Bead necklaces

Today some of the children worked on making their own bead necklace.  They used fine motor skills and eye hand coordination to pick up the beads and place it on the string, patience and determination to finish their necklace.

~Mrs. Rodrigues

New Student Teacher!

We have a new student teacher named Mrs. Ligy in our room since April 5th. The first five weeks she came every Tuesday from 8:30 until 11. Since May 9th she's been in our room from 8:30 until 4:30 for four weeks. It's been very nice having an extra hand in the room. We have enjoyed all the activities Mrs. Ligy has prepared for us.

     

    May 16, 2016

       Mrs. Ligy read us a story called, I Got My First

    Fish. Then we talked about what you use when 

    you fish. One child said a fishing rod and another 

    said a net. When the story was done we took 

    turns looking at the book and making up our own

    story.

    May 19, 2016

         Mrs. Ligy put the tablecloth on the table and put out

    some paper ice cream treats. In some paper plates there

    were different kinds of items like; little hearts, beads and 

    pom poms. Mrs. Ligy told us these were the toppings and

    we could glue them onto our ice cream. Some of us

    put some pom poms on our ice cream and others coloured 

    lovely rainbow colours.  Others decided not to put anything

    on our ice cream.

    May 20, 2016

         We played a fun blind fold game with Mrs. Ligy. She told us 

    the rules. One of us would be blind folded and then would have

    to chase our friends and try to catch them. Once we caught one

    of our friends we needed to guess who it was. Mrs. Ligy made

    sure we stayed safe. It was lots of fun!

    May 24, 2016

        We played musical chairs with Mrs. Ligy. Mrs. Ligy put the 

    chairs in a circle. Mr. Castell played some music and we had to

    walk around the chairs. When the music stopped we needed to

    quickly find an empty chair and sit down. Before the music started

    again Mrs. Ligy would take one chair away. Then we played the 

    game again. Sometimes we needed to share a chair with our 

    friends. Once there were not that many chairs left the game was

    over. We felt a little dizzy going around and around in circles!

       

    ~Mrs. Friesen

Pretzels!

Last week, I decided to do a baking activity with both the ladybugs (younger), and dragonflies (older) children. The original plan was that we were going to make banana loaf/ bread, but unfortunately the bananas we had were not ripe enough yet, so we agreed upon making "Soft cheddar pretzels".  The first group up to help was the ladybugs, and boy were they adamant to help. 

First, we had to add in all our dry ingredients, flour, baking powder, a little sugar, and a pinch of salt.  After that we needed some help blending in the margarine, so I offered a hand with the pastry blender (a potato masher is all we could find!) 

The last step was to add the milk and cheese, then roll  it out and divide into strips that would be turned into pretzels! I was really impressed with all the patience the younger ones showed while waiting for their turn, definitely on their way to being dragonflies!

After we baked the first batch up, we realized we JUST had enough for each child, and barely at that, so the next day we doubled it up with the dragonflies group.

Once again, all the children were very eager to help, and took turns really well.  Since we had more ingredients and children in this batch, it took a little longer than the first time,

but lucky for us, we have teachers to finish our job for us if we don't quite finish in time. 

The pretzels were salty and delicious in the end and mostly everyone enjoyed them.

Mr.Castell

Caterpillars

While we were playing out in the back, one of the children noticed some caterpillars on the tree.  When we looked closer, we realized that they were tiny ones and there were many of them.

That child called over his friends and soon enough everyone wanted to see.  

Of course, then they wanted to hold them.  Most of the children enjoyed having the caterpillars crawl on them.  We also talked about how the caterpillars were crawling to the top of the tree where the leaves were so they could eat them and after they would make themselves a cocoon and turn into a butterfly.

Pizza and beard

I observed 2 children playing in the housekeeping area, so I went over to listen to what they were saying.  Child 1 has a pencil and paper to write down what child 2 would like to eat. 
Child 1 - "You want pizza?"
Child 2 - "Yes!"
Child 1 - "What kind?"
Child 2 - "Olives, pepperoni."
Child 1 - "Here's your pizza."
Child 2 - "I want french fries and chicken nuggets."
Child 1 takes the pencil from child 2 and says "I'll write it myself."
Child 2 - "Can I have a beard?" (I'm assuming he means beer)
Child 1 comes back with a cup "Here's your beard."

~Mrs. Rodrigues

Play dough Creations

      I put out some blue balls of play dough and some items like; Popsicle sticks, tooth picks, feathers, pipe cleaners, google eyes, sea shells and coloured beads onto the table. The children came over to the table and observed the items in front of them. Then the creating began! Some pushed a bunch of popsicle sticks into their pieces of play dough, while others put google eyes in theirs making a monster. When the children were finished they showed off their magnificent creations!

    

   " I'm making mine very handsome!"

    "Mine's a butterfly!"

    ~Mrs. Friesen~

Construction!

Starting this week, the daycare has had some construction begin in the parking lot, so being outside in the adventure playground we're able to cautiously observe the workers use the big machines. Many of the children have plenty of questions to ask, and some have been inspired to construct something themselves.  Here's what our preschoolers have constructed...

Quite a few of our friends used their teamwork skills to help lift the heavier pieces of wood and build them into a little fort. This was good for their stacking and balancing skills.

We noticed 2 of the younger children had a great idea to build a see-saw, and they helped each other out until the job was done! Once they got the weight distribution down, they had a blast.

Mr. Castell

Sunshine!

We have been enjoying the beautiful weather by getting outside as early as possible.

There are crates in the Adventure Playground that we can build with.

"I found a seashell!"

Spending time with your sibling.

Chasing each other on the rocks.

Climbing the tires.

Jumping from one rock to another.

Passing the ball to each other.

~Mrs. Rodrigues

Painting With Yarn

     For our latest invitation to create, I set out some paper plates with tempera paints and pieces of        yarn and invited the children to get busy creating! The children dipped their piece of yarn making sure it got fully covered with paint. They then pulled it out and then placed it on their paper and moved the string all over their paper to make a cool design. I also showed the children how they could fold their piece of paper and place their paint covered piece of yarn onto the paper, then closing the paper and pressing the paper with their hands. When they opened it up they were surprised to see what kind of design they had created.

      

         Art has the role in education of helping children become

    themselves instead of more like everyone else.

  

    ~Mrs. Friesen~

Funny Faces

Recently, Mr.Castell created a new table top activity for the children to use. All that was needed was some full pages of faces (we used the teachers in our room), a little bit of cardboard, and some long magnet strips (cut to size).  

Once the faces were glued to the cardboard all that needed to be done was cutting out the needed body parts (eyes, nose, mouth, and hair), and adding magnet strips to the back.  After the activity was complete we set it down on the table and observed all the goofy faces the children were making out of all 3 faces. 

We noticed some children would try to correctly re-build each teachers face with its belonging parts, while others would make them as silly as can be, some with one eye, another with 5!  It was very fascinating at how many different variations they could make.

Mr. Castell