We learned about birds, nests, and eggs during the first few weeks of March. I love birds which made this month and especially fun one! For one of our projects about birds, we worked on strengthening fine motor skills. The older kids practiced writing the letters in various bird names and the younger students cut and glued as they matched up the letters in the word "birds".
We have a special book at the preschool that has birds from all around the world and a way to listen to their individual songs. The children absolutely loved when we got that out and listened to many different birds! Multi-sensory learning is an important part of preschool and we try to incorporate multiple senses as we learn to help the children retain what they've learned.
We also got to see and feel a variety of different bird feathers. This helped the children see first hand how different feathers are from fur, which can be tricky at this young age.
These boys loved their little bird projects! And they all did such a great job making them!
After learning about birds, we spent a week learning about nests!
We learned that birds build many kinds of nests using many different things like grass and mud, feathers and twigs. The children really enjoyed watching videos of birds diligently making their nests.
Checking out a robin's nest!
We compared the robin's nest with a mud swallow's nest and talked about the similarities and differences.
The children worked hard on making a little nest for their bird to lay its eggs.
For the past couple of weeks, we've been watching a live web cam of a bald eagle family. https://hdontap.com/index.php/video/stream/bald-eagle-live-cam
It has been fascinating to watch the birds and see their huge nest and wait for the 2 big eggs to hatch!
This little game is one that the children thoroughly enjoyed! They each pretended to be birds and used their beak (chopsticks) to pick up grass, twigs, or bits of string around the classroom and then added them to their group's nest.
Our next theme was "Eggs". The children loved looking at many different eggs and comparing their shapes, sizes, and colors.
Gently feeling the eggs helped the little 3-year-old class put words to the smooth texture.
We also learned that many other animals, not just birds, hatch from eggs. What child doesn't love a good egg hunt? We hid colorful eggs around our classroom with baby animals inside. What fun it was for the kids to search for the eggs and then find out which animal was inside!
As the eggs were opened, the children graphed and tallied how many of each animal were found. We discussed which animal had the most and which animal had the least. This process is a great introduction to categorizing and using some fun math skills.
In honor of St. Patrick's day, we took a little break from animals and learned about the color green and how to make it by mixing blue and yellow. The children are always fascinated with mixing colors!
For our St. Patrick's day project, the students carefully painted a shamrock green. Painting is a wonderful way to strengthen their fine motor skills which helps them get ready for kindergarten and writing letters and numbers.
We also used shamrocks for our letter review. We worked on matching uppercase and lowercase letters all around our classroom!
It's spring!!! What a beautiful time of year! These children enjoyed working together to put together this seasons puzzle.
The children also glued on different shapes to represent each season throughout the year.
Before creating their tree full of spring blossoms, these Pre-K students were working hard to trace the word "Spring".
Then they colored their tree and crumbled up little papers to glue on as spring blossoms. Their trees looked beautiful!
One of our letters this month was "Y". We glued yarn to make the letter and created yarn pictures as well! Creativity is an important skill that we love to foster at preschool!
We also learned the letter "X" so we brought out our xylophones for the children to play! Creating music is so magical!
The Pre-K kids love when we get our alphabet bingo game out to review the ABCs!
Our preschool has a very good balance of social, emotional, and academic learning and development. These darling girls have become good friends this year at preschool. Happy, healthy children is what we're all about!
The precious bonds of friendship are kindled at a young age!
More fun and learning to come next month!
