End of April

We've been having lots of fun studying about spring this week and last week. There are so many areas of spring that we can look at to learn more. Last week we started out by brainstorming some ideas about how we know that spring is here. We know that even though the calendar says it's spring, it doesn't always feel like it right away. We did a fun activity with some spring mystery bags. In each bag I put something that reminds us of spring. They loved that it was a "mystery" and did a great job of not telling everyone what it was until everyone had a chance to feel it. The hallway needed a little spring cheer as well, so we made fun tulip banners. The tulips were made by pressing their feet in paint and then they painted the stem on themselves. We also made some fun spring headbands that looked like grass. The students cut the green band and then put on some spring stickers. Many of them wanted to put on as many bugs as possible. I'm thinking there might be some interest in bugs and we might have to study about those in the next few weeks!

For small groups last week, we made a coffee filter flower to help decorate our room up, worked on making shapes on the geo-board, and went on a letter sound hunt. For the hunt, each student had a piece of paper with four letters on it and their job was to walk around the room and find something that started with that letter. They did great and really seem to enjoy being able to search for things around the room. We had an interesting day on Friday. It was so nice so the morning class was able to go on a spring walk for science and look for signs of spring. The afternoon class went on a different kind of walk. As many of you probably heard/read about, Madison Elementary had a lockdown drill that we practiced. We have done one before where we just hunker down in the classroom with the lights off, but this time we practiced what it would look like if we needed to get out of our classroom and move to a safe spot. In our room, that meant we got to practice escaping from our window. If you tell a preschool classroom that they get to climb out a window you get instant cheers haha! While it is a very serious drill and one we hope to NEVER need to use, we made it relaxed for our little ones. We tried to explain it the best that we could in a simple way and make sure they knew that it was just a practice. They all did wonderful!

This week we focused on plants and flowers. We talked about the different parts of the flower, different kinds of flowers, and how flowers and plants grow. Yesterday we planted some grass seed in a cup and we are all excited to watch and see those grow! They also created their own kind of flower and gave it whatever name they wanted. We got some pretty creative flowers and names. Look for those on our bulletin board in the classroom.

There are only three weeks left of school after this week :( We will finish up all of our letters, numbers, and projects that we have been working on. We will also be preparing for graduation that will be on May 22nd. I will send home more information about the last few weeks of school next week. I know there is a lot to remember!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! I hope everyone had a wonderful long weekend! The weather could not have been more perfect. This weather also gives us a reminder that we are on a downward slide to the end of the school year. How can that be?! The next few weeks will be busy ones preparing for Tulip Time and our graduation. We have a few more letters and numbers to learn and we will soon be starting to study about spring.

Some of our big highlights from the last couple weeks were our fun Science Friday, seeing a real sprint car on the playground, and some fun Easter activities that we did. The winner of the best Science Friday (voted by the students) was our slime experiment! We mixed liquid starch, food coloring, and glue to make this fun mixture. They really enjoyed playing with it at center time too! For Easter, we had some fun activities like a little Easter egg hunt around our room (the eggs were filled with letters and numbers) and decorating paper eggs with jello mix. That sure made our room smell good!

Hopefully you all got the letter about Tulip Time in last week's Friday folders. Please remember to let me know if your child will not be marching with us. Many of you have let me know and I have my list started that will help me on the day of the parade. Keep checking your child's backpack/folder for more information on graduation and our optional field day! I know that these next few weeks are going to be great ones!

Thursday, May 1st:  Morning class marches in Tulip Time parade
Saturday, May 3rd:  Afternoon class marches in Tulip Time parade
Thursday, May 22nd:  LAST DAY OF PRESCHOOL CLASSES!  GRADUATION CEREMONY! **More information to come!
Friday, May 23rd:  Madison Field Day!  This is an optional activity (more information to come)

April showers bring May flowers...

