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!

CREEPY CRAWLY BABY SPIDERS!!!

This week the children have been closely examining the baby spiders that Tami captured off of her deck at home. Yesterday afternoon, we released the spiders into our garden. Hopefully, we will end up some pest control by adding the spiders!

The children watched with great interest as the baby spiders fled their captivity in the jar and ran toward the freedom of our vegetable plants. The spiders seemed to be flying because they were moving with such speed and their webs were so small that they were not very visible. The children were very close so many of them ended up with a baby spider climbing on them!

To better investigate their webs, Tami tinted the jar with blue powder so that the tiny web patterns would be visible. The children were amazed that in just 4 days, the baby spiders had filled the entire jar with webs! (And some of the children were just very fascinated with the blue tempera powder that Tami used to tint the web!)

Below are some photos from today!

We celebrated Melinda’s 60th Birthday this afternoon! She was surprised and very happy with the box of 60 cards. Thank you to all that contributed them.

The last picture is what happens to the first candle by the time you light 60 of them!

Here’s a pictorial look at our morning as our tumbling groups rotated!

 

For lunch we served cream cheese and shredded carrots on whole wheat tortillas, apple sauce and Mexican style veggies.

Have a great day!

METAMORPHOSIS!

 

Late last summer, Taylor brought a caterpillar to school that she found at home. Wee Friends created an aquarium home for it. Soon thereafter, the caterpillar wove a cocoon and stayed there until yesterday (we think!). While in the science center, Tami noticed the caterpillar had become a beautiful moth! We studied the moth and then took it to its new home in the crab tree!

Inside, a small group of older friends studied the parts of a race car and hunted around the different WF learning centers to see if they could create a car with various materials of the same shape.

After they collected/compared their materials, they attached them to a Kleenex box to create a 3 dimensional race car.

Tami worked with our new readers, listening as they read aloud.

Our garden is growing! Thanks to our Master Gardeners Paulina and Amy Crosson, we will soon be eating from our own garden!

Today for lunch we served black beans and rice, shredded carrots and corn, and banana/apple fruit salad.

Have a great day!

SORTING!/

We began our day sorting transportation vehicles/bugs/teddy bears into corresponding colored cups.

Using the box of shells Cassie’s mom Michelle brought us (Thanks, Michelle!) we sorted shells by color and texture.

When the swimmers left for the Y, a small group of friends joined to sing “Blue..blue…is the color I see…if you have blue then stand with me…” and we sorted our bodies by the colors we were wearing.

We played our race track music and practiced pushing the ‘green for go’ and ‘red for stop’ pedals taped to the wall.

We enjoyed outside time this morning, experimenting with sand and water in both sandboxes and a couple plastic bins.

For lunch we served peanut butter on whole wheat sandwiches, mixed stir-fry veggies and banana/mandarin orange fruit salad.

Enjoy your day!

Happy Friday!

This morning, we continued weaving white strips of paper into black slotted construction paper, creating derby flags.

For further Mind Your Manners exploration, we played a sneezing game, using a spray bottle filled with water to explore what it feels like to be sneezed on! We talked about how germs spread during a sneeze and how to avoid spreading germs by covering your mouth or sneezing into your arm. Using glitter to “see” germs, we coughed into our hands that held glitter and then shook our friend’s hands sharing our glitter germs. We discussed the importance of coughing into your arm and/or washing your hands after a cough.

Using bath scrunchies and sponges, we washed our bodies while we sang and danced to “Bubbles in the Bathtub”.

As always, we ended with a music meditation to calm and regroup!

For lunch, we served pizza, peanut butter on whole wheat tortillas, green beans and bananas.

Have a terrific weekend and don’t forget, Wee Friends is closed Monday in honor of Memorial Day! See you Tuesday!

Happy Friday! It is the end of another adventurous week at WeeWee Friends. This morning we did some water play and worked diligently on our matching cards. We had some outside time, then indoors for our infamous “Pizza Friday.” We also had some green beans and pineapple. This afternoon we spent time reading a book called “No Biting!” We also looked at a picture book about biting, pulling, pushing and kicking, and the responses we can give one of our friend’s if this happens to them. They were all really involved, and do believe this was, and will continue to be a great learning tool. Please let me know if you might find some of these resources helpful to you at home. Please join us in welcoming our new little wee-one on Tuesday! More information will be posted on our Message Board then. May your weekend be filled with lots of smiles, hugs and love! Regards, Lisa, Amy and Marty

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Thursday May 26

This morning while younger WF were at tumbling a group of older friends continued to study pond water with the microscope. F.1.6 Use a variety of “scientific tools” (e.g., balance scales, magnifying glasses, measuring cups, food coloring) to investigate the environment and to gather information. F.1.7 Use age appropriate scientific equipment (e.g., magnifying glasses, thermometer, scales) when participating in scientific experiences.

Three Wee Friends have achieved letter/sound connections-the first stage on the road to “real” reading! Tami read Bob Books with these friends, practicing three letter words with the ‘a’ vowel. F.1.17 Generate sounds from letters. F.1.18 Recognize that words that look alike may sound alike.

We recently incorporated name place cards at the lunch table. Today, our friends used journal time to create their very own. F.4.7 Write from left to right. F.4.8 Write using pictures, letters, and words.

Using a racecar/track sound track and the steering wheel mounted to our hopscotch room wall, we stacked a few big blocks and drove race cars. F.2.4 Use various art forms such as dance, music, theater, and visual art as a vehicle for creative expression.

For lunch, we served whole wheat couscous with farm fresh scrambled eggs, watermelon/raisin salad and broccoli.

Have a great day!