Today our friends chose to start their day with the new trucks. They have quickly become the new favorite activity for the classroom!

Then we moved into the kitchen for a new activity: hammering golf tees into Styrofoam boxes! This activity tests their fine motor and co-ordination skills and friends couldn’t wait for their turn to hammer away!

Breakfast was Whole Grain Cheerios and pears. Lunch consisted of whole grain brown rice with turkey, pears, and mixed veggies. Afternoon snack was sweet pea butter on rice cakes.

Link to photos: https://1drv.ms/f/s!AtTCDmdhjIulh9QMPj-Hf5vZGAciiQ

Have a great night!

Amanda

Happy Wednesday! We spent the morning building together with stackers and Magna-Tiles.

Then we got ready for Easter by decorating Easter eggs with the dot paints. These will add lots of color to our classroom next month!

Different trucks were brought out and our friends love playing with them. They each picked an animal to put on their truck and pushed it along the shelf and around the habitrail area.

Breakfast was Chex and banana. Wee sprout was peas. Lunch consisted of homemade French toast casserole, banana, and peas. Afternoon snack was pretzels and string cheese.

Link to photos: https://1drv.ms/f/s!AtTCDmdhjIulh9NKM9FBqywe4bF-nw

Have a great night!

Amanda

Good Afternoon!

One of our kindergarten FAB’s for this week focuses on categories; figuring out what fits and what doesn’t. Today, we had the category game as our welcome activity which lasted all morning long.

Various friends came to the table and interacted with the game. They used their peers as a reference if they weren’t too sure which allowed for great communication and collaboration!

K.RV.2.2: Identify and sort pictures of objects into categories (e.g., colors, shapes, opposites).

Miss Melinda lead an activity at the art table that used a variety of art materials. Children used straws, cardboard, and labels to create their very own musical instrument! Friends cut the straws different sizes which gave their instrument a variety of sounds!

Afterwards, the musical instruments were tested out! We listened for the higher and lower pitched sounds that the variety in straws provided.

During large group, we read ‘Where The Wild Things Are’. After we finished, we had a discussion about the different between what’s real and what’s make believe. Our large group friends tied this conversation to what they KNOW: “That story is make believe: just like when we play dinosaurs in the habitrail. It’s not real.”

We hope you had a fantastic Wednesday.

Breakfast– Malt-O-Meal and blackberries.

Lunch– Homemade french toast casserole, PPC cantaloupe, and peppers.

PM snack– Air popped popcorn and raspberries.

Wee Sprout– Carrots and green beans.

Have a terrific evening.

-Mindy

Link to pictures: WF 3/15

Today we are celebrating Marty’s 20 year anniversary of being a teacher at Wee Friends! It is an amazing accomplishment and we are so fortunate to have a teacher with such passion for children and dedication to our program. Thank you Marty!!!

Good Afternoon! This morning we had music time. We played a variety of different instruments to hear the different sounds they made while making our own music.

Addi requested building with Legos. We went downstairs and brought them up and added them to our environment. Many friends were busy building their own creations.

We dressed up, created with magnatiles and blocks, and made a building project at the workbench.

Breakfast: Cheerios and blackberries.

Lunch: Hummus on whole wheat tortillas, pineapple and green beans.

Afternoon Snack: Whole wheat bagels with cream cheese.

Wee Sprouts: Cucumbers and carrots.

Have a great night!

Rebekah

Link to pictures: https://1drv.ms/f/s!AtTCDmdhjIulh9IkO_npLMMdH30-ag

Today we are celebrating Marty’s 20 year anniversary of being a teacher at Wee Friends! It is an amazing accomplishment and we are so fortunate to have a teacher with such passion for children and dedication to our program. Thank you Marty!!!

Enjoy the pictures!

Breakfast was Whole Grain Cheerios and banana. Lunch consisted of whole wheat flat bread with hummus, banana, pineapple, and peas. Afternoon snack was wheat crackers with cream cheese and blueberries.

Link to photos: https://1drv.ms/f/s!AtTCDmdhjIulh9FJSIpOfX8Akuwyfw

Have a good night!

Amanda

Please note: If anyone has any puzzles they no longer use and would like to donate, we would greatly appreciate some!

Today we had music time…

 

Cooked together in housekeeping…

Did plenty of climbing…

And used teamwork to complete a big puzzle!

Breakfast was whole wheat bagels with butter and cinnamon and apples. Wee sprout was peas. Lunch consisted of whole wheat pasta with shredded beef and cheese, kiwi, and peas. Afternoon snack was rice cakes with cream cheese.

Link to photos: https://1drv.ms/f/s!AtTCDmdhjIulh9BsSzX1tXENGTn6pw

Have a great night!

Amanda

Happy Monday!

