Spring Is Finally Here!

Whew!  What a long and record breaking winter.  We are certainly thrilled to be outside again and seeing all of the wonderful new things that spring brings us.  The spring unit is filled with lots of observations and science activities.  We got to make Nature Prints that use the sun, learn about water and how it is absorbed by some things and is repelled by others.  We performed cloud experiments with shaving cream and colored water to learn how a cloud soaks up with water until it cannot hold anymore...then we get "rain".  Mrs. Hill brought in a forsythia branch we could explore and then watch root and blossom.  She also brought in a nest that looked very different from a regular bird's nest.  It was a round nest with a hole that she found in the ground once the snow melted.  The kids guessed it was probably a chipmunk or mouse nest.  We ate rain clouds (blue jello and whipped cream), made rainsticks, and looked for pictures made by clouds in the sky.  We each made a cloud page for our book, "It Looked Like Spilt Milk".  This book will be coming home soon for your family to share.  Unfortunately, it rained many days, so we will be exploring outdoors later on.

Shadows are so much fun to play with!  What makes a shadow?  Ask your preschooler!  We played with worms (Don't worry, they were rubber ones!) and flower pots.  We made the worms go in, out, around, above, below, over, under, and so forth using our flower pot.  We will do some plantings after vacation so we can watch them spout and grow (and so they can get watered and not die over vacation).  Mrs. Bailey played spring games with us during language group.  The activity shown below was a syllable game where the bee got to move as many flowers as the word had syllables (ie. wa-ter is 2 syllables so the bee moved 2 flower spaces).  They were thrilled that the bee got to the end and all the way back home again.

Egg following directions always causes some giggles.  Kids are learning how to add together two sets of items.  Below we did "egg math" where there are eggs in two small nests.  Then we move all the eggs into the big nest.  Now how many eggs do we have all together?  Yes, word problems begin in preschool!  We performed another experiment and sorted items into "blows and does not blow" categories.  We used Mrs. D's small fan to try out our hypotheses to see if we were correct.  Another sorting activity was things that grow in a garden and things that do not.  Our "Find the Raindrop" guessing game was a hit!  Mrs. D hid a raindrop under some colored paper umbrellas.  Kids had to guess where the raindrop was hiding by telling Mrs. D which umbrella to look under by using the umbrella's color, number or color and number (ie. blue number 4).

Bunnies, flowers, rainbows, kites, birds, and eggs made up our learning table games and activities.

PM Class Visits the Concord Post Office

The PM Class had the opportunity to go on a mini field trip to the Post Office. Postal worker Linda was our guide. It was quite an adventure seeing all the areas hidden behind the mailboxes and counter.  A few children actually got to meet some of their own neighborhood mail carriers!

Did you get your letter in the mail?  The kids were very excited to write their families a letter. We brought our letters to the PO and Mrs. D bought us some stamps... Harry Potter ones!  After we put our stamp on, we got to take them to the lobby mailbox to mail them. We actually got to do this a couple of times because it was so much fun!  Then Linda hand cancelled the envelope with a stamper and then took our letters to sort them.  We knew our letters were in great hands and would be delivered soon! 

 

Preschool Reads Over 1,000 Books!

We celebrated our preschool's amazing book reading accomplishment with a Pizza Party at the end of our Annual Read-a-thon!  Thanks to all of our magnificent parents and families for all of the books you read and logged.  Reading is truly one of the most significant things you can do for your child's learning!

On Wednesday, we got to make our own personal pizzas with lots of toppings to choose from.  We kneaded the dough and rolled it out, added sauce, cheese and any toppings we wanted.  Some children made just cheese while other packed on "the works"!  We cooked them and put them in the fridge for our party day on Thursday.

Pizza Party Day was a success thanks to all of the parent helpers!  We did all things "pizza".  We made a pizza paper craft, put together pizza puzzles, played pizza topping games where you had to roll the dice or spin the spinner to add toppings to your pizza.  We had a matching game for the AM kids, which turned into "Go Fish" for the PM kids.  Pappa's Pizza Topple game always brings lots of giggles and laughter as you try to stack on and balance as many toppings as you can before they all fall off.  In the end, we did a pizza parachute activity and danced to the Pizza Pie song with Ms. McGregor.

