Good Afternoon!

Our pre-k/k group has been fascinated with Frog and Toad for the past several months. They often ask to read the books multiple times. Today, Lucy asked, “Why are Frog and Toad always together?”. This brought up the subject of ‘best friends’ but children started comparing and contrasting Frog and Toad’s relationship to relationships in their own lives. Lucy looked at Anna and Maddie and said, “We’re best friends but we’re not together on the weekends because we go to school. Frog and Toad don’t go to school together.”

When we’re reading stories, we’re not just reading them. We’re dissecting them; asking questions about the characters actions; or recalling certain events in a given story that we remember.

Today, we read a ‘Frog and Toad’ short story where Toad lost one of his buttons on his jacket. Frog and Toad went back to every place they had been that day looking for this button. Throughout the story, five specific characteristics were shared about this button: it was white, thick, had four holes, round, and big. After the author gave one characteristic, we said them aloud in a list. At the end, children worked together to state all five characteristics of this button!

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The rest of our day was full of the exploration of loose parts, wood bench creations, and new playdough!

Breakfast– Homemade oatmeal pancakes with PPC banana.

Lunch– Brown rice with shredded pork, fresh cantaloupe/strawberries, and PPC cucumber/fresh green pepper.

PM snack– Sunflower seeds and graham crackers.

Wee Sprouts– Fresh green pepper/cucumber.

Have a fantastic night!

-Mindy

Link to pictures: WF 7/12

Good Afternoon. I hope you’re all enjoying this beautiful day!

I want to thank all of you who took the time to tell me congratulations on my new grandbaby as well as to those of you who bought things for her. You’re kinds words and actions mean the world to me! I am very blessed to have such a beautiful and healthy granddaughter. 

“If you can dream it, you can do it” ~Walt Disney

Today, Mack and Daniel used their fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination to build with waffle blocks. While engaging ourselves in the activity, color recognition was also introduced into our conversations about these fun blocks.

We then moved into the kitchen to color in our journal binders. We utilized more fine motor and hand-eye coordination skills with this activity.  We have two different methods our friends can choose from to color. Either with markers or with crayons. Some of our friends chose markers while Rose was very specific that she wanted ONLY crayons.

Breakfast: Whole grain Kix with PPC banana.

Lunch: Farm fresh eggs with shredded cheese, corn and PPC pears.

Snack: Whole wheat crackers with cream cheese.

Wee Sprouts: Carrots (Which our friends LOVE)

Have a fantastic evening!

Marty

LINK TO PICTURES: https://1drv.ms/f/s!AtTCDmdhjIuljLd5dLH3XpnmDgUHAw

Good Afternoon!

In pre-k/k group this week, we’ve been focusing on consonant letters and the sounds that they make. Yesterday, we read a book that revolved around all of the letters. When we came to a specific letter, we worked as a group to come up with several other words that started with that same letter. For example, when we came to ‘L’, friends offered up these words: Lucy, lion, lollipop, and laugh!

Today, we used this in our journal experience. While our older friends are continuing to strengthen their kid spelling, their younger peers are starting to hear certain consonant sounds. When Anna finished her journal, we spelled ‘secret hideout’ together. When it came to the ‘t’ in secret, she shouted, “the t-t-t sound is a T!”.

The welcome activity drew the interest of several children. The tools that were available on the table were markers, wooden trays, plastic shapes, and paper. We formed different creations or patterns with the shapes and then traced them!

Maddie continued on at the round table with dominos. She made a road by connecting dominos that had like numbers. She stated several times, “These don’t work together because the numbers aren’t the same.” She also told me that once the domino road came to the end, that the space turned into a bathroom!

Breakfast– Whole grain oatmeal with applesauce and banana.

Lunch– Farm fresh scrambled eggs with shredded cheese, whole wheat bread, fresh oranges/pears, and PPC cherry tomatoes/fresh carrots.

PM snack– Blue corn chips and hummus.

Wee Sprout– Fresh carrots/PPC cherry tomatoes.

Have a wonderful night!

-Mindy

Link to pictures: WF 7/11

Good Afternoon!

Storytelling is a big part of our day. Some of the stories we hear are fact and real while other stories are made up using children’s imagination. As teachers, it’s important that we listen to these stories, asking important questions or helping children continue on with their story. There are several options we offer to allow children to express these stories in a different way if they wish. For example, children can go to the art table and create a book using specific, important events from their story or the housekeeping area is always available for children to act out their story.

I’ve attached an article that gives a few suggestions for how to strengthen this aspect of a child’s literacy development. Certain activities or events in a child’s life make for great storytelling!

https://www.naeyc.org/our-work/families/everyone-can-be-storyteller

Enjoy a few pictures from our Tuesday!

Breakfast– Corn chex and PPC banana.

Lunch– Hummus on whole wheat flatbread, fresh cantaloupe, and fresh carrots/cucumber.

PM snack– Whole wheat bagel with peanut butter and string cheese.

Wee Sprout– Fresh cucumber.

Have a lovely night!

-Mindy

Link to pictures: WF 7/10

Good Afternoon!

“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think” ~ Margaret Mead

Our friends sure enjoyed another day of cooking at the new food center in the outdoor area. Their imaginations always run wild when they are cooking and we are always served many different types of scrumptious foods to enjoy!

Using markers anywhere is fun for our little ones, but being able to color outside… Woooaaahh, EVEN BETTER!!!  Absorbing all what nature has to offer plus being able to utilize our fine motor skills doing something we love, equals, perfection!

Breakfast: Whole grain Cheerios and PPC banana.

Lunch: Whole wheat?grain flat bread with hummus, peas and PPC pears.

