Staying Cool this Summer

One of the reasons I keep blogging about our school days is that looking back at the week encourages me to be a reflective teacher.  One thing I've realized this week is that we need a new sandbox.  The old one was wooden and falling apart, so we took it out a few weeks ago, but there's a group of kiddos who still play in that area, desperately collecting the sand that accumulated in the mulch over the years.  When I see children determined to return to a favorite activity, I know it is feeding a need.  They need a sandbox.

It's definitely summer around here, and they also need ways to play outside and get their big body play, but without getting overheated.  I have misters that we turn on while we're outside, and they help a lot, but we've also had water and bubble play several days, and the kids love it!

 Arguably their favorite bubble toys, the large circular wands are in constant use when I have them available.  I'm really impressed with how well the children manage to share them, using other toys while they wait for their turn to use the huge wands. 

 Who wouldn't want to make huge bubbles like this?!

 Another favorite wand has many large holes, and makes a cluster of bubbles.  When a bunch of bubbles are stuck together, the children call them "snowman bubbles" - and chase them down to pop them.

 There's some snowman bubbles!

 This is the main cadre of bubble poppers, ready to chase them down and pop any stray bubbles, any way they can: with their feet, their hands...

 ... their mouths.  Yuk!  Bubbles don't taste so good!

 These girls, in the mean time, were figuring out how to share one car.  They couldn't scoot it very fast, but they were both on, and apparently they were satisfied with just sharing.  Nice!

As much fun as we can have in my backyard, I think it is important to play in other playgrounds sometimes.  Each playground offers different ways to move our bodies, different combinations of activities, and fun new elements to explore.  I took two different groups of kiddos to Stovall Park to play this week.  There are climbing elements that use lots of upper body strength, spinning elements, and some fun places to pretend.

 Here the boys were playing hide and seek...

 I mentioned last week that the Arlington Public Libraries have a lot of free shows for kids this summer, both at libraries and at recreation centers around town.  We're taking advantage of some of the performances, and checking out the rec center playgrounds while we're there.  If you are in the area, you can check out the schedule of events at  http://www.arlingtonlibrary.org/kids-calendar.

 It's really hot out on the playgrounds in the afternoons, so we take our ice water, and I take a spray bottle full of water to douse the kids - and myself.  Do you think these girls liked me spraying them down?

 Our backyard play area is nice and shady, and with ice water, misters, and a little water play, it's still nice to get out at the house too.

 So how do we keep from getting bored at the house?  By rotating which toys are available.  This week I dug out the light bright, and the little pet shop toys, as well as kid connex, and those were instant favorites.

Outside, I got out some high dollar toys... by which I mean recycled loose parts for the kids to play with.  You've surely heard people talk about how children prefer the box to the new toy sometimes... I take that theory and go with it pretty regularly.  These cardboard tubes were in the center of carpet rolls, slated for the trash or recycling bin... but I rescued them.  Add balls (and pine cones), and you have serious kid entertainment.

We added plastic tubing and recycled bottle funnels to the water play table, and the children came up with quite the creation.

 The children connected all the tubes, attached the funnel to one end, put the other end in the top of a water wheel, and collected water to pour down the funnel and into the water wheel. 

 Joy!

A months of firsts... and lasts.

Summer is a time of transitions.  Friends who have been with me for two or three years are ready to move on to elementary school, new friends are ready to start preschool, and sometimes "old" friends come back for the summer.  This month we've had 4 children leave, 3 start, and we're not quite finished with the changes yet.  Come August we'll have several more.  

I think most teachers find this a bitter-sweet time.  It's wonderful when our students have mastered the year's curriculum, and I know I  want them to go on to their next educational adventures, but...  that means moving on, and after such a long time together, they - and their families - feel like members of my family.  New kiddos are fun, and it's an adventure getting to know each other.  I guess I could say those new relationships are full of promise.  No one knows what is to come, and we're all full of hope.

