Good afternoon families!

Today we experimented with making loud and soft noise makers.  We tried a variety of materials on our tray inside test tubes.  We put on the cap and shook the noise makers to test them .  Then we categorized them as loud or soft sounds.  We observed that hard materials made loud sounds and soft materials made soft sounds.  One of our older friends noticed that some of the materials made no noise at all so she could not properly sort them.  In response we added a silent category to accommodate the observation.  

Breakfast:  Oatmeal with cinnamon and fresh strawberries

Lunch: Scrambled eggs with whole wheat tortillas, fresh cantaloupe, fresh green beans and bell peppers

PM Snack: hummus with tortilla chips

Wee Sprouts: Fresh cucumber and green beans

Link to photos: 2023-10-11

Enjoy the rest of your day!

~Wee Friends Teachers

Good afternoon!

We started off our morning engaged in various activities. Eliza used her imaginative skills to cook at the play kitchen table, Ben concentrated on working the colorful pegs through the wall maze, Dax threw balls with a friend, and Hannah worked on building with Duplos.

Eden explored a baby doll and Eleanor worked on placing Lego Duplo people in a plane.

We made our way into the kitchen to practice our patterning and color matching skills with loose part wooden beads. Our friends did a great job of identifying the color of their bead and then placing it on their pattern card.

We then bundled up and headed outside. We all enjoyed standing on the ledge and working on our jumping skills.

Breakfast: Whole grain Cheerios cereal with fresh strawberry slices.

Lunch: Whole grain wheat tortilla with peanut butter, Colby Jack cheese slices, fresh pineapple, and cucumbers.

Afternoon Snack: Whole grain wheat Cinnamon Raisin bagels with butter and apple slices.

Wee Sprout: Green Bell Pepper.

Have a wonderful evening!

Tina and Rebekah

Link to pictures: 2023-10-10

Good Afternoon!

Children were offered a chance to sign in for PREK1 group. They had to answer the question, “Find a person in our classroom who is taller than you!”. A few friends were able to find a classmate who was taller than they are while a few friends had to write a teachers name.

K.M.1: Make direction comparisons of the length, capacity, weight, and temperature of objects, and recognize which object is shorter, longer, taller, lighter, heavier, warmer, cooler, or holds more.

PREK2:  In group we are working on recalling stories that we hear.  Today we read “Polar bear Polar Bear”.  As we went through the book we recalled the animals we saw.  We were asked name the first second and third animal in the order they appeared in the story.  At the end of the story we named our favorite animal from to put up on the board.

Today for our welcome activity we created a pumpkin stand.  Everyone pretended to buy and sell pumpkins and gourds.  There was a lot of interest in setting up the stand and displaying the pumpkins in baskets and bowls for potential buyers.  There was some confusion about the exchange of goods for money.  It was a buyers market as the sellers gave away both pumpkins and cash…so we talked about how the farmer who has grown the pumpkin gets money in exchange for the goods grown.  The pumpkin farmers did a little better after that.

In the art center we experimented with mixed media.  We used oil pastels to make a drawing.  Next we using water color to paint over the pastel creating a wax resist effect.  A lot of our friends really liked how that looked.  We talked about the process always needing to be in the correct order…pastel first, paint last, or the process would not work.  There were a few friends who made five or more paintings!

Breakfast: Cheerios with fresh pears.

Lunch: Peanut butter on whole wheat bread,  fresh pineapple/apple slices, and and fresh carrots/green beans.

PM Snack: Whole wheat cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese.

Wee Sprouts: Fresh green beans and tomatoes.

Link to Photos:2023-10-10

Have a lovely afternoon!

~Wee Friends Teachers

Good Afternoon!

PREK2:  In group today we read the story “Where is My Mother?”  We were encouraged to pay special attention to all of the different things the baby bird encountered during the story.  At the end we tried to recall one thing the baby bird saw an his search for his mother. 

