Insects, bugs and things that creep

Oh yes, we got buggy this week!  This is a great time of year to learn about insects, and it seemed natural to follow up our caterpillar and butterfly learning by learning about other insects.  Do I even need to  tell you that the children loved it?!

In between our insect books (both fiction and non-fiction, of course!) we sang a song about insect body parts: Head, Thorax, Abdomen, and labeled a large diagram with the parts mentioned in the song.  Fun!  We saw pictures - including a life size drawing - of one of the biggest insects to ever live on earth, the meganeura.  Meganeura looked like a dragonfly, but it was up to 36 inches from wing tip to wing tip!  While the adults in the room seemed to all be grateful it is extinct (it lived 300 million years ago), we had the children graph whether or not they would like to meet one, and they overwhelmingly said yes!

We also had a live ladybug visit us, along with a nice supply of aphids for it to eat. (Unfortunately they all came from my oleander bush, which is yellow with aphids in some places.)  I need all the ladybug help I can get in my garden!

We also had ladybug dough play, with black beans to make spots.  We revisited a word we worked on last week, symmetry, and enjoyed the feeling of mushy dough and hard, slick beans.

We're going to use the dough again next week to make our own fossil type imprints, so a couple of kiddos borrowed their parents' phones again to take pictures of their creations.  I love seeing them remember this idea from past story time sessions!

We had out lots of magnifying glasses, plastic insects, informational cards and the like, as well as puzzles, all out of one of the early learning kits that are available for check out.

The most popular use of the plastic insects was the dirt sensory bins - with tall, tall grass, just like in Denise Flemings' book.  We set 5 of these sensory bins up on the patio outside our community room, so our families could enjoy the spring sunshine along with the bugs and dirt. 

While enjoying the sensory play bins outside, some of the children helped me to look on the day lilies for "evidence" of bugs.  We found some!  The children told me they think these petals were chewed by caterpillars, probably very hungry caterpillars!

Finally, since we did read In The Tall, Tall Grass, we followed it up with making our own tall, tall grass, an idea I saw here.  The children glued on words, wrote their names, fringe cut the paper to make "grass", and decorated it with brightly colored insects.

So much fine motor development, preparing those little fingers for writing and much, much more!

Next week we'll learn about another kind of animal that is extinct - and much bigger than the insects.  Can you guess what it is?  Come back next week to see what we learn!

Potatoes - a follow up

  If you've been following my blog, you might recall that the kiddos and I planted potatoes in the spring.  I read a fantastic children's book, Two Old Potatoes and Me, and we planted old potatoes just like the father and daughter in the story.  You can see the previous posts about it here.

 It's fall now, and the plants had stopped growing, and looked pretty tired.  I decided it was time to dig into the soil around the potato plants, and to see what we might have grown.

 The first thing we all noticed when I dumped out the big bin full of soil and potato plants, was that there were hundreds of worms in the soil.  Big worms, little worms, middle sized worms... lots and lots of happy earth worms.  The children couldn't keep out of it, and happily dug in, searching for potatoes, and thrilled to find the wiggly worms.

 Our "haul" was pretty pitiful.  Only one of our potato plants had any potatoes, and they were very small.  We ended up with just over a handful of new potatoes.  I probably dug them up too soon, but even so, we had very few potatoes.

You are probably thinking that growing the potatoes was a waste of time - if you judge solely by the final yield, that would be true.  So how else could this activity have been of value?

The children spent a lot of time learning about potatoes, literacy, plant growth, and nature.  We read
almost every week, all summer and into the fall.  We learned what color is "periwinkle," and noticed that the child in the book has two homes, one with dad and one with mom.  For children whose home experience is similar, it's very affirming to find characters they can relate to.

The kiddos learned that potatoes have eyes, and that they can grow from them.  We saw some of the pieces of potato rot or get eaten, and then watched as the surviving plants grew.  The children added soil to the pot, burying the base of the plants frequently to encourage potato growth.  They even looked for potato beetles regularly!  They may not ever do it again, but the kiddos know how to grow their own food, and that's a powerful piece of knowledge!

When the children found worms this year, they put them into the soil around the potatoes, and watched as the worms dug down into the soil.  Obviously those worms survived and thrived, evidenced by the massive crop of worms we found. I dumped the soil and potato plants into the vegetable garden for us to dig through, so the worms and the soil is now nourishing the garden, ready for another crop.  We also learned that worms are not boys and girls, but hermaphrodites - they are both male and female! 

