Constance

We read the Caldecott Winner "Thanksgiving Story" today at preschool.  Well, I read half of it then let the kids play while I read the other half to anyone who wanted to listen (one child).   That book is long!
One part all the kids liked was when it talked about the names of the pilgrims.  Pilgrims often had names like 'Diligence' or 'Prayerful' or the little baby in the book, "Oceanus".  I thought it would be fun to give all the preschool kids some Pilgrim names.  I actually did think long and hard about what names would fit each child.  Parents:  Can you guess which name goes to your kid?

Today we had:

Love, Remember, Strength, Constance, Melody and Patience at school.  For a while we also had little Tempest, but then Pa put her down for a nap.

I may use those names for the rest of the year.

What would your pilgrim name be?

Beans About It

Count 'em, add 'em, subtract 'em, graph 'em, eat 'em.  Beans are good no matter what you do with 'em.

Us? We did all those things with beans, plus made a mosaic out of them. A mosaic of something we are thankful for.
Me? I am just thankful for beans.

I showed the kids a mosaic my brother had brought back from Chile. It was made from minerals and had a key on the top telling which minerals were which. It was of a llama. The kids were only mildly impressed. I thought it would be great to tie in our South American studies and add our own Thanksgiving twist. We made our mosaics not out of South American minerals, but Native American seeds, nuts and beans. Okay, it was a stretch, but the kids seem to really enjoy the bean gluing part. They liked the graphing, too.

Oh Dear! What Could the Matter Be?

Solid?  Liquid?  or Gas?

Yes folks, it was Science Thursday at The Quick Cricket and this week we learned about states of matter!  Such a great lesson for kids.

First, we talked about molecules.  I told them if we cut up a banana (I had a banana at the time, hence, the banana) into tiny pieces, the smallest piece (that was still banana) would be a molecule.  They are so so tiny!  But, like students in our class, they like to wiggle! (here we all wiggled).   I then told them that when molecules are cold they wiggle less than when they are warm.

Then, I brought out the ice cube, glass of water and steamy tea kettle.  I showed them water in all three states!  Then, I showed them pictures of rivers and oceans, glaciers and foggy hills.  Water in all three states in nature!  WHAT?  I know their minds were blown.

After our quick discussion about examples of the states of matter I transformed them all into molecules and we ran outside.  I froze, melted, and evaporated them into various states of matter in a great game I (tap tap on the back) invented myself!  (Huzzah!)

STATES OF MATTER ACTIVE GAME
1.  Change all students into molecules of the same substance (no variable melting points for this game).
2.  Do a brief lesson on states of matter.  See above.
3.  In the solid state, your student-molecules must be touching at the shoulders and confined to a shape (inside a hula hoop you put on the ground to be your container).  In the liquid state, molecules may leave the container (spill out) and move around the yard but must maintain contact with each other by holding hands.  (think Crack the Whip).
In the gaseous state, molecules can drop hands and run as fast and as randomly as they wish around the yard.
Guess what state Student-Molecules maintain in their natural state?
4.  Teacher calls out "Colder! Colder! Solid!" or "Warmer, Warmer, Melting, Liquid!" to change the states.  Sometimes I would say, "I am adding more heat, you molecules are moving faster, and faster, some of you are melting out" or "some of you are starting to EVAPORATE!"

Hilarity ensues.
We didn't cover sublimation, though, this would be fun twist.  Especially if you brought some dry ice as an example. .. or to make root beer.


After our game we came back inside for a little art/science fusion.
We have been talking about primary colors and had started a Classroom Color Wheel.  I set up this little activity to have the kids observe secondary colors on their own.  It is fun to have them reach their own conclusions.  It was good review, too, for some that already knew (or thought they knew!) what colors would come about.

