Fun Week

It's so hard to believe that the school year is over!!  It went by so quickly!  We had a lot of fun our last week of school.  We sent home our flower paintings as well as our sunflowers and zinnias that we planted.

We celebrated Ava's birthday with popsicles and ice cream!

We had our class celebration at the park...

and we took a final picture by our "adopted" tree.

We made an art project based on Kandinsky's artwork.  Here's the original....

and here's our try at it.....

In 2012, a Kandinsky painting sold at auction for $23 million dollars...you might want to hang onto this artwork....you never know....

We also enjoyed watching our lady bugs all week.  They changed from pupae into lady bugs.  We soaked raisins in water for 5 minutes and then dropped them into "Ladybug Land" for the adult ladybugs to eat.  At the end of the week we released our ladybugs.  Hopefully they'll help keep the area around Maple Leaf free from aphids!

Here is the link to one of the kids favorite songs: The Dinosaur Dance....they may want to sing along with it at home and show you the dance again!!

https://youtu.be/XqE-tkd6DOI

I asked all the kids what they liked best about preschool and we wrote a story.  Here is what we wrote:

Our Favorite Parts of Preschool

Jayme's favorite was painting.

Ava's favorite was playing with sand.

Tori's favorite was all of the books.

Charlie's favorite was the sand.

Mika's favorite was watching the ladybugs.

Brooke's favorite was painting our hands.

Knox's favorite was show and tell and bringing in his ant farm.

Parker's favorite was building with blocks.

Emma's favorite was watching the ants.

Caden's favorite was practicing our songs.

Zoefii's favorite was playing in the sand.

Naomi's favorite was singing our songs.

Carter's favorite was playing with legos.

It has been a wonderful year and a joy to work with all the children and their families...have a wonderful summer...Joan and I will miss all of you!

Spring Sing

We practiced in the sanctuary for our spring sing on Tuesday and Wednesday and then on Thursday it was time for the big show!  The kids were so excited and couldn't wait to perform for their family and friends!  

Introductions...My name is ______ and I like__________.

If you're wearing _________today lets stand and shout "hurray!!"

"Oh, Mr. Sun, Sun, Mister Golden Sun, Please shine down on me!!"

Zippity Do Da Zippity ....where did my kazoo go???

Oh here it is....

The kids did a FANTASTIC job.  Thanks parents for all the support and help with refreshments afterwards!  

Mom's, Dad's, Ladybugs, and Outdoor Games!

This was a great week!  Ava was our "Maple Leaf of the Week."  She brought in a poster board filled with pictures and artwork and told us all about it during circle time. 

I had sent away for some ladybugs from Insect Lore (for us to watch during our insect unit) and they finally came!  During circle time we poured the ladybug larvae into our Ladybug Land container...the kids were so fascinated with this and sooo excited!!

We learned some great vocabulary...larvae, pupa, metamorphosis!!  Then we heard some great stories about Moms and Dads.  It's always fun to make presents for Mother's Day but since we aren't in school in June, we wanted to celebrate Father's Day too...so we did a combined gift and card.  It is so sweet listening to the kids talk about their parents and how much they love them.  We went around the circle and shared things that we love about our Moms and our Dads.  

Last week we traced our hands on contact paper and put them on canvas. This  week we painted over the entire canvas and then pulled the contact paper off when the paint was dry.  We were left with really cool images of our hands to give to our parents as a gift!

It was Charlie's birthday on Wednesday.  He brought in shark cupcakes....homemade by G.G. ...delicious!  We had fun trying to identify what kind of shark everyone got on their cupcake!  Thanks Charlie!!

Of course we had to sing "Happy Birthday" to the birthday boy!

Thursday  we wrapped our Mother's Day/Father's Day gifts and finished our cards.  Then Ava's mom came in with ice cream for our snack..yum!!  We got to pick if we wanted vanilla or chocolate.  We went outside and jumped rope and blew bubbles when we were finished eating!

We even got to take our jumprope and bubbles home with us...thank you, Ava!!

Finally we went inside and heard a story.  

Thanks Ava and Melissa for such a great day!!

Planting

We heard several stories about how plants grow this week.  We started the week by making a word map of what we  know about seeds.

Every child had their own line to tell us what they know about seeds!

Next we read the book Seeds, Soil, Sun.  Then we opened up pea pods and found little peas on the inside.  We learned that the peas are actually seeds so we wanted to try and see if they would grow. We took dried seeds and put them on contact paper, put paper towel on top, sprayed the paper towel and attached the contact paper to the window.  We taped around the edges to make sure the water didn't evaporate.  We've been watching it each day to see what happens!

We had pea pods for snack on Tuesday.  The kids had fun opening the pea pods and counting the peas that were inside.  It was fun to see the difference in the pea sizes as well!

It was a beautiful day so we went outside to play.  We  saw some signs of spring too!

Look closely to see the birds nest in the corner!  We've seen birds flying in and out of the nest so we're guessing that there are eggs inside the nest!

The bulbs that we planted at the beginning of the school year are growing!

It's so great to be able to get outside and play again!!

Wednesday and Thursday were planting days.  We heard the story The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle and 

then it was time to plant our own seeds!  We watched a short video first, before we planted.  Here's the link!  I bet the kids would love to watch it again at home!  

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCsQtwIwAg&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DdrBdvxtauoM&ei=32xGVf7gGYObNvO9gGA&usg=AFQjCNELNPlpsvbXjXQj2prs95wr9tb_UQ&sig2=23p4n2KpgST66lSdZoObbQ&bvm=bv.92291466,d.eXY

We went outside and scooped dirt into cups.  We each planted 2 zinnia seeds and 2 sunflower seeds. They're sitting on the windowsill in our classroom.  

It will be fun to watch them grow!

What a beautiful display of butterflies!!

We worked on the letter "P" this week.  We made p's on purple paper!  (And planted seeds in pots!)

Friday was May Day and we each made a May Day basket.  We had a lot of fun playing outside too!