Picture Day!

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Today Lisa Haasch came in to take pictures of everyone.  She set up an old fashioned school desk with a basket of apples outside in front of some trees.  Each child went outside individually with Lisa, while the rest of the class had an extended choice time inside.  

Some of the activites the kids were engaged with included playing with horses, using K'nex, and using stencils, as well as putting together a floor puzzle about pets!

Some of the kids were busy making strings of beads.....

and some had fun playing in the kitchen...

When we all had our pictures taken we went into circle time room and heard some good stories about a puppy named Spot and we also heard a big book about a cat named Ginger.  Then it was time for snack and time to look through all the books in our classroom library.  We had a whole bunch of new Clifford Books to look through!  We went outside for a group picture and then played the game Doggie, Doggie, Where's Your Bone?  The kids really seemed to enjoy playing this but we ran out of time before everyone got a turn...we'll have to play again next time so we all get a chance.  It might be fun to see if your child can teach this game to you at home!!  Then they can get lots of turns to be the doggie!!

Beautiful Weather!

Brooke celebrated her 4th birthday today!  She brought in yummy chocolate chip cookies for snack.  Thanks Brooke and Happy Birthday!!

We heard two great stories today.  We Are All the Same, We Are All Different is a book that celebrates each one of us as a unique individual.   Some of the things it discussed were how we all have hair, but the colors may be different.  We all have skin, but some of us have lighter skin and some of us have darker skin. We talked about how we all have birthdays but not on the same day and we all have feelings.  It was a wonderful book that helped generate a really good discussion.  

We fed our African Dwarf Frogs, Avis and Scooter, this morning.  They get fed twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays.  It's fun to watch how much they swim around and move when it's feeding time!!  We passed around our talking stick and created a class list of pets.  We had hamsters, fish, frogs, cats, kittens, dogs, puppies, snakes on our list.  

After singing and moving to Shake Our Sillies Out and Head Shoulders, Knees, and Toes we sat down to hear Sesame Street's Pet Show.  Bernie's pet was kept in a brown bag for most of the story.  See if your child remembers what Pet Ernie brought to the show and what prize he won!!

The weather was so gorgeous today we went outside around 10:30 to plant our class chrysanthemum.  Each of us put in a scoop of dirt as we transplanted the flower into a bigger pot. Then we each took a turn using the watering can and giving our class flower something to drink!  It's right outside our classroom now so we can watch all the blooms open during the next few weeks.  We counted and found out that 8 blooms were open today, I wonder if any new ones will open tomorrow? It will be fun to count the blooms before coming into the class in the morning!

We stayed outside for the rest of the morning.  We ran around, played on the equipment, used balls and sidewalk chalk and had a lot of fun!  We ended our morning by getting into a big circle and playing Mouse, Mouse, Cat!  What a fun day!

Pete the Cat

This week we focused on the book Pete the Cat and His Four Groovey Buttons.  This is a great book as it focuses on the numbers 1-4 as well as subtraction skills and is a pattern book as well!  Add the song to it and it gets the kids interacting with the book as we read it together.  The kids favorite part of this book is when it says, "Is Pete sad?" and the response is "Goodness, no".  To hear the book read go to this youtube link. It is one of my new favorite books!!  It might be fun to share the the link below with your kids, they might even read along with it!! 

► 4:12► 4:12

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEhdqbQ5N88

Jan 27, 2014 - Uploaded by Grant Temple

This is a full version of the book and song. Story written by Eric Litwin and Illustrated by James ...

Pete the Cat heard we were learning about him and hearing his stories so he came to visit this week too!  

We talked about the Letter C and the sound it makes as well as the word Cat and brought in things that started with C for show and tell.  As the kids showed or told us about the things they brought with the letter C, Mrs. Gould listed the words on the white board.  We had cat, cow, calf, chairs, cards, carrots, as well as Cayden and Charlie on our list.   (We talked a little bit about the ch vs. the c sound)

We had fun fingerpainting with blue paint and creating Pete using pipe cleaners for whiskers and shapes for his face.  We also talked about the letter P and the sound it makes and made Pete out of the letter P.  Then we each said what our favorite color shoe is and Mrs. Gould wrote it on our project for us.  We even practiced reading back what we wrote down!

We had music with Mrs. Jenkins this week and sang a song that helped us get to know each other.  We went outside and played the game Cat and Mouse and we also played the game Mouse, Mouse, Cat.  Maybe your kids can show you how to play the games at home!!

We had a lot of time to explore our own interests too!

