Saturday, April 30, 2011

May

We learned so much at our conference!  It's always wonderful to learn new ways to teach and innovative ways to make the classroom more inviting and full of discovery!  We'll be using some of those ideas starting on Monday!

We'll finish up this week studying insects as the last two weeks have been extremely short weeks.  We have our camping area set up and the children just love the tent and the swimming pool.  Barb brought in another tent that we'll set up on Monday morning so they can visit each other's camp sites.  It will add a whole new dimension to their play.  There's just something about getting in a tent with your friends that is absolutely so much fun! And, of course, you need to bring food from the play kitchen, blankets, a few babies and all of their belongings....it just wouldn't be camping without hauling our things with us!

Monday, April 25, 2011

Short Week!

I hope you had a nice Spring Break and enjoyed some of the candy the children brought home in their eggs.  They had a lot of fun looking for them and then they had the joy of opening them up and discovering what was inside.  We thank the Circleville Key Club for providing the Easter Egg Hunt for us!

Over the weekend, I added a tent and a plastic swimming pool to our play area since we'll be pretending to camp this week and next.  Since we're studying bugs, the camping theme seemed to fit!  We'll take our bug puppets with us to the play area and see where they'll surprise us!  The swimming pool will be our reading area in our campsite so I've added our soft pillows and stuffed animal friends so we can read to them while we're 'sunning' ourselves!

Our ants have been very busy building their ant hill and the children will be able to observe them at work this week.  They have built numerous tunnels and they are still building more.  We're learning more bug songs and the children seem to especially love, Baby Bumblebee and the Ants Go Marching!  Speaking of bugs....What kind of bug can't go into the men's bathroom?  Give up yet?.......why, it's the ladybug of course!  I have plenty more of those up my sleeve for this week!  We'll be making ladybug hats on Tuesday so I imagine we'll hear that joke a lot that day!

We will only have school this week on Tuesday, April 26 and Wednesday, April 27.  On Thursday, April 28, Barb, Gerry and I will be heading to Columbus to the Early Care and Education Conference and we're very excited as it's always wonderful to learn more and to be able to bring back fresh ideas to our classroom to share with our children.

Dates to Remember:

We'll have school on Tuesday, April 26 and Wednesday, April 27.

Thursday, April 28-No School due to Staff Training.

The Slate Run trip has been cancelled for May and they don't have any other openings.

Thursday, May 19-We're going to the Zoo with a rain date on Tuesday, April 24.  This is an all day trip and the children will be needing a packed lunch. 

Wednesday, May 25-the Preschool will be having their graduation ceremony in the conference room at 1:00.

Thursday, May 26-we have our last swimming date followed by a picnic at the Mary Virginia Crites Hannan Park on 188 and that will be the last school day for this year.

Friday, April 15, 2011

A Little Music, a Little Tball, a Little Swimming, and Lots of Insects!

This week has been a very well rounded week with a variety of activities.  On Monday, Sharon, who works in Early Intervention, brought her son in to play the baritone for us and that was a new instrument for us to explore.  The children listened intently as he explained the baritone to us.  Then he played 'Name That Tune' with the children and they were able to guess his selections!

We played Tball with new friends at the Pioneer School in Chillicothe and we learned that it's fun to hit the ball.  We're also learning about running to first base, and where that is...and that we're on the same team in the outfield so we don't need to fight over the ball as we're fielding it...so much to learn in Tball.  I believe we'll get out our Tball stand in the gym so we can play since the children enjoyed it so much.  One of the highlights of the game for us was the cheering that was going on with our children while they were batting.  As each child had a turn to bat the other children started chanting their name saying, "Go Evan, Go Evan, Go Evan" and clapped to the rhythm....it was fantastic!

It's hard to describe the progress that the children have made with their swimming abilities.....other than saying it's tremendous!  Whether it's becoming more comfortable just being in the water, to learning to blow bubbles, to getting your hair wet to learning how to back float....they all have increased their skills in the water.  Actually, one of our children says he's. "Just relaxin" as he back floats!

