March 10-14

I hope that everyone is enjoying their spring break! For those of us stuck in Iowa, I'm glad we at least had a few days of nice spring weather. Last week we worked on the letter Kk and continued to review our numbers. The students have also been doing such a good job deciding if the weather is a lion or lamb day at school. One of our small groups last week was to make a lion or lamb mask. I'm sure you'll enjoy the pictures of that below! Our second small group was a sorting activity. Even though St. Patrick's Day landed on our spring break, we decided to celebrate it this week. So what a better way to sort than with Lucky Charms! Their favorite part, of course, was munching on some after they finished. The last small group focused on teaching some social-emotional skills by talking about emotions. We focused on sad, mad, happy, and frustrated. The students were able to come up with stories and then ask their friends how they would feel if that happened. They are pretty creative little story tellers! Next week we will look at some more complex emotions (nervous, embarrassed, proud, etc.).

Our big highlight of the week was when the leprechauns came to visit on Friday! I'm so sorry that the videos I sent are not working. I'm still trying to figure out how I can send such a large file to you all. They had so much fun and were so funny to watch when we came back to our room after a bathroom break and the "leprechauns" messed the whole room up, set our Lucky Charms for snack, sprinkled glitter, and left footprints all around. We tried our best to make sure they all knew it was just something silly and fun so I sure hope no one went home scared of leprechauns!!! Miss Melissa made some Irish soda bread for us to try for snack and we even tried to do an Irish jig. It was a fun way to end our week before spring break.

Now that spring break is over, I feel like time is going to go too fast! There are only six more weeks until Tulip Time! Preschool does march with the school kids in the parades and this year the morning class will march in the Thursday afternoon parade and the afternoon class will march in the Saturday afternoon parade. There will be more information to come as the time gets closer. School will dismiss at 11:15 on May 1&2 and there will be no afternoon preschool on those days. Also, kindergarten round-up is near. Madison's kindergarten round up will be on April 10th and Lincoln's pre-k/kindergarten  round-up will be on April 11th. On April 18th (Good Friday) there will be no school. Lots of important days ahead. Let me know if you have any questions!

Practicing our emotion cards

 Sorting Lucky Charms

 Science Friday! 

We traced the clovers with glue, sprinkled on baking soda, and then used droppers to drop green vinegar on the baking soda. The loved it!

Our lions and lambs!

March has arrived!

Here's an update of our fun first week in March. Now that March is here, hopefully spring isn't far behind. We talked about the saying "March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb". They thought it was pretty funny to think about the weather as an animal and caught on quickly about deciding if it's a lion or lamb day. We are looking forward to more lamb days! We've also been finishing up our transportation unit. We worked on our sorting skills and did an activity where we sorted vehicles by where we find them: land, air, water.  It was also a great week to take a break from new numbers and review 1-14. We played a fun game where the numbers were written on the whiteboard out of order. They took turns "swatting" the numbers with a fly swatter. As you might guess...they LOVED it. It's not everyday your teacher tells you to whack the whiteboard with something :) 

Our letter of the week was Ee. We got some new letter book and there is a small book for each letter. We read that one and read some of the books of past letters too. For groups this week, we again split into groups by what their individual needs are. And finally, Science Friday made a much anticipated return! Since weather has been such a popular topic with our discussion about the lion/lamb days, I decided to do a weather experiment. This experiment was making pretend clouds and watching them get "heavy" with water until they rained. Our cloud was made by putting a pile of shaving cream on top of water. We slowly added drops of water on top of the shaving cream until it got so full that the colored water dropped down into the water. This might be the record for the longest science experiment by the students choice. They keep at this activity for a long time and even requested to have it set out at center time. I love when they enjoy what they are learning!

We are now finishing our last week before spring break. Many students get to go on trips while others will be taking a break from school by staying in Pella. I will be spending parts of my break preparing for our upcoming state visit. We've been busy working on things in our classroom to display how much fun and learning goes on each day! And thanks for your hard work raising such awesome kids! We just love seeing them learn and grow each and every day. They make our job soooo much fun :)

 Roll and Write game

 Our morning class has been creative with our cardboard cars and turned them into "puppy" cages.

 The afternoon class has still been buzzing around driving their cars. Even Miss Tammy and Miss Lynne joined in on the fun!

 The dollhouse has still been quite popular at center time!

 Meet these four future teachers. The boys were playing school at center time.

 Check our this cool block creation at table toy time.

 Land, water, and air transportation sorting

Science Friday!!!

February 24-28

We have officially completed one full with of school with both classes! No one is used to this feeling so I think we were all a little worn out by the end of the week. It was a great week despite our continuing lack of spring weather. We started our new theme of transportation and let me tell you, it has been a HIT! The students have just been loving it and have come up with so many ideas. We made a list of all the kinds of vehicles or ways to get from one place to another and they thought of so many! We also created our own vehicles out of shapes. Look for those outside in the hallway by our room soon. They are so creative! We have also turned our dramatic play center into a highway with cars and car wash to use as well. They have loved using the boxes to drive around and have even added some ideas of their own to this center. They decided to start handing out tickets to speeders! We added a bunch more small cars to our block center to play with and some of the students thought of adding a road in there for the small cars too. Lots of good ideas! Another big attraction has been the addition of a dollhouse in our room. Miss Amy's class was so nice to let us borrow their dollhouse for awhile while they are not using it. That center has now been full ever since! They definitely love when we add new and exciting things to our room.

For small groups this week we worked on lots of writing and drawing (good fine motor practice!). The first group was having the students practice writing their name the "kindergarten way" by using one capital letter and the rest being lowercase. Our second group was called "Write the room" and for this group the students walked around to room and wrote down any words they saw. It was a great activity for the students and the varying levels that they are at. For the last group the students drew a picture. This picture will be a part of a surprise at the end of the year so I can't give away many details ;) Next week we will be working on some small groups based on what the students need to work on to help them at their individual level.

As I mentioned before, we are all getting so tired of the cold weather so we decided to come up with a way to jazz up our indoor recess time. The afternoon class seems to think that inside recess is coolest thing ever! We tried out some Just Dance Kids videos on Youtube and they loved it! They are pretty good too. The teachers could use some extra practice. Anything to get them up and moving on these freezing cold days. Someday spring will come, right?!

We have two more weeks until spring break! Looking ahead, we will continue with transportation this next week and then move on to weather soon. We will be reviewing our numbers this week and focusing on letter Ee. Hopefully that warm up is on the way and we can all get outside and enjoy some fresh air later in the week.