We added a tube to our large activity room.  The kids have fun putting cars down the ramp.  They're learning the if they lift the tube higher the cars go faster and if it is at a lower angle the cars go slower.  Introduction to physics and inclined planes preschool style!!

On Friday, we made a special Pete the Cat snack out of bread, jelly, pretzels, bananas, and a fruit snack for the nose!  

Then we went for a walk to the Park!

Hope you all had a great week-end, plan to see everyone soon!!

Welcome Back!!

The school year is off to a terrific start!!

It was so good to see all the parents and families on Tuesday.  I really think it helped prepare the kids for the next day when they were dropped off.  Everyone seemed to make a successful transition with very few tears!!

On Wednesday, after morning play time, we reviewed how to be good listeners.  There is a poster hanging up in our classroom that says: watching eyes, listening ears, quiet mouths, helping hands and sitting quietly.  There are pictures on the poster to help the kids remember how to be a good listener in preschool and the pictures all us to all read the chart together!  

In circle time,we heard the story Pete the Cat, Rocking in His School Shoes.  We listened to the link on the Pete the Cat website.  Here it is:

http://www.harpercollins.com/childrens/feature/petethecat

It has a really cute song that goes along with the story.  The kids might enjoy listening to this again at home. It has a really catchy pattern!

Pete went to lots of places while he was at school so we went on a tour of the school when we finished reading.  We visited the music room, library room, the offices upstairs, the narthex, the sanctuary, the bathrooms, the playground and we even peeked in the conference room and the coffee room!  After our tour, we washed our  hands and it was time for snack....yum!!

It was too rainy to go outside so we did indoor movement with a CD.  We moved around to Shake, Rattle, and Roll and played the stop and go game.  Then we each had a turn to pour our rice into the sensory tub.  

We played a getting to know you game where we rolled a ball to each child in the circle and we had to say our name and something we liked.  We also read all of our "All About Me" Robots.  It was fun to hear what everyone liked to do at home and school and what their favorite food was.  The kids got really excited when they heard someone else say they like to play the same game or eat the same food as they do!  It was fun to learn how we're all similar in some ways and also different in some ways, but we're all friends!!

On Thursday we opened up the cabinet in the "vine room" to see what was inside!  Then we had a chance to get out some of those activities and work with them.  We also learned how  to pick up one activity before moving onto the next.  Everyone is working really hard to be a good "picker-upper"!

We heard another Pete the Cat book, this time it was called Pete the Cat, I Love My White Shoes.  This story also has a read aloud with it on the same link.  Pete's shoes don't stay white for very long in this story.  Ask your child to see if he/she remembers what happens to Pete's shoes!!

During activity time we used the train table, the blocks, the rice table, the cars, the dollhouses, and much more! We also broke into small groups and worked with Mrs. Gould and Mrs. Chyko.  We used glue and fruit loops to make the letter C or the word Cat. (And of course we had to eat some of the fruit loops as we glued!!)

We hope all the kids enjoyed school as much as Mrs. Chyko and I did this week!!

Final Two Weeks

It was great seeing everyone at the Spring Sing last Thursday.  We spent most of the week preparing for it!!  We were so proud of the kids...what a great job they did!!  And Thank You parents for all the delicious treats afterwards.  As teachers, our favorite part is watching the kids perform, but we know that the kids favorite part is being with their family and friends and eating the treats and running around in the narthex with their classmates after the show.  That's what they always talk about!!!

The past two days we have celebrated two birthdays!!  On Tuesday we celebrated Kate's 5 and 3/4 birthday!!  (Her real birthday is in August).  She sent in delicious frosted sugar cookies for a treat.  Yum, Kate!!  So glad we could all celebrate together!!

We heard a great story about a mother bear and a baby bear.  Mrs. Gould got the story when she was on a trip out west in the Grand Tetons.  The pictures in the book were real photos of bears out west.  We wanted to hear the book again we liked it so much, but if we did that we wouldn't have had time to go to the park so we decided we'd just have to hear the book again another day!

We walked to Wildwood Park on First Avenue and had a lot of fun playing on the equipment, running around and swinging!!  We were so tired and hot when we got back to school we all sat around the snack table and had Dixie cups filled with water.  While we were drinking we used pegs and pegboards to create designs, patterns, and shapes!

Today we celebrated Jonas's 5th birthday.  It is his real birthday today.  Happy Birthday, Jonas!!  He brought in dirt cups with worms for a snack!!  (pudding, oreo cookies and gummie worms).  Since we had been studying worms the past few weeks it was fun to eat some!! Thanks for sending in the great treat!!

During quiet activity time, first thing in the morning, Carter kept very busy working on his peg design that he started yesterday.  He was so proud of his accomplishment when he was done that we had to take a picture!!

