Our Week in Pictures

Here's a look at what we've been up to!

We....

 started polishing some rocks in our rock tumbler,

 practiced writing the word, "Rock,"

 painted rocks,

 listened to Lisa Ralls as she explained her rock and fossil collection,

 examined rocks and fossils with magnifying glasses,

 wrote questions for Lisa (each student had his/her own question), asked the questions, and wrote the answers,

and enjoyed our first field trip to Oakwood Park! (I didn't get any pictures of our actual rock activities during this field trip, which is a major bummer. We made a map of our route to the park and as we found rocks and added them to our bucket we marked the location on the map. When we arrived at the park, we talked about how those rocks got where they were. This helped us answer our question, "How do rocks get everywhere?")

I want to send out a huge thank you to Robin Charlson and Carrie Peterson for coming with us on our field trip yesterday! It helps so much to have a few extra adults while we are out of the classroom. 

We'll be continuing with our rock study next week. The kiddos seem to have learned so much with this study already, and I'm excited to see how much more they can learn. 

Have a fantastic weekend!

Oh, What a Beautiful Day!

It has been absolutely gorgeous outside this week! We've been spending gobs and gobs of time outside, because, let's face it, that's where we all want to be.

We've been starting our day off with interest areas. Since we only have 6 days of school (after today) left, I've been working on wrapping up a few things with the kids. We've been filming our movies, writing thank you's to the various people who have helped us this year, and finishing up the final touches for graduation.

Yesterday, we went outside for the remainder of the day. The kids were absolutely amazed that we had circle time, snack, and faith time outside! When we go outside for long periods of time like this, I take our interest area materials with us. We've been singing/dancing to music, playing with cars, building with blocks, and playing some games on top of the normal outside stuff. The difference in what the children decide to do with the materials is amazing to see. Here's what it looks like :

 Reading books

 Snack time!

 Creating a city

Tying knots in the "garden"

I'm hoping to film the last movie today! We should be ready to go for graduation! I'm really looking forward to it!

Please remember to return the blue permission slip for the field trip by this Thursday! 

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.

Just the Beginning to a Crazy Week

Goodness! I can’t believe it’s Tuesday night already. The last two days have flown by. I’m sure a lot of that has to do with the visitors and phone calls I’ve had the last couple of days. I swear that phone is going to ring itself out one of these days.

A good chunk of time was spent on hearing and vision screenings on Monday. I’m grateful these services can be offered at SON Shine. It is incredibly beneficial to catch hearing and vision problems early! In general, the children just thought it was a lot of fun to be out of the classroom (we were in the Fellowship Hall) and to be playing “games” with new people. They had a great time. (Plus, they got stickers. I think I’ve said it before, but giving a preschooler a sticker is like offering them a lifetime of happiness.) While they weren’t being screened, they spent some time drawing and writing at the table. 

Today, we were back to our hard work on our bodies. We’re almost done! One more day on each body and we should be good to go. Here’s what our bodies look like now:

Morning:

Afternoon:

 

I had the kiddos do some interviews today. My hope was for them to practice a few social skills (using nice voices while talking and listening to each other), writing skills, and letter-sound correspondence through writing. We worked as a small group to pick out three questions they wanted to ask their classmates. Then, I sent them off with clipboards and pens to find the answers. They looked so grown up as they conducted their interviews. Asking all the questions and writing down their answers – they looked like adults. The really cool thing about this was how they decided to forego returning to their centers so they could continue the interview process instead! 

 

Next Tuesday is Kindergarten Round-Up. (Seriously?!? How did that happen? We just started school yesterday, right?!?) Preschoolers who will head over to the big school next year will come to SON Shine just like a normal day. I’ll walk the children across the street and stay with them during the Round-Up process. We’ll be back at SON Shine for you to pick them up there at the end of their class. If your preschooler normally comes on Tuesday/Thursday but will not be headed to the big school next year, you will have a day off from school on Tuesday – Enjoy!

Please remember to sign up for a time to help out at our tip day on March 10. Again, you can sign up for as little or as much time as you have available. Thank you, in advance for your time! I am so grateful to have so many fabulous families at SON Shine!

Construction Underway

We have been loving building our bodies this week! Hopefully, we'll have them completed by the end of next week, and I cannot wait to share them with you.

The morning class started work on their body by creating a brain on Wednesday. We talked about how the brain is the boss of our bodies and it tells our bodies how to move and what to do to accomplish different tasks. We also spent some time examining various pictures of brains to determine what our brain should look like. Here's what they came up with:

They rolled play dough into "worms" and squished them all together to make:

the brain, which we put inside this plastic skull.

