May is finally here!

We are nearing the end of our Star of the Week presentations as we only have a few weeks left of school.  As we enter the month of May we will enjoy reaching into more parts of our imaginations and kicked things off this week with talking about royalty first.

The children started by making crowns out of paper plates by decorating them in any way they wanted.  Some chose to draw on them and then others chose to add foam decorations, etc.

All that is needed for this is to fold a paper plate and cut the inner circle a few times to form points like a crown.  Some of the children chose to wear them for a few pictures while others played in them a while.  

Once we finished making crowns we had the children defend their castles and towers with a 'snow ball battle.'  The children each were given a piece of paper and asked to crumple it up and then we split them up to see which side of the room could have the least paper which helped lead us to an 'indoor snowball fight.'  Once we decided the score seemed to be even, we held passage for the kingdom by allowing the children to jump across the stepping stones!

As we further discussed kingdoms and magic, we read a story about a dragon who needed to find someone who would love him.  This of course ended in his mother coming to his rescue as Mother's Day approached.  We will not be celebrating Mother's Day in school, however, we will be talking about family and the magic of love as we come into the week after Mother's Day.

This will go the same for the afternoon group because we had too much fun this week going into space via rocket ship!  We did the old film canister trick as we added alka-seltzer to a little water, popped on the lid and watched them shoot to the ceiling just like a rocket!  It was AWESOME!

When we headed to the moon in the morning, we added craters using glue sticks and sequins. Then, we ended up climbing into an actual rock ship and took turns leading the way to the moon where we created 'aliens' using blue hair gel and google eyes in order to create a see through creatures!

The afternoon preschoolers were able to understand and see gravity at work as we held a popcorn kernel in mid-air and helped a die sink only half way down our science tube!  

It was a great experiment involving corn syrup, honey, vegetable oil, lamp oil, water, dish soap and more.  The children each had a turn either adding in a liquid or small item to see how far down the bottle it would sink into the tube.

We have finished up our numbers of the week and will be moving on to shapes in the last two weeks of preschool.  Each time we review a section of letters, numbers or shapes, we will review all of these items together as a class.

The afternoon children have loved talking about space so much, they have remembered the word 'constellation' and know how to look for and use it appropriately.  

They learned another great 'space' word this week - galaxy.  They made their own galaxies by using water, vegetable oil and water color paint as well as sequins to represent planets and stars.  Once the lid was placed back on the bottle, the children were able to shake it and watch the galaxy 'swirl.'

Then, the children were asked to define a constellation and then created one using stars to make their name.  As if that wasn't enough, the children used pom pom balls and a pipe cleaner to create our solar system and added star stickers to  add some shine their their projects.

We built a rocket by following a color by numbers direction sheet a teacher made and we were so proud of how many of the children were able to follow the directions on their own by reading the colored boxes and numbers!

We had time to throw 'moon rocks' (balls of foil) into bins during some large motor time in the afternoon.  Much like the 'snowball fight' of the morning our students did a terrific job with their aim!

We talked a lot about rockets and what they do and where they go and how they get there this week.  Many of the children were fascinated with the 'smoke' that comes off the bottom of the rocket as it lifts off.  The children then inspired the teachers to create a rocket ship art project that allowed the children to 'add smoke' to the bottom of the rocket just like they saw in the many pictures we shared with them this week.

The morning students had their share of rockets as well this week as they made one using the letters in their name followed by astronauts with their faces inside the helmet.

These children made their share of galaxies and watched them glow as the teachers placed their phones underneath the water bottles to see these space tools come to life!

This rocket theme was something many of the morning and afternoon children couldn't get enough of this week so we kept on going as we learned about gas and propulsion.

We used balloons as a safe way to teach the children about some of the gas that is used to make things go up in the air.  We placed water and vinegar into a water bottle then added some baking soda to the inside of the balloon.  We decided to do this with two balloons and watch them 'race' to see which balloon grew the biggest, the fastest.

The great thing about this experiment is that you can hear the gas bubbles as well as see them which helps us share how things are able to start moving when looking at rockets in space.

Since the afternoon was also so impressed with this information, we took things a step further by Friday and had both the morning and afternoon children helping us with the 'launching' of balloon rockets.  

By attaching a balloon to a straw with a piece of tape, we feed a bit of string through the straw then blow up the balloon.  In doing this, we then fill the balloon with air and then count down with the children to get a blast off.  The balloon flies across the room on the string and it looks like something taking off for flight!

The morning children wanted to be lifted up with their balloon rockets so we did the next best thing, added their pictures to some dot paintings along with some black lines for string and created artwork to give them this idea of flight via balloon.

The balloon talk was so popular in the morning we played 'balloon volleyball' using our hands and 'balloon tennis' with paper plate tennis rackets.

We then reviewed our numbers 0-10 by reading a book about counting at night as we reminded the children of how much easier it is to see the stars at night.

Then, later, when we read about a very busy spider we created his web using a hula hoop and tape then asked the children to help 'flies' go through the air to see which ones will get 'stuck' for the spider to eat.  

The children were so excited any time their cotton ball fly made it to get stuck in the web! 

Back to space time again in the afternoon we searched for moon rocks using magnify glasses and their sense of touch to decide which rocks might have come from the moon.  

While some children were looking up the rocks, our other small group worked together to build rockets out of our magnet tiles.  These were some of the last space activities we did this week with the afternoon, they have been so excited about this topic we have loved helping them discover more and more about space!

The morning children have loved talking about space nearly just as much as many of them loved using their kindergarten math number recognition skills to place the correct number of star stickers on stars.  They did an excellent job of counting and recognizing the numbers between 11-20!

The science lesson on Friday for the morning children involved salty stars and planets as the children allowed water colored paint droplets (while using pipets) to change the colors of the water colored paint.

These pipets can be found at any local craft store as can water colored paint.  The salt lines were drawn with glue and salt mixed together often like people do with glue an glitter or sand.  

Before going home, our morning preschoolers built a galaxy using white, purple and blue colored piles of pre-made goo. We have created this as science in class before but this time the teachers pre-made the colors and then asked the children to blend them to get a 'galactic look.'  This was the hit of the week for sure!

What's Coming Up?

We have two weeks left of preschool and will be sending home a sheet this coming week with words and movements for the song choices the preschoolers elected this week to perform at graduation on May 22nd.  

If you need another parking pass, please let me know sooner rather than later and email me if you have any questions about graduation.