Here are a few of the things we've been doing as we say our hellos and goodbyes at school this week.

We're enjoying playing with manipulatives after lunch, learning about shapes and numbers together.

We've sorted, and pretended a lot.

 There were a couple of stormy days this week, so we got out of our rhythm, and improvised with whole days inside.  Play-dough to the rescue!

Several of the preschool children have mastered their letters and sounds, and have begun trying to sound out words as well as "read" books.  This week I started several of them on reading predictable texts full of sight words - which is really teacher talk for the next stage in teaching them to read.  This is a magical time, when children are trying to break the reading code, and have the tools to start figuring things out.  What a joy when a child looks up from a book at me with shining eyes and announces, "I can READ!"  With just a little more support and guidance, they will be unstoppable readers, because they know they can.  It is an exciting time!

One of our kiddos had a birthday this week, so of course we had to bake cupcakes. 

 I took two groups on field trips this week, and for several of the children it was their first time to go on a trip with me.  One group had a blast at the FW Museum of Science and History, and the other group loved seeing a Mad Science show at our local library.  If you are in the Arlington area, you really should know about all the free programs the library has to offer this summer - check it out here and the museum here.

 Pretend grocery store...

 ... snakes and spiders to observe...

 ... trains to play with...

 ...water play...

 ...and giant blocks to haul and arrange.  I asked one of the children what she was making.  "A sculpture," she told me.  Yes indeed!

 Another day we made my pumpkin gingerbread muffins for snack.  The children get very excited about the muffins, and not only because they help to cook them!  I have the recipe posted on my website:   http://paulaspreschoolandkindergarten.webs.com/favoriterecipes.htm  There is more pumpkin in the recipe than there is sugar, so it is jam packed with nutrition, as well as flavor.  They are super-moist... and even the newest 3 year olds can help to make them!  I hope you'll try them too - and let me know what you think!

Our summer is off to a great start!  We have a lot more fun to look forward to as we get to know our new friends, and learn together every day.  I hope your summer is jam packed with fun and learning too!  Have an awesome day,
Paula

Post Script
Ms. Julie just called me out to see what they kiddos are doing on the playground this morning.  They  are trying to make it rain.  They're out on the playground, sitting in a circle.  They're holding hands and have their eyes shut, and are chanting "Oh, ma-hey-ah."  Gosh I wish I'd have a change to get a picture of that!

It Must Be Summertime...

 It may only be the beginning of June, but here in Texas, it sure feels like summertime!  When the temperature hits 90*, it's time to break out the popsicles.  This was the first popsicle of the summer.

 With summer break here, we have some old friends graduating, and new friends starting.  My main focus for this week and next is making that transition, reestablishing routines, and learning about each other.  If we can add in some fun and a few popsicles, all the better!

 I've started turning on the misters while we are outside.  It's funny how children and adults see things differently.  To me the mister is a lovely cooling device, a spot to stand for a moment to cool off.  Do the children see it that way?  No!  They think it's a shower.  Or if they bring buckets over, maybe a bath tub, or the beginnings of delicious mud soup.

Here are some of the other things going on at school right now...

Quiet moments with friends, looking for ducks and herons, or maybe turtles...

 The cabbage plants that flowered a month ago are drying up now - and releasing their seeds as they do.

 The children spent a lot of time this week picking the tiny seeds out of the seed pods, and gathering them in envelopes or tiny cups.

 They enjoyed it so much, and were getting such great fine motor work outs doing it, that I brought them inside to work on after lunch one day.  They collected hundreds of seeds!  One day next week I'll have them count them out and glue them in groups of ten, so we can find out just how many there were.

Do you remember the nasty old carefully nurtured potatoes I wrote about a couple of weeks ago?  You can see that post here.  They are growing beautifully!  Not all of them survived, but there are several plants growing, and the children have already helped me add soil around them twice.  Potatoes will grow in the space between the original planting, and the top of the soil, so we'll keep adding soil as the plants grow, and hopefully have a delicious harvest in a couple of months.

