Mother's Day Tea

May 9, 2016, 10:00 AM

Our class hosted a Mother’s Day Tea last week and we really enjoyed it. We wanted to do something special for our mommies / grandmas. We gave our teachers ideas at circle on what we wanted to do, and we came up with a tea party idea. Then, we thought about what we will need for the party. So, here was our list:

1. Invite our mommies and grandmas

2. Make a present

3. Make cookies

4. Prepare sandwiches and watermelon

5. Get ready to TEA party!

First, we each went outside to take a photo for our own invitation. We thought a special invitation is needed for such a special occasion.

Second, we set out to make a present. We made bath tea bags with lavender flowers, oatmeal, and Epsom salts. Each of us made our own. Some of us liked more oatmeal and some of us liked more lavender flowers. And, some of us REALLY liked Epsom salts in our bath tea presents! We mixed it up and scooped the ingredients into empty tea bags.

Third, we made cookies. There is no party without cookies! We made the dough with a teachers help. Then, we rolled out the dough and used cookie cutters to shape our cookies. They were then baked and cooled. We then iced the cookies. We had to stop ourselves from eating the cookies right then and there.

The tea party day arrived.

We came to school excited to help make the food for the party. We made cucumber and cheese sandwiches. For cucumber sandwiches, we needed to slice the cucumbers. Then, we took two pieces of bread, buttered the bread, added the cucumber, and voilà - a cucumber sandwich! We did the same for the cheese sandwiches.

For the watermelon, our teacher found one lonely melon baller. So, we used cookie cutters to cut out our watermelon. We had to push the cookie cutter through the watermelon to get the shape we wanted. We were able to not waste any of the watermelon (we used the lonely melon baller to get out the rest of the watermelon).

Now we were ready: Invitations out (Checked) / Presents (Checked) / Cookies (Checked)/ Sandwiches and watermelon (Checked).

We patiently waited for our special guests to arrive and to serve them. We just wanted to show how much we love them!

Happy Mother’s Day!

Love

Children from MWF Fine Arts / Science and Nature Class

WRCC

Comments

From Planting to Helping Friends

April 22, 2016, 01:01 PM

We began the week by planting some scarlet runner beans and bush beans in a clear plastic cup with paper towel so we would be able to see the bean sprouting process over the next few classes.

After the children had a chance to plant the beans and place them on the window sill, they were waiting for it to sprout and found it challenging to understand now that the bean is in sunlight and it has water why is it not sprouting? Lots of great questions and discussions had the children thinking.

I decided to read the children a story about The Enormous Potato by Aubrey Davis while they still stood by the window waiting for the beans to sprout!! The story is about a farmer who plants a “potato eye” and it begins to grow and now he needs the help of his family to pull the potato out of the ground.

We decided that after planting our bean, imagine the bean grew as big as the potato and we now needed the help of others to pick these beans, so the children had an idea that we could all pull the bean.

Each child would name a friend that could come up and help with the bean that had grown “enormous”. We began the day talking about planting and ended with helping friends.

The children demonstrated "Emergent Curriculum", which allows us to be responsive to their interests and give them a meaningful learning experience, during these activities of planting and reading a story.

Until next time.

Jess

WRCC

Comments

My Garden

April 6, 2016, 01:38 PM

Spring is here!

During playtime the children were able to create their garden using different shapes of felt on the felt board.

At circle, we read the book My Garden by Kevin Henkes. In this book, the girl grows chocolate rabbits, seashells, jellybean bushes and strawberries that glow. That is not your ordinary garden!

After the story, I asked the children “ What would you grow in your garden?” They responded through drawings.

Boaz - blueberry

Keira: flower

Ruka: flower

Jeffrey: watermelon

Chantel: flowers, ice cream, blueberry and strawberry

Claire: ice cream

Sarah: sunflower

Benjamin: cheese and apples

Chloe F: watermelon

Just like in the story, some children used their imagination in what they wanted to grow in their garden. Anything can be grown! They were also able to enhance their artistic abilities in drawing their pictures.

Until next time,

Patricia

WRCC

Comments

Spring Has Sprung

March 31, 2016, 03:41 PM

The children in our Four year old class recently had fun in the sun and sand.

On this particular day, the warmth of the sun could finally be felt and that sense of Spring was most definitely in the air.

It had rained the night before and the sand was prime for sandbox play.

There was loads of sharing, team play, and strategizing happening this morning.

We all know it takes plenty of skill, strength, and trial and error, to flip over the bucket of sand without losing the bulk of the sand in the process!

A simple puddle in the sand was icing on the cake, and was well utilized by the children.

Hands can't always and shouldn't always be clean. Being allowed to get down and dirty is an important excercise in play.

With the anticipation of more sunshine and warmer weather, Spring is an exciting time of year. We look forward to many more sandbox days ahead!

Barbi

WRCC

Comments

4 Hour Class - Playground Detectives 2: WORMS!

March 28, 2016, 11:07 PM

After many days of rain we began to notice that alot of worms had made their way onto the playground floor. Our curiosity was piqued!

In order to bring this discovery into the classroom the teachers brought in bins of soil to play with.

After some digging around we found some real, live worms in the bins!

That was when the questions began.

What do worms eat? How do worms see? Can a worm live when it has been cut in half?

We took a book out of the library to find some answers.

Here are some of the things that we learned about worms:

they don't have eyes
they can grow a new head or tail, but will not survive being cut in half
they eat leaves, grass, dead trees (and roots), and food scraps
they do not like the sun and will die if they are exposed for more than an hour or two
their poop is ok to touch
there are no "girl" worms or "boy" worms - all worms are both!
the reason that worms squirm around in your hand is because they like all parts of their bodies to be touched at the same time.

We also did some worm-inspired art!

Worms in dirt

Worms digging tunnels

Then we did a worm search!

This involved guessing where we might find worms that had come out of the wet ground and onto the pavement or playground floor. So we made a list of some of the playgrounds we know and guessed if we would be able to find worms there. Here are the results:

We chose 3 parks: West, Climbing Spider, and Mushroom and headed out to see if we were right!

Much to our surprise, we discovered that the only park that had worms was our own!

Except for one dead worm that we found at Climbing Spider Park

Here are the results of our search:

One of the other preschool classes heard about our adventures and asked if we would come and share with them. We gladly accepted the invitation and brought our bins of dirt and our newly aquired knowledge and joined them at circle time one day. We told them the facts that we learned and invited them to dig in the bins with us.