The Naked Egg Experiment

I cannot believe it's Friday already! This week flew by!

We continued our study of eggs with a super cool experiment called The Naked Egg Experiment. Here's how it worked. Since we wanted to find out what is inside an egg, we needed to take the shell off so we could see inside. We didn't want to break the egg though. I let the kids try get the shell off using their hands, but none of them were successful. (Imagine that! :) ) Then I explained to them that if we put the egg in a jar full of vinegar for a couple of days, the vinegar would eat the shell off the egg and we'd be left with just the insides. We filled up our jars and put an egg in each one. The kids watched them for two days, and we were finally able to take the eggs out and play with them yesterday.

 (I tried to get a good picture of this process, but my hands were covered in egg goo and the kids were so excited it was hard to find an opening to take a picture. This is the best I could do.)

After being in vinegar for two days, here were some of the things the kids noticed about them:

• They were squishy.
• They were larger than a normal egg.
• They could see the yolk moving around inside.
• They bounced.
• When they finally broke, there was some kind of sack around the yolk so the kids could pick it up with their hands.

The kids were amazed at this experiment! They were all so engaged and asked many questions about what might happen next. A few of them hung out in the discovery center (where the eggs were) watching them for a good chunk of interest area time on Tuesday and Wednesday. They noticed all kinds of things about the eggs, like the cracks forming in the shell, and the bubbles that completely covered them. The room was full of a bunch of little scientists.

I've been spending a good chunk of time this week working on individual goals with each child. Some of the goals are in areas where an extra push is needed and some of the goals are in areas of strengths. Since we are getting closer to the end of the year, I want to make sure the kiddos are ready for what kindergarten and k-prep have to offer. I work on these goals mainly through various games and in interest areas. For example, for some of my kiddos, my goal is to help them start using inventive spelling. To do this, I find the children in the art center and offer them paper and markers. As they draw, I help them find the sounds in words to describe their pictures and write them down. For kiddos who have goals in numbers and counting, I have created a few games that ask them to identify numbers and count out quantities. There are other goals too - these are just a few examples.

Here's a picture example:

I feel this individual time together is really helping the children improve! In the last week, I have seen a ton of growth in quite a few children! If you would like to know what I'm working with your child on, let me know and I can give you some ideas for how you can help at home.

We'll be continuing our egg study next week by answering the questions the kiddos came up with yesterday! We'll also be doing a few more fun things with eggs (dyeing eggs and eating eggs).

I posted a schedule for spring conferences (April 17-29) on the alley door. Please sign up for a time that fits your schedule! There was also some information about important dates that will be coming up in the newsletter. Please put these on your calendar!

Have a great weekend!

Color Wheels and Donkeys

Holy Moly! I went a whole week without posting - sorry about that! I was busy, busy, busy getting registration stuff around for next year. By the way, if you have a child who will be preschool-age next year, I sent a registration packet home with your current preschooler. I'm also sending one home with the current three year-olds. If I missed someone, please let me know!

Last week, we worked on color mixing and the color wheels. The art center was a mess! It is cool to see the kiddos mixing their own colors though. At the beginning of the year, they mixed colors just to mix them - it was all a sensory experience for them. Now, they mix colors to create a desired color. For example, I had one friend who wanted to use green paint, but we were out of green paint. I guided her to use the color wheel to decide which two colors make green and to mix it herself. She did just that, and made a delightful shade of green! That's the type of learning preschool is designed for!

Here's what the last week of our color study looked like:

Another fun thing we did last week was begin our Easter study during faith time. We started by learning about Palm Sunday. We made our own palms and acted the story out. The kiddos had so much fun pretending to be the people of Jerusalem, Jesus, and, of course, the donkey. Easter is my favorite holiday to celebrate with preschoolers. There is so much to talk about, and I've planned a ton of fun activities too!

This week, we are starting a study of eggs. We began by exploring how strong eggs are. (I, of course, forgot to take pictures of this...) I started by asking the kiddos what would happen if I squeezed an egg. They all thought that it would break for sure. So, I squeezed an egg and the kiddos squeezed the egg and it didn't break! Turns out eggs are much stronger than we thought.

We also watched an online story that talked about different kinds of eggs. We'll be watching this throughout the week and I'm sure the children will pick up something new each time.