On Wednesday, the morning class worked on their legs. We ran out of PVC pipe while working on our second leg, so we taped two together. This led them to come up with the idea that their person had broken a leg, so we put a cast (made of a sponge and some gauze) on it. While we did this, we talked about how broken bones are fixed. Here are their legs:

The afternoon class decided to make the skeleton of their body first. We started out making the arms and collar bone on Wednesday. Then we added hips and legs on Thursday.

Emma, who brought a bunch of sponges to share, was determined to use her sponges on Thursday too, so we did some brainstorming about what we could use them for. Eventually, they decided to use the sponges to make the brain. First, though, they needed to paint them, because the brain is not yellow or green. 

 After the girls painted the sponges red, they scrunched them all together and we tied them together using some string. Of course, since the string was white, it needed to be painted too. Here's the finished brain:

We'll continue this project next week, and hopefully, we'll be finished by Thursday. I'm hoping to have full skeletons, with some organs (heart, lungs, etc.). We'll see what the kiddos have in mind first though!

Here's a look at some other things we did this week:

We made pattern bracelets:

We made Puff Corn Balls with Jodie:

We also did some finger painting and, of course, continued our construction in the block center.

Just a reminder: Our vision and hearing screenings are on Monday (or Tuesday for those who come on Tuesday and Thursday). If you haven't brought in your consent forms, please bring them in on Monday! Thanks!

Also, we are having a tip day at Pizza Ranch on March 10 from 11-8. I want to encourage everyone to sign up for a shift to help out with this day. You can sign up for just one hour or for as many hours as you would like. We're planning to use this money to update our play ground!

Skeletons and Obstacle Courses

So, as I mentioned in the newsletter and briefly in the last post, we are working on a study of the human body right now. The kids have been really getting into it so far! This week was our exploration week, so I borrowed a skeleton and a couple of models from the high school for the children to look at. They had so much to say about them, and they wanted to examine every part of them. I even had to get a step stool for them at one point, so they could examine the skeleton's head. 

We talked a bit about bones and organs this week too. We tried to put together our own skeleton using a felt board, which led to many great conversations about how our bodies are put together and how many bones we might have. We also played around with where our organs are found in our bodies. My favorite guess was that our lungs are in our legs!

Since we are talking about our bodies, I designed an obstacle course for the children to run through in order to explore the different ways our bodies can move. They started out on a balance beam:

did a couple somersaults:

crawled through a tunnel:

hopped over some hoops:

and took a ride on a scooter:

The kiddos had a great time with this, and I'm sure this will be something I'll pull out again for them.

I'm looking forward to our Valentine's Day party on Tuesday. Your child brought home a class list on Thursday, so if you decide to send valentines with your child you can use this list to address them.

I forgot to mention in our newsletter that we will not have school on Monday, February 20 following the LMCS school calendar!

Have a great weekend!

Out of the Mouths of Babes

It's over!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Our verification visit happened yesterday and today, and from what I hear, the verifiers were very pleased with what they saw! I'm so grateful for all the support I have received from parents and other adults at Salem, the school, and the AEA throughout this whole process! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

I left my camera at school today, so I can't add any pictures tonight. I did want to give you just a sample of some of the things that made me smile this week.

1. While I was watching/helping some kiddos work on a zoo in the block center, one of my friends collapsed into my lap and said, "Mrs. Hansen, I'm going to sit right next to you, because I never want to leave you." At this point, my heart melted and I nearly started to cry. (I blame the tears on the overwhelming ups and downs I've experienced with the verification process the last couple of days.)
2. My morning friends made some pretty cool pipe cleaner sculptures on Monday, and we hung them from the ceiling to decorate the classroom. When the verifiers walked in this morning, one of my friends walked right up to them, pointed to her sculpture, and said, "Look!" She was so, very proud of her sculpture. The verifiers made a big deal of it, and she walked away with a gigantic smile on her face.
3. We have had a review week during Faith Time this week, so we've been rereading some of bible stories we have read since we came back from Christmas break. We were talking about the story in which Jesus calms the storm, and one of my friends remembered the words Jesus said to make the storm go away: Peace. Be still. When she remembered these words, another kiddo said, "Yup! Those were the magic words!"
4. The children have been exploring a skeleton I borrowed from the high school biology teacher. It has been fun to watch how they've interacted with the skeleton. This afternoon, I was playing a game with a friend in the toys and games area when she noticed that one of my morning friends left a present in the skeleton. Sitting on the skeleton's right hip was a plastic lizard. We laughed and laughed at this! There is nothing more out of place than a plastic lizard on a skeleton's hip.

