April Celebrations!

Two more friends turned 5 this month! We're so glad you celebrated with us at school. 

Happy Birthday to both of you!

Earth Day and Frogs

Earth Day was this past Monday, so we spent some time this week talking about how to take care of our planet. We talked about 3 important words that can make a big difference: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle! Some ideas we had were using both sides of a paper to draw, and taking just 1 or 2 paper towels when we dry our hands in the restroom. We found lots of things that we reuse in our classroom, from the cardboard from juice box cartons that was used to make stencils, the paint cups and trays that used to be frozen entree pans to the sensory bottles made out of old drink bottles and peanut butter jars. For recycling, we always try to remember to put our paper scraps in the blue recycling bin in the classroom, and keep the other trash out of it. After a circle time of great ideas, we got started on some  big hats made from newspaper sheets. We decorated them with leftover stickers and paper shapes that we had in the scrap box.

Here we are tossing the Earth ball and working on our alphabet:

For homework this week, we each had a small bag to fill at home with clean recyclables that we thought might be handy in an art project. Using a piece of cardboard as a base, we arranged, cut and glued all kinds of scraps (that would usually go in the trash) into some wonderfully imaginative creations! I saw rocket ships, drum sets, boats, free form collages and all kinds of interesting arrangements. While it may not have been obvious to me what each child was making at first, they had no trouble proudly explaining to me what they had made and why they chose each piece. Never underestimate a pre-k student's imagination and determination! They always have a plan, and will glue their art into submission. :) These will definitely take all weekend to dry.

When not working on Earth Day activities or getting ready for Mother's Day, we spent a few days talking about frogs. A favorite activity was the frog pond center- a tub of water filled with frogs, bugs, tadpoles and frog eggs (water beads).

 

We read a couple of books about the frog life cycle, and illustrated one on our own. Reused bubble wrap made excellent blobs of frog eggs. Don't you love it when things work out like that? :)

 

There were lots of oohs and aahs during a slideshow of colorful rainforest frogs. Purple, red, blue, yellow, orange, striped, polka dots- frogs come in many different colors and patterns! We then took out the dot painters and decorated our own frogs. The next day, after they were dry, we worked on our handwriting by writing a color word sentence describing our frogs. These are hanging in the hall outside our room. Check them out!

 

We ended our week with a special snack on Friday. Earlier in the week we had read The Lorax, by Dr. Seuss. At snack time, we took pretzel rods, flower cookies and cotton candy to make our own yummy fluffy truffula tree snacks!

 

  

Our Week: April 15-19

Between Donuts with Daddy last week and Bike Day this week, we have been very excited at school! We've kept on working on our reading and math skills, too, and played some fun games. This week we focused on our last vowel Uu. This is a tricky one! We had several centers this week to help us learn this important letter. We made unicorn Uu books, colored upside down, painted giant umbrellas, and made a rainforest umbrella to go along with Jan Brett's book The Umbrella. We also worked on number formation, counting in Candy Land, and learned about bike safety. We had the felt boards out several times this week with different thematic pieces: rainforest animals, pirates, beach scenes, letters, numbers, and shapes. There was lots of designing pictures, making patterns, words and stories happening with these fun sets.

Coloring under the tables:

 Playing Candy Land with our friends.

 

 Working on letters and numbers:

 

Uu is for unicorn and umbrella!

Fun with felt!

  

Learning about bike safety:

 Painting projects:

Literacy links: Here is our bucket of rainforest animals and small umbrellas that we used, along with the book, to recreate the story in The Umbrella.  We also cut out big palm leaves to make a retelling prop so we can tell the story at home.

Green tree frog gummy treats were earned for completed homework this week- YUM!