Time is flying by! Now April has arrived. We are actually down to about 25 days of preschool left this year! I can definitely tell how much they have grown and learned this year. I know most of the kids are attending pre-k/kindergarten roundup this week to get ready for next year. Many of them keep talking about how excited they are for that roundup day so we had to add it to our calendar! We worked on letter Ll last week and also completed our weather study. I'm sure many of you heard how excited they were about weather (especially tornadoes) at home. We watched a few weather clips and videos online and they LOVED watching those. We had some fun reading my favorite book, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. The students got to create their own page for our classroom Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs book. They got to decide what kind of food weather they wanted to have. I will put this together in a book so that they can look at it in our reading library. They had some pretty clever ideas!

Our small groups last week were making a flower craft (that you'll see in your surprise at the end of the year), working our our monthly name page practice, and making a graph with different types of weather that we like or didn't like. It was a great way to work on more/less skills.

As our year winds down, things seem to get quite busy!! There will be no school next Friday on Good Friday and Tulip Time will be here before we know it. Reminder: morning class will march in the afternoon parade on Thurs. May 1st and the afternoon class will march on Saturday, May 3rd. Please let me know if your student will not be marching with us or needs to switch days. I'm hoping to make a list that I can use to help us make sure we have everyone on those days. Our last day of preschool is on Thursday, May 22nd. Our graduation ceremonies will happen on that day. Final times have not been set yet but I'm guessing it will be pretty similar to the Christmas program schedule (a little earlier in the morning/afternoon since it takes longer though). Madison's track and field day will be on the May 23rd and that is optional for preschool. It will be during the middle of the day (10-2ish) so there will not be normal preschool hours so morning and afternoon classes will be together if you choose to attend. We will also be working on plans for a field trip before the end of our year too. Not much time left but we have LOTS of fun yet!

Watching our weather videos.

Working hard on making our new class book.

Spring!

Could it be? Spring has finally sprung?! It was so nice to enjoy some warm weather this weekend. Hopefully it sticks around for at least a little while longer! We had a great week last week. Our preschool program completed our big state visit and they had lots of great things to say about our program. I'd like to thank you all for your help and support to make it such a great program! Without your willingness to help and great communication between home and school, we couldn't make it such a positive for the students.

We've started studying weather and so far the students are really enjoying it. They shared some things that they already know about weather and then came up with some GREAT questions that they want to know more about. We'll spend more time this week searching for those answers. We added lots of new weather books in our room that the students have loved looking at. Our dramatic play center turned into a weather news room complete with a weather map, camera, and microphone. It's very fun to watch these "mini meteorologists" report the weather at center time. Another big hit has been our tornado bottle in the science center. We've had lots of great exploring and learning happening at center time!

This week for small groups we continued learning about emotions that we might feel. We focused on nervous, scared, proud, loved, and embarrassed. They all did a great job understanding and thinking of when they might feel all of these different emotions. We played a fun letter game game with a fly swatter. Each student took a turn "swatting" each letter of their name on letter cards laid out on the table. Our last small group was a number game called "puddle jumping". We laid out some hula hoops on the carpet and each student took turns picking a card out of a pile with a number on it. Their job was to jump in each "puddle" as many times as their card said. They LOVED that game!

Looking ahead: We will continue studying weather this week. Hopefully the actual weather will cooperate and we can get outside each day. It looks like some rain in the forecast which makes for a muddy playground. It would be great if the students could bring their rain boots to school again so that we don't send them home all muddy! Pre-K/kindergarten roundup is around the corner. Hopefully everyone got the information that they needed to know where/when your student should go. Reminder- if you'd like your child to go to Pre-k, you should call over to Lincoln and put them on that class list. Let me know if you have any questions about any of that! I'm also so excited that Tulip Time is right around the corner. The morning class will march with the school kids on Thursday, May 1st and the afternoon class will march on Saturday, May 3rd. I'll be sending more information about that in the next few weeks. Can't wait!

 In the morning class our good friend Dominic moved away this week. We were soooo sad to see him go :(

 Playing with bubble wrap!

Singing and dancing is their new favorite thing to do at center time.