Ocean Adventure!

We are just home from what must have been the best field trip ever!  Our 4s  embarked on an Ecological Marine Adventure down at Topsail Beach.  

We worked through many different centers.  Here the children are making a rainbow fish.

We had a story time where we learned about 2 sea creatures, the Octopus and the Ray.

We spent some time investigating some very cool creatures in the touch tanks.  Here S and K are touching sea urchins.  The coolest thing about all of these creatures is that they are collected right from the water on our beach, then returned their natural habitat.

 Here H, D, and E are being very brave and handling a spider crab.

Things got a little silly with the sea squirts today!

 Each participant got to drive the R.O.V.(remotely operated underwater vehicle).

 We also got to explore "surprise seaweed".  Each child got a tray of seaweed.  Then they looked all through it to see what they could find. 

 Here C is using the microscope to look more closely at a snail that he found.

 Then we headed off to the beach for an ocean adventure walk.  We saw many types of seaweed, jelly fish, and ghost crab holes.  

 We learned to use seine nets and we dragged them to the water.  We caught some neat things in our net.

Like all good things, our time together came to an end.  We had a wonderful experience.  If you have not tired Ecological Marine Adventures, I recommend that you do!  Check them out on FB or their webpage.  They offer many fantastic learning opportunities throughout the summer.  Thank you to Miss Kathleen and her friends for their kindness today.  Thank you also to each and every family member that traveled with us and made this such a great experience for the children!

http://ematopsail.webs.com/

Aquarium Trip

 Today our 3s visited the aquarium at Fort Fisher.  

 We met our teacher, Miss Sharon. 

 She took us to her special classroom, were she read us a neat story about a baby sea turtle and his journey to the sea.

 Then she let us look at and even touch some land turtles.  

 Everyone was so brave!

 This guy had some really cool spots.  Boy box turtles have red eyes, that's what we learned!

 We made our own sea turtle project.  

 Then it was off to find each creature on our scavenger hunt.  We found this quail, who sang us the prettiest song!  He was not on the list, but we were really glad to meet him.

 Each parent/child pair had a scavenger hunt necklace and marker.  Will found the Albino Alligator, Luna.

  

 Coolidge and his dad found her too.  Coolidge is checking her off his list.

 Windsor and her Daddy also found something on the list.  

 We were also supposed to find and tough a horseshoe crab.  This was super cool!

We touched spiny sea urchins...

and sea stars.  

Next we headed to the park when we had a chance to sing and dance in the rain!

We had a wonderful fleld trip today.  I am really going to miss these little ones next week!  Thank you to the moms and dads and grandpas that took time out of their busy schedules to make this a successful learning experience for the children.  

Finally!

Our preschoolers have been hard a work for the last month, preparing for Mother's Day.  It has been hard to keep our secret, but we did it!   This week we had Mother's Day Teas for our 3s and 4s, and a Muffins with Mom Breakfast with our 2s.  Each child prepared a special present for their mom.  Here is how we made them....

 First, we had to scratch our clipboards so that they would accept paint.

 I wasn't going to have them do this part, but they saw me and wanted to jump in, so we did it together!

 Then we took them outside and prepared to paint them with primer.  This little fellow is dusting them off before Mrs. Georgia sprayed them.  

 Finally, it was time to paint.  

 Here is the sweet, finished product.  This mama will treasure my gift forever!  Can't wait to hang it on my refrigerator!

 Here are our 3s singing for their moms...

And our 4s singing for their moms.  

I wasn't able to attend the Muffins with Mom breakfast, but hope to post some pictures of that event soon!

A "Berry" Sweet Field Trip

 SDS 2s visited Cottle Strawberry Farm in Faison.  

They had such a great time at the farm with their families.

 After playing in the barrel maze, a covered wagon ride to the strawberry patch was next.  

 Strawberry picking is serious work!

 Especially with all the tasting going on!

 The berries that made it into the buckets were beautiful!

 Everyone planted seeds.

 And then it was picnic time.

What a great day on the farm!

Recycle!

We have been learning how to take care of our earth at preschool.  We learned that we can all help, no matter how small we are.  One thing that we can all do is recycle.  We had a teachable moment last week when we there was a big juice bottle and no room in the trash can.  We decided that instead of putting it in the trash, that we could recycle it.  We just happened to have an empty box that was also ready to head to the trashcan. We turned it into a recycling box, so we recycled the recycling box!  Everyone got really excited about this.  

We wrote the word recycle on the box so that everyone would know it was not trash.

We learned that you have to check to see if plastic can be recycled. We check by looking for a number 1 or 2 on the bottom.  

This is our first week of independent snacks, where we bring our own from home.  Each day  it is so much fun to see who has something in their lunchbox that can be recycled.  

We learned that it is best to rinse things before we placed them in the box, to keep bugs and other pests away.  

So far we are doing a great job with our project.  It is even catching on in several homes that I have heard about. 

I received this picture of Savannah's recycle box that she has "installed" at her house.  I love how she is sorting the recycling by type.  Paper on the left, plastic on the right.

We even have a recycling box at our house that is filling much more quickly than I imagined.  It is almost like a scavenger hunt, what can we find today that we can recycle instead of throwing it away?  

We will soon have to load up our little red wagon and walk our recycling down to the new recycling center, that is located downtown!

 If you don't have one at your house, it might be something fun to try!