Color Mixing

Last week the kids were talking on their own at the snack table, and the topic of mixing colors together to make new colors came up for discussion. It's always interesting to observe conversations like this, because it gives me such a great glimpse into their different levels of understanding.  After they discussed it for a few minutes, I joined in and suggested that we learn more about colors and what happens when they mix together. Everyone agreed it would be fun to learn more. I love it when I can prepare activities based on their interests and inquiries!

There are a lot of fun books that explore primary and secondary colors, but today we read a simple one called Mouse Paint. We actually read Mouse Shapes last week, so it also allowed us to make a little text-to-text connection as well.

I prepared some plastic bags with "paint puddles," like in the story, that we could use as we read.

During the story, we pretended like our fingers were little mice feet and mixed up the colors together.

We mixed until we could see bits of the new color starting to form, and then we set the bags out for further exploration and mixing during center choices time.

I also set out some finger paint and white paper to see what other kinds of Mouse Paint color mixing art the students might create.

We ended up with some pretty colorful masterpieces!

Are You as Tall as a Sunflower?

Another plant we've been exploring in my yard this fall is sunflowers. I had two sunflower plants mature and bloom this year.

By the time school started, both had started to droop and dry out. We've been checking every school day to see if the seeds in the middle are ready to harvest yet.

We decided to make some big sunflowers for our classroom. Last week we measured the height of our sunflowers using string. We also worked together to paint some large pieces of paper yellow so we could make the petals.

Over the weekend, I put the flowers together and hung them up on the wall.

Then every student had the chance to stand underneath one of the flowers to compare their height with both the sunflower and the other students in the class. We did this by writing our name on a green paper leaf, and using that leaf to mark the height along the stem of the flower.

Early Pumpkin Harvest

Last spring, my husband and I planted our first garden. We decided to start small, and only planted a few different things to try out. Among some other produce, I wanted to plant some pumpkins and sunflowers that I could use with my preschool class. It has definitely been a learning experience for us. Out of the 12 sunflower sprouts that I planted, only 2 survived. The pumpkin plants were doing awesome until this last month, when all of our squash plants developed a powdery fungus on the leaves and started to die. Thankfully there were already plenty of Jack-Be-Little pumpkins growing before that happened.

Although I had planned to wait until October, the preschool kids didn't mind at all that we harvested them a little early due to the dying plant. They were eager to jump in and find a pumpkin...or two...or five...to pick.

Through this activity, we were able to observe and experience:

• how pumpkins are attached to the vine as they grow
•  how they turn different shades of yellow/orange as they mature
• how to twist and pull a pumpkin off the vine
• that the stem is what's left of the vine after you pull it off 
• that pumpkins can be a bit dirty because they are sitting on the ground as they grow

We ended up with quite a large collection of pumpkins! After our two days of harvesting, we took a final count.

Exactly 30 pumpkins!

Honestly, I was a bit surprised at just how many there were, but I'm excited there are so many for us to use and explore this fall! 

Careful Counting with Bear

One-to-one correspondence is a vital skill for both reading and mathematical development, which is why I focus on it a lot with my preschool students. In math, it is basically the ability to assign only one number to an object that you are counting so that you don't recount or miscount any objects. I like to call it careful counting.

This week we read a cute counting book that helped us to practice the careful counting strategy of organizing.

Each student used a counting mat and colored bears while we read the story together.

With each new number in the story, we used the mat to help us organize the bears into a line so that we made sure we were counting carefully. Some kids were also mindful of associating their count with the written numeral as well, which was a great!

This was also a great starting activity for me to observe the strategies that each student uses while counting so I can plan for ways to further their development of this skill in the coming weeks and months.

First Day of School

Today was our first day back to preschool! The day went very smoothly, and we had a lot of fun. I'm really looking forward to a great year with this group of students.

We used the book How Do Dinosaurs Go to School to talk about some of the simple rules and routines in our classroom. When I read it, I adapt the text slightly to apply more directly to my specific classroom and common situations that I find with preschool age students- like grabbing toys or not cleaning up after an activity.

The kids laugh at the silly dinosaurs in the book, and are quick to recognize the ways the dinosaurs are behaving inappropriately. It leads to some great discussions about what the dinosaurs could do differently, and then by the end of the book the dinosaurs have figured out what to do at school. It is a fun way to start talking about how to be a great friend and student- something we will practice all year long!

We also read the well-known Chicka Chicka Boom Boom as part of our overview of the alphabet this month. Every student is at different stages of alphabetic knowledge and reading development, and we will be doing a wide variety of activities to practice with letters, sounds and words throughout the year.

I decided to use the side of this filing cabinet as a magnet board this year, and created an alphabet tree as our first invitation to play. Since it is placed right next to the word wall, we will be finding different ways to work with both letters and words using the board.

I included a dinosaur in the art center today, along with a coconut tree, to remind us about the books we read today.

At the end of the day one student drew a dinosaur as part of her first day of school journal.