Rumble in the Jungle Day 1

Finally, the day we have all been waiting for, Rumble in the Jungle Camp! Today I will blog our first session, the 9-12 class, tomorrow, I will feature the second session, the 1-4 group.  

 We started out this morning on safari, looking for jungle animals in our special tree.  We saw a macaw, monkeys, beetles, butterflies, a spider, and 2 snakes.  

Later we spotted a tiger, a leopard, and a zebra!

You will not believe what we found in our sensory table... reptiles!  

These girls are not afraid of anything!

We did a DIY snack today of Rain forest Pizza.  Each child topped an English muffin with items that originate from or grow in the rain forest.  We had chocolate chips, bananas, pineapple, and coconut.  

Our safari guide and scientist working at the "SDS Jungle Research Station".

One of our stories today was The Umbrella.  Several jungle creatures end up floating in an umbrella down a river.  We extended our story outside with our new "river" table. 

The childred loaded the boats up with all kinds of creatures, like these salamanders and frogs!  

The river table was just as cool as I had hoped it would be.  They loved it, behaved responsibly, and even stayed dry!!!

Finally, we read Caps for Sale, a silly book about a peddler who has caps for sale.  He stops under a tree to take a nap and some mischevious moneys take all  of his hats.  When he wakes up, he finds his hats missing and feels very angry.  We decided to act the story out.  Each child colored their own hat to use as props.

Here the peddler is napping under the tree.  The monkeys are sneaking up to take her caps.  

The pedder was so angy that she shook her finger at the monkeys, and what do you know, they shook their fingers right back at her.  This continued on through arm waving, feet stomping, and finally cap throwing.  Once the peddler through her hat down, so did the monkeys!  After all, monkey see, monkey do!

 For our math lesson today, we used geo boards to play Monkey See, Monkey Do math.

The children worked in pairs.  Each had a geo board and a supply of rubber bands.  Their job was to create a design or shape, and then let their partner try to recreate it.  

Look at these ts, how cool?!?

We has a super morning and a super afternoon.  Tomorrow I look forward to sharing with you how our afternoon session enjoyed "Feeling Froggy" on Day 2!

Peace, Love, and Kindergarten!

Today was one of those wonderful, yet rare days when everything comes together just like it did in my imagination!  The children participated in 2 powerful learning experiences and had the time of their lives doing it.  

First, we made our Pete the Cat project, in response to reading our very cool Pete the Cat books.  

 I wouldn't classify it as art, because they were all supposed to look similar, but we practiced skills that will make us better artists. Each child was responsible for collecting the materials that they needed for their "Pete", then they had to assemble them to look like a cat.  Each tray was labeled with the number of "body parts" they were supposed to take.  1 body, 2 ears, 1 nose,  6 whiskers... 

They did an amazing job collecting their pieces.  They were very careful and diligent in their work. It takes some serious spatial sense to be able to turn random pieces of paper into cats!

 Although they all had the same pieces, the cats all had their own "flare" (like a fifth leg!)

"Miss" Georgia inadvertently failed to provide tails for the cats.  No problem, they just made their own.  One child used triangles, one used a whisker, and one a blue leg.  

Our special book today was Pete the Cat, Rocking in my School Shoes.  

This was a great time to talk about music and sound and the science of how it is made.  To visually explain sound, we placed beans on the drum and beat it.  Those beans just jumped all around!  Then we hit the rhythm sticks together and really tried to feel the vibration in our hands

We listened to several instruments and talked about how we thought they manipulated air to create sound.  

 Then is was time to make our own noise!  

 Each child was charged with creating their own instrument,  the only qualifier was that it has to make noise.  

Each child used their imagination and all the tools provided to build their instrument.  They has access to rubber bands, tape, hole punchers, steamers, balloons, stickers, markers, beans, rice, funnels... and anything else they needed.  

It was so neat to see them working together, experimenting, hypothesizing, testing, and retesting, and collaborating with other scientists.

 It was far less chaotic than I though it would be!  Everyone was so engaged in the process.

 In the end, each child shared the sound their instrument made, and told us how they made it.  Some instruments, like this one, were very versatile.  You can play it right side up, or upside down, or even shake it!

It was a joyful noise in our classroom!

Amazing how a recycling bin can turn into a fabulous lesson...

How cute are we in our Peace, Love and Kindergarten Tees!

We ended our time together with a parade, celebrating our send off to kindergarten!  I am so sad to see them go, but happy for them as they head of to "Rock" in Kindergarten!!!

Reading is an Adventure!

Today at Pre-K camp we focused on learning to love reading and writing.  Sure, reading is something you HAVE to learn to do, but we might as well get them excited about it!  We talked about all the adventures that you can take and the cool characters that you can meet when you just open a book (or your Ipad)!  I am all about instilling a love for reading in young children, and what better way than to expose them to fun books! And speaking of cool characters, you should meet Pete the Cat!

Pete the Cat, is just that, a fun book.  What makes Pete even cooler is that there are some really cool You Tube videos that set his story to music, which is really catchy!  Today we read Pete the Cat on my Ipad, then watched the story come to life, read and preformed by the author and illustrator.  

It has occurred to me that many of the children will read in an age of no-books.  They will be reading on E-readers and computers.  So today was a good opportunity to show them that there are many ways to read a good story!

Next, we read our own version of Pete the Cat.  First, we took a picture walk, and discussed each page.  Then we went through and in an exercise in listening and following directions, we colored each page to give us extra clues to help read the words that we don't know.  This book will be trickier to read, but I hope that they will stick with it and enjoy the challenge.  Just remember to make each reading experience fun,  when it gets stressful, just step away.  