Today we experimented with melting ice.  As we are talking about comparisons in our curriculum this week, we tried a hot vs cold experiment.  We had a block of ice and ice cubes with pompoms frozen inside plus warm water in a spray bottle and in an eye dropper.  We predicted what would happen when we added it to ice.  We felt the ice and the water with our fingers and described how it felt.  When we tried the experiment we were encouraged to decide which method of melting we thought worked the best.   Most of the class preferred the spray bottle because they just enjoyed using it the most.  One friend chose to throw out the eye dropper completely, put the ice cubes directly on the cup of warm water and spray warm water on top of it which was probably the over all most effective method used:)

During our welcome activity we compared our two objects.  We tried to use descriptive words to talk about how they felt differnt.  We found that one felt “warm and soft” in our hand.  The other felt “cold, hard and a little pointy”.

Breakfast: Whole wheat toast with butter and fresh pears.

Lunch: Whole wheat pasta mixed with fresh tomatoes, basil and mozzarella cheese, fresh apple slices and fresh bell peppers.

PM Snack: Whole milk yogurt with graham crackers.

Wee Sprouts:  Fresh carrots and tomatoes.

Link to Photos: 2023-10-09

Enjoy the rest of your day!

~Wee Friends Teachers

Good Afternoon!

This morning the girls engaged with the dancing scarves, looking through them to see everything the color they had and covering up their legs with them. The boys built with Duplos together.

We then headed into the kitchen to engage with the corn/bean sensory table.  We really love scooping and pouring the mixture using different sized scoops.

We then headed outside and engaged with all the leaves, tossing them up in the air.  We also explored the leaves in the grass.  We also enjoyed going down the slide, sitting and watching friends while sitting together on the steps and pushing the construction trucks around in the rock area.

Breakfast:  Whole grain wheat English Muffins with cream cheese and fresh apple slices.

Lunch:  Whole grain wheat penne pasta with shredded roast beef, fresh cherry tomatoes and oranges.

Afternoon Snack:  Whole milk yogurt and fresh strawberries.

Wee Sprouts:  Fresh green beans.

Have a magnificent evening!

Rebekah and Tina

Link to pictures:  2023-10-09

Happy Friday!

We began our morning by doing a variety of activities.  We worked on dressing a baby doll, putting the color rings around our neck to wear them and sat on the reading step to enjoy a good book.

We then headed into the kitchen to do a painting with bubble wrap and a playdough hammer.  We used our hammer to pop the bubbles to make the colors spread, which made a colorful painting masterpiece.  We loved it!

We then went outside to enjoy some beautiful sunshine and the Fall colors.  We held a friends hand and went down the slides together, scooped in the rock area and collected leaves using one of the trucks.

Breakfast:  Whole grain brown rice cakes with peanut butter and bananas.

Lunch:  Hummus, whole grain wheat bread, fresh plum/bananas and yellow bell peppers.

Afternoon Snack:  Goldfish crackers and Colby-Jack cheese slices.

Have a great weekend!

Rebekah and Tina

Link to pictures:  2023-10-06

Happy Friday!  It was a project oriented day at Wee Friends!

Today we used our magnets to create art.  We placed a paper with our chosen colors on a tray along with a paper clip.  We used our magnet under our tray just like the sand.  This time we used it to slide our paper clip through the paint and move it around the paper to make a painting.

During our welcome activity we got to use a set of materials to invent a completely open ended project.  We started with tin foil, popcicle sticks, straws string and tape.  We got banners, kites, boats and puppets when we added our creative young minds.

Breakfast: Brown rice cakes with peanut butter, fresh bananas and fresh plums

Lunch: Turkey on whole wheat bread with fresh cucumbers, bell peppers, pears and orange slices

PM Snack: Colby jack cheese with wheat thins

Wee Sprouts: fresh tomatoes and cucumbers

Link to Photos:2023-10-06

Have a lovely fall weekend!

~Wee Friends Teachers

Good afternoon on this rainy Thursday!

This morning, our friends used a variety of items to get their bodies moving. We took turns going down the tiny turf slide. We also walked on the liquid squares and on the stepping stones with our friends.

