We have been having so much fun learning and growing the last couple of months. I just love all the spring units. The kids have so much fun with all our hands on activities.
We finished out our March theme "In like a Lion, out like a lamb" by making some Lambs out of construction paper and oatmeal.
We also put the correct number of lambs in their pasture during centers this day. The lambs were just cotton balls and they had to read the number on the green pasture to know how many went in.
We practiced handwriting today with a fun Volcano picture.
For snack time we had pink milk and blew bubbles in it until it exploded. This was a BIG HIT and the kids were great helpers cleaning up afterwards as well.
We also made our own volcanoes by cutting out a hill and then ripping tissue paper. We added some dinosaur pictures for fun and talked about this being a theory of one of the ways the dinosaurs might have become extinct.
At the end of the day we made our own volcanoes. We made a big mound out of salt dough and then painted them in groups. Afterwards I filled them up with MAGIC volcano potion. Just baking soda, red food coloring and then we added the vinegar. And we watched them erupt. This is always the favorite part of Volcano day and I have to buy a big bottle of vinegar so we can do it over and over again.
Letter X: X-Ray Day
I was so excited for this day because I had just bought real x-rays of animals from out scholastic book order to show the kids. They loved matching all the pictures of animals with the right x ray. There were a couple really neat ones. There was one of a turtle and the x-ray showed all the eggs inside the turtle. And then there was another one of a snake that showed a couple mice in it's body that the snake had eaten. I didn't get any pictures of these but the kids absolutely LOVED them.
We also painted letter X's that I had put on the paper with tape and when they were dried we peeled the tape off.
We pulled out our big skeleton from Halloween and talked about all the different types of bones in our body. We also made little flip paper people. On the outside they drew a picture of themselves and underneath they drew a picture of all their bones.
We finished up the day with some bone breadsticks that look more like a dog biscuit to me. And we danced to a fun Skelton Dance.
APRIL
April Fool's Day was one of my favorite days! We sang silly songs like Old Macdonald and made the animals make different sounds. We told funny jokes and we made some Brown E's for our parents. We also talked about letter U this day and had fun with things upside down. I turned all the pictures on the wall upside down and our tables and chairs were upside down when they came to class. The kids thought a leprechaun had come back to our classroom.
We made letter U's and put letter U sticker words on it.
Letter Y:
We made a list of lots of yellow things and added our poster to our Word Wall to practice reading new words.
We also did some yoga this day. The kids loved learning tree pose, table top, downward dog, cat, etc.
We also talked about what makes a good friend. We sat in a circle and I got out our yellow yarn. We made a friendship web out of it. They would roll the ball of yarn to someone and then say something nice about them. I would put a piece of tape on the ground to hold the yarn before they rolled it. At the end we had a fun web to jump in and out of.
Letter Z: Zebra Day
We read some great non-fiction books this day and learned all about zebras. What they like to eat, where they live, how big they are and about their predators. We also read this book:
This was a great book about a Zebra who is sad because his best friend, giraffe, moves away. They write letters to each other and Zebra realizes they can still be friends, plus he makes lots of new friends in the jungle along the way.
We made our own Zebras out of black paper and bleach. We painted the bleach on with q-tips and watched it change colors.
At the end of the day we had some yummy zebra cake for a snack.
Easter Week:
We made eggs by coloring designs on paper and then painting with watered-down blue paint. We added a little baby chick inside.
We also played a game to see different animals and insects that come from eggs. Each child got to pick an egg and inside was a picture of that animal. We later acted out each animal for PE.
We matched our uppercase and lowercase letters to put our plastic eggs together.
Rock Day:
Always one of the kids favorite days. I talked to them about the different type of rocks. Igneous:that come from Lava, Sedimentary that come from sand and water, Metamorphic which are igneous or sedimentary rocks that change from lots of heat and pressure.
I also showed them examples of each from my rock collection. They always love the lava rocks the most.
Afterwards we got busy doing our rock experiments with the rocks they brought from home. We measured them, we saw how hard or soft they were, we checked to see if there was limestone in them, we checked to see if any of our rocks were magnetic, we found out what colors were in our rocks and we checked to see if any of them floated.
To finish off the day we had a fun little easter egg hunt.
INSECT UNIT
As some of you know my bugs got delivered to the wrong house. Luckily I was able to track them down before they died. They are doing great. Our butterflies are in cocoons and should come out in about a week or so and our ladybugs started hatching from their cocoons just yesterday. I can't wait for the kids to see them.
For snack time we made butterflies out of wafer cookies, pretzels, apples and skittles.
We made a diagram with pasta noodles to show all the phases of the butterfly life cycle.
During centers I would call out a letter and they would put a dot with our bingo markers on the right lowercase letter.
We danced gracefully with streamers and pretended we were quiet butterflies.
We also make butterflies and the kids were begging me to make cocoons for them to come out of. So I quickly stapled some rolled up paper.
For some of my older kids I encouraged them to make their butterfly symmetrical.
For our ladybugs we sorted ladybugs by size: Smallest to biggest, Biggest to smallest, and we also sorted them by which bug had the most dots to which one had the least amount of dots.
Ladybug snack time. Strawberries, pretzels for legs and antennas and chocolate chips for spots. I realized after class that I forgot the grapes for the heads. :/
We read this great book! And worked on telling time while I was reading the story.
We made our own ladybug picture with paint and made sure to add some green leaves with lots of aphids on them to eat.
Plants
We added all the parts of a plant life cycle to our word wall to practice reading. They love playing our flashlight game to this. I was so happy today when one of the students was at my house for a play date today. She saw one of my plants and said, "Look Miss Julie, it is Germinating!"
We made a picture showing the 4 things plants need to grow: Air, water, sun and soil.
We played a flower game during centers to match the numbers together to complete the flower.
Later we used those same flowers to play a relay race.
We also read some great fiction and non-fiction books about plants.
We made flowers with sparkly jewels on the inside. And practiced cutting out stems and leaves.
We also covered a Letter F with lots of flower stickers, planted our own seeds which are starting to grow, and picked a season we liked most during morning starter.
We finished the unit out with a yummy dirt snack of chocolate pudding, oreos, and gummy worms.
May Day
The first day of May is called May Day. Long ago many countries would celebrate this day as the coming of Spring. They would pick a Flower King or Queen to wear a crown of flowers. They would then find the tallest, skinniest tree and dance around the tree while spinning ribbons all around it. They also would fill baskets with flowers and deliver them to friends and loved ones. In some countries they still celebrate this day. I thought it would be fun to celebrate for preschool.
We made flower necklaces out of paper flowers and straws. We went out to the park and found the tallest tree. I would pick a king or queen each time while we sang, "Ring around the rosies, pocket full of posies, flowers, flowers we all……." the king or queen would tell us what we were suppose to do at the end.
At the end of the day we made baskets and put real flowers in them to give to somebody we loved.
Ok, I hope I haven't bored you to death! One of these days maybe I will figure out it is better to update every week or so. Then I won't have to post so many pictures at once. :) I sure love it though and love seeing these smiley faces.
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