Graduation

This week we have been busy getting ready for Graduation.  We will be saying goodbye to 7 very special Graduates this year.  Even though I am always sad to see them go I am also excited to see what their future has in store!  Tomorrow I would like to have all of my graduates from 9:00-11:00 for graduation practice.  Our Graduation ceremony will be Sunday at 2:00.  All of our PLA kiddos are invited to come and support their friends.  They can even join in when we do our performance.  Even though we have been busy with graduation preparation there has still been plenty of time for playing!

Pictures from the week!

 

Farm – Friday

We had such a great week learning about farms! Our field trip, Thursday, to The Funny Farm was so much fun. I posted pictures on our Facebook page. Today, we drew a picture and talked about what our favorite part of our field trip was.  We also practiced writing on our white boards. We had a special McDonald’s breskfast, and there was a frog in our tank!! He will be going back to David’s creek soon!
REMINDER: Friday I need our graduates for graduation practice from 9 -11. They can stay longer if needed. Graduation Sunday, May 31st at 2:00.

Farm

I am so glad we decided to reschedule our field trip!  What a yucky day this turned out to be.  We talked about the different crops some farmers grow, and then we explored corn on the cob!  We took turns shucking it and then we took the corn to the table and painted with them.  We read Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that Type by Dorren Cronin.

REMINDER: Field Trip tomorrow, a jacket and tennis shoes would be a great idea, and don’t forget your PLA shirts.  No School Monday, May 25th.

Farms

Today we sorted jungle animals and farm animals.  We read Mr. Duck Means Business!  We played with our barns and made fence out of toilet paper rolls and craft sticks. http://makinglearningfun.com/themepages/CowboyToiletPaperTubeFences.htm  Some of the children painted with water color and we all enjoyed the beautiful weather on the playground.  The weather tomorrow though is not going to be so nice.  We have decided to reschedule our Field Trip for Thursday same time same place.  I hope this works for everyone!

REMINDER: Field Trip Thursday, May 21st 9:30-2:00.  PLA will be closed Monday, May 25th for Memorial Day.

Farms

This week we are learning about farms.  I asked the children what they know about farms and these are the answers they gave…

We sang Old MacDonald Had a Farm while looking at the book and read Otis by Loren Long.  Otis is a tractor and we have a few books featuring Otis.  We love Otis!  We practiced writing our names, and painted with tractors.  We also did some more fine motor work with the chalk board.  I wrote the alphabet and the children used water and a paintbrush to trace the letters.  We also had a lot of fun on the playground!!

REMINDER: Field Trip on Wednesday.  We are leaving PLA at 9:30 and will be back around 2:00.  If you are not driving, please remember to leave your child’s car seat.  No School on Monday, May 25th for Memorial Day.

Tadpoles

We interrupt our regularly scheduled theme to bring you Tadpoles!!  My son caught a bunch of giant tadpoles that are in all stages of development.  He also brought us a 20 gallon tank for us to watch our tadpoles turn into frogs.  After the metamorphosis is complete they will be taken back to his house so he can release them back into the creek.  The children were so excited, way too excited to talk about anything but tadpoles.  So I dug out our frog books and we learned a few new words like metamorphosis and amphibians.  We talked about the life cycle of a frog and even pretended to be frogs by hopping away from circle time.  We got the tadpoles tank ready and added some rocks, because after their back legs pop out their gills slowly quit working and they have to breath air.  We leaned that from our book Rookie Read-About Science book Tadpole to Frog.  We also boiled and froze some lettuce for them to eat.  This will be such a fun science activity for the kiddos, be sure and ask them about their tadpoles!  I know they will have many storied to tell over the next few weeks!  Thank You David for the tadpoles!

There was a word search on the back of our frog poster and he was showing me that he found all of the letters in his name!

Weather Journals

Bees

We learned about Bees today.  We learned about how pollen sticks to bees feet and they transfer the pollen from flower to flower.  To show them how this works we ate Cheetos and then looked at our orange fingers!  This was a fun and yummy experiment!  We made honeycombs out of honeycomb cereal and used a yellow stamp pad to add fingerprint bees.  There is now a puppet theater in our classroom!  I made a quick trip to Springfield after work yesterday to pick it up… It was a big hit!  We also welcomed a new friend, and had to bring out our 3rd table and for the first time we used all of our cots!  Yay!  We are so happy to have you!

REMINDER: Our field trip is Wednesday, May 20th!

Worms

We read Wonderful Worms by Linda Glaser, and we learned how helpful worms are for our gardens!  We painted with “worms” (spaghetti) and finger painted with “mud” paint.  I thought the boys would love this, but they were a little grossed out… the girls however loved it!!  We filled up our class Weather Journal we have been doing since January during Circle Time.  The weather watcher would check the weather and then draw a picture of the weather in our weather journal.  From now until the end of school the children will be drawing a picture of the weather in their own weather journals.

Insects and Worms

This week we are learning about insects and worms.  Some of them are very helpful to flowers and plants and some of them are not.  Today, we read the book Creepy Crawlers and Buzzzz Said the Bee.  Creepy Crawlers is a nonfiction book about bugs, and Buzzz is a silly rhyming book that the children helped me read.  We made ladybugs out of an egg carton and used insect stamps to create a picture.  We added dinosaur sand toys to our kinetic sand and bug eyes to our Science Center.  We also had fun playing in our flower shop, and the weather was beautiful for playground time.  Flower shop pictures can be found on our facebook page www.facebook.com/plaacademy

   

Muffins for Mom

Thank you so much to the moms that were able to join us for breakfast this morning!  After breakfast the kiddos helped us clean up, we did circle time, and had free play the rest of the morning.  It was a beautiful day on the playground!