Monday, May 31, 2010

Grandmas and grandpas and respect

Our last circle time until Kindergarten! I tried to sneak in a little place value with our last focus number, 11.

We read a couple of cute books about grandmas and grandpas and other older people. This book was a story about a little boy who goes to visit his grandma and great-grandma every Sunday. In the book, the grandma would tie the great grandma to a chair so she could sit up and visit with the little boy. Ellie asked if this story was fiction or non-fiction, and I was even surprised to discover that it was based on a true story. In the story, both the grandma and great-grandma died, and we talked about where their spirits went since the book didn't cover that.


Nana Upstairs and Nana Downstairs

So, I tied them to their chairs while I read the story. Here's Gavin, with his tongue flopped out, looking very old. We talked about how our muscles are still very young and strong, but often-times, older people like grandmas and grandpas don't have such strong muscles.

We also looked at pictures of technology from the 1950's when most of their grandparents were about their age. We learned that there were no personal computers, Ipods, CD players, microwaves, or (gasp) movies in cars. We learned that if their grandma or grandpa had a television as a young child, it would have been black/white.


We also read this book, a story about a little boy who lived next door to an old folks' home.
Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge (Picture Puffin)


We shared sad (like when your daddy leaves for the Philippines), warm (like when your mommy holds you), silly (like when you sister makes you laugh), and beach memories with each other, like the old lady and little boy in the book did.

We took a field trip to go visit our grandmas and grandpas. First, Gavin practiced reading our names and seat assignments. He was the ticket-hander-outer-guy:



We practiced matching our tickets to the seat numbers/letters. It took a long time to board the whole plane actually, especially when those already seated got up to help others find their correct seat:


There was a flight attendant. She handed out snacks, and when you were hungry and wanted more, she offered you a napkin. Sounds like Southwest, huh?



But we made it. We went to Texas, Washington, Minnesota (I think), Utah, Massachusetts, California, and Italy (I think someone was confused). Here's Simone, telling about her grandma. We practiced being very respectful, looking with our eyes, listening with our ears, and controlling our hands and voices while others were talking.











We made butterfly magnets. We colored coffee filters,





sprayed them with water to blur the colors,




then added antennae. We were going to give them to residents at the assisted living center, but now you can either send them to your own grandma or grandpa, or add them to the rest of your refrigerator art collection. Or keep them for yourselves, like Ellie wants to do.








While our butterfly wings dried, we worked on dot-to-dot books. "Easy peezy, lemon squeazy!" That's what Gavin says when he thinks something's easy, and he's proud of himself for doing it. The last couple *challenge* pages were a bit trickier, though. Gavin could still do them, and finished Haven's for her.





The kids played so nicely together. It was a really good last day of school. They shared the legos, even the Lego girl dresses:





They hammered and hammered:




Then, they worked together hammering some more:





But Maylie was the most serious about it; she used every second of her free time, working on this. I think we have a future architect/construction manager gal here:




Fun friends, fun teachers, fun year. Thanks, guys!

















Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Flags

Today was my last day of teaching preschool....EVER!  Not that I'm excited or anything,  just possibly a little trunky.  So trunky, in fact, that I got to the end of preschool today and realized that we never even did circle time.  

(Don't worry I've already awarded myself the Spacey Teacher Award of the day, so you don't need to nominate me again). 

So what did we do all day if we didn't have circle time?

First we went outside and practiced looking all patriotic and cute.... 


As you can see....

it wasn't hard for them....

looking patriotic....
or cute....


They were all eager models...

with eager smiles...


After wearing out our smiling muscles we came back in and started working on our Flag Booklets.  It was crazy and I didn't take a single picture of the process, but they spent their time...

Making and decorating their booklet covers (oodles of cheap stickers were used in the process)....

 Affixed flag stickers from different countries around the world...

I had done this page in advance with the velcroed flag...

 This page was to help us remember that we live in a free country...

This page reminds us that we should take off our hats when we sing the Star Spangled Banner or say the Pledge of Allegiance.  They thought the movable hat was kind of cool....

 This page was time consuming for them.  They each traced their hand and cut it out.  I then laminated it and attached some Velcro to it, so they could stick it to the heart on the page.  We talked a lot about how we should put our right hands over our hearts to show respect for the flag.  Figuring out which one of their hands was the right one was a fun challenge too. :)

 This is where all the posing and looking cute at the beginning came in handy.  They each glued their cute patriotic picture down to this page with the Pledge of Allegiance. 

 This page was to remind us that we should never let the flag touch the ground.  Once again, they really liked the movable flag and pole. 

