexible like the discussions had in school on Friday.

Some of you may have noticed we have finished our alphabet this week and have reviewed all the letters of the ABC's together as a class as we looked over the sounds of each letter by looking at pictures and practicing the initial sounds of that image to rehearse the phonics associated with each letter.

For the next 10 days, we will be working on numbers 0-10 and practice writing these as they are the core of all other numbers in the future.  It will be at this time when we pair the writing of the letters what spell the numbers being showcased as well as looking at the amounts each of those numbers represent.

The afternoon preschoolers ended our week with their version of a tornado in a jar followed by making clouds and rain drops to hang in our room to finish out the spring time decorations.

As the preschoolers worked on these clouds, they added math components to them by only needing to add the amount of raindrops shown on their cloud.  We enjoy watching the children show their expanding confidence with activities like this where they use their experience to show us they can complete these tasks with little assistance from their teachers.

What's Coming Up?

As we move into the last few weeks of this month, we will be finishing up talking about the weather and seasons around the world and how we can get around this great big world.  

May 1st preschool will be cancelled due to a change in the high school schedule.  A note has been sent home but you will be texted another reminder in the coming weeks in order be sure no one ends up making the trip when school has been cancelled.