 My kindergarteners helped me pick beans, strawberries and tomatoes at a neighbor's house one afternoon this week.  Their garden is so much more bountiful than mine!  It was such a pleasure for us to search for green beans, hiding under the leaves, and for ripe red tomatoes.  One of the children kept picking tomatoes, and telling me they were "as red as candy".  Guess what?  They tasted like candy too!

 Look closely at this child's smile... yes, that is a strawberry in her mouth!

One more fun activity that I want to share this week is our "junk box exploration".  Yes, I know, junk box sounds... lovely.  Just what you'd want your child to play with.  Really.  The truth of the matter is, the children loved this so much, they begged to have it again the following day - and we did.

 So what exactly is "junk box exploration?"  Just what it sounds like.  Over the years I've collected lots of little bits of junk that I know will fascinate the kiddos. 

Do you remember being a child?  Do you remember what fascinated you, and what you wanted to play with and check out?  I remember being fascinated with paper - any kind of paper.  Little pieces of colored paper, the marvelous acordian folded dot matrix printer paper with the tearable seams... any paper!  I also loved the junk drawer in our kitchen.  I never knew what I might find in the junk drawer: keys, coins, buttons, rubber bands, book marks, lost game pieces... treasure!  Maybe I've made this collection for myself more than for the kiddos, but they love it just as I did.

Looking at these pictures, I see a block the boys played with when they were little, a coin purse one of them used for a short time, a glow in the dark star that was once on the ceiling above the bunk bed, a plastic top that used to be in my treasure box at school, a key ring - from where?, a tiny yellow traffic cone that may have been Bob the Builder's, a cork, a marker lid - how many of those have we worn out over the years?, the bow from a Snow White dress - the one we could hardly get off a daycare child long ago- it was so loved.  There's a white pinecone left over from a craft project, tiny plastic mazes the boys were given one Halloween, the magnet from a magnadoodle toy... all flotsam and jetsom of my life as a teacher and a mommy. 

When I think about it, this is not really a junk box at all.  It's a memory box, already full of memories for me, and just beginning to open itself to possibilities for the children.  Little wonder they see it as a treasure!

Denise Fleming books

Do you have favorite authors and illustrators?  Chances are, you do.  Me too!  One of the many children's book author/illustrators I love is Denise Fleming.  Her art is very distinctive, and her books are perfect for young children.  I decided to focus on some of her books this week, here are some of them:

We began the week with the book Lunch!  In the book, a little mouse enjoys a variety of colorful fruits and vegetables, and gets very messy in the process.  We used cotton swabs to paint our own little mice.

 I also created several other follow up activities for the children: a blind taste test, with graphs for predicting and charting the results, sorting which foods in the book are fruits/vegetables, and of course, a class book to write, inspired by the original.  There were enough activities in this pack to keep us busy for 2 days.  If you'd like, you can check it out on my TpT store here.

On Friday, I thought I'd try a lesson with the preschoolers that I've used successfully in the past with first graders: writing poetry in response to Where Once There Was A Wood.  I am so glad that I did!

We started by reading the book, of course!  Then we talked about the habitat in the book, and other places that animals live.  As you can see, the children came up with a lot of ideas about habitats!  We brainstormed 3-4 animals that might live in each habitat.  With older children, I would have had them describe each animal and the actions it might take, but these kiddos are young, and had really worked hard to think of all these ideas.

To follow up, I pulled each child individually to the computer, and we looked at the chart together.  Each child chose one habitat and three animals that belonged there.

 
The children thought about what their chosen animals might do, and as they dictated, I typed their words for them.  As you can see, we followed the structure of the book very closely, and Denise Fleming's beautiful imagery and repetition guided the children to make thoughtful observations.











What do you think?  I think these 4 and 5 year old kiddos wrote some lovely poetry.