Thursday, May 28, 2015

First Year Favorites

It's been busy the last couple of weeks getting ready for the end of school, and today I said goodbye to my first preschool class at Hands and Heart Learning. This year has been so much FUN, and I've honestly felt a little bit sad all day about finishing up the year. But Gorilla and I have some awesome summer activities planned, and it will be nice to take a little break.

I've enjoyed reflecting on this year and everything that we did, so I thought I would share some of my favorite moments. 

Raising Butterflies
I'm pretty sure I was just as excited as the kids during this whole process. It was all so fascinating to witness, but the moment when we watched the butterflies flutter away just felt magical. 

Rainbows
There's just something happy about rainbows..
.a couple kids continually drew rainbows after this art project. 


Penguin and Pinecone Friends
I found a lot of great new literature this year, but I especially loved this book and the kids loved making pinecone friends.


Frozen Hearts Sensory Bin
This was a favorite sensory bin. 
I am now a huge fan of "ice excavation" activities. They are so fun!


Polar Bear Art
Our study of polar bears resulted in my favorite art project of the year. 
Gingerbread 
Another new favorite book, plus the process of baking gingerbread with the kids was pretty sweet. 

Fall Leaves and Pumpkins
They are so great to use as learning tools!
We have done some fun things this year, but the best moments for me are definitely watching the kids each progress and learn in their own ways. I love being a part of their learning process. 
Happy Summer!

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Magnet Painting

Last week, we did some exploring with magnets and everyone was excited and eager to get a turn to try this fun magnet painting activity.
Although this art process creates a messy looking effect, it is super clean and contained.
We used an old box, paper, paint, a strong magnet, and then magnetic marbles to move around. When I researched this activity, I saw some talented teachers that had taken the time to create a stand for the box so the kids could do this more independently. Maybe one day I'll create something like that, but this time it worked for me to just hold the box for each child as they manipulated the magnet underneath.
Even when it wasn't their turn, the kids loved to watch the process. It was almost like magic to watch the marbles dance around the paper.

Saturday, May 16, 2015

Our Butterfly Books

Throughout our butterfly unit, we took time almost every day to write about the things we were learning.

Each of my students are working on different stages of pre-writing development, just as they should be at this age. This was a great process to let them apply their developing skills within a meaningful context.


First, we wrote about caterpillars:

I always encourage the students to tell me what words to write for their picture or markings. This helps them to understand that what they write has value, meaning, and purpose. It also models the act of writing words to represent thoughts and ideas. And if students are interested and ready to write words and letters on their own, I of course encourage those efforts as well.
Then we wrote about caterpillars forming a chrysalis. You might notice a lot of 'J' shapes in these pages because we talked a lot about and observed our caterpillars hang in the shape of a 'J' before forming their chrysalis.
Then we did a couple different butterfly pages.
For one of the pages, I demonstrated how to draw the basic shapes of a butterfly and we all tried to draw one together that looked like the ones we had raised.
Finally we did some coloring, cutting, and gluing for a page depicting the butterfly life cycle.

Thursday, May 7, 2015

Goodbye Butterflies!

Four of our five caterpillars successfully transformed into butterflies, and today we set them free!

But not before spending plenty of time in class watching them stretch their wings and flutter around the butterfly habitat.


This has been such a fun process to be involved in, and we all felt a little bit sad about letting the butterflies go today. But we've been learning about how butterflies can fly so high and so far, and how they carry pollen that helps the flowers keep growing...and they can't do that in our little cage.
So during outside time, we opened their cage and set them free. One butterfly was quick to flutter right out. I gently helped the rest one at a time in hopes that the kids could get another up-close look before they flew away.
It was exciting to watch them fly higher and higher until they were out of sight.

Goodbye Butterflies!

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

From Chrysalis to Butterfly

On Monday morning I noticed a new little friend sitting on the bottom of our butterfly habitat. Our first butterfly! I was excited that there would be at least one butterfly for the preschool kids to see after the weekend.
Sadly, another butterfly tried to emerge on Monday as well, but something went wrong and it wasn't able to get its wings open. It looks like that one is not going to make it. :(

But the kids were really excited to see the first butterfly. We checked on the other 3 remaining chrysalides throughout the day, but didn't see any changes. Then at the end of the day, we saw that another butterfly had emerged! I was bummed that we missed it- I would have loved for the kids to see that step in the process first-hand.
About an hour after preschool was over, I just happened to notice that another chrysalis was transparent and had broken apart. It was fascinating to watch the butterfly climb out and then slowly stretch out its wings. I wished again that we had caught the moment in class earlier! But that's okay, we have 3 healthy butterflies and 1 chrysalis left, so we'll have plenty to observe and then set free during the next class. Overall, I'd say the timing worked out pretty perfectly for this activity- each week we've been able to observe a different stage of the butterfly life cycle.
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