Learning How to Be Safe

Safety can be a challenging thing to teach preschoolers.  There is a fine line about learning ways to be safe without causing children to be anxious.  We try to take the topics and present them through fun activities that hopefully teach and prepare them for real life possibilities.

• We learned about "Yum and Yuck" things to eat and read a silly story called, "Yummy and Yucky"
• "Touch and Don't Touch" not only included hot or sharp things, but also guns.  We instructed the children to ALWAYS run away if they saw a gun and to go get a grown up.  They should NEVER touch a gun.  A few of the children mentioned that some of their parents had told them the same thing.  Kuddos to you!!  
• We learned about what an emergency is and practiced how to call 911 if you need help.  We sang songs about traffic lights, buckling up our seat belts, and how to cross the street.
• Learning how to "stop, drop, and roll" while covering your eyes was a very important skill to practice, along with crawling and staying low if there is smoke and to always feel a door to see if it is hot before you open it.  If the door is hot, don't open the door because there is fire on the other side!  
• We talked about throwing your stuffed animals out your bedroom window if you are stuck inside so the firefighters know to look for you.  Most importantly, we learned that you NEVER run or hide from the firefighter because they are there to help you.
• Another tip we gave kids, was that if they ever lose their parent or grow-up in a store, that they should go to the cashiers or the people who check you out and you give your money to.  This way they can be assured that they will locate someone who will help them.

As part of our safety unit, we learn about Community Helpers and how they help us with every day things.  Of course the kids favorites are firefighters, police officers, doctors, and construction workers!  We sang a lot of songs, did fingerplays and guessing games, and learned about the tools everyone needs to do their jobs.  We got to play firefighters and put out flames by locating paper water blobs in the room and then running up to the board to find the same letter match and put out the flames!  "Red Light, Green Light" was a favorite game as was driving through town to find the color and number on the houses.

FYI to all of you... It is never too early to have children begin to learn their addresses and phone numbers!  Try teaching it to them in a sing song pattern or make up a little song or rhyme.  You might want to think of teaching your children your cell phone numbers instead of home numbers as most people are more easily reached by cell.

A Concord Police Officer came to visit the AM kids and to talk briefly about being safe.  Of course the biggest hit was getting to see his police car.  Both classes also got to enjoy a bus ride around the Ripley parking lots.  You should have seen the joy in their faces and excitement!  Teachers got a little dizzy going around and around the parking lots!

Making traffic light cookies, playing in the dramatic play/pretend airline ticket counter, putting out flames in our water table with squirt bottles, and the traffic light car race game were some of the hits of our Safety Unit.

The Bubble Lady Comes to Preschool

Miss Stella from the Science Discovery Museums in Acton came to visit us.  She showed us all kinds of ways to make bubbles and how to take care of our bubbles so they will be less likely to pop.  We discovered that no matter what shaped item you use to make your bubble, it will always become a "sphere"!

We all got to explore bubbles in a variety of ways.  We used all kinds of bubble wands, and even our hands to make bubbles.  We used paper funnel cups/horns to make bubbles and then to keep them up in the air.  We loved the bubble window!  If our hands were wet, we could push them through the bubble!  We also blew giant bubbles through the screen.

 Miss Stella showed us the wonderful world of bubbles.  Our most favorite thing though, was "POPPING" the bubbles!

