Rain, Rainbows and Back to the Farm!

Sorry this post is a little on the late side, time has definitely gotten away from me!

Last week we talked a little bit more about rain and how it happens! We did a science experiment and made rain in a jar. The hot water on the bottom and cold air on top causes water to condense on the plate and 'rain' in the jar!

We then got to make our own rain sticks!

On Wednesday we had our long awaited trip to the farm! The kids had a good time learning about cows and seeing the other animals.

I think my favorite part was the baby calf! She was only a few minutes old and we got to watch her learn to stand up and walk.

Friday was our last day about weather as we talked about rainbows. We learned about some of the science behind rainbows and made our own rainbow in the backyard using the hose. We also made a rainbow in a bowl! This took forever for some reason, so the kids didn't actually get to see it. I'm sure they would like to see the picture if you want to show them!

This week we also learned about the letter h. One of our activities was charades with words that start with h. We then used those words to make the objects out of playdough.

We also introduced alphabet bingo this week and the kids did a great job of matching the letter on the card I held up to the letter on their board. Later in the year I will make it harder by just telling them the letter names, rather than showing them the cards!

Curious George

My kids were just watching Curious George and watched an episode that fit so perfectly with our unit this month! It talked a lot about clouds and wind, George even makes his own windsock! It's season 3, episode 9, called "Red Sky At Night, Monkey's Delight". If your kids are wanting to watch tv, this is a great way to re-enforce what we've been learning!

Columbus Day, Wind and Snow

This week started out with a Columbus Day celebration. We learned a little bit about Columbus and then made some boats and telescopes of our own. The kids had lots of fun sailing their boats!

We also introduced the letter G on Monday. It is always fun to learn about the letter's that the kids' names start with because the kids are already familiar with them! We talk about the letters in our names so often as we practice writing our names.

On Wednesday we talked about the wind. We played "Will the wind move it" and blew on different objects to see if the wind would move them. The kids didn't a great job of making predictions and figuring out why some objects would move and other's wouldn't. After that we made our own windsocks.

Friday doesn't have any pictures. We talked about snow on Friday! (Totally foreign concept around here! ) We had fun during centers with counting snowflakes and making patterns with them. We also got some cutting practice in! We read several books about snow and talked about how we dress differently during the winter, which was also kind of hard to explain. Flip-flops are definitely worn year round around here!

Weather Watchers

On Monday this week we finished up our farm unit with some acting! We read the book, "The Hat" by Jan Brett and then the kids used stick puppets to act out the story. They also got to make their own stick puppets to take home.

On Wednesday we played a little bit of alphabet matching to work on letter recognition. They did really good with the letters we've already learned and got a few of the others right as well!

We also had some fun on Wednesday with pajama day! October is National Popcorn Month. Just the kind of thing I love to celebrate in preschool! We read a fun story about Paul Bunyan accidentally covering Minnesota in popcorn and then made some popcorn of our own.

Wednesday was also the start of our weather unit. We watched a little bit of Sid the Science Kid to introduce weather and clouds, in particular. It's tough to learn about weather here in Arizona when we don't see much besides the sun!

On Friday we got more into clouds, starting off with some cloud counting. We made our own rain cloud counting mats and then used cereal to make different numbers of raindrops. This is an activity you can continue at home! Use whatever you have on hand for the rain drops and give your kids different numbers to count out. Challenge them and see how high they can count!

We also got to make our own mini rain storms! The kids got to squirt colored water into a cloud of shaving cream and watch as the cloud filled with water and then started to rain!

Once too much rain had gone through the cloud, it turned into fog in a bottle. (Which was also a new concept for these weather deprived Arizona kids!)

After that we painted cloud pictures with white paint and cotton balls.

Have a great Fall Break everyone!