Friday, April 26, 2013

April 29-- May 3 Things That Grow


Unit: Things That Grow
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:
Where Does Garbage Go?
Ugly Vegetables
Farfellina and Marcel

Small Groups:

- Weighing fruits and vegetables.  We will compare 2 foods using a balance scale to discover which food weighs more and less.
- Measuring vegetables- We will be using cubes to measure how long a carrot is and how long an earn of corn is.  We will use words such as more than and less than to compare. 
- Measuring the room- We will each use a measuring strip to find items in the school that are less than or more than the measuring strip.  This is reinforcing the concept of non-standard units of measure. 
-We will be creating vegetable soup.  We will be asking for donations of vegetables for our soup.  We will then wash, cut, and cook the vegetables just like in our unit book.  We will then create a graph to show if we liked the soup or not. 

Centers
-Dramatic Play- Making vegetable soup
-Sensory Table- Soil with seeds and sticks.  Children can create rows in the soil with sticks and pretend to plant seeds in rows
-Art Table- Printing Veggies on paper with paint
-Science- Seeds soaked in water with magnifying glasses

-Writing Table- Drawing seed packets.
-Math- manipulatives
-Library- Books about growing

Songs, Word Play, and Letters
-Green Grass Grows All Around
-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. 



Handwriting
We will be continuing our Handwriting Without Tears Curriculum to combine our concepts.  (ie. diagaonal lines, magic C, and diagonal lines to create letters with all strokes such as R)

Preschool Life Skills
We are continuing to review our previous skills 1-7.
1-When a teacher calls your name, stop, look and say, "Yes".
2-When a teacher tells you to do something, do it "Right Away".
3-When a teacher tells you to do 2 things, do it "Right Away".
4-When something is too hard, first try then say,"Can you help me please?"
5-When you something from a teacher or a friend and they are doing something, say, "Excuse me" to get them to look at you.
(6and 7 are join together)
7-When someone is in your way or has something that you want, say "Excuse me" to get their attention, and then say"May I_____?" to get what you want.
8-When an adult tells you to wait say, "Okay", and your waiting words. (Waiting Words= "When I wait quietly, I get what I want")
 9- When a friend tells you to wait say, "Okay", and your waiting words. (Waiting Words= "When I wait quietly, I get what I want")
New Skill:
10- When someone gives you something, look at them and say, "Thank you."

We also have been learning:
"Checking our Body" - This is to remind us how to sit during large group activities. We will talk about how to "check" our bodies to get ready to listen. This is a important skill as we transition into kindergarten.



Friday, April 5, 2013

Shadow Scientists

 Our class read the book Moonbear's Shadow. In this book the bear tried to get rid of his shadow without success.  When it was noon, his shadow disappeared when the sun had moved above him.  To prove the point that the sun moves in the sky and changes how a shadow is cast on the ground, we had Pat to stand in the same spot 3 times during the day.  Lisa B. traced Pat's shadow each time.  We observed how Pat's shadow was biggest in the morning and became shorter as the sun was moving up in the sky.
We traced Pat's shadow at 8:45, 9:45, and 12:00.  Thanks Pat!  



Shadows and Reflections April 8-12


Last Week of Shadows and Reflections
-April 15-19 No School Vacation Week- Have a wonderful break!!
-School Pictures will be coming home Monday
-FYI- Our classroom is being painted over April vacation. If your child tells you that the walls at school are empty, that is why.
- Included in the blog are pictures of our prism exploration

Theme – During this unit students will explore shadows and reflections, using observations, experiments and books to learn what makes a shadow and a reflection. Through Story Time books, children hear about a girl playing by a still pond, a puppy who thinks he is a kitten, a crocodile collecting reflections in a pail, a sleepy boy who sees a shadow save a cat, and a raccoon who has an adventure with only his reflection for company.
Theme Concepts:


Reflections are images thrown back from a shiny surface.
There must be light or there is no reflection.
Mirrors and still water reflect light well; dull surfaces do not.
If water is moving, its reflections are blurry or crooked.
Objects are opaque, translucent, or transparent.
Shadows are the dark areas made when an object blocks light.

Stories:
Beady Bear 
Kitten for a Day
Dreams

Small Groups:
-Science- Light Play- We will go into a dark room each with a flashlight, a mirror, and a prism.  We will try to make the light bounce off the mirror and go to the other side of the room. We will also shine a light in the prisms to observe what happens. 
-Math-How many bears? We will roll a cube then put the correct number of brown bears in a cave.  Then roll the cube again but this time put black bears in the cave.  We will then add how many bears there are all together in the cave and write the "number sentence" below.
-Language- We will label or identify the beginning letters of animals from our unit books.  We will create a small beginning letter sound book for the animals.  We will then write the beginning letter for each animal.
Special Small Group Activities
- Kaleidoscopes- We will be creating our own kaleidoscopes.  This is a fun project that reinforces that light is needed for reflections.

Choice: -
-Easel – watercolors
-Sensory–Water Reflections- Look into water using a prism to see a rainbow
-Dramatic Play – Projecting Images- We will have a movie theater using a view master projector- One child can project the images onto the wall to tell a story. The other 2 children will watch the show until it is there turn to project their show.
-Art/Language-Spring flower tissue pinching activity
-Writing Center – kaleidoscope app on ipads
-Puzzles –tangrams
-Blocks – Blocks
-Science Center- Mirrors and kaleidoscopes and Frog Eggs with magnifying glasses

Songs, Word Plays and Letters
Bingo – with the word Snake
Whose Reflection is in the Pool?  (Smart board Activity)
Little Letter/Big Letter Chant


Handwriting
-Magic C Letters Books finishing this week
-Flipping frogs in water bowls
-Squeezing sponges racing game
-Theraputty activities

Preschool Life Skills
We are continuing to review our previous skills 1-7.
1-When a teacher calls your name, stop, look and say, "Yes".
2-When a teacher tells you to do something, do it "Right Away".
3-When a teacher tells you to do 2 things, do it "Right Away".
4-When something is too hard, first try then say,"Can you help me please?"
5-When you something from a teacher or a friend and they are doing something, say, "Excuse me" to get them to look at you.
(6and 7 are join together)
7-When someone is in your way or has something that you want, say "Excuse me" to get their attention, and then say"May I_____?" to get what you want.
8-When an adult tells you to wait say, "Okay", and your waiting words. (Waiting Words= "When I wait quietly, I get what I want")
 9- When a friend tells you to wait say, "Okay", and your waiting words. (Waiting Words= "When I wait quietly, I get what I want")
We will review our life skills then start #10 after vacation.

We also have been learning:
"Checking our Body" - This is to remind us how to sit during large group activities. We will talk about how to "check" our bodies to get ready to listen. This is a important skill as we transition into kindergarten.

Frog Eggs In Our Classroom

Our class has received these frog eggs.  Our unit when we return from April vacation is "Things That Grow". 
We are hoping to watch these frog eggs grow into tadpoles and then release them just before they reach adulthood.  These eggs will be in our science center in our classroom so the students can get a closer look. 
We will be watching this video today to understand where these eggs come from.