Discovering Dinosaurs!

Dinosaur week was a HUGE success!!!  Dinosaurs are so fascinating and we had a terrific time learning about them and enjoyed some very fun dinosaur books as well like the darling books by Jane Yolen.  A few of the titles are: "How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food?" and "How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night?" as well as "How Do Dinosaurs Go To School?"  The kids loved these books when we read them in class!  They teach right and wrong and good manners and the illustrations are wonderful!

  Dinosaur puzzles were a hit this week!

 Field trips are the BEST!  This week we went to the BYU Museum of Paleontology to see first hand the dinosaur bones and fossils we'd been learning about this week.  Thank you to all the parents who drove and helped out at the museum.  It's always wonderful to have you with us!

The children thought it was so neat to see the paleontology students working so carefully to uncover more dinosaur fossils.  

 Hands-on exhibits were fascinating!  

 Fossilized dinosaur eggs and nest.  

 Wow!  It was awesome to see just how big some of their footprints were!

 We had some great projects this week applying the children's skills with scissors and glue as well as figuring out which dinosaur bones went to which dinosaur picture.   

The kids also enjoyed making their own 3-D fossil!  The did a great job!

After going to the museum, we made our own fossil-looking prints of dinosaurs in Play-doh.  I love the excitement and wonder of children as they discover a new way to play with something and a new way to see things.  Some of the kids even wrapped up the small toy dinosaurs and pretended they were hatching!  

Caterpillar and Butterfly update:  Our butterflies all emerged this week!  What a remarkable process! 

One class let a butterfly go this week.  The others will get to next week in class.  This is always an exciting moment!  What will the butterfly do?  This particular butterfly wasn't in a hurry to leave.  We carefully got him situated on a nice safe leaf where he stayed the entire length of recess.  

 We had such a great week!  We also learned the letter "D" and are getting ready for next week's theme:  USA!!  

Pet Week!

For our 2nd summer camp we learned all about PETS!
The children took turns matching the pet with its name written out.  We practiced letters by pointing out various letters in our words as well as reading together for those who were ready.  

We learned about what types of things pets need.  We learned that pets eat many different things depending on what kind of animal it is.  

For one of our projects, we sorted stuffed animal pets and compared them.  We counted and pointed out which pet had the most and which had the least.  

We love books!  Each week we rotate the books that the children look through after snack time while everyone finishes snack.  The kids really enjoyed all the books about all kinds of pets!

Since we have our own preschool pet rabbit, we just had to learn more about pet rabbits!  We enjoyed the book "Brown Bear's Shape Book" and then for our project, the kids painted Brown Bear blowing up a balloon just like he did in our story!  Painting is a wonderful way to strengthen those fine motor skills in little hands.  It is also a very calming exercise.   We love painting-days at the preschool!

This week we read a darling interactive book about dogs.  The kids loved getting to feel the different textures and make the dog's tail wag!

After learning so much about pets and how to take care of them, we made special note of our little preschool pet rabbit and all the things she needs to stay healthy.

Enjoying the chance to pet our pet rabbit!  They were all so gentle!

The children all delighted in playing with our many pet stuffed animals during centers.  This was another great opportunity to practice sharing and taking turns with the different pets.

One group even turned into veterinarians and gave the pets check-ups and made sure they were healthy!

Practicing teamwork with our big pet puzzle! 

The caterpillars we got last week have been so FASCINATING to have in our classroom!  We all loved watching them get bigger and bigger and one by one find their way to the top of their enclosure this week and turn into a chrysalis.  It is truly remarkable!  

This week we also worked on the letters "R", "P", and "D".

First Week of Summer Camps: Insects!

Summer Camps have begun!!
We structure summer camps much like the regular school year to continue the consistency for those who have been in our preschool already and to introduce the structure to those who are coming for their first time.  We have centers each day where the children learn through playing with one another or individually, learning social skills and gaining self-confidence as they try new activities.

One great aspect of our summer camps is that they are for children ages 3-6.  This gives many of our older children opportunities to be examples to and teach the younger children, like how to play hopscotch, for instance.

 It's also a terrific opportunity for siblings to get to be in the same class and to strengthen those sibling relationships.  I love how this brother and sister were role-playing and working together to make the food and eventually serving it to the other children.

The theme for our first camp was INSECTS!
This is always such a fascinating topic for preschoolers.  They love that they all have personal experiences with insects and we made sure to look for insects and other bugs while we were out at recess this week too.  We learned that insects have 6 legs, 2 antennae, and 3 body parts.  

For one of our projects, the children took turns choosing an animal out of the bag and then counted it's legs to determine if it was an insect or another kind of animal.

After they counted the legs, they sorted the animals into 2 groups: insects or other animals.

Then we counted the two groups and compared them.  This was a great project to incorporate science and math as we counted and classified animals as well.

To the children's surprise, our tiny little caterpillars arrived in the mail during one of our classes!  This was so exciting!  I love letting the children experience first hand the life cycle of butterflies.  It is so magical to be able to witness nature up close and personal.   

We also got to see some chrysalises from other butterflies so the children could look forward to when our caterpillars will change into chrysalises.

We acted out being different insects like flying around like butterflies and hopping like grasshoppers.  They all love getting up and using their bodies as they learn.

We also take time each class to let the children look through books about our theme independently.  I love how these girls are pointing out different things in the Insect Zoobook together!

The kids that come 3-days a week worked on the letter "C" and created their own caterpillars that they could take home! 

In addition to letter "C" we also learned "B" and "I".
Our next summer camp will be "PETS"!  We love summer!