Friday, May 13, 2016

May 13th, 2016

These past two weeks, we've celebrated our brand, new garden.

 Last week, we started off by spreading lots of new soil out into our empty planter box.

Then, we carefully planted basil, carrots, lettuce, strawberries, cilantro, tomatoes, mint, rosemary, and parsley.

We also discovered that we love watering!

We didn't do half bad!

In class, we started with a new library of books...

...and new sensory bins.

 Then, we updated our door display and created a flower shop.

Throughout the rest of the week, we spent a lot of time in the flower shop.

We learned about the different parts of a plant...

...we pieced together pictures of fruits and vegetables...

...and we watered.

Carefully breaking and rinsing out eggs (followed by a scrambled egg snack), we planted flower seeds inside...

...to make flower heads.  Hopefully they grow!

We didn't forget about our letter Yy, though.

We made our Y-Yaks...

...once we figured out what a yak was.

We also studied Mary, Mary Quite Contrary and made our take-home books.

Oh, and we watered.

Our absolute highlight of the week, however? Worms!  I brought in 100 composting worms from the Mission Hills Nursery and the kids could not get enough of them.

Worms, worms...
...we love worms.

We even love playdough worms.

Finally, we said goodbye to the worms as we let them do the work that they do best.

And then we watered.


PS.  For my birthday/teacher appreciation day, thank you.  Thank you for all of the beautiful cards, generous gifts, and well-wishes.  It made my year! :)

Friday, April 29, 2016

April 29th, 2016

This week, we celebrated our field trip to Sea World!

Last week, as we prepared to go, we learned all about ocean life.  We started with our W-Walruses...

...made our dolphin water colors...

...put together water puzzles...

...played with whales...

...made our handprint crabs...

...and traced sea life words.

We also got to have fun with my seashell collection.

And practiced subtraction sentences with them.

Speaking of math sentences, we have been killing them these past weeks!  

On Monday, we went on our annual trip to Sea World and met a real walrus.

And horseshoe crabs.

It was a fun time had by all.

Coming back Tuesday, it was a short week.  So, we filled our time with one big project: Volcanoes!  
We made four separate teams and created Mt. Lava, Mt. Cyborg, Mt. Rocky, and Mt. Rose.

Step 1 was paper mâché.

Step 2 was painting.

And, step 3 was blast zone!

We ended our week with a bang. :)

Friday, April 8, 2016

April 8th, 2016

These last two weeks, we've learned all about bugs!

And went a little bug crazy.

We filled our library up with bug books...

...and filled our science center up with bug stuff.

We also had a chance to catch bugs and show them off in class.  We built a mini-entomology lab with ladybugs, crickets, ants, rolly-pollys and beetles.  And, for good measure, a snail.

Learning about the letter U, we created our U-Underground...

we practiced bug writing...

...and we practiced bug math.


Examining the life cycle of butterflies, we learned about their different phases: Egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, and adult butterfly.


We even practiced butterfly yoga.

and made butterfly paintings.

By the next Monday, we were ready to learn about honeybees.

I brought in honey, honeycomb and bee pollen for everyone to taste...

...and we had fun with our science journals.

Then, we examined hexagons and the life cycle of a honeybee.

The highlight of our bug unit, however, was our ant farm!

Turns out, when they're safely inside an acrylic container with blue gel, they're really fun to watch!

And write about.

We like ants in this form!

They're even cuter when you add eyelashes.


It's been a buggy two weeks.


And we've enjoyed every second of it!