U.S.A.

In preparation for the 4th of July, we learned a lot about our wonderful country!  We looked at our globe and saw that there are a lot of different countries throughout the world.  Then we found our country-the U.S.A.!  We learned what those letters stand for as well.

As we listened to "God Bless America!" we looked at pictures that go along with the lyrics to help the children see various parts of our country and how beautiful it is!

The kids had a great time putting together our US puzzle and familiarizing themselves with the 50 states.  

We talked about how each star on the American flag represents one of the 50 states in our nation.

For one of our projects this week, we counted stars to work on number recognition and one-to-one correspondence.  For the older kids in our summer camps, we asked them addition problems to challenge them and had them practice writing the numbers as well.

We also learned about the American flag this week.  We focused on colors and creating a mini flag as we talked about our flag.

This was a great week for a fun snack time treat!  

We also learned that America started with just 13 colonies.  The children loved seeing how different life was back then as we read a book about life in the colonies.

With the kids that come 3 days/week, we got to learn about the Statue of Liberty!  They did a great job putting their individual puzzles together!  The older kids even worked on their cutting skills.

For one of the centers this week, the children used shapes to make pictures.  This was a great activity to focus on colors, shapes, and creativity!

Puzzles are always enjoyed by the preschoolers!  They are a great teaching tool as well.

Once a week, the children get to take any of the toys off the shelves during centers.  This is definitely a day they look forward to and these kids had a great time playing together!

  Since the early colonial people did not have cars, many of them rode horses.  For music time, we listened to and acted out a pony song.  The children LOVED riding around on their "ponies" around our classroom!  Imagination and movement are a delightful part of childhood!

Happy kids!  : )

 
 We hope you had a great 4th of July celebrating our precious freedoms and the heritage of our wonderful land!

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!!