Monday, April 18, 2016

Welcome back to preschool!  We had a super fun day!

First...1 quick reminder...

There is NO school this Friday, April 22 for a spring break day.

We were surprised to see that our pets got into a little mischief this weekend when we were not at school!  They made a web of yarn, but were then stranded in our block center!  

Each friend took a turn documenting his/her plan: What are you going to do to rescue a pet? First, he/she picked which pet to rescue.  Second, he/she drew a picture of his/her plan.  Third, Mrs. Mudd took dictation as he/she explained the plan.  

Finally, execute the plan!!!  But, be very careful, don't touch the yarn (and improve those large motor skills)!!! The ability to think symbolically by planning and then using those plans to represent ideas is an early cognitive skill.

After all that hard work of rescuing our pets, we needed some time to run and play outside!!!

Tricky Mouse was back and he brought squirrels with letters on them.  That silly mouse thought that squirrels could be pets and live in our classroom!  We let tricky mouse know that squirrels have to live outside in the trees!  We did do a great job of identifying/recognizing letter names and sounds to find that tricky mouse (each time he hid from us)!

For science time today we began our ladybug journals.  We looked at models and our tiny larvae as each friend drew a picture of stage 1 (egg) and stage 2 (larva) of our ladybugs.  Our larva are getting much bigger and should soon move on to stage 3 (pupa). We are excited and anxious to see what that looks like as metamorphosis takes place!  

While each friend created his/her journal we learned some fun facts about ladybugs.  Did you know that their eggs can be yellow or orange?  Did you know that one ladybug will lay 1000 eggs in it's short lifetime?

Time for small groups (centers)!

As we begin our project on pets, we needed to find out what each friend already knows about pets. Mrs. Mudd took dictation as each friend told me what he/she knows about pets!

With Mrs. Burnham we began another experiment involving "new" life!  We each "planted" 2 lima beans (one soaked in water for 3 hours, one dry) and 1 jelly bean in 2 separate plastic bags with wet paper towels.  We then predicted which will grow bigger the lima beans or the jelly bean.  We placed a sticker on the bag that we predict will grow bigger!  Finally each friend observed his/her 2 bags of beans and drew his/her observations for "day 1" in his/her own "Bean Journal"!  We will continue to watch and journal our beans over the next few weeks!

And...more beans...we used 4 of our 5 senses exploring beans in the sensory table.  What do they look like? What do they feel like? What do they sound like? What do they smell like?  Some friends even decided to sort them by color!

These little scientists needed to get the wiggles out...so off we went outside!

During Jesus Time we learned the story of Jesus and the Miraculous Catch of Fish!  This was the third time He appeared to the disciples after He was raised from the dead.  The disciples had spent all night fishing with no luck.  Jesus appeared on the beach early in the morning and told them to cast their net on the right side of the boat!  They caught SO many fish, they were unable to haul the net in!  Jesus will always take care of us, just as He took care of His disciples!