Plants

This week we really dug in and learned a lot about plants!  We learned an AWESOME song by Dr. Jean that taught us all about the plant parts and had a lot of fun singing and dancing with it!

The kids can now tell you all about the plant's stem, leaves, roots, and flowers!  Not only did they learn the names of the parts, they also learned what they do!  Check out these kids observing how the celery stalk sucked the red water up the stem and was beginning to turn the leaves red!  So cool!

We also talked and read about how seeds grow, then we made our very own green house so we could observe them  with our very own eyes!

First we got a paper towel wet and put it inside a Ziploc bag, then the kids put their seeds in the bag.

and put the bag in the window to get some sun. 

After one day, we noticed the seed coat was starting to crack!  We are going to continue to observe it for the next few weeks to see what else happens.



We had the sensory tub full of everything garden.  It was so cool listening to the kids using all their new vocabulary words as they explored the tub.  The kids were calling out "Look this bean seed is starting to sprout!", or  "My stem is sucking up all the water!", and "OOOH my goodness, this one's seed coat is cracked"   It was very cool to watch and listen to them play at the sensory table, it was my favorite sensory table of the year!

 We practiced our prewriting skills by making stems for flowers!

We learned that bees help flowers by spreading their pollen, then we pretended to be bees and used tweezers to spread pollen from one flower to the next!

And plant week wouldn't be complete without planting some plants of our very own!

 Have a GREAT week, and I will see you next week, when we explore Derby!!!

Bugs, Bugs, Bugs

The past two weeks we have been learning about everything buggy.  There were bugs EVERYWHERE!  There were bugs in the rice table.

Bugs in shaving cream.

There were BIG bugs,

little bugs,

and even bug stickers!

We did A LOT of fun crafts with bugs while we learned the difference between insects and spiders!  We made an insect with 3 body parts, 6 legs, 2 antenna, 2 eyes, and a mouth!

Then we made a spider with 2 body parts, 8 legs, and up to 8 eyes!

We also studied the letter Ll and practiced making the letter Ll while we made this cute little ladybug.

 And we practiced our number recognition while we played beanbag toss with our ladybug spots.  It was so much fun!

The second week of our study, we concentrated on butterflies.  We learned about the butterfly life cycle and made this cute little caterpillar to reinforce all of our  new knowledge.

We also acted out the butterfly life cycle for those who learn better that way!  It looks crazy, but it was a lot of fun and it really got the kids involved in how butterflies grow and evolve!

We painted some really cute butterflies with our feet!

And we learned all about symmetry while we painted 1/2 of the butterfly and folded the paper over to make a beautiful butterfly.

It was a great week with a great group of kids!  They have gotten so big and are so independent now!  I am so proud of them!