Animal Adventures!

Animal Adventures visited preschool last Tuesday!  Both classes had a wonderful time with Zoo Keeper Emily.  She showed us many animals that had fur and scales.  We got to learn about them, see them up close, and even touch any animal we wanted to.  Below are photos of the animals.  I was able to find a few pics without faces of the kids touching the animals.  You'll have to wait for the end of the year preschool movie for some special ooh and ahh faces!

The baby rabbit named "Nugget" was only 5 weeks old and it was her first trip away from mommy.  She brought along her sibling "Chicken" to keep her company on the journey.  She was one of the kids' favorites.  The skink gets its' name from their blue tongue.  Mrs. Hill and I tried to get a pic of the tongue, but he was too fast for us!  The lizard was surprisingly soft to touch and the spines were not sharp at all!

The ferret was a bit smelly.  Kind of like a wet dog!  The kids were in complete giggles watching him do the hula dance and get folded in half, backwards!  Who could not love that little face?  The skunk was HUGE!!  It was getting ready to hibernate for the winter.  This skunk was very special because of it's unusual coloring.  The stink of the skunk was taken out, so no smelly skunk!  The kids were quite impressed with the baby alligator.  At their zoo, they have an 8 foot long alligator!  The alligator's mouth was taped closed so he would not take a nibble of someone's finger.  The kids were very happy to hear that the tape does not hurt him.

Another favorite animal was the chinchilla.  If you have never pet a chinchilla, you will never believe how soft they are!  Chinchillas are great climbers and hide from their prey in very tiny spaces.  The PM kids got to have a chinchilla sit on their head!  We also got to see the chinchilla get "squished" into a taco and a burrito.  This showed us how they squeeze into those small spaces!  Can you believe that we have corn snakes here in Massachusetts?  They are very afraid of vibration, so they often slither away quickly and hide from us.  They are harmless and the kids were amazed at how smooth the snake was.

Agh!  The boa is by far Mrs. D's least favorite creature friend!  The kids were oh, so brave to hold the boa in their laps!

Zoo Unit - Week 1

We are finally in the swing of things and have begun our first "real" unit of the school year.  We dove right into the Zoo Unit with all kinds of zoo activities, songs and games.  We are learning animal names, where they like to live and play, and about their characteristics (colors and skin patterns, how many legs, how they like to move, and other body features such as teeth, tails and so forth).

This week for table time, we sorted peacock feathers by their colors and used our little pincer fingers to push and pull putty apart to find zoo animal erasers hidden inside.  Other fine motor activities to get strong hands included feeding Mr. Monkey plastic bananas with tweezers, following paths to match animals, and putting together Duplo blocks to make animal pictures.  We also fed monkeys on long stick grabbers that you had to use pull triggers on the end to make the mouths open and close to catch the pom-pom "food".  A favorite activity was the Elefun game.  There are small fabric butterflies that fly up the elephant's trunk with a fan inside the elephant.  You have to catch the flying butterflies with nets.  Most of the time, the butterflies fell to the floor and placed into the nets by little fingers!  We counted bananas to string onto monkey cards and matched animal pictures to their shadows.

Two teacher table games included "Please Do Feed the Animals" where they got to put a gem onto the animal picture if they had that animal on their game card.  The other game was called, "Going to the Zoo!"  This is played like Candy Land.  You spin the spinner to find out what animal you will travel along the path to visit.

More table activities included zoo animal rubber stamps, playdough with animal stampers, a zoo floor puzzle, and Crocodile Dentist (a game where you push the croc's teeth one at a time, and eventually one of the teeth causes his mouth to "chomp").  We matched the spots on the creature from the Put Me in the Zoo book with magnetic pom-poms .  We also drew on spots on our giraffes to match the number on the card.

During Circle Time, we learned the song, "Monkeys Jumping on the Bed" and acted it out.  We sang, "Monkeys Teasing Mr. Alligator" and Mrs. D used her monkey pom-pom puppets and a green sock for the alligator.  We danced around to an animal moves song!  Another game we played was "Land, Sea, and Air".  Mrs. D had lots of animal photos to name and then decide where they liked to live.  We found that some animals like to be in two or more places.  There were some really goofy and silly looking creatures in her envelope!

