Rub-a-dub, dub!

You may be familiar with the nursery rhyme, Rub a dub dub, 3 men in  tub..

Well we made our own version!

Rub-a-dub-dub,

Three friends in a tub;

And who do you think they be?

There's C......., and P............, and N........., too;

And all of them gone to sea!.

It was a blast trying to squeeze all those friends in a tub!

The boys and girls used the skill of cooperation to make this lesson successful!

We spent some time to explore water today.

We learned how to clean up after ourselves when we made a spill.

We scooped and poured, stirred and splashed throughout the morning.

The children were so careful and thoughtful of their neighbors as they played side by side.

Our final water play for the day was painting with watercolors. 

It is always fascinating to watch young children as they interact with new art materials.

The Red Ripe Strawberry

This week we  have been enjoying this old favorite with our 4 year old preschoolers. 

It is the story of a little mouse who is desperately trying to keep a "Big Hungry Bear" away from his strawberry.  He tries to bury it, lock it up, and disguise it, to no avail.  Finally, he decides to just eat it all up and avoid the bear all together!

After the first reading of the story we discussed what a "disguise" is, and then decided it would be funny to disguise our own handmade strawberries   

We used our fresh, homemade strawberry play-doh to make our strawberries.

 

Then we borrowed Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head's accessories to complete the perfect disguise   

I am sure that no BIG HUNGRY BEAR could find these strawberries!

How about this cowboy strawberry!

An Aquarium Adventure with our 3s

It was my pleasure to accompany our sweet 3s on their end-of-the-year field trip to the aquarium.

Mrs. Renee' and Mrs. Jill arranged for us to have a special lesson in the aquarium classroom.

We gathered to listen to a story.

Then we touched lots of spiny sea creatures.

We were SO brave. We toughed a sea star, a spiny sea urchin, and even a spider crab!

We completed a craft together.

After our class, we visited the aquarium and completed our scavenger hunt.

Look at these cool fish!

There was a touch pool for sharks!

And a touch pool for other interesting creatures.

These 2 really enjoyed spotting turtles living in the open air exhibit.

Growing Vegetable Soup

In early spring we learned about vegetables and all the good things God gives us from the garden.  We read Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert and decided to make our our vegetable soup.

Each child was assigned a vegetable to find at the grocery store.

We took turns preparing each vegetable.  

These 2 boys are busy washing green beans.

Then we chopped the vegetables.  

Where possible, and safe, we tried to let the children be independent with the preparation.

T was able to cut this potato with a butter knife.

Once prepared, we placed each item in our croc pot.  

It was so neat to see the inside of each vegetable.  

"Unwrapping" corn was super cool and a first for many in our classroom.

The end product was delicious!

We had fun making our own place mats and tasting new foods.

We even had many requests for seconds!

Dissecting Flowers

Today we brought in signs of spring from home.  

We identified the parts of plants and how they grow from seed to mature adult.

As part of our science/math lesson, we dissected some of the flowers.

The goal was to sort the parts of the flowers.

First we isolated the stem.

Then we removed the leaves.

Finally, it was time to take the flower apart.

The boys and girls were so fascinated by this process.

They used real tools to further investigate our specimens.  

They worked with partners and took turns using the equipment.

We were able to the pollen in some off the flowers.

What a great day at preschool!

"Planting A Rainbow" Literacy Centers

This year we implemented literacy centers into our daily routine for our 4s.  Literacy centers were a staple of my kindergarten classroom, and seemed like a concept I would like to implement in our preschool day.  

The basics are that our students work in small groups and rotate through 4 stations throughout the week.  Two centers are teacher lead, and 2 are student lead.  These 4s have totally exceeded my expectations with their work in literacy centers.  Here is what we have been up to this week...

When I look at these pictures, it is hard to believe that there are 16,  4 year olds working together, on task,, engaged in meaningful learning experiences.  I am so proud of them!

Thanks to an awesome idea from over at Teach Preschool, we worked with Mrs. Regina to make Alphabet Soup.  Each child dipped 5 letters into their bowls and depending on where they are in their development, either named the letter, or its sound.  

Not only did we all get a terrific fine motor work-out and hone in our hand-eye coordination  but there were also opportunities for extension.  Some children sounded out words and spelled them in their bowls!  

Our first independent center this week involved reading simple color word sentences.

They children worked together to build flowers and place them in the appropriate flower pot.  

G has done a great job filling this pot with pink flowers.  

These small groups are called literacy centers, but as you see here, we are able to incorporate skills from other areas of development  as well.  Building and sorting our flowers by color is an excellent math skill.   

The second independent task was to look through gardening catalogs and cut out pictures of flowers.  

After cutting the pictures out, the job was to paste the picture on the correct spot of the color wheel.

Looking through the catalogs was a great opportunity to experience print in a meaningful way, and our little hands got to strengthen as we worked those scissors.  

This week Mrs. Georgia's group received new reading books that I hope everyone is enjoying reading with their families.