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!