The AM kids got to pick their pumpkin from the pumpkin patch!  Now we have two pumpkins waiting for our Pumpkin Fun week and Fall Fiesta.

FIRE DRILL!!
We even had a fire drill one morning!  Here we are going out the playground gate to practice getting out of the school quickly and safely!  Mrs. Sumner was one of the adults who helped hold our hands.  Once we got to the soccer fields, we sang a few songs to pass the time.

All in all, it was a short, but fun and busy week!

Our First Few Days of School

The We have had a great first few days getting to know the rules and routines, learning one another's names, and just having fun!

During Table Time, we caught rolling marbles (an excellent eye-hand coordination and visual tracking activity), used our pincher fingers to pick up pom poms, place straws in small holes in a cheese container, drop pennies in the slot of a squeeze jelly jar, and fill up test tubes with water using a large eye dropper.  We also strung letter beads on Mrs. D's Chicka Boom tree.  We played a lot of cookie games with matching cookies, counting chocolate chips (pom-pom's) onto a cookie (shown in next collage) and filling up cookie jars with magnetic cookies.  We also played a cookie game where we followed a cookie "recipe".  There were cookie cards with ingredients on the back.  We picked up the cookies to find our ingredients with a suction cup spoon.  We had to watch out for the "rotten egg" cards.

Our letter this week was H, so there were several ways to explore making an H with Duplos, pattern blocks, and stamping (not pictured).  We also found magnetic letters in a tub filled with packing peanuts.  After catching the letters with a magnetic wand, the kids would match the letter onto a letter mat.

Two of our most favorite activities were in the sensory table.  Colored water beads wiggled and jiggled as we scooped them up.  They were very slippery and bouncy too!  We made lots of colored foam in the water table.  We re-used hand soap containers filled with water and about 1 tsp. of clear dish soap.  Of course we added food coloring to our mixtures.  Voila!  Many hours of foam fun!

We also played a Preschool Friend Lotto Game where we found the pictures of all our new friends and teachers.  This game will be coming home to play with your family in the upcoming weeks.

After reading, the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom story, for project/craft time, we made Chicka trees with our handprints and letters in our name as well as a Chicka snack with pretzle rods, green apple slices, and a black grape "coconut".  Most of the kids gobbled up their trees with gusto!  We made sculptures with foam blocks, pipe cleaners and beads.

During circle time we learned quite a few new songs.  Some songs were just for fun and to help everyone feel more comfortable, and others helped us learn each other's names.  The hits were Sticky Bubble Gum, Who Stole the Cookie From the Cookie Jar, and Stand Up.  One game they enjoyed was the Backpack song/game.  Each kiddo got a turn to wear the special backpack while we all sang a song.  At the end of the song, that child got to pick a card out of the backpack.  The card told us silly things to do, such as jump up and down, clap our hands, count to 10, etc.  We also played a find and seek game with our shoes!  Each child and teacher took off one of their shoes and we placed them in the middle of our circle time area.  One at a time, each child picked up a shoe and then located it's owner.  This was another game to help us learn each other's names.  Our kick a ball game started off great as we passed the ball to one another by calling out their names.  However, it quickly blew up into a full fledged kick the ball around game (as I knew it would) that brought on LOTS of GIGGLES and LAUGHTER!

Our preschool garden is in full bloom!  The PM kids got to visit the garden and helped our class choose one of the pumpkins.  We cut it off the vine and will use it during our pumpkin explorations and our Fall Fiesta coming up in a few weeks!  The AM class will pick their pumpkin this coming week.

Welcome to Preschool 2015-2016!

Welcome to Mrs. D's preschool blog!  It is my hope that this blog will give you a glimpse into your child's school day and that you can feel a part of our experiences.  I welcome your comments on what you like or any suggestions for improvement.  I want this to be a valuable use of all of our time!

Now onto our first day....
Hopefully, you all saw the small green ball of green playdough that came home and read the note about our Magic Playdough.  The kids were really excited to see the dough change colors.  It is going to be a good year!

Bugs, Bugs & More Bugs!