We got down the rain sticks which all have different items inside, like bells and foam shapes. We shook our sticks to listen to the variety of noises they each made.

We then made our way to kitchen to engage in a water sensory activity with Miss Bekah. She filled a bin with water, a strainer, boats, funnels, and various sponges with different shapes.

Breakfast: Whole grain Corn Chex with fresh watermelon.

Lunch: Whole grain brown rice with black beans, peach slices, and yellow bell pepper.

Afternoon Snack: Sunflower seeds with Whole grain Triscuits crackers.

Have a wonderful evening!

Tina and Rebekah

Link to pictures: 2023-10-05

Good Afternoon!

Children ventured on over to their PREK1 sign in this morning that asked them to use the book, ‘The Grouchy Ladybug’ to answer a question about the sequence of the story. They had to find a specific event and determine what happened right after that event.

K.1.4: Identify and order events that take place in a sequence.

We read, ‘The Apple Pie Tree’ since we are peak apple picking time! When we finished reading the story, I read five different sentence strips and children worked together to put them in sequential order in which they happened in the story.

K.1.4: Identify and order events that take place in a sequence.

PREK2: Today at group time we read “The Big Umbrella”.  At the end of the story we all picked who we might bring under our own big umbrella.

Magnetic exploration continued!  Today we experimented with black iron rich sand mixed with regular beach sand.  We put the two kinds of sand on a tray with a magnet underneath and observed how the magnet interacted with he sand.  We found that the black sand moved but the white sand did not and we learned that iron is what makes the black sand attracted to the magnet.  Several friends noticed that the grains of sand were standing  up like “spikes” or “hair”.  This was a strong area of interest and conversation.  Some pretended they were creating hair styles as they explored with the magnet.  Some said it looked like lots of tiny people were standing up and running around.  We learned that the particles of sand line up like that because they become magnetized when in contact with the magnet.  This makes them attracted to each other as well, causing them to arrange themselves in those interesting formations.

In the art center we created with play dough beads and pasta.  Some friends made faces while others made cakes or cinnamon rolls. 

The sensory bin was filled with black beads today.  Several friends experimented with pipes on different configurations and tried pouring the beads through the shapes they made. 

Breakfast: Whole grain cheerios with fresh watermelon.

Lunch: Brown rice with shredded turkey, fresh carrots/bell peppers, and fresh peaches/plums.

PM Snack: Trail mix with pepita seeds, sunflower seeds, peanuts and granola.

Wee Sprouts: Fresh tomatoes and carrots.

Have a great night!

-Wee Friends Teachers

Link to Photos: 2023-10-05

Good Afternoon!

There has been continued interest in magnets in our classroom which has progressed from magnetic tiles, to a loose parts activity with magnets, evolving into today’s more in depth exploration of magnets.  We set up three trays to experiment with magnets in different ways.  Our first tray dealt with picking up magnetic objects of different mass, finding where the mass of an object exceeded  the magnetic force of our magnet.  The next tray offered an experiment testing which types of materials were magnetic and which were not.  We found in this experiment that only some metal is magnetic.  We learned that iron is magnetic and brass is not.  The last tray taught us about the two poles of the magnet.  We experimented with repelling and attracting magnetic poles.  A few of us had a conversation about the compass.  A couple of minds were blown to learn that the earth is actually a giant magnet having a north and south pole just like the magnet on our tray. 

The art center was covered in glue…mostly in conjunction with paper:)

House keeping was all about shoes today.  Our younger friends were happy to practice putting on and taking off shoes in this context!

PREK1:

PREK2: During Group we read the story “The Sandwich Swap”.  After the story we took a vote on which sandwich we would prefer.  We each put a tally mark up on the board. 

Breakfast: Oatmeal with cinnamon and fresh pears

Lunch: Boiled eggs with fresh carrots, tomatoes and watermelon

PM Snack: Popped corn with raisins

Wee Sprouts: Fresh green bell peppers and tomatoes

Link to Photos:2023-10-04

Enjoy the last hot day! (probably)

~Wee Friends Teachers