Rocks

We had fun learning about rocks this week.  On Tuesday we heard the story Everybody Needs a Rock.  We looked at the rock collection I brought in and passed the rocks around.  We observed how the rocks looked, felt, and smelled.  Then it was time to go outside and go on a rock hunt!  We looked all around the church grounds and each of us had to choose just one, very special rock, that we wanted to take home with us.  We had lots of fun doing this!  When we went back inside it was time to celebrate Brooke's birthday!  She brought in ice cream cups with sprinkles that we could mix in if we wanted to.  (Of course everybody wanted to!!) Yum!! We sang "Happy Birthday" to her in English and Spanish! Happy 5th Birthday, Brooke!!

Mrs. Jenkins had us doing the hokey pokey among other things during music time. After music we had activity time.  We finished our houses today...they turned out so cute and the kids enjoyed writing on the inside using the prompt "Home is....."

Wednesday We read another good book about rocks.  This one was called A Rock Can Be...It helped us use our imaginations and get ready to paint some rocks and turn them into various creatures!

Look closely, we've got frogs, bees, lizards, ladybugs and butterflies!

Mrs. Chyko helped us use tooth brushes and water to clean rocks and see what they look like when they are wet.  Some of them got darker and shinier, some didn't change much.  The  kids enjoyed using the tooth brushes to get the rocks clean!!

On Thursday we heard the story If Rocks Could Sing.  We talked about the letter R and it's shape as well as the sound it makes. We each took a piece of black paper and went outside to put rocks around the letter R.  This  helped us become familiar with it's shape even more.  We were making sunprint art, so we left the papers outside to sit in the sun to see what happens!

We  practiced making R's with side chalk too.  Some of us wanted to write our names and make other things with the chalk as well!

We had snack when we came back inside.  We had enough ice cream left over from Brooke's treat on Tuesday to have it again today....yum!  Thanks so much Brooke for sending in such a delicious treat!

After snack we had Mr. Fleming (a Maple Leaf parent from the previous two years) come in and teach us some Spanish.  He'll be coming in on Thursdays about twice a month to work with us on Spanish.  Today he had us practicing how to say "hello" (hola) "good bye" (adios) and "my name is _____",  as well as counting to 10 in Spanish.  The kids really enjoyed this...thanks Mr. Fleming for volunteering your time to come and work with us!!

Many of the ideas for the rock unit came from kidssoup.com a wonderful resource for early childhood educators and parents!