Ducks

Tuesday was so nice we spent about 45 minutes outside!  We had fun playing and then we went on a spring walk.  We saw tulips, hyacinths, daffodils, bugs, and lots of new leaves growing on trees!

We noticed that most of the fuzzy buds on our pussy willow tree are gone and have turned intos leaves!

Mrs. Chyko taught the kids how to play hopscotch.  A fun way to incorporate counting and number recognition!

Our theme this week was ducks.  We read The Chick and Duckling, Make Way for Ducklings, Hamilton Duck's Springtime Story and several other duck books.  We also watched a  real live video of Make Way for Ducklings!super cute video!

Making our ducklings!

While some of the kids were creating duckling art, others were working on floor puzzles with Mrs. Chyko and Mrs. Swietlik.  Mrs. Jenkins came in on Wednesday and we put our songs together with the piano for the first time!

Matthew was our Maple Leaf of the Week.  He shared his poster and photos with us on Tuesday and brought in delicious frosted brownie cookies for snack on Wednesday.  Thursday his mom came in and read us his favorite story, There's a Wocket in My Pocket by Dr. Seuss and then we had a dance party.  We turned off the lights, turned on Matthews dance party ball, and danced to Kids Bop!  It was so much fun!!  Thanks Matthew and family for helping make our week so special!!

Frosted brownie cookies with homemade cream cheese frosting....yum!!!

We loved all the lights that moved while we danced!  We used scarves for some of our songs!

The Maple Leafers have some great dance moves!!

Listening to a Dr. Seuss book.

Chicks

We started our week with an extended day.  This was the first time everyone stayed for lunch!  We went outside for an extra long time and played with balls, sidewalk chalk, and our climbing equipment.  Mrs. Chyko showed us a pussy willow tree and we had fun feeling how soft the buds were!

The Maple Leaf Lunch Bunch!

Standing by our pussy willow tree...another sign of spring!

Max was our Maple Leaf of the Week.  He shared his poster with us on Tuesday and brought in homemade poppy seed break on Wednesday.  We liked the bread so much we had some with our snack on Thursday too!  Max's mom and sister came to visit with us on Thursday.  They read us stories about rain and then set up a science experiment for us to try.  We used water, shaving cream and food coloring to make it rain in a cup!!  So much fun!  Thanks Max and family for helping make our week so special!

Listening to stories about rain.

A  making rain" experiment!  We're wearing the chick headbands that we made during art time!

Our theme for the week was chicks.  We watched some youtube videos on chicks hatching life cycle of a chicken and read lots of books about chicks.  On Thursday, Henry and his mom brought some chickens and eggs in for us to see.  We met Jessica and Georgia Peach, two chickens from Henry's farm. We also got to see that different types of chickens lay different types of eggs but they are all equally good for us! 

Meeting Jessica and Georgia Peach!

Eggs from Henry's farm!

Bunnies

Pretending to be bunnies!

Bunnies and eggs was our theme for the week.  We read the children's classic  The Golden Egg Book by Margaret Wise Brown.   We also read The Great Easter Egg Hunt, Max's Chocolate Chicken, Max's Easter Surprise and Winnie the Pooh's Easter Egg Hunt. Of course we had to make Bunny masks and hop like bunnies!  We had fun looking for eggs and going on our own Easter Egg Hunt upstairs in the sanctuary! During activity time Mrs. Swietlik and Mrs. Chyko helped us use different color crayons to trace and decorate an easter egg. We also had colored beans in our sensory tub to play with and Mrs. Gould had brightly colored pink and green play dough with bunny and egg cookie cutters that we used. On Wednesday, we practiced singing lots of songs with Mrs. Jenkins!

The cutest bunnies I've ever seen!!

We brought home our Monet paintings this week.  They all turned out so beautifully!  We have fantastic artists at Maple Leaf!

Finn was our Maple Leaf of the Week.  On Tuesday he brought in his poster and shared it with the class during Circle Time.  On Wednesday he brought in some delicious homemade banana muffins for snack, and on Thursday his Mom came to school to visit with us and make a project.  We made tambourines out of paper plates and bells and then we listened to one of Finn's favorite songs about a tambourine.  We danced to it with our tambourines! Boy did we have fun! Thanks Finn and Molly for helping make our week so special!!

Getting ready to dance!

Dancing with our tambourines!

Spring!

We started the week by talking about spring.  The theme for show and tell was spring. The kids had fun sharing their things during circle time.  We had such great ideas... balls and other things to play with outside, a baseball bat, catcher's mitt and glove for spring baseball season,a homemade rain stick, and books that were filled with pictures of things we see in the spring.  We decided to go outside to look for signs of spring...we saw buds on trees and flowers beginning to grow.  We also saw and heard a lot of birds.  We especially liked watching 2 cardinals and several robins!  We ended up at the park! 

Of course the best sign of spring is that we can go to the park and play outside!!  

One of the cardinals we saw on our walk!

Eli was our Maple Leaf of the Week.  On Wednesday his mom and Grandma Sharon came to visit with us.  Grandma Sharon read us the story If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.  It is such a fun story and the kids loved hearing it!  When the story was over we went to the snack table and had a "cookie and milk party" with Grandma Sharon's homemade cookies...yum!!  Some of us even tried to make milk mustaches just like the mouse did in the book!  Thanks Eli and family for helping make our week so special!! 

Listening to Grandma Sharon read us a story!

We talked about birds this week.  We had birds nest cookie for a snack one day and made pine cone bird feeders too!  We put sunflower seed butter all over the pine cones and then rolled them in bird seed.  

We broke into small groups to make pine cone bird feeders!

Mrs. Swietlik's group.

Mrs. Chyko's group.