So no, this crop of potatoes is not going to go very far. I'm going to make mashed potatoes with them, but will have to supplement with store bought potatoes to make enough for us all to enjoy.  Still, I'm happy with the return on the investment:  we grew some children, right along with the potatoes!

Pigs and Mud: Getting ready for International Mud Day

Have you heard of International Mud Day?  It's June 29th, but we're going to celebrate at school all week long, culminating in muddy play on Friday, June 27th.

Today we are thinking about pigs and mud, since they go together so very well.  I made a Venn Diagram sorting activity for the kiddos, which we all did after reading Ten Dirty Pigs by Carol Roth.  Here are several other good, muddy, piggy books:

We have a friend with a birthday today, and another child's birthday was yesterday, so some of the kiddos helped to make cupcakes....

 ...and everyone else helped to make "mud dough". 

 This is marvelous dough!  I found the recipe on www.icanteachmychild.com.  The dough is soft and malleable, and made a huge batch - easily enough for a dozen kiddos to play at the same time.  We played with pigs and fences, with a few other farm animals thrown in for good measure.

 Next we added "cooking" props, so the children could continue making birthday cakes, brownies, and chocolate milk shakes.

Today started out very stormy, but late in the morning the rain stopped, leaving us puddles to play in!

 I know it isn't quite mud, but we did get muddy and dirty.  I think our puddle stomping is at least within the spirit of International Mud Day!

While the youngest kiddos were resting this afternoon, I worked with some of the kiddos on sounding out CVC words with a game I created for them this weekend.  We played two rounds of Mud Puddle Stomp!, and I modelled how to sound out when it was my turn.  By the time the game ended, the kiddos were sounding out these simple words too.  This game is also available at http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Paulas-Preschool-And-Kindergarten.

After snack (those yummy birthday cakes the children made this morning) we headed outside for one more dirty activity.  I put some soil and trucks in one of our play tables, so we could have dirty truck play.  No water in there yet - we'll save the real muddiness for Friday, but we had plenty of fun with the dirt.

What are you doing for International Mud Day?  I hope you can find a way to join in the fun, and get messy!  Come back every day this week to see how we keep the mud theme going!

On The Farm!

I don't know if I've ever seen the kiddos as excited as they were today!  They've been looking forward to visiting the farm where one of their classmates lives, and he's been talking about it for weeks.  Lots of parents and grandparents joined us, transporting their students so we could all make it in one trip.

Ms. Julie and I worked hard to gather all the kiddos together, and to get quiet enough to listen to directions - and the farm rooster crowed loudly.  The kids laughed and laughed!  I tried again and again, but the rooster had impeccable comedic timing, and kept the kiddos laughing.  I thought we were going to need to cook him up for lunch!  :-)

When we calmed down and sat in a big circle, our hosts brought around their bunny, Dolly, for us to hold and pet.  He was so soft!

 A few minutes later we met two kinds of chicken, a Silky and an Americana.  They were very different!

 There were horses and a donkey outside for us to meet, and a nanny goat and her almost grown son.  Last year, when we visited, he was just a kid, but he's a big boy now.

 We returned to the barn to see more animals, and sat sweetly to wait for the horses.

 Steele was a favorite with a lot of the children - he's a one eyed, pirate horse.  He's a gentle giant who lost one eye to disease this year.  We fed him treats, so he really liked us!

 Canton is a miniature horse, much less intimidating for the children as he was just about their height.

 One of the things the children remember doing last year, and were very excited to do again, was to throw rocks and dirt into the pond.  It's the little things in life!  Fortunately for us and for them, the ducks were on the other side of the pond hiding in the grasses.

 Our hosts had collected a bunch of no-longer-fit-to-eat eggs, and we got to have an "Easter" egg hunt.  The kiddos hid the eggs, and then collected them again.

 And where do you think we wanted to hide the eggs?  In the grass?  Not so much.  By the rocks?  Yes, but just a few.  No, we wanted to hide the eggs in the sand pile.  Buried.  And then climb the pile.  We're hoping we found them all, and our hosts don't discover more eggs a month from now! (Pee-ew!)

