Gardening

 We had a special visitor this week.
Carson's Grandmother shared some information about seeds with us.

She showed us several different types of seeds and what was hidden inside the shells.

She also showed us the book, Seed Soil, Sun, which was full of beautiful photographs and interesting facts.

 Then we got a chance to start some seeds ourselves.



We'll check on them next Monday to see what's happened.

 Our artwork centered around the beautiful blossoms that we see everyday in our yards, fields, and florist shops.













We cut, glued, colored, and painted a variety of flower forms.

Our open-ended artwork made for some unique compositions.

Some of this lovely work is in our Memory Books that will be coming home next week.

We even tasted seeds!

Many of our friends tried both types of sunflower seeds and most of them liked the special snack.









We sequenced the growth cycle of a plant for our math experience. First, second, third, and last is pre-math experience and skill work.

 We were thrilled to play outside during the beautiful sunny days this week.

Everyone enjoyed the fresh air and room to run!

Gardening

 We had a special visitor this week. Carson's grandmother came on Wednesday to share some information with us about seeds.

She brought in some flower and vegetable plants that had grown from seed. and then showed us what those seeds looked like and what was inside the seed shell.

 A beautiful resource book was shared by Carson's grandmother and we enjoyed telling her all that we knew about what a seed needs to grow.




Ask your child to tell you three things that a seed needs.

 We made some lovely art using flowers as our inspiration.







We cut photos from magazines and glued them to paper.

 Using both real and artificial blossoms as a reference, we drew our own flower designs with markers.

We glued different petal shapes to form some abstract flowers.

Part art and part math, we sequenced the steps to show how a seed grows into a flower.

 We even tasted seeds!  Two kinds of sunflower seeds. Ask your child if they liked them.

We sorted many different types of seeds. Some looked familiar (corn, beans, peas).

Derby Time - Horses

 They're at the starting gate...and they're off!

Look at them go!

Giddyup and Whoa were the key words to a fun game of Derby racing around the track in our room.

 Thanks to Clarie's Aunt who gave us a box full of real horseshoes to handle.


We were able to trace them, lay a path with them, and incorporate them into our music time .

 We talked about horses wearing shoes (they're the only animal that we know to wear shoes of any kind!).











We used three different sizes of horses to sequence from smallest to largest.

Some new vocabulary included, Mare, Foal, and Yearling.

Practicing our scissor skills took place at the writing table and when we "fringed" the "grass" for our water-color horses.

Using cookie cutters, we made horse prints.

Tangrams are geometric-shaped pieces that form pictures when placed together.  This math activity is simple and gives experience to the many different shapes and their dimensions.

Horse week wouldn't be complete without a barn of "My Pretty Ponies" to arrange.

Finally, we spent some time talking about another very important holiday coming up this weekend - Mother's Day!





We decorated cards and make hand-prints on a poem page for our marvelous Moms.

We hope you each have a wonderful Mother's Day and enjoy all the homemade gifts and extra love from your preschoolers.

We really are grateful for all the Moms and Dad's who together, with their children, form our family at Lafayette Academy Preschool.

Thanks for all that you do for us.

Frogs

 We started our investigation of Frogs with a book that clearly showed the stages of a frog's life cycle.







Then we glued the five stages from egg to frog on our paper.

 We learned some new vocabulary: amphibian, tadpole, pondweed.

Frogs are born from eggs. They develop into tadpoles that have gills, then develop into frogs that have lungs.


Their tails disappear and they grow legs.

Math time had us counting out 5 green frogs and we added the speckles from the three-hole-punch.










We also sang a song about 5 Green and Speckled Frogs using our flannel board.

 We counted and sang through this song several times so everyone had a turn to choose a frog from the board.

Ask your child to sing it for you. Remember to rub your tummy after "eating the most delicious bugs, yum yum!"

Easel painting gave us some large, green lily pads which we decorated with lovely pink paper blossoms.










If you have a chance, take your child to a pond to view real lily pads and if your lucky, see a frog having a rest on one!

Our writing practice focused on the letter "Ff" for Frog.

Some of us follow dotted lines, some trace over a previous drawn line, and some are independent writers. Everyone is growing and progressing.





Read-alouds are one of our favorite times of the day.