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

Hello!

In large group today, we continued our dinosaur theme by reading a story about Tyrannosaurus Rex or T-Rex as we call him. Before we started reading, we came up with a list of things that we already know about the T-Rex including eating only meat and that he died/became extinct.

After reading through the story and looking at pictures, we made a list of new things that we learned about this dinosaur. The following things were listed by members of large group:

-It’s head is the size of a refrigerator.

-Sue is the biggest T-Rex fossil ever found. (Lulu shared that she’s seen Sue before!)

-T-Rex dinosaurs have 50 teeth and some are as long as a banana!

The art easel was open today for friends to come and go as they please. We had many children paint multiple pictures using a variety of paint.

Thankfully, it was nice enough to go outside! We bundled up and headed outside for a little while before lunch. Friends ran around the outside environment, burning off some energy.

Friends were glad they could go outside and explore. Addi found a hard shell that looked like a feather. We’re still investigating…

Breakfast– Kix and strawberries.

Lunch– Brown rice with chicken, pineapple/pears, and cauliflower.

PM snack– Goldfish and pumpkin seeds.

Wee Sprout– Sweet peppers.

Have a lovely night.

-Mindy

Link to pictures: WF 3/9

Enjoy the pictures from our day!

Breakfast was Kix and strawberries. Lunch consisted of farm fresh eggs with cheese, banana, and corn. Afternoon snack was wheat crackers with hummus.

Link to photos: https://1drv.ms/f/s!AtTCDmdhjIulh8xBTWQweU5lgvKqPw

Have a great night!

Amanda

Good Afternoon!

In large group this afternoon, we read a book titled ‘Alphasaurs’. We read about different kinds of dinosaurs along with several characteristics of each. Friends were surprised to hear that a certain type of dinosaur had no teeth! Children in large group compared the dinosaur pictures to what they’re familiar with. Tate commented on each page, “That dinosaur looks taller than my dad!”

We’ve been interested in dinosaurs lately and how it is that they were once here on earth and now they’re not. The word ‘extinction’ has been used when discussing dinosaurs. A friend said, “People were extinct when dinosaurs were here and then the dinosaurs became extinct!” We’ve contemplated a couple reasons as to why dinosaurs are extinct. Here’s a few theories that we have:

1. There was a meteor that hit earth and killed all of the dinosaurs.

2. A volcano erupted and took the dinosaurs with it.

3. All of the dinosaurs just went to heaven.

K.W.5: With support, build understanding of a topic using various sources. (Identify relevant pictures, charts, grade- appropriate texts, personal experiences, or people as sources)

Jackson is always into conducting experiments so today, we used gender as a basis for our experiment. In one of our experimentation books, there are a few activities to do that involve gender. For example, one of the experiments says to use a boy and a girl, have them take four steps back from the wall, put their head against the wall, and try to lift a chair/stool that is underneath them. The theory is that girls can do it and boys can’t. So, we did our own test!

It turns out, this was true! However, it explains in the book that the reason men can’t do this trick is because they have big feet! Women have feet that are smaller in proportion to their height.

We spent the rest of our morning building and manipulating various toys throughout our environment.

We headed outside for a little while before lunch to get some fresh air…and boy did we sure get some AIR!

Breakfast– Whole grain oatmeal with honey and PPC pears.

Lunch– Scrambled eggs with cheese, banana, and broccoli/cucumber.

PM snack– Blue corn chips and refried beans.

Wee Sprout– Cucumbers and broccoli.

Have a wonderful evening.

-Mindy

Link to pictures: WF 3/8

In large group, we read a story titled ‘Frog Song’. The story focused on a variety of frogs in several places throughout the world. We learned how the frogs lay their eggs and how they vocalize when the eggs are hatching and turning into tadpoles.

For example, in Canada, the wood frog bursts out with a song in a mossy bog. The female attaches a mass of eggs to underwater plants. Many eggs and tadpoles will be eaten by fish and birds, but some will become frogs that can freeze in winter and thaw in spring.

We learned about several different frogs while some friends shared their background knowledge and personal experiences associated with frogs.

I asked my large group friends what they wanted to learn about so I got books from the library that focused on frogs, polar bears, volcanoes, and dinosaurs! If a topic peaks our interest, we’ll use a variety of sources available to us to retain new information.

K.W.5: With support, build understanding of a topic using various sources. (Identify relevant pictures, charts, grade- appropriate texts, personal experiences, or people as sources)

This morning the art table was busy with friends decorating paper eggs with dot markers or regular markers for us to hang up in the classroom.

Friends were throwing the bean bags around while we were listening to music. Miss Rebekah found a few songs for us to do with our bean bags.  They were the Beanie Bag dance and Put your Finger (Bean bag) in the Air, both by Greg & Steve.

Today we received a food order which also meant a lot of cardboard boxes for us to use during our play.

We were able to get outside and enjoy some fresh air.  We explored nature and exercised our gross motor muscles by running around the circle and climbing up the log house.

Breakfast: Nature’s Path Raisin Bran cereal and strawberries.

Lunch: Hummus on whole wheat tortillas/bagels, oranges and broccoli.

Afternoon Snack: Toasted whole wheat bagels with cream cheese.

Wee Sprouts: Cauliflower.

Have a great night!

Rebekah

Link to pictures: https://1drv.ms/f/s!AtTCDmdhjIulh8sEDSO3vDArQR49bA

This morning was full of activities!

We started with play dough in the kitchen and worked with different materials to manipulate it with.

Then we opened up the sensory table and played with moon sand.

After that, our friends worked on their hand eye coordination with the number pegs.

After nap, friends asked to play with the cookie letters. Franklin proudly identified the ones he recognized and Sophia held up an ‘s’ and said, “Sophia!”

Breakfast was Whole Grain Cheerios and apples. Lunch consisted of whole wheat tortilla with hummus, pears, and mixed veggies. Afternoon snack was toasted whole wheat bagels with cream cheese.

Link to photos: https://1drv.ms/f/s!AtTCDmdhjIulh8tR1i3nuk_DH1EurQ

Have a great night!

Amanda

We missed our outside time! Our friends loved spending the morning outside, exploring together and doing their favorite activities.

Breakfast was whole wheat toast with butter and cinnamon. Wee sprout was corn. Lunch consisted of whole wheat pasta with red beans, apples, and corn. Afternoon snack was organic whole milk yogurt and apples.

Link to photos: https://1drv.ms/f/s!AtTCDmdhjIulh8o23AYNX9nmrOGUWg

Have a good night!

Amanda