Smell and Taste

I just got around to teaching these topics, since I was originally supposed to teach them the week school was canceled.

We had a lot of fun with smells and tastes on the same day. We started with a review of all our senses and what body parts we use for each sense (with a Mr. Potato Head as our prop).

We had fun using our sniffers for the first half of our class. The kids had opinions about all the different smells - vanilla (yum), cinnamon (yum), mint (yum), orange (okay), soap (okay), perfume (yuck), onions (yuck), vinegar (yuck). Cinnamon was the favorite.


We added pages to our 5 senses books too. We cut out noses and other things with strong scents and pasted them to a page. We also colored a fun picture of a baby with a stinky diaper (thanks Lara) that the kids had fun with.

We used koolaid to make smelly scratch and sniff paints. The boys had fun painting. And Jack knew exactly what he was painting (a big orange and an apple) whereas the other boys weren't as sure, but were just as enthusiastic.


We moved on to the taste testing, which was equally as fun. We tasted sugar (sweet), salt (salty), lemon (sour), and baking chocolate (bitter).

It was funny to watch the boys stick their finger in the chocolate and then all cough, gag, and say ewwww!

Yuck - bitter!

Surprisingly they all liked the lemon and even asked for seconds.

Yum - lemon!

We mixed some flavors - sugar, lemon, water - to make yummy lemonade. The boys drank that down in no time.

We added another page to the 5 senses book telling about the different tasting parts of our tongue along with pictures of foods that we like to eat.


It was Thomas' last day of preschool and we were glad he could make it! He was slightly late, so there aren't many pictures of him but here is one for proof that he was there.

We'll miss having him in our group and wish him the best in France!

Dinos & Fossils

We started off the day with a dinosaur puppet show. I took a bunch of plastic dinosaurs and plants (they have a kit at Walmart for $3) and used green construction paper as my base. We talked about how the dinosaurs lived a long time ago and set up the scene using the plastic dinos and plants. I then used a sheet of brown construction paper that I crumpled into a ball to talk about the theory of a meteorite hitting the earth. I put black construction paper behind all of the plants and dinos and talked about: how the meteorite kicked up a lot of dirt which made it dark, it was so dark that the plants couldn't get enough sunlight (I took all of the plants out of the scene), and then the plant-eating dinosaurs died off (I took all of the plant eaters out), and finally the meat-eating dinosaurs had nothing to eat so they died off as well (I took the rest of the dinos off). It was a great way to introduce the types of dinosaurs as well.

Everyone thought it was great, and then the girls played dinosaur house with all of the pieces. It was really cute to listen to.

We made our own fossils by pressing some of the plastic dinos (seriously, that $3 at Walmart went a long way!) into some slightly wet sand and then poured plaster of Paris over it. I held onto the dinosaurs for our archeological dig on Thursday.

And after reading a few books about dinosaurs, we cut a large dinosaur print out of newspaper and let the kids stand inside it. We then went outside and measured how tall we were compared to a T Rex (75 feet is a long distance down the sidewalk!).

Today, we discussed fossils and all the different types of fossils one can find such as imprints of dinosaur tracks, bones that have changed to rock, insects encased in fossilized tree sap, frozen fossils of whole mammoths, etc.

I let the kids use play dough to make their own imprint fossils. I had originally planned on letting them make handprint impressions to take home, but those quickly were rolled up into "tacos" or cut into shapes of dogs, etc. so I just let them take home the play dough when they were done. Seriously, much more fun! And I forgot how long kids can spend playing with play dough! I finally had to pry them away from the table with the promise of a snack.

We finished the day by heading outside for our own little archeological expedition. In our case, it was a bagful of sand on a tarp with all of their dino fossils from Tuesday hidden inside. I equipped them with toothbrushes (they were amazed to find out that real archaeologists use toothbrushes!) and we headed outdoors.

Everyone had fun excavating their fossils and a couple stayed and played in the sand afterward.

And then of course there was the requisite jumping on the trampoline. It was so nice to have a sunny, warm week!

Music

Preschool on Thursday was noisy! And fun! Did I mention noisy?!

To get us in a musical mood, we sang along with these sing-along books:

And we read Max Found Two Sticks, a story about a little boy who found two sticks and used them to beat the rhythm of sounds in his neighborhood.