What Do Slime, M&Ms, Toast, and Oakwood Park Have in Common?

What a fantastic week! The weather, the kids, the activities - everything went so well this week!

We continued to explore colors in many different ways. The favorite activity for almost everyone was making slime. It helps that we were able to make it outside! The slime was made from glue, liquid starch, and food coloring. We did some experimenting with making different colors. We discovered that red and blue make purple and yellow and blue make green. The slime is similar to silly putty. It's stretchy, slightly bouncy, and can be broken if pulled quickly. The kiddos used it in many different ways. They used rolling pins to roll it out, they stretched it to see how far it would go, they covered their entire hands with it, and they made necklaces and bracelets. We made the slime on Wednesday, and it was still a popular choice on Thursday.

We also explored the colors of the rainbow with a super fun math game. To play Roll-A-Rainbow, the students rolled a dice. Each number on the dice correlated with a color of the rainbow. The students, who all had a rainbow mat in front of them, picked the color of M&M that matched the number they rolled and added it to their rainbow. When their rainbow was full, they were able to munch on a few of the M&Ms and take the rest of them home. The children had a blast with this game! I was impressed at how well the children were quantifying (knowing the number of dots on the dice just by looking)! They were, of course, especially motivated by the candy.

Another way we explored color was by making painted toast. When I originally told the children we were going to make painted toast for snack, they all looked at me like I was crazy. After talking about it for a little while, though, they came to the decision that we probably weren't going to use regular paint for the toast because that wouldn't be good to eat. They were very much relieved when they discovered that the paint was really just milk and food coloring. They enjoyed painting rainbows on their bread, and then eating them.

Yesterday, since it was super nice outside, we took our exploration outside. We went on a scavenger hunt for all the colors in the rainbow. Our goal was to find three things that were each color. When the children found something that was a certain color, I let them take a picture of it. This took some practice for some of them. Cameras can be tricky. We'll be making these pictures into books next week! We ended our scavenger hunt at the park, where the kiddos had a chance to play. They were climbing everywhere! I was impressed with their bravery! This was a great chance for them to work on some of the gross motor skills that the playground at SON Shine doesn't offer. Overall, it was a great way to enjoy the warm weather we have been having!

Here are some of the pictures they took:

Fun at the park:

I wanted to send out a huge thank you to all of the volunteers who helped with our tip day last Saturday. We ended up making over $1000 to be put toward new playground equipment! I was so humbled by the number of people who were willing to offer hours out of their weekend to help! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Have a super weekend!

Happy Grams, Listening, and a Whole Lot More!

I don't normally blog on Mondays, but today was just a great day! I need to share it with you.

So, as some of you know, last week was tough. I'm not sure what the source of the behaviors were, but the kiddos just had a hard time listening and staying in control of their bodies. I talked with some people who work at the elementary school, and the situation was similar over there. It was just one of those weeks. I decided to spend this week reviewing expectations and rules. I also decided to add in a few new positive reinforcements to help inspire the children to have a good week.

One of those new reinforcements is a Happy Gram. My hope is to send home one Happy Gram with each child every week. On the Happy Gram, I will write about a good moment the child had in school that day. This good moment could be anything from good behavior to mastering a new academic skill to simply having a great time doing an activity. I award the Happy Grams at the end of the day, and all of the children cheer for them! Today was a huge success with this! The children were motivated to work so well with each other, and they were really great listeners. I was super proud of them all!

We also reviewed what listening looks like today. I showed the kiddos an online story called, Henry B. Wigglebottom Learns to Listen, (you can find it here) and we talked about the troubles Henry got into when he didn't listen and how much better his life was when he did listen. We talked about how to tell if someone is listening, and how we can do that in the classroom. I am already noticing a difference in how the children are listening, and I'm sure that by the end of the week the kiddos will all be super listeners!

We're starting to explore color this week. I'm not sure if we'll do a full study on color, but I've been noticing the children drawing a lot of rainbows in their journals so I figured I'll see what kind of interest there is. To start the exploration, I added some colorful rice to the sand table and started a sticky easel in the art center. Here's what the exploration looked like:

 The easel is covered in a piece of contact paper, which makes it easy to stick things to it.

