Swimming in fun!

This week we had an ocean of fun talking about animals around the sea in the water and on the beach.  We found hidden 'letters' in bottles floating in water around the room and as we opened the bottles we found various letters inside!  Some said A or F or M!  It was great fun sharing these with one another.

We had a blast this week with a variety of under the sea songs as well!  The children LOVE to sing, "Baby Fish," and "Baby Shark," so we have included the links to these songs for you here.  We performed them both a lot this week! 

We read the classic Rainbow Fish book this week as well and then made fish with glittering silver scales (made out of foil) on those paper fish just like Rainbow Fish gave out his scales in the book.

After working on writing words that pertain to ocean animals, we did a lot of acting out of ocean animals like including ocean animal yoga moves too!

 After all the stretching and dancing and singing and giggling, we took a field trip to the Palatine gymnastics room to feel the bouncy floor and pretend we were bouncing on the waves of the ocean!  We went treasure hunting and found all sorts of things as we 'swam' to the bottom of the 'ocean' and collected prizes!

We enjoyed a beautiful Star of the Week poster and were amazed to learn we only have one more to go next week! This school year is really flying by as so many things are coming to an end in the next few weeks!

We made crabs out of our hand prints this week and will be sending them home next week and enjoyed decorating our room more this week when we added starfish to our classroom walls to add to our snakes on the ceiling, lions on the cabinets and jellyfish on our walls.  Our room is looking really fun for the end of our school year for sure!

For some added math fun this week we used our finger prints into fill fish bowls with the amount of finger prints associated with the number written on the fish bowl.  It's always great to watch our older kids count out their finger prints to be sure they have the accurate number of finger fish in the bowls.

 We spelled words this week using our word puzzle games and looked for three and four letter words and spelled them at our tables.  For our younger students or those who are not ready to work on reading whole words yet, we worked on three letter words, then for our children heading off to kindergarten next year, they worked on the four letter puzzles for added challenge.

Our seahorse project this week encouraged the children to show their creative side and use whatever materials they wished to fill in the seahorses body.  Some children colored in the animal and nothing else while others did add additional materials to their horses too.  They all looked amazing and so different from one another too!

 What's Coming Up?
Next week we will be talking about Space and are very excited for all we have planned!

Invitations to the graduation ceremony and party went home on Wednesday too, please let me know if you have any questions and remember you are invite anyone you wish!

Jungle Time!

This week we continued our talk about animals only we focused on the jungle and many of the wild creatures within.  We worked on a project as a team to hang up cheetahs, tigers and lions on one of our bulletin boards.  We will post a photo of their work on instagram next week.  Each table worked on a different animal and we put all the creatures together to hang up in our room for everyone to enjoy for a while.

We did a lot of number matching this week as well.  We used self correcting puzzles that only fit together just right if they were the correct answer as the children had to count dots on one piece and then read the number on the other piece.  Activities like this teach the children the worth of the numerals they see as well as help reinforce the reading of these numerals.

After working hard in our math unit we read Giraffes Can't Dance and then started on making another animal at the tables; the snake.

Teachers cut paper plates in a circular fashion to create a swirl of sorts and then the children used our dot/stamp markers to decorate the snakes.  Some children made their snakes all one color and others added color in patterns before putting the eyes and tongue on them to hang them in our classroom.  Some of the children asked to make more snakes so they could take one home and leave one at school to decorate the room more but we are now filled with snakes on our ceilings!

We looked at pictures this week of mama animals carrying their babies with their teeth and compared human mamas who carry their babies with their arms and discussed why animals use teeth instead.  Then, we all became parent animals and used tongs to be our 'teeth' and pick up the animals and move them from one place to another.

After acting as animal parents we became animals traveling in the jungle and made our way over logs (balance beams) and through caves (tunnels) around the room before coming to the main rug to 'hibernate'.   This way my favorite part as the children laughed and laughed as they napped and napped after their long journeys through the jungle.  Then, they would jump up and do the same thing all over again. 

By Friday we worked on mixing colors as the children painted lions using yellow and red paint.  They were given directions to keep yellow paint in the middle of their plate and then they used red paint on the edges of the plate then mixed in some of the yellow paint to turn the 'mane' orange.  

This was a lot of fun to watch as most of the children followed the directions given by the teachers for this project so they could see their work pay off in magic color mixing!

We made snakes by twisting different colored pipe cleaners together working on our fine motor finger muscles as we twisted and twisted.  This act really works those muscles and gave some of our kiddos a run for it as they focused really hard on making their snakes.

We worked on mixing colors in plastic bags with chameleons drawn on the outside.  The children each were given a baggie with a variety of colored paint inside then slowly and carefully mixed the colors together by pinching, rubbing and squeezing the bags.  The kids enjoyed this so much they asked to take their chameleons home.

We talked about what might happen if we were taking adventures in the jungle and ripped our pants or jackets.  We learned that we would need to sew them up and then practiced sewing patches and buttons with our lacing cards. 

Before heading home we learned what letter the word snake starts with and used our finger prints to trace the letter S and make a snake out of those finger prints.  It is amazing to see the growth in so many of our little pirates as they are following the directions more and more with activities like this and they have shown a lot of growth over the course of the year.

 What's Coming Up?
This coming week we will finish our animal units talking about who lives under the sea.

We WILL NOT HAVE PRESCHOOL on Friday, April 27th due to a change in the high school schedule.

 Don't forget preschool graduation is WEDNESDAY, May 16th, more details will come next week.