So we used chopsticks and tried to beat along to the rhythm of my car alarm, an alarm clock, and other rhythms at my house.

We tried to play Name That Tune, but we spent more time talking about how you won't get called on every time your hand is raised (but the teacher still notices you) than we did guessing tunes. Not getting called on is very disappointing.

Dancing: We danced to different types of music (fast, slow, happy, hoppy, sad, marchy, scary) with streamers. Or, in Rachel's case, we wore the streamer like a bride and danced around.

Musical Mats:

Maracas: We really concentrated on making fancy maracas.

Multi-tasking: These girls could do all three! Maracas, streamers, and kazoos.

Magic Shapes: We practiced guessing and cutting magic shapes (fold a paper in half and draw half a shape - bone, house, square, flower, etc like you'd do if you were going to cut out a heart). Here, Simone thinks she has a leaf...

Peter and the Wolf and Smart Kids

Once we hit January, and the half-year mark, I started to feel the pain of sending my little one off to Kindergarten. But it still seemed so far away. However, watching these kids on Tuesday (who are ready for Kindergarten!) made September seem right around the corner.

We talked about our names a lot. We discovered that Maylie has the word "May" in her name. And Gavin has the word "in" in his. Gavin wanted to know what each of our names would sound like without the beginning sound. That's a kindergarten skill: breaking words apart. I was so excited!

The kids had no problem looking for two number cubes with dots totalling 9. Wow!

When I started reading Peter and the Wolf, Rachel said, "This book is fiction. I know."

The kids are feeling so independent, serving themselves. Guess who was the only person who spilled while pouring the water? me.

And, it was so exciting to watch the kids trying to make words out of their Cheezits. Several of the kids were making 3 - 5 letter words like box, rat, pant. Maylie found T for Taryn.

Daniel was worried that he couldn't read any words, but when I put N and O in front of him, he could sound out the word "NO". And look! He's raising his hand (not sure why). That'll come in handy next year!

Peter and the Wolf

The topic yesterday was Peter and the Wolf. This was my favorite version of the story:

Last year Lara showed part of a YouTube video of Peter and the Wolf which was really cute, but one little one was way too scared (of even the music) to view it. I put it off, hoping to have time at the end so those who wanted to watch could, and those who didn't could play. But we ran out of time. And I don't know how to include a link. Just look to the right under Peter and the Wolf. She included a link.

Peter and the Wolf puppets:

The kids had a lot of fun coloring finger puppets from Peter and the Wolf. And trying to contain them in their *garden* (recycled boxes with a fold-out door for the gate). The boys thought up ways to make the wolf extra dangerous (Daniel tried to add lightning; Matthew suggested coloring lava around the wolf's mouth, and Gavin wanted both). Even Ellie declared with a smile on her face, "I'm going to make my wolf bad. Really bad." Maylie was the only one who wanted a purple wolf that would be pretty, not scary.

"Grrr"

9 Things from Peter and the Wolf:

Here are Gavin and Maylie, practicing counting and writing their numbers.

Before I layed out the characters and instruments, I asked the kids which characters and instruments were in the story, and collectively, they remembered all of them. So smart!

Opposites Game

Here's Matthew picking a stick from each cup. One cup contained *actions*, the other cup contained opposites.

Here they are, crawling quickly.

And here are the girls, crawling slowly. I'm not sure why none of the boys are in this picture. I think they crawled as slowly as their little boy bodies could possibly handle, but not as slowly as the girls.

And this was the favorite: jumping loudly. I'm sure it was my work-from-home-husband's favorite too :)

Helen Keller

Today we talked about the number 7. The kids had to count out 7 toothpicks and make the number 7. As it turns out, a 7 CAN go either way... :)

Today we talked about our ears and hearing. We talked about all the wonderful things we can hear-- music, voices, speaking, etc. We sang the songs softer, louder, faster, etc. with our eyes closed so we could appreciate our ears.

We worked on our senses workbook and practiced our writing. For part of our 5 Senses Workbook, we 'wrote' our names in braille. Here the kids are working in teams to make the holes.

We passed around a bowl that has braille on it so the kids could feel what it felt like.

We also read the book The Black Book of Colors. It is a book for children who are blind. It describes what colors 'feel' like.