Frying Pan Farm Park Field Trip

We scared off a few people with the cloudy skies, but it ended up being a perfect day for a trip to Frying Pan Park!  The kids had a great time wandering around the farm and playing with each other!   

Sorry for the overload of Ellie pictures!  

Learning About Rainbows

Learning about rainbows is one of my very favorite lessons of the whole year. In fact my older kids remembered how much fun we had last year and begged to stay home from school to "help" me.

First we read a few books about rainbows from the library including this cute book

which opens up on the last page to a big rainbow!

We made rainbows out of Fruit Loops

Then, we celebrated Eve's 5th birthday with this delicious cream-filled Danish that Eve's mom baked for us. We made tie-dyed t-shirts with all the colors of the rainbowand then saw how rainbows are made when sunlight shines through prisms.The kids LOVED making their own little rainbows.

Then we listened to a couple of fun rainbow songs

and did FREEZE DANCE!
The kids had as much fun as I did!

Field Trip to Petland

Another fun field trip! This time we threw together a very last minute trip to Petland pet store.
At first the kids were even fascinated in the empty cages,

but then they noticed that guinea pigs, dogs, rabbits, birds and fish were so much more interesting!

Then it was off to lunch at Subway

where Cheetos and chocolate milk were consumed in large quantities!

Bradford wanted to make sure he got all those Cheeto crumbs off.

Eve's thumb tastes as good as any Cheeto.

Looking up for a smile was way too hard with chocolate milk right there!

Gavin was ready with a willing smile!

We had a great time together and look forward to visiting the dentist next month! Sorry it didn't work out for Maylie and James to be there. We missed you!

Helen Keller Preschool Lesson

Today we learned about Helen Keller. We read a book ("Young Helen Keller: Woman of Courage ") all about her and the amazing things she did even though two of her senses didn’t work.

We played a cold/hot game with the blindfold on so they could get a tiny glimpse at what life is like without vision. We did a few of the favorite activities from last time (freeze dance and touching game). The kids finished up their five senses books (they worked really hard on these) and had a wonderful time!

Five Senses Preschool

Today at preschool we learned all about the five senses.

Seeing, tasting, smelling, hearing, and touching!

First we tried taste testing: Sweet

Sour

Bitter

Salty

Then we tried mixing sweet and sour together to try some lemonade...much better!

Then we did freeze dancing to use our sense of hearing (a very entertaining experience)!


Then we played, "I Spy With My Little Eye...." and tried to guess what everyone was thinking of while we used our sense of sight!


Then we tried our sense of smell by smelling cinnamon, vinegar, vanilla, and molasses.
To try out our sense of touch we closed our eyes and reached into a bag and tried to figure out some common objects were without looking at them. They were pretty good at it!

We also spent some time working on a project, which they will finish up next time to bring home.
We missed you Maylie and Bradford...hope to see you Thursday!

Learning about Native Americans at Preschool

I guess I should probably start off today's post with a confession. I know it's much more politically correct to say "Native Americans", but for simplicity's sake today I just called them Indians. Sorry, I hope no one is scarred or offended.

After circle time we started off by getting into our own "teepee" [you know the classic blankets draped over chairs].
Right there in the teepee we looked at a globe and reviewed Christopher Columbus' voyage to America. We talked about how he thought he'd found a way to India, so he called the people he met Indians. We looked through a couple of Thanksgiving/Columbus books and briefly talked about how the Indians helped the new people coming to America. How they helped them grow crops and learn to survive in America. I really emphasized the friendship and help they gave to the newcomers.

Then everyone got to color their own teepees (a cute kit from Oriental Trading Company).

Although everyone was quite convinced at first that they'd just made themselves some cool hats! [Gavin was smiling two seconds before I pressed 'click']

Then we talked about how they were actually supposed be like the tents that Indians lived in.

Then we had a little pow-wow, while they wore these cute Indian headbands...

eating popcorn (just like the Indians)...

and doing some good old fashioned Indian whooping and hollering!

I think everyone had a fun time learning all about Indians!

Fire Station Field Trip

Monday morning we headed over to Eve's house for the kids to have a great time building (or at least hammering) their own fire engines.

Then it was off to the Dunn Loring fire station, where despite repeated phone calls from Becca our visit ended up as a complete surprise to them! Luckily they were in the station and were great sports about accommodating us on such short notice.

By my count there ended up being about 14 preschool aged kids plus the moms and younger siblings attending....so it was a great turn-out!

The firefighters were kind enough to let the kids try on some of their gear...Ellie's modeling Firefighter Rebecca's heavy duty hat!

And Bradford got to stand inside of her boots for a minute!

Firefighter Felicia donned all of her gear and did some fun demonstrations for us...climbing the ladder, dragging the heavy "person", pounding down a "door", and lowering the rope. She was dripping sweat by the end, but still all smiles as she talked with the kids!

One of the highlights from the trip was actually getting inside the fire truck and looking at the world from a fire fighter's perspective!

Of course they each got their own fire hat to take home with them!

In all the fire station field trips I've attended over the years (somewhere in the double digits)...no one's ever let the kids spray the hose! What a special treat for them!

And an unexpected fascination of the day...the fish tanks and candy machines inside the station!

It turned out to be a fun, well attended field trip. Thank you to Becca for making all of the arrangements (even if they forgot to write them down) and thank you to Captain Jackson and all the other fire fighters at fire house #13 for making this a wonderful day!!


Once again I have a ton more pictures than I can post here, so be sure to look at my online photo site where you can right click on any of the pictures and save them to your own computer full sized!