Claw-Claw the Kite

While learning about wind yesterday, the kids wrote a story about Claw-Claw the kite. This story is entirely theirs, I merely wrote it down for them!

Hi! My name is Claw-Claw. I'm a kite. One Sunday, my friend Leecy was at the park flying me. Suddenly, a big storm came and blew me away. A big wind named Blower was so scary. He was blowing me away from Leecy and I knew she would be so sad. Blower took me all the way to Mexico. When we got there, I hid behind a fall tree and Blower couldn't find me. Leecy asked her mom to drive her to Mexico to get me. Her mom tried to get me down from the tree, but it was too high. So she asked politely if she could borrow a ladder and she got me down! Then they took me home and locked me in the garage so Blower couldn't get me and they locked all the doors so Blower couldn't get any of the other kites. The End.

We have been working on asking politely when we want something another student has, so I was so glad they put that into the story! They have great imaginations!

Clouds & Rain

This week we have learned about clouds, rain and wind.

One of the favorite activities, of course, was making mud and dirt! We rained milk into a pile of dirt and it turned into mud. While the mud cooled down in the fridge, we crushed some cookies into dirt to go on top! Lots of fun and a super yummy snack!

We also used our time in the kitchen to make rain in a jar. We (I) poured boiling water into a jar and put ice cubes on top to make it 'rain' inside the jar.

After that, we moved back to the preschool room and each student got to make their own rain in a jar, with the help of some shaving cream and colored water. After a little bit, the shaving cream started to dissolve and the kids all decided they had fog in a jar! I was so impressed that they made that comparison.

Today we talked about the wind. The weather cooperated nicely with a great breezy day. We spent centers time talking about patterns and they all did really well!

During our group activity we pretended to be wind, experimented with what things the wind could move and made our own windsocks!

Getting Our Hands Messy

We have been having lots of fun with manipulatives lately! I love finding new ways for the kids to practice the things they know and they love playing with new things. Play really is the best form of learning at this age!

Last week, we talked about the letter F. We first played charades with words that start with F. After we were done, we took some of those words and showed them with playdoh.

Fish

 Fancy

Today, we used shaving cream to practice writing letters and drawing shapes. If you can't pick them out, this picture shows F, T and C. The kids thought I was a little nuts for a minute, but once they got in there, they loved it!

Apparently our fun with shaving cream inspired them, because they continued it through snack time! They made lots of squares and triangles and then made a goose. (Inspired by the song "5 Little Geese". Yes, it is usually ducks, but we're learning about G this week. Plus, honking is so much more fun than quaking.)

Our First Field Trip

Thank you all for coming to the farm with us and making our trip such a success! I think the kids all had a great time learning a little more about cows and getting hands on experience with the things we have been learning. I was so impressed by how polite our kids were and the fabulous job they did listening to Farmer Jason!

Stayed tuned for pictures of some upcoming science experiments! We will be exploring clouds and rain this week! On that note, if it happens to be raining any morning in October, please plan on your preschooler being outside making some observations during class! (Not that it's actually going to rain, but I can hope.)

The Z Was Zapped

Today during circle time, we read The Z Was Zapped by Chris Van Allsburg. The kids absolutely loved it. I think several of them would have been happy if I'd just read it over and over for the rest of class! I would definitely recommend checking this one out from the library and reading it at home. If you haven't read the rest of Chris Van Allsburg's books, you need to check him out. For us adults, his artwork is beautiful. For the kids, he is so creative and writes in a way that helps the kids use their imaginations.

Here is another of my favorites from him:

Also, for those that had their fingers crossed for our plants, we have success! As of today, all our plants have sprouted! The radishes are doing really well. I might even have to thin them out to get some decent sized ones.

More Farm Fun

Due to our shortened week and our Grandparent's Day craft (which took much longer than anticipated), we took some extra time last week for the letter C and reviewed what we have learned so far. The kids loved playing with the playdough!

We continued learning about seeds by observing different fruits and veggies, looking at where their seeds are and how they grow. We then got some extra gluing practice by gluing all the red things we could find onto some tomatoes.

We also used some of the fruits and veggies that we looked at to paint pictures with! Cauliflower and green beans were the favorite painting tools. We were having so much fun that I didn't get any pictures taken while they were working, sorry!

We ended our seed week by reading about The Little Red Hen. The kids were not impressed by how rude her friends were, so we made our own bread to show how they could be much better helpers than the animals in the book! We threshed our own wheat, ground it and made it into rolls. They turned out pretty yummy!

We even made our own butter, which was apparently very hard work!

The kids made their own story wheels of The Little Red Hen while we took turns shaking the butter. Unfortunately, I couldn't find my brads that I thought were with the rest of my school supplies, so we skipped that part. A couple kids just drew a picture of a brad on their wheels!

I wanted to add a note here about my philosophy of preschool, just in case you were wondering. During preschool we do a lot of exploring and playing with the things we are learning about and  then the kids do a worksheet or a craft to take home. I try to let the kids do these on their own as much as possible. This means that they won't come home looking perfect! Frequently the kids follow the directions on the worksheet, and then start doing something else (coloring all the circles instead of all the squares, for example). It is good practice for them either way and we do plenty of other practice on following directions. So don't stress when their work doesn't come home looking perfect! Preschool is all about learning how to be independent and do their work on their own, even if it doesn't look beautiful that way!

Down on The Farm

During the past week, we have started our new unit on farms. During the first day of the month, we sorted through all kinds of animals and other items to find things that belong on a farm. The kids colored everything they found and put it up on our board. If you look closely, you can see the pigs that are hiding in the barn. 

We took a quick break from the farm on Friday to make gifts for our grandparents. The bookmarks turned out really cute and were super fun to make!

This week we are learning about some of the plants you might find on the farm. We learned about how seeds grow and then planted some of our own. The blue container in the back holds radish, carrot and onion seeds and each student has their own cup containing flower seeds. Keep your fingers crossed for us that everything will grow! We will be observing our plants throughout the month and then sending the flowers home (and hopefully eating some of our vegetables!).

After washing up, we made some fancy pictures out of seeds. It was great practice for using glue and following an outline.