Snack: Whole wheat cinnamon raisin bagel with butter and PPC strawberries.

Wee Sprouts: Corn.

Have a wonderful evening.

Marty

LINK TO PICTURES: https://1drv.ms/f/s!AtTCDmdhjIuljLZyO2jxtchkSqXlMg

Welcome back!

We hope everyone had a terrific vacation!

When we returned to Wee Friends this morning, we found several outside improvements that Miss Tami and her husband, Charles, had made. We all had such a wonderful time exploring our new outside spaces. There are no words to express how thankful we are to be able to enjoy an outdoor space like this!

Our new housekeeping area was full of bodies and excitement. We quickly learned the new rules along with the loose parts that are available.

The deck can get warm depending on where the sun is so our new umbrella offers a spot for children who want to be in the shade. Anna took advantage of the new sand and several friends quickly joined her. The art table was busy as children drew with markers and put their paper in the ‘done’ bin when they were finished.

Breakfast– Whole wheat bagel with peanut butter and fresh oranges.

Lunch– Whole grain pasta with butter and chicken, fresh oranges, and PPC broccoli/cherry tomatoes.

PM snack– Whole milk yogurt with PPC mangos.

Have a lovely night!

-Mindy

Link to pictures: WF 7/9

Welcome back!  We hope you a fabulous summer vacation.

We have a special announcement.  Miss Marty is a Nana!  She became a Nana over our vacation to a precious little girl, Sierra Maria Lopez.  She was born Friday, July 6th. Congratulations Miss Marty! I am sure she will have many more pictures to share with us!

Our friends were excited to come back and see all of their friends and teachers.  We started our morning off by getting back into our daily routine by reading stories, playing with the barn and animals, fire station and cooking up some food in housekeeping.

A friend requested play dough this morning!  What a fabulous sensory experience for our little hands.  We were busy squishing it in our hands, using rolling pins and hammers to roll it out bigger and flatten it, a craft stick to cut it and making bears using a variety of different sizes of cookie cutters.

During outside time, the art table was available for us to express our creativity on our paper with our markers. We used a variety of different colors to make beautiful and colorful masterpieces.

Breakfast:  Whole grain wheat toast with Sunflower butter and fresh oranges.

Lunch:  Whole grain wheat pasta with shredded chicken, fresh PPC banana and peas.

Afternoon Snack: Whole milk yogurt and graham crackers.

Wee Sprouts:  Peas.

We hope you had a great Monday!

Rebekah

Link to pictures:  https://1drv.ms/f/s!AtTCDmdhjIuljLVHUC0R-Sro3PQhXA

Happy Rainy Wednesday!

“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Pajama day was a success and our friends loved being all comfy, cozy! It was the perfect day for pajama’s, with all the yucky rain coming down! We engaged ourselves quite nicely in many activities around the classroom today!

Breakfast: Whole wheat butter toast with PPC banana.

Lunch: Farm fresh scrambled eggs, whole grain bagel with butter, peas/carrots and PPC pears.

Snack: Pretzels and mozzarella string cheese.

Wee Sprouts: Peas.

Have a wonderful time off and we will see you all on July 9th.

Marty

LINK TO PICTURES:  https://1drv.ms/f/s!AtTCDmdhjIuljLRreCzPzXlBhQJzIQ

Good Afternoon!

An art activity was made available for children that involved shaving cream along with red and blue paint. First, children took shaving cream and spread it around their paper before adding drops of blue and red paint. They took a cotton swab and mixed the two colors of paint together. One child commented, “Mine’s turning purple!”. This brought up a conversation about what happens when we mix two colors together.

The rest of our morning was full of enriching play experiences. Sophia and one of her peers set the table and served lunch. They talked about the different food that was being served as well as using their one to one correspondence skills as they set each place setting.

Lucy and Anna got to work on making invitations to a pretend party they were having. They both worked together to address the invitations by writing each child’s and teacher’s name.

Breakfast– Whole grain oatmeal with honey and cinnamon with PPC banana.

Lunch– Farm fresh scrambled eggs with shredded cheese, whole wheat bread, PPC banana/pears, and PPC snap peas/cherry tomatoes.

PM snack– Air popped popcorn with butter and PPC banana.

Wee Sprout– PPC snap peas/cherry tomatoes.

Have a fantastic summer vacation!

-Mindy

Link to pictures: WF 6/27

Good Afternoon!

**Tomorrow is PAJAMA DAY!**

**A housekeeping request before we start vacation on Thursday: please make sure that your child’s cubbie is cleaned out as well as their art cubbie. Thanks!

The welcome activity that children explored involved unifix cubes. Children either took unifix cubes and filled up the tray ranging from 1 unifix cube on the left hand side to 10 unifix cubes on the right hand side or completed color patterns in either of the unifix books.

When children chose to fill up the unifix tray, they compared and contrasted the colors that they chose as well as the number of cubes they saw in each column.

We’ve been using water colors at the art easel lately instead of tempera paint. Children are LOVING the way that their paintings are turning out. We filled every single jar space with a different color so our paintings were really colorful. As Lucy was painting, she took ten steps back to look at her painting. She stood and observed her painting for a couple seconds before walking back to her painting and continuing on.

“We’re going on a bug hunt, we’re going to catch a big one..” (or twenty worms..which we did today).

Breakfast– Kix with PPC pears.

Lunch– Refried beans on whole wheat tortilla, PPC grapes, and PPC cherry tomatoes/snap peas.

PM snack– Whole wheat bagels with cream cheese and block cheese.

Wee Sprout– PPC cherry tomatoes/snap peas.

Have a great night!

-Mindy

Link to pictures: WF 6/26