Van Y Preschool Preview: April 2015

Week of April 20-23

At Large Group:

We read stories about recycling, plants & seeds, and taking care of our world.

Monday our question of the day was “Do you know what pollution is?” Many of the kiddos didn’t know, so we had a discussion about it. We talked about littering. They were interested in water pollution and how it effects water animals.
We used examples from our classroom to talk about recycling. We use plastic containers for storage, paper tubes and scraps for art, etc.
After reading the book “10 Things I Can Do To Help My World” we talked about other ways we can help our world. They came up with things like cleaning their rooms/classroom and rescuing animals.

We danced to several earth day songs and jumped in indoor puddles.
Our letters of the week were: P, Q, R, U. We identify the letter, the sound it makes, brainstorm other words that start with the letter, and work on finding the upper case and lower case letters in our letter poem books. We also practice writing the letter during planning or recall.

At Small Group:

We read a book about growing sunflowers and then we planted sunflower seeds. We will be watching them grow for the next few weeks and then they will be coming home.

We used pretend recycling bins & pictures of different things you can recycle to work on sorting. The kiddos thought it was very interesting to learn we can recycle things like glasses, clothes, & TV’s.
We went on a letter hunt to spell the work yellow while singing the yellow color song.
We used pretend flowers to work on our counting and one-to-one correspondence. We rolled dice and arranged that many flowers in a play dough “vase”.

We used blue and green paint to create Earth Swirl paintings.

We made a snack of dirt and worms using pudding, crumbled oreos, and gummy worms.

At Choice Time:

This week the kiddos have been really into:

Playing, acting like, & drawing Pokémon.
Building homes for animals with the magnatiles in Toys & Games.

Playing dress up, dolls, cooking, and doing hair in dramatic play.

Building with a variety of blocks in the block area.

Parking Garages

Baby Carriages

Writing books and drawing pictures in the writing area.

Week of March 30 - April 1

At Large Group:

We read stories about dinosaurs, fossils, and how big dinosaurs really were.

We listened to several dinosaur songs this week and moved like various dinosaurs. Our favorite was: We Are The Dinosaurs
We read and acted out the story “Ten Terrible Dinosaurs”.

We made a big T-Rex footprint and taped it to the floor. The kiddos measured it with their feet, counted how many friends fit inside laying down, and counted how many shoes fit inside.

We built a dinosaur skeleton out of cardboard tubes. The kiddos said “it looks just like a fossil!”

It was a long neck dinosaur with a spiky tail.

They all got inside the dinosaur and shouted "Teamwork!"

Our letters of the week were: C, O, S. We identify the letter, the sound it makes, brainstorm other words that start with the letter, and work on finding the upper case and lower case letters in our letter poem books. We also practice writing the letter during planning or recall.

At Small Group:

We modeled how to read a book, talked about the author and illustrator, and showed them where to begin reading.
We froze dinosaurs in balloons to create dinosaur eggs. The kiddos used warm water and salt to help them hatch.

We used our upper case and lower case eggs to play a matching game. We also used our rhyming eggs.
We created fossils using salt dough. We mixed the dough up and then pressed our dinosaurs into them. We baked them in Miss Justine’s oven. Then we painted them. The fossils will be split between the sand table and discovery area when we return from spring break.

They did some whole dinosaur imprints and some with just tails or feet.

We used paper cut into many sizes and shapes to create and name our own dinosaurs. They had names like Rectangladon, Jellybeanasaurus, and Meowasaurus Rex.

We talked about what a paleontologist is and how they dig for fossils. We became “cookie paleontologists” and used tweezers to dig the "fossils” (chocolate chips) out of the “dirt” (cookie). We made predictions of how many fossils we would find and then counted them to see if we were correct. Then, of course, we ate them. :)

At Choice Time:

We got a shipment of new things for our classroom last week so the kiddos have been exploring and playing with all our new things. We added science viewers to discovery (like binoculars with pictures) and community helper garages in the block area.

They used the boxes that all our new stuff came in to create cars and then they decorated them.

We watched “The Land Before Time” during choice time on Wednesday. They made their own refreshments just like they would have at the theater.

We hope everyone had a wonderful spring break!

Week of April 13-16

At Large Group:

We read stories about weather, clouds, and spring animals.

When we read the story “It Looks Like Spilt Milk” we talked about different kinds of clouds. When we went outside later in the day we watched the clouds in the sky and talked about what they looked like.

We made a list of weather words & talked about what our favorite types of weather were.
We talked about thermometers and temperature and how the temperature tells us what kinds of clothing to wear to make sure we are safe.

We played a dramatic movement game where we would say a type of weather like a thunderstorm or a tornado and the kiddos would have to act it out however they wanted to.
Our letters of the week were: B, D, G, J. We identify the letter, the sound it makes, brainstorm other words that start with the letter, and work on finding the upper case and lower case letters in our letter poem books. We also practice writing the letter during planning or recall.

At Small Group:

We made “Mud in a Bag” (brown paint in a baggie) and the kiddos wrote words, letters, numbers, and shapes in the mud.
We used frog counters and lily pads to count and identify numbers.

We made frog puppets then learned and used the puppets to sing/act out the song “Five Green & Speckled Frogs”.

We put shaving cream (“clouds”) on top of a big clear bucket of water and then used food coloring to drop on top of the cloud. We talked about how clouds work and that when they get to heavy the rain comes out. The food coloring seeped out of the “cloud” like rain.

They wanted a picture with the "cloud".

They decided to try mixing the colors to see what would happen.

We left the "clouds" out for the day to see how the water changed.

We drew pictures of different types of weather and tried to sound out how to spell it.
We read a poem about wind and how it can be both helpful and hurtful. Then we made and decorated paper kites to use outside. They also work well inside if you run. Here is the link to make the kites.