Butterflies and Insects

It was fun week of studying butterflies and bugs!  We talked about the life cycle of a butterfly and the parts of creepy crawly insects.  We made ladybugs by paint stamping with potatoes, and we traced butterflies with stickers and crayons.  We also made symmetrical butterflies with globs of paint that turned out really colorful!  It was a very busy week with assessments starting, so I was busy doing out last evaluation of learning rings as well as starting our end-of-the-year assessments.  (That's why there aren't a lot of pictures this time.  Sorry!)  This year sure has gone by quickly!  I am going to miss the kiddos so much!


Here is a song we enjoyed this week about butterflies as well as a book that we read by Eric Carle.
Butterfly Life Cycle Song

The Very Hungry Caterpillar Read Aloud

Painting our hands to make butterflies that we'll get to decorate next week.

Using stickers to trace and "color" our butterflies.

Using globs of paint to create symmetrical butterflies.

Didn't these butterflies turn out super cute?!  All this from squeezed globs of paint. :)

It's playtime!

 

Working those hand muscles with our playdough time.

Enjoying the beautiful sunshine outside!

Such sweet friends. :)

Plants and Gardening

We were able to do so many fun things with plants this week!  We made crafts with noodles and yarn, we painted with forks, we put flowers in colored water, and we learned the different parts of a plant.  So much to learn and so little time, but we definitely had fun doing it!  Hope you enjoy our pics from our activities this week.  Hard to believe we only have a few weeks left of preschool! :(

I've also shared a little video we watched about the life of a seed. 
Sid the Seed Video

These kiddos are making progress on tracing their names!  All that hard work with strengthening these hand muscles is starting to pay off! :)

We talked about the parts of the plant and then created a sunflower out of sunflower seeds, rotini pasta, pipe cleaners, and yarn.

We labeled the roots, stem, leaves, and flowers/petals.

We traced the letter X by painting with the ends of celery stalks.

We got to paint tulips with forks and paint brushes.  We counted as we painted 10 tulips and then traced our name and the number 10.

We made xylophones and mallets to show the letter X.  Great work for these little hands, and a great way to create the letter as well.

Playdough time with our friends!

So many sweet friends getting along and playing well together.  Makes my heart smile. :)

Ryland, Katelyn, and Jake were putting on a puppet show for all of us.

We put three daisies and a white rose in water and then added food coloring to the water.  We made predictions about what we thought would happen, and the next day we looked to see if any changes had happened to the flowers.  The tips of our white rose were starting to turn blue the next day from the blue colored water that traveled up the stem.  For some reason our daisies didn't show as much color difference.  Nevertheless, this was still a great way to talk about the parts of the plant.  We said the stem is like a straw that sucks up the water and travels to the flower and petals. 

We had a special cupcake snack to celebrate Arrabelle's birthday this week. 

Happy Birthday, sweet girl! :)

Have a great week everyone!  See you next Thursday!

Easter

It's been so much fun celebrating Easter with these sweet kiddos this week!  We've gotten to enjoy some sunshine playing outside, paint with peeps, hunt for eggs, paint with plastic eggs, and celebrate the resurrection of Jesus!  Hope you enjoy the pics of our various activities as well as a few videos we enjoyed this week too. :)


The Bunny Hokey Pokey

Letter Sound Song

Counting 1-10 Video

As part of our morning work, we were able to use tiny pencils to scratch and color crosses for one of our crafts.  The more we scratched off, the more rainbow colors were revealed.  These were really fun and great fine motor practice too.  We made them into our Easter craft papers that are hanging up in the hallway.

We opened up plastic eggs and dipped them in paints of different colors.  Then, we traced our letter Z for the week with all these circles from our eggs.

We worked on doing the Jesus foam puzzles.  They were a little tricky for some, but they did a great job!

We're making progress with our pencil grips and with our name tracing.  Keep working on this at home!  Hopefully, we'll be able to write them independently really soon!

We also got to paint with marshmallow peeps!  We cut them in half and used them like sponges for painting our Easter eggs of different colors.  Then we traced our name at the bottom.

These sweet kiddos were so proud of their goodies they brought in to share in their plastic eggs.  We had some great items in these eggs, and we had some very smart scientists who made great predictions on what was inside. :)

Let's shake the egg first and see what we hear.  Is it loud or quiet?  Does it sound like it's soft or hard?  Do you think there's one item inside or many?  

 

 Then, we opened each one to find the surprise. 

They were so sweet and excited about sharing what they had hiding inside. :)

Great playtime with friends!

Such cute smiles!

We're strengthening our hand muscles when we work with play dough, and cutting it with these plastic scissors works these hands all the more.  Way to go guys!

We're on the hunt for Easter eggs!  Each kiddo found 3 eggs for their bag to go home.  We also had some great friends who helped each other out when they couldn't find any.  Such good friendship!

We were able to enjoy some AWESOME weather this week!  What a blessing!

Hope all of you had a wonderful Easter!  See you next week. :)