 We were all sandy, so we got blown off with the air compressor and the leaf blower.  You can see the wild and crazy joy in their eyes as they played those games!

 I considered mailing the kids home... okay, not really.  There was a giant cardboard box by the barn, and anyone who's ever met small children knows that they are like kittens, cramming into cardboard boxes at every opportunity.

 Finally, we piled up on the mower and four wheeler for a group picture, before loading everyone into cars to head back to school.

We had a blast, met lots of animals, and checked out farm equipment.  As one of the grandparents with us said, "This is the best field trip.  You can't make any better fun than this."  Thank you so much Mara and Jerry for sharing your morning and your farm with us!

P.S.  One of the parents that went with us has also blogged about our trip - from a parent's perspective.  Check that out here: http://www.pondfam.com/blog/2014/05/ !

Farm, puddles, bugs, BRIT, and zoo!

We're continuing our farm theme this week and next, as there is just SO much we want to learn about.  I made this sorting game board for our plastic farm animals this week, and the kiddos sorted animals and seeds on it.

 We did a lot of piggy activities this week, including Piggie Pie! by Margi Palatini at the listening center, and the Wee Little Piggies memory game.

 This was an exciting game, especially when someone remembered all five piggies in order to make the "This little piggy went to market" song play all the way through!

 We also practiced planting seeds like farmers, putting in hundreds of beans, chard, beets and kale seeds this week.  There's still more to go, and we'll keep working on it.  One of our youtube.com videos this week was a time lapse video of beans growing, so we're hoping that by Monday our plants will be sprouting, and we can watch them grow in real time!  I'm also hoping we'll have lots of yummy fresh veggies to eat this summer, there really isn't anything quite like picking vegetables fresh off the plant and popping them in our mouths - yum!

This week we had two different field trips.  The first group of kiddos went to Bella's Storytime at the Botanic Research Institute of Texas.  I've mentioned this story time before - it's the best story time I've ever been to!  This month we listened to the story The Great Fuzz Frenzy by Janet Stevens (see it on Amazon here), and did lots of fuzzy activities.

 We counted fuzzy pompons, sorted items by how fuzzy they were, painted with fuzzy things, and made fuzzy creations, as well as dancing with fluffy balls of fuzz.  We love Bella's Storytime!

 Another group of kiddos went to the zoo to see the giant animatronic insects.  Most of them loved it, but one kiddo isn't in any of these photos, because he was hiding behind me each time.  There's nothing quite like a 20 foot tall moving tarantula to make some of us nervous!

  I wasn't really expecting these insects to be very educational, just an extra thing to see between other animal exhibits at the zoo.  I was wrong!  Seeing the insects so much larger than life allowed the children to see some of the adaptations that make them great hunters or flyers.  On the dragonfly we could see the spikes on it's legs, and how it held its legs in a basket shape for catching mosquitoes.  We like them helping us with mosquitoes!

 When the ladybug opened it's wings, we could see that the red parts are stiff wing covers, there to protect the flimsy brown flying wings below.  It's very hard to see that on a real ladybug, but we had plenty of time to check it out on these.

I planned to take one more group of kiddos to the zoo, but we had a very rainy day, and it was not good zoo weather.  Luckily, there was a break in the rain, and we were able to go puddle stomping.  The children were so excited!  We took our shoes and socks off, rolled up our pants, and ventured out with bare feet.

 The children stomped and splashed in puddles....

...found bugs and snails in the soil....

 ... and ran around and around the circle planter in our cul-de-sac.

 Walking barefoot in the rain and stomping in puddles is one of those things that I believe every child needs to do sometimes, but it's often hard to find the right time for it.  As adults, we're so often rushing from place to place or chore to chore, that these moments can slip right by us.  Today we really did stop to smell the roses... covered in rain drops.

 Here we all are, damp but happy.  Yes, we did need a lot of baby wipes and towels afterwards.  And yes, we will definitely be ready to do this again!

Here are a few more pictures of the fun and learning we enjoyed this week:  painting...

 ...cleaning the table with shaving cream after we finished painting...

 ... learning on the ipad - I love how focused these children are, and that they are helping each other.  It's great to see the children working together to help each other learn!

... playing outside - of course!...

 ...checking out the cool caterpillar I found (but can't identify)...

 ...looking for roly pollies and other critters...

 ...and enjoying a picnic in the backyard.