 I cut some strips of construction paper and the kiddos stuck them to the easel in whatever design they wanted.

There was all kinds of measuring and counting going on in this center all afternoon! It was also a great chance for them to practice sharing and working together.

I've got more color activities planned for the rest of the week, and we'll see where they take us.

Our first sign of spring visited us today too:

He visited us a couple of times throughout the day, and the kiddos were very excited to see him! I was too! Bring on the spring!

Oobleck and Green Eggs and Ham

We continued our fun with Dr. Seuss on Wednesday and Thursday. On Wednesday, we read Bartholomew and the Oobleck. This book is a long one, so we broke it into sections. After the first section, we made our own Oobleck. In case you're wondering how to make it at home, it's just two cups of corn starch and one cup of water. The result is a fabulous goo that is both a solid and a liquid. The kiddos had a blast playing with it.

The afternoon class had an especially fun time with it, because Salem's high school youth group dropped in to play with them. It was interesting to watch the children go from their normal selves to absolutely silent people back to their normal selves in the course of about a half hour. I often forget that the kiddos are just four and five years old and that they are still shy around new people! They had so much fun talking and playing with the high-schoolers!

Today, we spent some time with Green Eggs and Ham. Reading this story aloud is so much fun, because many of the children are familiar with it so they read along with me! It was also a great opportunity for them to fill in the rhyming words for me. I love this book!

Of course, we couldn't read Green Eggs and Ham and not make green eggs and ham, so we did just that. First, we graphed whether or not we thought we'd like them and all but two children said they'd probably like it. Many of them remember making them last year, so they already knew they'd like them! Then we got to cooking. I let the children crack their own eggs, which is always fun for them. Some of them are pretty good at it too. After the eggs were all cooked, the kiddos were excited to eat them! After the whole thing was said and done, all but one kiddo liked them! It was great fun!

Dr. Seuss is so much fun!

Kindergarten Round-Up and Dr. Seuss

Today was an exciting day! Kindergarten Round-Up was so much fun for the kids! For me, it was exciting to provide them a chance to share everything they know with their future teachers. The whole day went so well. The kindergarten teachers were marveling at how well this year's group of preschoolers behaved while they were at Round-up. At one point this afternoon, one of them came back into the room where the children were all playing and said, "Wow! You wouldn't even know there are kids in here!" They were busy playing hard and staying focused! (Which makes for one, proud preschool teacher, let me just say!)

I, unfortunately, forgot my camera in the morning. Luckily, I had it this afternoon though, and in terms of the activities, the two sessions were identical. Morning parents - look at these pictures and pretend the children in the picture are yours, and I'm sorry I forgot my camera.

The kindergarten teachers will be letting you all know how your children did as soon as they've had a chance to fully review all of their information. If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know!

Also, I feel compelled to tell you all how incredibly sad I am that my young friends will not be with me forever. I can't believe they'll be heading off to kindergarten and k-prep already. I feel truly blessed to have had this time with them, and I hope they stop in to see me every once in a while after they leave me for The Big School. I'm going to miss them so, very much!

This week we've been talking about Dr. Seuss. We were busy finishing up our bodies last week, so we missed celebrating his birthday. We'll be celebrating all of this week though! We started out by graphing our favorite Dr. Seuss books on Monday. The Lorax won by a landslide. (Of course, I wonder how much peer pressure played a role in this. Most of the kiddos were intent on picking the winning book instead of their actual favorite. It's all good though! Graphing is graphing either way!) We also read The Cat in the Hat and made some hats to go along with that story. I will be hanging most of these hats in the hallway as soon as I get a chance. To make the hats, the students had to find the pictures that started with the letter on the brim of their hat and glue them on the stripes. When we finished with those hats, some of the kiddos wanted to make hats, like The Cat's, that they could actually wear. Here's what they came up with:

Today, since it was absolutely gorgeous outside, we went outside when we returned from Kindergarten Round-Up. The kiddos blew some bubbles, ran around, and played a fun game of hide and seek with a rock they decorated. It was a great time, and I'm so excited to see signs of spring around us.

(looking for rocks to collect and to play hide and seek with)

We are still looking for volunteers to help with tip day on Saturday! Please sign up if you have any time free that day! Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of you who have already signed up!