Wormy Fruit with Teacher Susan!

Hello parents, families, and friends of Teacher Kate's class! Before I tell you about the very exciting project our friends are working on, I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself to all of you. I'm Teacher Susan, and I am thrilled to be working in the preschool classrooms with Teacher Kate and Teacher Jane! I am working to revamp the afternoon class (I hope our late pick-up parents are enjoying friends' evening art, music, games, and dancing!), and I am spending my mornings doing everything I can to help our preschool teachers do their amazing work.

I had a very exciting opportunity this week to do a project with Teacher Kate's morning class thanks to a peach one of our friends found in his lunchbox on Monday. After taking a bite of it, he turned to me and said, "There's a bug on my fruit!" I came over to inspect it, and, sure enough, there was a little worm inching its way up the side. Our friends were immediately excited and wanted to know more. We all looked and talked about the worm and what it was doing. Then we saved the peach and the worm to see how they changed throughout the week. Our friends noticed Tuesday that the worm was not on top of the peach anymore. On Wednesday, one of our friends noticed the worm crawling up the side of the jar. We did shaving cream paintings with yarn worms. We also compared the peach to some oranges from my own home- one healthy and one with a worm as well- and did drawings with chalk, colored pencils, markers, and crayons.

We will continue to observe and discuss how the fruits are changing and what kind of relationship the fruits have with their worms.

Books

We are learning about books!  Some new terms we will be learning are: fiction, non-fiction, author, illustrator, and binding.  We are also writing autobiographies, and getting some extra writing practice!

Habitats

Our preschool class just finished a section on habitats.  We learned about different animals of the rain forest, the ocean and the desert.  We found out that there are 4 layers in the rain forest: emergent, canopy, understory, and the forest floor.  The ocean has different types of animals at the surface, in the open ocean, and on the ocean floor.  And the desert has both nocturnal (night time) and diurnal (day time) animals.  Our class also got to taste several different foods from each habitat, some of which we hadn't ever tried before.  Mango and bananas were two of our favorites from the rain forest, but the peppers were not a big hit.  We really liked the crab, and salmon from the ocean but not many liked the seaweed.  The desert had some interesting foods, feta cheese and figs were the favorites, but dates surprisingly were not.

Meet Mr. Joe

Hi All,

     I would like to introduce you to my husband Joe.  Joe works for an engineering startup and creates everything from board games to computer simulators.  Mr. Joe (as the kids call him) will be coming in to the classroom for a couple of hours on Wednesday mornings to read and do crafts with the kids.  We are so excited to have him!

Teacher Kate

Teacher Kate Got Married!!

Hi guys,

    So one month ago I got married!  It was a beautiful ceremony.  It was also wonderful to have my family in town from Michigan.  Joe and I went to Alaska for our honeymoon, and it was gorgeous and very relaxing.

    I am so happy to be back at school, and we have so much going on in our classes.  Last week we celebrated International Mud Day!  What a blast!  The water flowed into the mud pit and the kids had a ball.  We drew pictures and wrote poems, and generally got VERY MESSY!





















   Last Friday we celebrated the Independence Day by learning a bit of history about how the United States became its own country, making paper fireworks, and having a patriotic snack of red, white, and blue fruit. (also practiced our dexterity by putting the fruit on our own skewers!)


















    This week we are kicking off our summer program and starting out by learning about the rain forest.  Today we learned that the rain forest has 4 layers: the emergent, the canopy, the understory, and the forest floor.  We also taste tested lots of food from the rain forest: peppers, tomatoes, avocado, papaya, mango, and banana.  And smelled flavors from the rain forest: vanilla, cinnamon, turmeric, ginger, and cocoa.  We are definitely having a lot of fun with the rain forest.   

Silk Worms

If you haven't checked out the new visitors in our class, you should soon! They are silk worms! Currently they are pretty small, but with such a voracious appetite they won't stay small for long. Pretty soon they will be about 10,000 times as big as they were when they hatched!

We are looking forward to seeing this amazing transformation.

If you have access to a mulberry tree, please bring in leaves since our silkworms eat A LOT!!

Teacher Kate and Teacher Jane

K'nex Connects Ideas

Have you watched the children play with K'nex? It is so fascinating. One day we see an arrow or a spear (not my favorites) and the next it is a robot or a clock. This inventive toy is the craze in the blue room right now. You can see anywhere from 1 to 8 children building at the same time. They seem to attract both boys and girls. It is great for small motor skills not only putting them together but pulling them apart to put them away. They are using spacial development and I have noticed that they are balancing their work; same pieces and colors being put on each sides. Their structures are also getting larger and more complex. Then they use them in pretend play after they have them built. They are so proud to show off their finished products and describe what the new thing can do. Here are some examples: Erik and his helicopter. Luke and his Robot. Nico and his robot. Ryan and his hat. trent and his clock.