This unit lends itself to many, many strong hands activities where we get to use our little fingers.  Using strawberry hullers, we placed teeny tiny little plastic ants into small ice cub trays.  The sand table was filled with all kinds of plastic bugs that we scooped, crawled and helped dig tunnels for.  Rubber stamps were flying as kids created beautiful bug scenes or just went crazy stamping bugs.  We had pattern block butterflies to make, rubber caterpillars to pick up with butterfly hair clips, and Cootie Bugs to make.  Bug Easter eggs were fun to match and put together and we had a blast with the wind up bug toys to make them move, wiggle, hop, or jump.  Magnetic puzzle pieces were tricky to take out and put in with a magnet attached to a string.  We fed our hungry caterpillars and played BUG SWAT where you have to use a small fly swatter to point to a bug picture.  We work on "symmetry" during our bug unit, as butterflies and bugs are nature's perfect demonstrator of natural symmetry.

The bees were buzzing to their hive with a letter beehive lotto game.  Our ladybugs needed some spots, so the younger kids rolled a color dice to determine what color spots our ladybugs needed, and the older kids used a dice and the "key" to find their colors.  Ladybug squeezers helped to save the leaves from pom pom aphids.  Ants in the Pants creates lots of giggles and laughter seeing those colored ants fly around!  More symmetry is explored with butterfly games, coloring, and "design your own" butterflies using felt pieces.  We searched for small bee erasers in a tub filled with Honeycomb cereal.  A different tub of bug parts helped us create even more bug creatures!  A magical activity was the spider web rubbing.  The kids were amazed by the "hidden" spider webs on our table (glue that had dried that I made in the shape of a spider web).  With a piece of paper and the side of a crayon, VOILA! a spider web is created!  They then made fingerprint spiders on their webs to add to the effect.  Scoop a Bug is fun as you have to use scooper tongs to pick up the bugs and sort them where they belong.  I also had a smaller Eric Carle, Very Hungry Caterpillar puzzle they enjoyed.

The kids had a blast being bakers while decorating their own cupcakes with pastry bags filled with icing.  We then put all of their wonderful creations together to form a long cupcake caterpillar.  Of course the best part, eating the caterpillars!  Kids got to experience the world of a bug by putting on a bug headband, complete with antennae, and then crawling around under our grassy table.  The timer was busy buzzing away as everyone wanted some turns!  More symmetry with butterfly alphabet matching, creating bugs with the Rainbow Blocks and our magnificent butterfly paintings!  Stringing spiders on their webs was great counting practice.  Playdough and diffuser paper made some wonderful bug creations as well.  We pretended to be bees gathering pollen and placing it in the honeycombs with little yellow beads and tweezers.  There is that static electricity again!  This time we made butterflies fly!

The Bug Unit lends itself to an author study on Eric Carle.  He is one of my favorite authors and his books always have a special surprise.  We read the Very Hungry Caterpillar and the next day we fed a tin can caterpillar his food the next day as we worked on story sequencing and the life cycle of a butterfly.  The Very Busy Spider lent itself to our glue spider webs on the table and making a hula hoop weaving web.  The Very Quiet Cricket with it's magical chirping at the end, The Very Lonely Firefly with the blinking fireflies at the end, and The Very Clumsy Click Beetle with his clicking at the end, are the top kid favorites.  The Grouchy Ladybug works on size concepts and a discussion on feelings, as well as that is how they learned about the bad aphids eating the leaves.  Mrs. D transformed herself into a bug with special goggles.  We played "Bug in the Rug" with the parachute.  This is a detective game where one student (the bug detector) looks around the circle to see who is missing (the bug) and hiding under the rug (parachute).  We played this game over and over!  The older kids just love the beehive game where we try to figure out how many bees are hiding by process of elimination with the numerals.  If there are 3 bees hiding and someone guesses 7, we can erase the 7 and then all of the numbers above 7 (8, 9, 10).  If they guess 2, we can erase 2 and also 1.  Eventually the kids narrow the numbers down so they can guess the correct number of bees hiding.

Bug Lady Visit!

Miss Maire Anne (also known as the "bug lady" by the kids) from BugWorks out of Sudbury, came to visit us last week.  She brought with her many different creatures for us to look at, touch and explore.  She talked about their sizes, shapes, how they protect themselves, what they eat, and how they grow.  She also talked about where some of them came from.  WE LOVE THE BUG LADY!!