 This page showed them that there is a proper way to fold a flag.  We talked about how flags are rectangle shaped, but when we fold them they should end up looking like a triangle.

 And here was where I just threw in as many of the cute pictures as possible....


 And afterward we ate lunch, then listened to the Star Spangled Banner and practiced our flag etiquette (taking off our hats and placing our right hands over our hearts).  Everyone went home with 2 flags and a reminder that they shouldn't let them stay on the ground. 

Although I may have sent them off from their second to last day of preschool with a poor reminder of structure, it was a fun day and we all learned a lot together! 

Thursday, May 20, 2010

V is for Volcano

The volcano topic is so much fun to teach. We discussed why we have volcanos and where you can find them, focusing on the fact that there aren't ANY that are close to where we live. I had thought that emphasizing the fact that we don't live near any active volcanos was rather funny when I read it in Lara's description for this theme, but let me tell you that I noticed some of the kids' eyes getting pretty big as I talked about how volcanos erupt. So in the end I talked about how volcanos are one way that new islands, like Hawaii, are made. They seemed to like that.

I also had a piece of volcanic rock from Mt. Vesuvius that I passed around so the kids could see how bits of lava that shoot out from a volcanic eruption form porous rocks.

After circle time all the kids got to make their own little volcanos. Each child got to pick several dinosaur pieces (again, no real people or towns in this diorama!). We used an 8 ounce water bottle as our volcano and plaster of Paris to hold it in place.



Just a note if you want to do this project in the future, please note that when the box says that the stuff dries quickly, they are not joking! I originally tried to make a bucket full of it only to have it become unmanageable very quickly. So I ended up sending the kids off to play while I regrouped. I mixed individual batches, called one kid back at a time, and poured and molded the plaster of Paris up around their bottles, letting them put in the trees, rocks, and dinosaurs as they wanted. It was much easier this way. In the end, I only ended up losing three containers and one wooden spoon - ha!



I then showed the kids "The Magic School Bus Blows Its Top." It talks about how an island is formed from an underwater volcano. The kids were entranced!



We then went outside where we made a volcano "erupt" using baking soda and water in a small water bottle. Their volcano masterpieces weren't dry enough yet so I just put some baking soda and loosely capped them. You can add your own vinegar and let them erupt at home over the next day or two. Just make sure you do it outside in case the lava overflows!

We ended up running out of time, so our worksheets were sent home as homework.

I also forgot to let the kids watch this video of a volcano erupting. Here's the link in case you want to show it to them: wide shot of erupting volcano / lake in foreground.

I also sent home some dinosaur fossils and stickers that I bought back at the beginning of the year from Oriental Trading, but that I'd forgotten I had back when I did the unit on dinosaurs and fossils. (Just so you don't get confused as to what the theme was for this time!) I think it was Simone who asked why they were all picking out dinosaur fossils when that wasn't the theme. Too cute!

Oh, another funny side note. When we were putting together the volcanoes, the kids noticed that the plaster of Paris got pretty hot once it was mixed. It was so funny hearing them (particularly the boys) talk about how hot it was and that it was so hot that if they touched it too long it would kill them. Ha! It could have made a good lesson on exothermic reactions, but I thought that might be a bit too advanced for them at this point. Maybe next year in kindergarten!

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Telling time

What fun we had today! Our new friend, Berkeley, fit right in.

First, we talked about clocks. We practiced sitting like kindergartners and raising our hands to say something we noticed about the clock. We noticed the decorations, the broken parts, the numbers, the hands, and Berkeley noticed the clock wasn't working. They were pretty excited to reach in, pull out a time, and make that time on the clock.



We read The Grouchy Ladybug. They've all heard that before, but it's one of those you can always hear again.

For those of you moms, like me, who say "one more minute!" and then talk for 5, 10, 20 more minutes, you're in trouble! We learned how long a minute is, and it's short!

Here we are, writing our names. Most of us can write our names about 2 times in a minute.




We can stand on one foot for a minute and only fall over a couple times.


But, Ellie says she's an expert at standing on one foot because she took ballet.




And we can hop on one foot 53 times in one minute. Berkeley's and Rachel's tongues help them balance, I think. :)

Candy clocks: First we traced the numbers,



then we used licorice to tell the time.



We worked on a couple nursery rhyme pages that mention time. Gavin tried so hard to read all the words!


We read What's the Time, Mr. Wolf?, and decided that WE would be smart enough to decline a party invitation from a wolf who was licking his lips!



Then we played *Mr. Wolf, Mr. Wolf, what time is it?*



SAFE!