This morning Melinda led a science experiment creating sand. Using Starbuck’s coffee grounds (thank you Alexandra G.!), salt, flour and corn meal, friends measured, poured and hand sifted sand. Using mathematical concepts, we compared the amounts of ingredients as well as the containers from which we poured. We poured in order of size (ex: “whoever has the largest container – pour it into the tub!”) adding ingredients sequentially.

As we mixed the ingredients together, friends made observations and comparisons: “It looks like an oreo cookie! It looks like dirt! It does feel like sand! It smells like coffee!”

Friends then squeezed the sand into balls, sifted and rubbed it between their fingers and enjoyed the fruits of their labor!

Melinda then made coffee ground Play-dough!

To pass the rainy day indoors, we blew bubbles out the back door, sang “Bubbles in the Bathtub” and acted out King Bidgood’s in the Bath.

 

A group of younger friends played house, everyone acting out being a baby. We sang “Hush Little Baby” using the animals from Brown Bear Brown Bear, What Do You See? identifying animals and colors.

The truck room was busy all morning as friends built structures with Magna Tiles and Trios.

For lunch we served toasted turkey and cheese on wheat bread, peas and bananas.

We’re all thinking of Tami as she recovers from yesterday’s surgery on her wrist!

Enjoy your day!

 

Happy Birthday, Oliver! Oliver turns 5 today!

This morning a fire truck visited our neighborhood. Melinda walked a couple friends down the block to explore it!

We removed the sand tub from our sensory table (Thank you, Charlie!)and added race cars, ramps and road signs. F.3.9 Make roads for toy trucks and cars. A few friends added flags and other race track details to a teacher drawn race track. F.4.1 Draw pictures and scribble to generate and express ideas.

Tami bought us neon colored golf tees! We unearthed some Styrofoam and many friends enjoyed hammering golf tees in and using their fingers to pull golf tees out! F.3.4 Participate in a variety of gross/fine motor and sensory activities. F.6.18 Imitate the use of an adult tool in play.

To stay cool while playing outside this morning, friends filled up plastic watering buckets, pouring out and refilling over and over.

For lunch we served farm fresh scrambled eggs with shredded cheese, buttered whole wheat bread, mixed veggies and apple/pineapple fruit salad. F.3.36 Help clean up after doing an activity.

Have a great day!

Happy Hot Tuesday!

Through a group effort here at WF, every child in our classroom has an
Electronic Portfolio (EP) started and it has been emailed to parents. A few notes about the EP’s:

• Our goal is one weekly for each child. However, some weeks you may get more than one and others may not have any.
• We will email your child’s entire file in pdf format each time rather than page by page. It is easier for us to store them this way. When the file gets large enough that it gets “slow”, we’ll start a new one.
• Be sure to scroll down to see the latest entry in your child’s EP each time you get an email.
• Our goal is to email the EP’s as they are written, but some may come later.
• The email address that is used to email the EP’s is not checked with any regularity, so please direct any responses to our personal emails. Otherwise we may not see that you responded.

 

This morning we exercised some fine motor muscles by stringing small beads into necklaces and bracelets. Our older friends strung the beads onto the yarn while our younger friends used their pincer grasp to pick up one bead at a time, identifying colors.

Using our bath sponges we washed and scrubbed appropriate body parts while singing and dancing to “Bubbles in the Bathtub” from the album Funky Fish Party by singer David Chicken. An easy tune to download!

Afterwards, friends requested “The Cheesehead Special”; a song we sang last fall. We created an eye/hand coordination game with the foam cheese hat: everyone sat in a circle and passed the ‘cheesehead’ around. When the music stopped, whoever held the cheesehead, stood up, put the hat on and did a funky cheesehead dance. Friends played cooperatively, rhythmically and imaginatively!

At journal time we assessed what we have learned about race cars:

*You always have seat belts, stay on the track and if you break down you go to the pit crew for help.

*You drive them.

*Go Carts go fast and have lawn mower motors.

*You can go really fast and if the car is damaged, you are still safe.

* You have to go fast AND keep your car on the road.

*You go fast.

*You could race against sheep.

* You need helmets and fireproof suits.

We started brain storming a name for our Wee Friends car race.

For lunch we had whole wheat egg noodles w/ shredded carrots & kidney beans, mixed vegetables, and fruit salad (that included the fresh strawberries picked by our preschoolers at the farm yesterday!).

Have a great day!