Below we had large meal worms that turn into beetles as they mature.  She even showed us a beetle that pretends it is dead to protect itself from predators.  One of the meal worms shed it's skin during the presentations that day (second plate picture with one meal worm and skin).

Here is a giant grasshopper.  He does not fly, his wings are too small, but he does have red under his wings that he can show to say "don't eat me, I taste bad"if something tries to eat him.  The plate with the "second" smaller grasshopper is actually another skin that was shed by the grasshopper that she brought to show us.  She brought a praying mantis baby and a mother one for us to look at and a walking stick.

Below is a hissing cockroach and two kinds of millipedes.  See the cute baby millipede below?

Frog, Lizards, Snakes and Turtles - oh my!

What a lot of creature learning we have going on.  It never ceases to amaze me how much knowledge kids have about the world around them and how curious they are to learn more!

Activities this unit included placing and balancing frogs on a log/wooden block (to go with our song, "Five Green and Speckled Frogs".  For math activities, we added numeral cards to a frog counting book, made frog number lines, created snake patterns, helped frogs eat the correct number of flies, and holding our own creature races by rolling a color and a number dice while making predictions on which creature will win first and who will come in last.  Our strong hands fed flies to a frog with tweezers, traced curvy frog tongue paths, squeezing rubber frogs to open their mouths to feed them foam flies, and coloring lizards amazing colors!  We also had a ton of plastic frogs and craft foam lily pads in the water table and a giant frog puzzle to put together.

How do lizards eat?  With long sticky tongues!  Our lizards ate with magnetic flies.  Matching snakes and frog pictures and frog colors were favorite activities for the AM class.  Sorting and grouping rubber snakes, turtles, lizards, and frogs into a sorting tray was a favorite of the PM class.  There were no rules and no clues on how to sort the creatures.  The kids thought of great sorting categories all on their own (by color, by creature, by creature and color, ones that had legs and no legs, animals that are on the ground and ones that can go in the water, etc.).  We also enjoyed alphabet lily pad lotto, sorting turtles by size, and having fun with turtle bean bags and lily pads.  Mrs. D made pipe cleaner snakes so we could fill up colander holes and string cheerios on them.

Can you put the animals where they belong?  With a little clue card, the kids matched the plastic creature with it's initial sound (frogs went on the letter F's, snakes went on the letter S, etc.).  We worked on strong hands by tracing frog paths, using pool noodle pieces to string long snakes on clothesline rope, lacing up turtle cards, and tracing, then cutting straight lines.  AM kids fingerpainted chameleons beautiful and bright colors.  PM kids made a snake numberline that went 1-30.  They really had to work together to complete this long snake!  Cinnamon sugar snakes were a hit for our cooking project.  Our science experiment this unit was to learn about static electricity to make our frogs jump to the balloon.  We first rubbed a filled balloon on our hair to create all of those negative charged electrons.  Then we held the balloon above frog tissue paper cut outs, and VOILA! the positively charged tissue frogs magically jumped to the balloon.  Of course this activity was done over and over again.  They also had a great time seeing their hair stand up tall!

See our tadpoles?  They are growing so fast!  We are on the look out for hind legs.  The PM kids painted snake pictures at the easel.  There were a lot of colorful designs and creations.  S is for Snake with our snake paper chain craft the PM kids did.  Our frog below and his long tongue was a greater than, less than activity where we moved the frogs tongue to the "most" bugs because he was so hungry.  Rattlesnake patterns were a hit.  Each kiddo got a rattlesnake to hold (a plastic mini m&m container with some corn kernals inside and googly eyes and a tongue on the top.  Mrs. D made a pattern on the giant black snake with pattern blocks.  The kids were on the lookout to see if Mrs. D made a mistake.  If she did, they shook their rattlesnakes.  Then we fixed the pattern and continued on.  There was lots of measuring going on.  The AM kids measured how far a frog jumped with foot cards and the PM kids measured classroom items with frog feet rulers.  Mrs. Bailey had fun with the kids during her language groups.