Plant a Tree!

To start, we practiced 'ch' with a worksheet.  

We were supposed to color the things that had 'ch' in them and put and 'x' through the others,

but some of us had to color the kitten because it was soooo cute! 

 Next we read the book, The Giving Tree, since trees are an important part of our earth 

and one way to celebrate Earth Day is to plant trees.

 

 

 For snack we had apples which are one of the best parts of a tree (not to mention fun to eat)!

  

 

We also planted our own sunflowers which are not trees, but they can still get pretty tall!

 

Happy Earth Day!

The Park!

To learn about more about the environment and taking care of the earth, we had Joy School at the park.

Unfortunately, with the wind, it did not feel as warm as it actually was!

We each used our own field guides to make notes and pictures about the different habitats and plants and animals that we found there.

On our walk around the pond and at the playground we picked up the trash that never quite made it into the garbage cans.

 

  

We found some very interesting garbage including an old sock.

 

Some garbage like plastic bottles and boxes can actually be recycled and made into new things, 

but we have to put them in the right recycle bin...

  

As we were learning about recycling, the recycling truck came to empty the cardboard bins, what timing!

 

We had granola bars for our great outdoors snack, but hot chocolate would have been better :)

 

Bryn says the Pledge of Allegiance

I know it's not the normal format for our blog posts and we can delete it later, but I just wanted to share this video with everyone. Bryn is quite strong-willed, but is going to start trying to do things even though she doesn't want to do them so she can get ready for kindergarten. We had quite the discussion about kindergarten today and I finally got her to say the whole Pledge of Allegiance. She really only needed one help because she has been learning as she listened to all the other kids say it for two years now. It took more pushing to get her to say it on camera, but she finally did it! Thanks everyone for teaching her!

Ch...cheese! & The white Arctic!

C and H together make a 'ch' sound... as in cheese, chalk, and chuga-chuga-choo-choo!

What better way to practice 'ch' than with chalk?

 

Since we are learning about Earth Day this week, we talked about a far away part of our earth that is covered in white... the arctic. 

We watched a short clip from Planet Earth about the animals that live in the arctic.

  

Then we formed a human choo-choo train to get to the dining room 

for a snack of cheese and chocolate milk.  

We tried some different types of cheese...

cheddar (which everyone loved),

goat cheese (which no one loved),

and havarti with dill (which received mixed reviews).

After snack we colored pictures of the Arctic.

We discovered that white crayons and pencils show up best on dark paper. 

 

F is for Fish!!

Today went so quickly, I don't know where the time went.  We talked all about the letter F and all kids of fish. We read about different kids of fish and what makes a fish a fish.  We red the infamous silly book, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, and then we colored an aquarium and filled it with our choice of fish.     

Wild Cat Hills Nature Center

This week our letter was F and our Theme was Fish, but I have really wanted to take the kids to the Wild Cat Hills Nature Center. So we left the fish in our dist and drove the 65 miles or so to our destination.  It was so much fun, and we had a great day.  There were so many little things for the kids to do, and really have some hands on fun. 

What a great looking group of kids!!!  And they were all so well behaved!!!

 The kids did a chalk rub drawing.  There were patterns of leaves and insects that they placed under their papers and after rubbing it with chalk they had some great pictures.

 The kids sure liked the two aquariums that they had, one with fish and one with turtles.  And they each got to try their own binoculars and look out the window for birds.  The microscopes were a little exciting but it was a little difficult for preschoolers to see much of anything.   And Bryn was excited to show me the feather she found.  

Amelia, making animal tracks in the sand.

Lily, showing us her best bumblebee.

Will, feeling the different types of fur they had displayed.

Zane, reaching to feel the wings of a mallard. 

There were so many things to see and experience, and all in all we had a fantastic day!

Jungle Animals Everywhere!

We finished our Jungle week by creating "Jungle Art." The great thing about art, you can be creative and make it the way you want. We looked at some pictures of jungles and jungle animals to get some inspiration.

Then the kids created their own watercolor jungle scenes.

The kids worked so carefully and they each created a very unique jungle!

Bryn carefully painted pink stripes on her zebra and then covered them all with red. Will made black and brown spots on his. Lily liked the more traditional black stripes but added some pink and orange also. Amelia painted blue and purple stripes on hers because it is a girl. Zane and Stella both liked the blue striped look. Stella also created a soft comfy bed of leaves for her zebra. I wanted to take their pictures with their completed art work but many of them were still damp when it was time to go home.

For snack we ate Tiger Tails (carrots and ranch) and Zebra cakes. They all agreed that Zebra cakes are the best. Zane told everyone where to find them at Safeway so they could be sure to ask their mom's to buy some.

Then we were ready for a jungle safari! We divided into two groups. One group was assigned to find all the orange and green animals while the other group found all the brown and yellow animals. We braved the wind and went outside to search for the paper cut-out animals I had planted around the yard. The kids had so much fun and even asked me to hide the animals so they could find them again. The wind was getting stronger though so we went back inside.

We finished off our day playing hide and seek with a snake.

In The Jungle

We continued our Jungle theme by learning some important facts about jungle animals. Things like, the biggest python was as long as a school bus and bears eat ants. (People might need to eat ants also to survive.) We also learned that African elephants have the largest ears and tigers can run fast but they get tired easy.

The kids took turns thinking of words that begin with "J" and came up with quite a list. For each word they thought of they got a turn throwing a bean bag at the bear to knock him off his rock. That was harder than it looked but eventually they all knocked the bear off.

We did a maze and helped the snake get to his favorite rock. Sometimes it's easier if the snake can just jump over the walls. And jump begins with "J".

Jungles make a good place for animals to hide. Our snack was hiding too. The kids had fun finding the hiding bears in all that (coconut) grass.

We went outside to play "Catch the Snake by the Tail" but it was more fun running around. The sun was warm but the wind was a little cold still. Bryn and I stayed in the warm sunshine and watched the kids play.
Nebraska really doesn't look anything like a jungle.

J is for Jungle

The kids worked so hard today! Our theme this week is The Jungle so it was the perfect opportunity to make Monkey Bread!

We read over the recipe, collected the ingredients and rolled up our sleeves. We learned that dipping bread dough into melted butter made it feel slimy and that cinnamon sugar kind of feels like sand. We also learned that when it's all baked together it tastes YUMMY!

Bryn asked if she could eat as many as she wanted.

Why is it called Monkey Bread?

We practiced writing big "J" and little "j" on the chalkboard. Then we colored a silly monkey with a tail that made a "J" on the branch.

Each monkey was colorful and unique!

We had a great discussion about all the different animals that live in the jungle and even practiced making some animal sounds.