Great job, Carter!!

We heard a story today called The Perfect Pet. It was about a girl who really wanted a pet but her parents didn't want one.  So she looked and looked and thought and thought until she finally found the perfect pet!  She named him Doug.  Ask your child what kind of pet Doug was.  Below is the link to the book read on youtube.  

http://youtu.be/qGoTeV2RjDU

The kids giggled all the way through this book!!  Then we went outside to play.  We had bug nets and magnifying glasses outside in case anyone wanted to look for bugs.  Most of the kids wanted to do that for part of the time we were outside.

 Back inside, it was activity time!! The kids had been asking for it, it's usually their favorite time of the day.  We had play dough set out, the sand table open, a lady bug art project available, 

cars and car ramps and we even got out a school bus play house that the kids could get inside!  It was a great final day of preschool.  Thanks for such a terrific year, we couldn't have asked for a better group of kids and parents!  Have a wonderful summer break and look forward to seeing many of you back next year! 

Flowers

We started the week celebrating charlie's birthday!  He brought in some yummy train cookies for snack.  He said he helped his mommy decorate them.  Happy 4th birthday, Charlie, and thanks for the delicious treat!!

We were learning about flowers this week.  We walked around the neighborhood on a flower hunt.  We found daffodils, tulips, pink and purple hyacinths, lillys, grape hyacinths and crocus!!  Most of the kids decided that their most favorite flower of all is the dandelion!!!  Because they can pick those!!

We liked to smell the flowers if we were able to get close enough.  We found out if you get too close you may end up with pollen on your nose or lip!!

We were scientists when we went inside and looked at some potted daffodils that were done blooming.  We pulled them out and found a bulb on the bottom of the stem!!  Then we saw roots underneath that.  We also looked at some other plants and identified their parts.

We learned about the letter Y.  The color yellow starts with the letter Y.  Lots of flowers are yellow!!  Mrs. Chyko helped us make y's with do-a-dots.

Another day we planted seeds.  We planted sunflower seeds and snapdragon seeds. We covered the with dirt, added water and put them in the sunny window to grow.  It will be fun to watch them grow over the next few weeks.

We also heard some great stories about families and mommies this week.  We had a lot of fun making a special project for our moms.  Happy Mother's Day!!

Spring!!

It was raining as I walked into school this morning.  Puddles and worms were everywhere.  We were planning to study spring today and what could be more "springy" in Wisconsin then rain, puddles and worms.  So later in the morning, when it was just misting a little bit outside the kids partnered up and each twosome was handed a magnifying glass so we could go outside on a worm hunt!!

We love learning about the natural sciences and had more fun looking for worms!!

We learned that worms like to live underground in the dark so we picked up a lot of the worms and put them back in the grass and the dirt so they could go home.

We also learned that worms make holes in the ground, are good for the soil and help things grow!!   We watched a short video about worms and composting. 

► 5:19► 5:19

www.youtube.com/watch?v=X69M1MBGG8A

Jun 1, 2011 - Uploaded by scottndisa

Mrs. Rice shows kids how to create a worm habitat out of a plastic tub. ... Worm Farm ...

We're playing a memory game and are working on memorizing our phone numbers so each day we've been practicing reading them out loud during circle time. Then we turn our card, with our phone number on it, over and see how many of the numbers we remember!! Even Mrs. Gould is trying to memorize her husbands new cell phone number!!  So far one of us has completely memorized a phone number, (it isn't Mrs. Gould!!)  the rest of us

are getting close.  Keep practicing at home, we'll do this daily until the end of  the year and see how many of us can memorize all the numbers in our phone number!  We've also been practcing dialing them on a play phone in our kitchen center.  

We've been working on counting and....

patterns with our unifix cubes.

We also made a terrarium this week and talked a little about the water cycle, and what plants need to live.  

Then we used charcoal, river rocks, soil, and sheet moss to create a class terrarium.  We all worked together to put everything we needed inside our glass container.

We added 3 plants to complete our botany project!!

We saw that the water was trapped in our terrarium the next day because the lid was wet inside!!

Of course we've been having a lot of fun playing outside as the weather has been getting nicer.  We've been using balls, sidewalk chalk and our climbing equipment!

Thursday Mrs. Bulgerin subbed for Mrs. Chyko.  It was fun to have her back for a visit!!

Mika brought in some special treats from Holland for our snack on Thursday.  Her Oma and Opa brought them from the Netherlands on their visit.  We loved them!!  Thanks Mika, Oma and Opa for the delicious (and international!!) treat!!