Independent snack today was Fruity Tarts.  They really have gotten the hang of the process now.  They get out the recipe card, follow the steps, enjoy the snack, and clean up.  It is truly amazing to watch them work together, passing the foods and helping each other.  

The whipped cream posed a bit of a challenge due simply to hand size, but the problem solved and got it all worked out.  

 Some asked a friend, some asked me to help, and some stayed with it until they got it out themselves.
  

In preparation for our Kindergarten Rocks send off next week, we tie dyed some really cool shirts to wear during our parade.  We did a little research and found out how to make certain designs on the shirts.  I printed the information as a guide.  Each child chose the design they liked and tried to follow the instructions, many mixed the designs, which should turn out to be pretty neat.  The rubber bands were pretty difficult to stretch, but you know what that means, it was a good fine motor workout!

Finally, it was time to don our PPE (personal protective equipment) and head out to apply the dye.  We wore goggles, gloves, and smocks (when necessary).  

This was another super, busy day at Pre-K summer camp.  We can't wait to see how our tees turn out!

Next Monday we will have our kindergarten send off- Kindergarten Rocks- complete with a parade and rock and roll, tie dyed tee shirts!  We will be exploring sound and how it is created.  We will use what we learn from the lesson to create our own instruments.  This open ended project, where children select their own materials form a collection of recyclables, will surely be an adventure.  I am willing to bet, if you just stopped by, you would think you had stepped into absolute chaos.  Rest assured, it will be organized chaos!  You will see kids planning, experimenting, thinking, trying ideas, sharing, collaborating, talking, and learning.  No 2 instruments will be the same, but I guarantee that there will be good stuff going on in our classroom and joyful noise will be made!

Pre-K Camp Day 2

Today we focused on "First Day Feelings".  We talked about how each child was feeling about the first day of school.  We read the "Kissing Hand", and followed this theme throughout our day.

Today the children prepared their own snacks of love cookies.  They did a great job following the recipe once again, and no spills today :)

I did give them a little time to free-explore in the classroom, and look what they did! 

 Such a cool "structure" (their word!),

During our free exploration time, each child made a pocket full of kisses to remind them about how mama's kiss goes straight to their hearts.

 They did sewing and stapling to complete the project.

  

 They did a wonderful job operating the stapler.

 Today's literacy focus was on reading a predictable text.  We took a picture walk together and discussed other strategies that we can employ when we encounter words that we don't know.  

We read the book together, each person worked really hard to point to each word.  

So proud of my little readers!  Make sure they read their book to you too!

Finally, lunch time!  They hardly even needed us today.  I even heard someone remembering to eat their sandwich first, instead of dessert!  

Pre-K Camp Day 1

Yay for the first day of Pre-K Summer Camp.  Just a little background information... I decided to offer this workshop series as a way to help children and families as they prepare for the transition from preschool and home to kindergarten.  There are many transitions in life, but this is one of the biggies.  Preschool IS preparation for the transition by its nature, however I try really hard to let the end of preschool be just that, the end of preschool.  I hate to "cheat" the end of preschool by totally focusing on kindergarten.  This series of classes lets us focus on 4 main parts of the transition, as well as skills that will be mighty handy when we start big school!  

 5-4-3-2-1, Blast off for Kindergarten!  Each child found their name on our bulletin broad when they first arrived. During circle time, we talked about bring a good friends, and what the Bible says about being a good friend.  We made a list of what good friends do. Then we read the book Chrysanthemum, by Kevin Henkes.  She is a little mouse who goes off to school for the first time and runs into some bullies.  Not to worry, a nice teacher comes along to save the day.  This book was a good way to talk about how important it is to be a good friend, and use nice words.  

 During centers the children had the opportunity to "cook" their own snack.  (see previous post)

 We also had a formal writing lesson.  We wrote stories about how to be a good friend.  

 Many people wonder how you do a formal writing lesson with preschoolers, who are one so many different levels.  It is really not as hard as it sounds.  Through modeling, we are reaching each learner where they are. Some children are working on drawing people, some are developing a setting, and many are writing sentences using sounds and sight words.  It really is a neat process to watch unfold.  The sentence accompanying the illustration pictured above says, "I can be nice to my friends".  

 We were able to squeeze in just a little time for playing outside.  We were so surprised to see that our tomatoes were ready to harvest.

 Then we dug potatoes!

  Time for lunch!  We are learning how to manage our lunchboxes, open all of those tricky containers, eat our sandwiches FIRST, and clean up.  We also started talking about things that we can save, and things that will spoil if we put them back in our lunchboxes.  Since many kids will be eating food purchased in the lunchroom, we will be playing some fun balancing games with cafeteria trays later in the month.

 For our math lesson we thought back to the story of Chrysanthemum.  She has 13 letters in her name, 1/2 as many as there are in the entire alphabet.  We decided to find out how many letters we have in our names. We also found out who has the longest name in our class.  Each child write the letters of their name in a strip of boxes, then counted carefully.  

Finally, we sorted ourselves by the number of letter we have in our names.  5 was a very popular number, with 5 kids having 5 letters in their names.  

We are blessed with many double-name babies in our class.  We decided to count the letters in the names they go by, so we had many names with 9+ letters.  

Guess who has the most letters in their name???

Today was a very good day at school.  We accomplished all that we needed to, and then some.  Each child took home homework.  It is not my favorite thing for young children, but it is a reality of going to big school. The children are to assemble a homework kit (crayons, glue, scissors), and find a quiet homework place to do their work.  Hopefully having some of these in place will help them when homework comes in the fall.  We will talk more about this during our parent session at the end of June.