Our day began with a wonderful costume parade. The children all looked amazing and enjoyed parading around and filling their treat bags. We had a nice representation of super heroes, princesses, sea creatures, and trolls.
I want to start today with a heart felt thank you. I know the news today was a surprise but we still have several weeks together and will make the most of our time. One of the hardest parts of leaving is having to say goodbye to my Oak Hills family. And you are family! I love on your kids as if they were my own. I am going to miss them terribly. Our day began with a wonderful costume parade. The children all looked amazing and enjoyed parading around and filling their treat bags. We had a nice representation of super heroes, princesses, sea creatures, and trolls. We free painted with candy corn colors. Our pumpkins from Wednesday are drying nicely and will be ready by next week. Our party was wonderful. After a busy day a low key party of pizza and cookie decorating was just what the kids needed. They loved icing and eating the sprinkles. That kept their attention very well. Thank you all for your help in making this first party a success for the children. I think they really enjoyed themselves. I hope you all have a wonderful time, how ever you choose to celebrate Halloween. Next week we will focus on shapes!
We were hard at work today learning all about pumpkins. One of our favorite activities was to hammer golf tees into pumpkins, testing our hand eye coordination skills. We counted, weighed, and even painted our very own. We really enjoyed our art activity this morning. We each chose a pumpkin and had the opportunity to pour several different colors of paint over the top of the pumpkins. This produced some truly beautiful and unique designs. I am hoping the pumpkins will be dry by Friday so that you can take them home. Some have a pretty heavy layer of paint. A special thank you for the pumpkin donation. The boys and girls are really excited to share their creations with their families. We are all looking forward to our first class party on Friday as well as our Fall Costume Parade. Lunch will be provided as part of the party. If you or your child does not wish to wear their costume all day please pack a change of clothes for after the parade. Also, many parents bring treats to pass out to the boys and girls as they parade by. I do have treat bags for everyone to carry.
We had a fun filled day. We made some amazing paint smear monsters, visited with the fire department, and listened to several silly monster stories. We enjoyed making our smear monsters. We squeezed many bright colors onto the paper, folded it in half, and pressed the paper together smearing the paint. When we opened the paper we were delighted with the beautiful "monsters" that appeared. To top it off we added some wiggly eyes. The highlight of our day was definitely the visit from the fire department. We learned all about fire safety. We also got to jump on the fire truck and a few of us were brave enough to help hold the fire hose! A very special thank you to Engine 47 for coming out and treating us to such a great learning experience.
We have a lot planned for next week. We will be learning all about pumpkins and even get to paint our own to take home. We will have our fall parade (come in costume) on Friday and celebrate with our first party of the year at noon. Lunch will be provided as part of the party on Friday. Can't wait to see everyone's costumes! We continued our work with spiders today. We worked on a lovely water color project this morning where we used pipettes to drop colored water on paper towels. What fun to watch the color absorb and blend together. The final products are quite lovely. Some of us also got the opportunity to work with scissors, paint, and play on the playground. Next week we will be having fun with the theme, Happy Monsters! Remember, Wednesday is class and individual portraits. Enjoy your weekend!
We had such a great time learning and playing with spiders. We learned that spiders have eight legs, spin webs, and many eat the bugs they trap in their webs. We painted spiders and even "dissected" a spider. The class also enjoyed singing, "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," while playing with spiders and water spouts in the sensory table. We enjoyed a very creative snack of spiders and spider eggs. It was a huge hit! The children used paper towel rolls cut like spiders to stamp as many spiders on to their paper as they liked. Then they added eyes to complete the project. Next, we engaged in a fun science/sensory invitation to play. The children were each given a tray with a block of gelatin that had "spider parts" (pompom, pipe cleaner legs, and eyes) embedded in it. They could use their fingers or a large tweezer to free the spider parts from the gelatin. I was pleasantly surprised that after a few messy sensory activities that not every one was into, all of the children thought this was great fun! Overheard while "dissecting" spiders... "Ewww, it's cold!" "Gross!" "Look! I did it!" "I found the eyeball!" "Me too!" "Why are spiders so slimy?" "Mine broke apart, look!" "It's squishy!" We learned so much with this playful activity. Skills touched on were fine motor, sensory integration, counting, language development, vocabulary expansion, social interaction, role play (we were scientists), personal space boundaries, hand eye coordination, risk taking, cause and effect, trial and error, following multi-step directions, and the list goes on. I have already seen so much growth in the class as a whole. Thank you for sharing your little ones with me each week! Looking forward to more fun on Friday.
It was a great day for every little owl! We learned more about bats and did an exciting experiment that made bubbles! For story time we each received a little bat puppet. We used our puppet as we followed along with a book about bats. When the bat in the story flew in circles, so did our bats. When the bat hung upside down to sleep, so did our bats. We had such a great time with our puppets. We did a little finger painting during art. Some were not as excited to paint with their fingers so I brought out a few paint brushes. The children also enjoyed a fantastic science experience today. We put some baking soda on our trays and added drops of colored vinegar with pipettes. The excitement after seeing and listening to the bubbles pop was contagious. We sat for nearly a half an hour repeating the experiment over and over again. At one point someone dumped their vinegar over and the whole tray exploded in bubbles! Slowly but surely the boys and girls discovered that if you added the baking soda to the vinegar in the cup you would get an explosive reaction of foaming bubbles streaming over the sides of the glass. What fun! This simple experience worked our fine motor muscles, pincer grasp, and our pressure control of the pipettes. It allowed us the opportunity to experiment with trial and error, chemical reactions, and cause and effect. We focused on hand eye coordination, multi-step procedures, and sensory play. There is so much learning going on here and it is all disguised as play! The joy and wonder on these little faces warms my heart! A very special thank you to our play dough maker of the month! We loved our orange play dough and new pumpkin cookie cutters.
Hope you all have some great family time together this weekend. Next week, we dive into the world of spiders! Although the fire department had to cancel their visit today we made the most of our time together. We learned all about bats. We played many new games, made our own slime, and even had a batty treat for snack. The boys and girls enjoyed the most adorable snack today! During story time a little bat puppet arrived to tell us all about bats. We learned that bats fly at night, sleep upside down, eat fruit or bugs, have wings and fly but do not have feathers! We also had the opportunity to try on a silly headband to see what we might look like if we were a bat! We make some pretty adorable bats! During our table time we made Bat Slime! We mixed 1/2 cup warm water, 1/2 cup clear glue, and 1/2 cup liquid starch, sprinkled in a few bat sequins and presto! Slime! This science/sensory experience was fun for every one. It was exciting to see how far our slime would stretch. We counted the bats in our slime and noticed it had a cool slippery texture. Some of us were a bit hesitant while others explored for nearly a half hour. Samples went home in our totes. I did make it clear to the children that the slime was only to be played with in an adults presence and at the table! The children also worked on some color matching with stickers and necklace making. I don't think they missed the fire truck one bit! More bat adventures to come on Friday! See you then.
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Why Blog?Here you will find little snippets of our days together. When my children were in preschool and would come home I would always ask, "So, what did you do today?". All they ever said was, "Played." That didn't tell me much. I hope this blog will be a place to share what we have done and help you ask more directed questions of your child. You will see first hand just what we do after you kiss your little one goodbye in the morning. It will also be a great place to visit and see just how much your child has grown and learned throughout the year. Archives
March 2024
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