Me and My Shadow

Off to the sun, or as close to it as we could get without melting!  

Today we boarded our rocket ship to explore the sun.  

We began our day by reading Moonbear's Shadow.  A silly little book about a bear who tries his best to get away from his shadow.  He nails it down, buries it, and hides from it to no avail.  Finally, noon comes and his shadow is gone- only to return later in the afternoon.  

During our stations, we made space inspired sensory bottles.

We put in beads to remind us of planets, stones to remind us of the moon, and stars to remind us of, well stars.  

We also used forks to paint sunshines.  We mixed yellow and red paint to make a new color.

Finally, we headed outside to explore light by doing a little shadow watching.  

We traced each child's shadow at 10:00.

Then it was time for a solar snack.

Today we prepped the ingredients ourselves.

We leaned how to use a knife safely, we learned how to use a trash bowl for the extra parts of the fruit, and we listened and followed a recipe.

The end product was delicious,  

and fun!

At 11:45 we headed back out to check on our shadows.  Would they still be there?  

Would they look the same or different.  

We found our shadows, but they were different.  

What a neat way to demonstrate the moving earth to our little ones.

Mission: Moon!

Today we added an American Flag to our galaxy-doh, which for today was moon rock.  

Playing with a flag would normally be off limits, but for this project, we made an exception.  It is difficult to re-tell what happened on the moon without a flag to work with!

We started our morning off with a BANG!

Shortly after our blast-off for the moon, we read Hey Diddle Diddle.  This was the perfect story to keep us busy while we traveled to outer space.   

In our story we met many animal friends and learned how they played their instruments.  We pretend to play along with each animal, then we played our own instruments.  Since it was opposite day, when Mrs. Georgia said, "Play quietly", we played loudly.  When she said, "Play loudly", we played softly.  

Once we arrived on the moon, we got started with our space stations.

Today, opposite day, we drew pictures of the day and night sky.  We discussed what we do during the day, and what activities are specific to night.  

We used a white crayon to place stars in the night sky.  When we painted over them with blue watercolor, they shone through beautifully.  

We made a set of finger puppets to re-tell the story of Hey Diddle, Diddle.  

 

We placed craters on our moons.  

We used this activity to support our learners as they develop the ability to cut curved lines and manage the flow of glue.  

 And we dressed up like astronauts.  

3-2-1 Blast-off!

Summer camp is the best!  We get to do ALL of my ideas without worrying about schedule.

This morning we gathered for rocket launch at 0900 hours.  

Before blasting off we did a little research with some galaxy-doh.

We built pattern block rockets...

and bristle block rockets.  These are blasting off!

After we got dressed in our space suits and boarded the shuttle, it was time for a countdown.  We read a story about astronauts and discovered what they use many of their tools for.

During our space stations we built rocket names.

Made 3-d planets,

and straw rockets. 

Finally, it was time for the astronauts to eat.  We talked a lot about what it must be like to eat in space.  We wondered aloud what would happen when you poured milk without gravity.  We though about what astronauts do with their trash.  We are thinking that they reuse things quite a bit.    

We know that the astronauts can't go to the grocery store in space, so they have to take dried foods and other shelf stable items with them to eat.  

 Today we ate like astronauts.  We made pudding in a bag.  

Each child added milk to their bag of powdered pudding and mixed away until it was nice and ready.  Our pudding turned out to be delicious.  We reused our milk cups to pour our pudding in.  Way to recycle!

During free choice centers we read stories in the rocket ship, built  aliens, and explored moon sand.  

Stay tuned for a few more from today...

Ecological Marine Adventure

Like any family, we have traditions at preschool.  One of my favorites is that our 4s take a end-of-the-year field trip to Topsail Island each year.  We visit with Miss Kathleen from Ecological Marine Adventures.

This year we embarked on a Marsh Exploration.

Before we left, we explored creatures that live on our coast.

We touched fish, urchins, crabs,  whelks and sea plants.

The boys and girls loved begin able to handle the creatures. 

Next, it was off to the marsh.  After a sticky, muddy walk, we arrived at our destination.

We did stop along the way to investigate cool things we found.  I love teachable moments!

The moms may never forgive me for getting them in to this! 

It was surely an adventure, worth every moment to see the looks on their faces when we got to our island.

We made a stampede toward some fiddler crabs to conduct an experiment.  

We learned that they sense movement with hairs on their legs. We wanted to see how close we had to get before they could sense the vibrations caused by our feet hitting the ground.  

We caught so many amazing creatures with our nets, including flounder, shrimp, minnows, fiddler crabs, hermit crabs and snails.

E found a snail.

K caught a mama shrimp with eggs on her back.  

We learned how to scoop our nets under the mud flats to catch lots of fish.

We found sea lettuce...

 and more snails.

What a wonderful day exploring God's beautiful world!

Thankful for the friends and family members that shared this day with us.  

A Surprise for Mrs. Georgia

I am a little bit of a snoop.  It is next to impossible to surprise me, but my fours sure did get me last week.  During the middle of our tea party, I realized that I was not "in charge" anymore.

A super sweet mama, made a presentation to me on behalf of the class and their families. They shared kind words about me and presented me with this ceiling tile, painted by Hope. Each precious child went to her shop, on their own time, and placed their hand-print in the art.    It is a priceless treasure to me.  I love it SO much that I had to climb a ladder immediately and install it-still in my tea party dress.

Not being one to miss a teachable moment, we had to take some time to investigate what was in the ceiling.  We saw lots of duct work, found out there is an outlet there (going to get that projector installed after all!) and got an idea that we could store some stuff up there.

I don't know how they got it done, or how they kept this secret, but I am so grateful that they did.  So humbled to hear their words and honored to be their teacher.  

Pollen!

The pollen came at just the right time for our "Planting a Rainbow" week, our unit on things that grow in the flower garden. To marvel at pollen is to really see things through the eyes of a child.  For most adults, it is a terrible mess.  For little kids, they wake up one day and the earth is covered in fantastic yellow dust, almost like snow.  It tickles their noses, itches their eyes, and makes the slide super fast.  This week we discovered where it comes from in a new and meaningful way.  

We read Planting a Rainbow and found ws on every page.

Then we learned that seeds grow into flowers.

With a little sprinkle of water from Mrs. Georgia, these seeds grew strong.  

Roots go down, shoots go up.

We collected flowers from our yards and brought them to school to dissect.

Each team was tasked with dissecting the flowers into its visible parts: petals, stem, and leaves.

Using our magnifying glasses we were able to see the "anthers" the part of the flower that makes pollen.

The children were absolutely fascinated.

 It was so neat to see them make the connection between the "funny" yellow dust and its source.

  

After the dissection we drew pictures of plants and labeled them.  

I LOVE inventive spelling and to see children expressing themselves through writing.  

Can you see the "stem", "roots", "leaf", and "flower"? So proud of these PRESCHOOLERS and what they have accomplished.