**BOOK DONATION: One of our Wee Friends parents is working on an initiative called TRANSLATE FOR TODDLERS: SOUTH BEND TOWARD JUSTICE. It aims at translating into French donated English language books for toddlers and young children aged one to eight. The translated books are then gifted to charitable organizations as a present of welcome to immigrants, refugees, and international students with young children. We are going to have a donation box here at Wee Friends so if you’re able to donate a book, it would be greatly appreciated! If you have any questions, please ask!

In large group, we read a story titled ‘The Little Red Hen’. After we read the story, friends kept asking, “Why are none of the red hen’s friends helping? That doesn’t seem kind..”

Lately, we’ve started looking for the meaning/theme in stories. We also looked for punctuation throughout the story!

After we were done with the book, we went through sentence strips that I made, looking for and naming the punctuation that we saw. We recognized periods, question marks, and exclamation marks.

K.W.6.2b: Punctuation—Recognizing and naming end punctuation.

______________________________________________________________________

Maddie and Lulu were extremely interested in writing themselves today, without teacher assistance. Lulu sounded out the words she needed, spelling ‘map sun’. Lulu drew a map to a sun and described it by writing underneath. Maddie drew a beach and found a paper in her journal titled, ‘beach’. As she was looking through her pieces of paper with writing on them, she noted, “I need to look for a ‘b’ because beach starts with ‘b’.”

Since it was a little chilly and snowy this morning, we brought the outside in to us!

We used many tools to manipulate the snow. When the snow had been inside for a while, we noticed that it started melting.

The rest of our morning consisted of building with various materials, art table, and interacting with peers.

Breakfast– Cinnamon raisin bagel with butter and apples.

Lunch– Whole wheat noodles with shredded beef and shredded cheese, oranges, and cherry tomatoes.

PM snack– Whole milk yogurt with blueberries.

Wee Sprout– Carrots and peppers.

Have a wonderful night.

-Mindy

Link to pictures: WF 3/13

We had a fun filled Friday with jumping on the trampoline…

Getting trays, hands, and faces messy with shaving cream…

      

Climbing, running, and jumping together in the gross motor area…

And crawling through a tunnel!

Breakfast was Chex and banana. Lunch consisted of whole wheat flat bread with cheese, banana, pear, and corn. Afternoon snack was mozzarella string cheese and cheese crackers.

Link to photos: https://1drv.ms/f/s!AtTCDmdhjIulh88Yf-2thL8Vm3uOtA

Have a great weekend!

Amanda

Happy Friday!

For Kindergarten:

An activity was set up in the science area that appealed to all developmental levels.

Our older friends used the gems to count using one to one correspondence. Children started making their own patterns or extending patterns that I started. At first, some children couldn’t start a pattern by themselves but we discussed what a pattern is: the repetition of something. So for example, Lulu picked her favorite colors yellow, blue, and purple and started a pattern using those colors. Once she had blue, yellow, and purple, she repeated those exact same colors, creating a pattern!

K.CA.5: Create, extend and give an appropriate rule for simple repeating and growing patterns with numbers and shapes.

 

Our younger friends manipulated the jewels in a variety of ways. Anna chose all of the green colored gems and counted them. Friends also called out all of the colors that they saw. A few friends took the gems and used descriptive words to describe what they felt.

Someone suggested separating the gems by color. Once we did, we looked at each group and figured out what colored gem had the most in the group as well as the least amount.

Miss Melinda read a story to a small group titled, ‘Draw Me A Star’. On each page, it said to draw something. It went in order; star, sun, people, house, dog, cat, bird, butterfly, flower, clouds, rainbow, moon, and then the star (comes full circle). Addi and Jackson both sat down and drew the prompt on each page.

Afterwards, they must have been in a cleaning mood because they cleaned the art easel! Jackson and Addi take the initiative to help teachers and their younger friends.

It was a morning full of creation building! (we often ask for pictures to be taken)

We had a terrific week!

Breakfast– Rice cakes with cream cheese and banana.

Lunch– Turkey on whole wheat bread/english muffin, kiwi/banana, and cherry tomatoes.

PM snack– Raisins and graham crackers.

Wee Sprout– Cherry tomatoes.

Have a wonderful weekend.

-Mindy

Link to pictures: WF 3/10

Our friends loved their time in the gross motor area today!

They pulled out the soft stars and spent time climbing and balancing on them. Their favorite thing to do with them lately is stand them up to turn them into tunnels and try to crawl under them without knocking them down.

Another thing they like to crawl under is the habitrail! They climb underneath and explore from one end to the other!

Breakfast was Whole Grain Cheerios and clementine’s. Wee sprout was peas. Lunch consisted of whole grain brown rice with chicken, pineapple, and peas. Afternoon snack was blue corn chips and block cheese.

Link to photos: https://1drv.ms/f/s!AtTCDmdhjIulh812V6O91IFwL4XwNA

Have a great night!

Amanda