As I mentioned, I am so grateful this verification process is over, and I cannot wait to focus my attention on teaching once again! If there's anything I learned from this week, it's that the children I get to see everyday are precious and wonderful in many, many ways, and I am truly blessed to have them in my life. I'll give you another update on Friday!

Holiday Celebrations Around the World and a Whole Bunch of Singing!

Wow! This week went by super fast! I realized yesterday that we only have two and a half school weeks until Christmas break! How did that happen?

We spent a lot of time this week trying to get back into our routines. Coming off of long breaks can be a challenge for preschoolers, but luckily we didn't have any problems! We also spent a lot of time preparing for Sunday! I cannot wait for you all to see the hard work the kiddos have been putting into our little program! I think you'll enjoy it. :)

We have been working on transitioning from our Lake Mills study into a study of holiday traditions around the world. In the next two weeks, we'll be learning about various celebrations families around the world celebrate, like St. Lucia Day (Sweden), Los Posadas (Mexico), Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Christmas. To start this study I added a few celebration artifacts to the classroom and let the children explore. They:

 made bouquets out of artificial poinsettias and

decorated a Christmas tree.

A few of the kiddos made and decorated trees out of play dough and a few painted some trees too!

Outside of those beginning exploration activities for this new study, we also: 

 played doctor and patient in our clinic,

played many new math games where we practiced counting, patterning, and number recognition, and

played with endless amounts of play dough.

Next week, we'll really start to delve into the different celebrations, and I'm incredibly excited about it!

I'm also excited to see you this Sunday! Remember to have your child in the classroom wearing a yellow SON Shine shirt by 10:00 so we can be ready to go by 10:30! I know there are a few kiddos who don't have a shirt yet, but I'll have one for them to borrow on Sunday and I'll be ordering a few more so that you can have one to keep. See you then!

 

The Worst Thing That Can Happen To A Preschool Teacher...

Well, as many of you who I see on a daily basis noticed, I completely lost my voice this week. I felt wonderful - I didn't have a sore throat or a cough or a fever or a headache or any other sign of the flu or a cold - I just simply lost my voice. That has never happened to me before, and I hope it never happens to me again! I realized fairly quickly that this is the worst thing to happen to a preschool teacher. Thankfully, it was almost completely normal today. The kids did a fabulous job being super listeners to help me deal with the lack of a voice! I was actually pretty amazed at how well they listened when I told them my voice couldn't get any louder than a whisper! Thank them for me!

Now, on to the good stuff. Yesterday, we had an afternoon visit from the firefighters. It was a blast for the kiddos, and it went very smoothly. I was so happy that no one was afraid of the firefighter in the full uniform (although it might help that this particular firefighter was Keely's dad - Thanks, Ryan!). Last year, I think I ended up with four kids trying to sit in my lap because they were scared. They learned all sorts of ways to stay safe from fire, and, of course, they got to see the fire truck! What a fun time everyone had!

We did a few more investigations with water. We learned about sinking and floating by making boats out of aluminum foil. The kids made a prediction about how many bears it would hold. I got all sorts of predictions from 5-115! Then they added bears one at a time while we counted to find out how many bears would make it sink. Mrs. Twedt was surprised that one of the boats held 64 bears!

We also did an investigation of how water reacts on wax paper. The cool thing about water is that it really wants to stick together, so on wax paper, which repels the water, you can push the drops of water around to see this sticking in action. We used eye droppers to make drops of water on wax paper. Then, we took pencils and dragged the drops around the paper. Some kids tried to break the water drops apart, which is actually pretty hard to do. Some kids tried to push all of their drops together to make one mega-drop.

We also did some cooking today! Since we weren't able to cook with Jodie this week, I brought the cooking into the classroom. We made Doughnut Muffins - they're muffins that taste exactly like doughnut holes! The kids read a recipe to find out what and how much to add. They did all the stirring, the measuring, and the pouring (with some guidance from me, of course). After the muffins came out of the oven, we rolled them in butter and then cinnamon sugar! Yummy! They were a hit! Even one friend after saying, "I'm not sure if I like these," told me they were tasty!

I got a newsletter out on time today, so check your child's bag/folder! Don't forget our Read-a-thon is next week! I'm really, really excited, and I hope that you are too. There's a note on the newsletter about signing up for the supper before the Read-a-thon. We need to know for sure how many people are coming, so we know how many pizzas to get!

Have a fantastic weekend!