We are in the process of making insect puppets and the children are doing a great job coloring the various insects, cutting them out, and then gluing them to popsicle sticks.  We'll be using our puppets as we sing and read about insects.  I found a great series of non-fiction books by Nancy Loewen that the children are enjoying.  This week we learned that a bee's tongue is a long tube that works like a drinking straw.  Bees can either roll up their tongue or hold it out straight so we tried rolling up our tongues...that was a lot of fun.  We also learned that it takes 55,000 bees and 2 million flowers to make one pound of honey...I now have new appreciation for the jar of honey that I have!  Did you know that bees have a great way of talking to each other?  They do it by dancing.  If a bee finds a lot of flowers, he goes back to the hive and flies in the shape of an 8.  From this dance, that's called a waggle dance, the other bees know where the flowers are, how far they are, and how good they are....that's amazing!  We'll continue to learn more about other insects next week.

Dates to Remember:
Spring Break is from Thursday, April 21- Monday, April 25.

We'll have school on Tuesday, April 26 and Wednesday, April 27.

Thursday, April 28-No School due to Staff Training.

The Slate Run trip has been cancelled for May and they don't have any other openings.

Thursday, May 19-We're going to the Zoo with a rain date on Tuesday, April 24.  This is an all day trip and the children will be needing a packed lunch. 

Wednesday, May 25-the Preschool will be having their graduation ceremony in the conference room at 1:00.

Thursday, May 26-we have our last swimming date followed by a picnic at the Mary Virginia Crites Hannan Park on 188 and that will be the last school day for this year...so hard to believe as this has been such a wonderful group of children to spend each day with!

Friday, April 8, 2011

Spring is Here!

We enjoyed a fun day at the AHA! Museum yesterday and capped it off with eating lunch and playing at Rising Park on a beautiful spring day!

We're looking forward to beginning our study of bugs-the good, the bad and the ugly...we want the whole truth about bugs!  I've sent away for our ants for our ant farm and expect their arrival any day now!  They are coming from Utah, believe it or not!  Did you know that you can't send a queen ant across state lines.....just a little fun fact for you!  We'll have to look up that state on the map to see where that is in the USA so we know where our ants are from!  We have our magnifying glasses ready to do some inspections of different species.  We also have our crayons ready to record what we see and our rulers so we can measure our specimens.

We've added some nice pretend bugs to our dirt in the sensory table so we'll be waiting on Monday morning for the first child that finds them.  We'll also adapt a song that we're familiar with, Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes and change it to Head, Thorax, Abdomen!  Here are the lyrics if you want to sing along!

Insects

(Tune: “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” )

Head (point to head)

Thorax (point to chest)

Abdomen – abdomen! (point to stomach)

Head, thorax, abdomen – abdomen!

And eyes (point to eyes)

And mouth (point to mouth)

And antennae, two (stick 2 fingers up)

Six legs (wiggle 3 fingers on each hand)

And there’s an insect for you!

(Leave off a verse each time you sing and hum.)
 
Dates to Remember:
 
Wednesday, April 13-Tball trip to Chillicothe at Pioneer School.  Please pack a lunch for your child.
 
Thursday, April 14-Swimming at the YMCA
 
Thursday-Monday, April 21-25-No School-Spring Break
 
Tuesday, April 26-Free concert with Shawn Brown for your family. I will send home a flyer about it on Monday.
 
Thursday, April 28-No School due to staff training.
 
Tuesday, May 4-Free Slate Run Historical Farm Field Trip with a picnic lunch first.
 
Later in May we plan to go to the Zoo and we'll have a swim and picnic lunch at the new park on 188.  I will double check the dates on those events and let you know.

Friday, April 1, 2011

School Calendar

 I finally found a way to put our school calendar on our blog....it's only taken me most of the year but here it is and I'll be all ready for next year now that I know how to do it!  Thanks for your patience as I learn how to blog more effectively!!