Space Circle Time & Gym

Below are some Circle Time favorites during the Space Unit.  We played Alien and Space Man tic-tac-toe.  It is always interesting to watch where kids are developmentally, as many just had fun putting a space man or alien in an open space, while others had strategy and real thought in the placement of their piece.  We learned about tally marks as we kept score to find out whether space men or aliens won.  Alphabet space used blue paper plates with giant capital letters on them.  Depending on the class, we threw bean bags into the plates and named the letter or said the sound of the letter on the plate, or we played a space letter hunt.  One of our science teacher parents let us borrow their moon, sun, and earth stuffed animals.  We used them the practice the orbits around one another.  For the M or Not M (picture hard to see below) game, each student got a small white paper plate with a giant M on it.  Mrs. D showed pictures to the kids.  If the picture began with the /M/ sound, we raised our plates and sang "moon, moon, moon".  Before we played the game, we listened to the Laurie Berkner song, "Moon, Moon, Moon".  Delicious fruit rocket ships using cut up fruit and a wooden skewer were a hit.  Mrs. Bailey's alien puppet made us laugh with silly words and sound play.  We learned about things that give us light (such as a light bulb) or do not give us light (such as a book).  To learn how craters on the moon were made, we used a tub of flour and large wooden balls.  When you drop the wooden ball into the flour tub, the flour goes "poof" and a nice crater hole is made.  Their favorite part was the "poof" and then all the mess it made on the floor around the tub!  Not pictured was learning how the sun gives us light using a lamp and the globe.  We saw that when the earth turns, half the Earth has daytime and the other half has night time.  We also saw why we have summer and winter time.  Of course, we also had a lot of songs, dancing, and fun fingerplays to go along with space!

GYM TIME

We had a "blast" (yes, pun intended!).  

1.)  We used blow up space shuttles to play a blast off and landing game.  Each child got their own space shuttle to use.  They each stood on their own rubber dot on teh floor (their space station).  We counted from 10 to BLAST OFF!  They got to take off and run around the gym until the space commander (Mrs. D) told them to come in for a landing.  They would go back to their space station and wait for the countdown.  

2.)  After this game, we had simple relay races where one person would stand on one side of the gym, fly across the gym to their waiting partner, and then hand off the shuttle to their partner, who would then take off across the gym to the next waiting person. 

3.)  The final game was using our bodies on a scooter board.  The scooter was our space ship.  The kids would lay on their bellies, push their feet up against the wall and then used their feet and legs to push off the wall to "blast off". 

Space Games

Our Space Unit is one of our most popular themes during the school year.  Everyone fantasizes about being an astronaut!  The kids just LOVED our giant cardboard spaceship (see below)!  We donned some astronaut costumes and BLAST OFF! 

Below are some of our sensory table time games we had for this unit.  We found small eraser stars hidden in this special bubber dough, found colored stars in our rice and karo syrup sensory bottles, and cut out star shapes in flubber using cookie cutters.  We picked out the colored stars in black beans with large tweezers or clips and then sort them into a colored tray.  Playdough is always a favorite, especially when you have space molds!  Our sensory tables were a hit as well.  In one table, we had moon sand with all kinds of space men, marbles, and alien spacecraft (recycles cherry tomato containers!).  If you are not familiar with moon sand, it comes in a bunch of different colors (ours was blue), and when you squish it, it molds together.  In our other table, we had rice, moon rocks (aluminum foil balls), and more

Some "strong hand" activities included; using star and sun shape hole punches.  Many children ended up making math patterns with their paper punches.  We made solar systems by spinning the Lazy Susan while holding a marker to it to make the circles.  Then we added space stickers and foam shapes.  The kids really enjoyed carefully placing cool space looking marbles on top of golf tees.  Cutting while following wavy curves, tracing star shapes, and decorating 3-D cardboard space ships were all popular activities as well.  Kids made star bead necklaces, often times in math patterns again!  The rolling giggles and laughter when the little alien creatures popped up after you pushed them down were just precious.  I think it was the anticipation of waiting for them to pop was half the fun!

We matched star faces and the planets in the solar system orbit order.  Making constellations with star erasers and black pipe cleaners produced quite creative "pictures in the sky".  Some kids made star flyers that spin and wobble when thrown because of the straw center.  We compared sizes of rockets using Unifix math cubes to build them a certain number amount high.  Two big favorites were large motor activities.  "Shoot the Moon" used foam rockets that we shot at a moon and stars board (made out of a large black trash bag, star stickers, and a moon print.  "Catch a Comet" used water jugs with their bottoms cut off to use as a "catcher" and a giant aluminum foil ball with streamers coming out of it.  Puzzles, creating rocket ships using math blocks, counting stars, space lotto, and spaceship "go fish" rounded off our unit.