May 9-13 How things grow week 3

Theme 6- Things That Grow
**On Thursday, we will be sending how a measuring activity to do with your children.  We will explain to them how to use a measuring strip to compare items that are shorter and longer. Have fun measuring with your child. 
Children will explore how living things grow, using observations, experiments, and books. Through story time readings, children will hear about ducks who find a special home, a new baby on a farm, a boy who grows from baby to school age, and a girl who discovers the joys of growing vegetables. Children continue to learn about leters, sounds, and rhyming words, and participate in many other math, science, music, poetry, and art activities.

Theme Concepts:
-Living things grow and have life cycles.
-Living things reproduce, and the offspring are the same kind of plant or animal as their parents.

-Living things need food, water, and proper living conditions to survive.
-Immature living things need special care.
-Living things interact, and among animals ther are predators and prey.

Book This Week:
Make Way for Ducklings
I heard said the bird
Chickens Aren't the Only Ones

Small Groups:
-How seeds grow art project-We will use art supplies to show different parts of a flower such as stem, roots, leaves, seeds, and petals.
-Animal Babies born alive or in eggs- We will look in books to see what babies are born live like people and born in eggs like birds. We will then create a chart to take home.
-Sorting Seeds- We will give each child 4 different seeds to sort into 4 groups. Then they will use words to describe each different seed.
-Measuring classroom items with measuring strips. We will be send how a homework project to extend this activity.

Centers
-Dramatic Play- Garden Shop
-Sensory Table- sand
-Art Table-creating flowers for our garden mural
-Science- Observing Tadpoles and Seeds
-Blocks- Little People Community Helpers
-Puzzles- measuring with clothespins as a non-standard unit of measure
-Library- Books about growing
-Technology-using Ipads(teacher directed app=Which two items go together)
-Easel- bingo dobbers on flower
-Math- measuring project

Songs, Word Play, and Letters
-Green Grass Grows All Around
-Grow song
-When I was one (a growing poem)
-Letter Garden- Each child will be given a fruit or vegetable. A "seed letter" will be planted and they will be asked if they have a fruit or vegetable that has the beginning sound of that letter.