Thursday Last Day of School.....

Our intro to Phonics at the Zoo ended with singing for our parents.  The kiddos did a great job and we look forward to summer activities.  I am looking forward to seeing some of you for our summer class!  It will be full of super heroes,  dinosaurs, ocean, robots and space!  See you soon!

100th POST!

I am so happy that all my families are enjoying the blog.  It is such a great way for you and your extended family to stay in touch with your child's' activities. Pictures can be saved at anytime by dragging the .jpg to your desktop!  

Only 14 more days until the end of school!  I'm starting to think much about my Kindergarteners moving on and cherishing the last days of preschool with them.  This has been a very special group of kids and I have enjoyed knowing my class families. 

We worked hard on counting today and the kids did a great job!   We made our 100 counters and counted our bags into groups of 10.  Using manipulatives helps a child with one-to-one counting.  When practicing, have your child put their finger on each item as they count.  This will prevent skipping or miscounting items.

If you haven't seen much coming home lately, it's because we are working on end of the year projects and super secret projects ; ).  

Leave a comment if you enjoy the blog or have an idea how I could make it better!

Thank you all!

 

Rainy Day Friday

What fun it was to finally see rain, so we went outside for a ten minute splash in puddles.  We took paint and paper and watched what the raindrops did on paper!

We had a very good day with quiet reading time and music, then went out with a bang during music time!

We learned about parts of a plant and practiced writing "plant, leaf, stem and root".  The writing skills are taking off!

Have a great weekend!

Thursday Time

We were busy today working on top secret projects!  Everyone was so busy and engaged that the room was so quiet!

(Ok, I admit I love these days, but it is nice to see them interacting so nicely together). 

    

Rainbow day was fun reading very special interactive books and having a special rainbow wand snack!

Even the animals loved them!

Writing time was popular with our new wipe off boards; these are great for in the car on short or long trips!  Even older children can use them for playing Hangman or Pictionary!

                           The End

Ms. Kathi's Earth Crayons!

We had such fun Wednesday using our Earth Crayons, that I promised I would put directions to make them on our blog!   Any shape can be made using a regular muffin tin or the new shaped flexible molds. 

1.  First preheat oven to 250 degrees and gather up all those old crayon bits.  The paper can be easily removed by running a knife down the side of the crayon to slit the paper.  ( I did this as I watched Grey's Anatomy)

2.  Line the bottom of the muffin tin with 2-3 crayon bits.  You can mix colors or use blue, green and white to make the earth ones.

3.  Put muffin tin in oven and crayons will be totally melted in approx. 10-15 minutes.

4.  Put tin in refrigerator until crayons become solid again.  

5.  Pop the crayons out of the tin.  The crayons will have a small amount of clear wax on the edges and this can be removed by scraping a knife along the edge.

New Crayons in 1/2 hour!

What is special about these crayons?  Little hands can easily hold them!   

An extra idea:  big crayons are great for doing texture rubs.  Have your child take paper and put it over a leaf, or bark or any texture.  Rub with the big crayons!

Sneak Peek of Circle Time!

We Love U Mother Earth!

The Earth Is Good was our book today as we learned about how to take care of our Mother Planet!  We made our earth by painting and gluing, did dot painting for a later project ; ) and watercolored.
A workday of ART!

 
We played games using recyclables at the festival and sorted trash into bins by cardboard,
 bottles/plastic and paper!   You all must recycle because they were very good at this!

We saw various animals like the bunnies, baby pigs!

   

The armadillo has a very hard shell and curls up when you hold him!

Mr. Wallaby was  cute and fuzzzy!

We learned about other kinds of moths, butterflies and even ones

that disguise themselves as leaves or bark.  This was awesome since we had just 

finished our unit on the life cycle of the butterfly.

Miss Angela did it again with a fun snack for us!  Thank you!

Our readers are making great progress and we all still need to practice at home!

I will be trying to get the readers as far as they can go before the end of the session.

Summer practice will be important to keep up those reading skills.  The Southwest Regional Library has a wonderful FREE reading program for children where they read and earn prizes!  Be sure to sign up!  Did you know your child can have his/her own library card?

Today Grandma Moe (my mother) stopped by and read the book to us.   I am an avid reader due to my mom reading to me so much as a child.  My favorites were Dr. Suess (especially one called "Come on Over to My House" about children from different countries)  and those Nancy Drew thrillers.  I really never learned to swim well because I was the kid laying out under the big tree in the backyard  reading the summer away.  The bookmobile came to my neighborhood every other week and I read as many as I could.   Reading is the biggest gift you can give to your child!  It evokes imagination,  a love of learning and a lifetime of growing.