Glass Jars + Colored Ice Cubes= Art and Science Harmony

I pointed out that as the ice was warmed up (I used warm water to be more dramatic) the molecules in the ice moved faster, melted, and changed into a liquid, taking the colors with them.  We observed the color change as the ice melted.   This was a great activity because they could 1. do it themselves 2. draw cross-curriculum conclusions (we reviewed our Spanish colors as well) 3. the ice melting provided a slower color change.  It was almost like magic!

To really bring it home. . .and to bring something home, we did a beautiful art project that i have seen all over the internet but can't remember exactly where.  I didn't think it up, but i did copy it and that is worth something.  

I glued crayons in chromatic order across the top of canvasses the night before (I did a test as well to ensure that the melting point of the crayons was less than that of my glue. . .tragedy averted!  In the test I also found the need for a drop cloth as wax does splatter).  Then, I turned a blow dryer on and let the kids feel the air that came out.  It was warm!  I told them that water was not the only substance that changes states.  Any solid can melt and become a liquid and a liquid a gas if the right amount of heat is applied.  I showed them the canvasses and asked them what they thought would happen if we put the blow dryer on the crayons.  Then, I let them go for it.  2 at a time the kids aimed their air guns at the crayons and every the wax started to drip it was like Christmas morning.  Squeals, shouts, laughter, applause.  It was glorious.  I thought they would get bored watching the other kids cycle through but they didn't.  Every time was as magical as the first.  Every one turned out differently, too.  It was really one of the best projects we have done.  

The best part is, if you want it more blended or some wax chips off, you can always just apply more heat.  The kids loved this and I pretty much let them do it themselves and decide when they thought theirs was 'done'.  They all were different and that is what I love.

Favorite Quote of the Day:

Me:  Okay kids, what is an example of a liquid?

Cambell:  Chairs!

Me:  No, try again.

Cambell: Broken Chairs!

Me:  No, a liquid, something runny, like water?

Cambell: Broken chairs into teeny tiny, I mean really, really broken up chairs!

If nothing else "River of Chairs" does make a good band name. . .

Color Wheel Autumn Walk

I don't have time to do everything I want to do at preschool.  But, I still like to do them with my own little ones.  Here is an idea I had that turned out so beautiful.  We have been talking about the color wheel in preschool and how colors have opposites, how colors change, etc.
One warm, fall day we went on a walk.  We had 6 bags with us.  Each bag had a color written on it.  As we walked we collected things outside that were colorful and put them in the right bag.  Back at home I drew a color wheel on some 12x12 card stock and wrote the color word above each piece of the pie.  We talked about color mixing, complements and primary colors as Lily (and our buddy, Claire) glued their finds in the right spots.

They turned out better than I would have hoped.

Pumpkin Patch

Picasso Pumpkins. SO SO SO SO cute. I am just kicking myself for not taking a picture of all of them.

I also cut out letters and had the kids spell their names on the back. Can you say 'cross-curriculum?' I can!

The hay maze was a huge hit. It was perfect for the little ones. I was so happy we chose to go to a smaller pumpkin patch and not to an overwhelming crazy one.
The farmer gave us a great little lecture about all the different varieties of pumpkins, read a story and answered questions. I usually have intense anxiety about field trips but this one was perfect. Just perfect.

Best snack ever. Oranges, carved as jack-o-lanterns and stuffed with fruit. Strawberries, grapes, pineapple, yum! My Lily has asked to make these almost everyday since. I saw something online where they carved bell peppers like a jack and stuffed them with meat, veggies, mushrooms, etc. Maybe she would go for that? Either way, it will be fun.

One more look at Africa

I forgot to document something. . .well, many things. . .but one thing I really liked.

I gave each child a 12x12 piece of cardstock with the the shape of Africa on it.  After talking about where Africa is on the map and the animals that live there we learned the names of some of them in Spanish.  We even learned a fun Safari song in Spanish as well.  I told the kids to use that shape of Africa to draw an animal that might live in Africa.  We reviewed what we had been learning about line and shape and how to look for shapes in all art.  I showed them how to turn the paper to alter the shape.  Then, I gave them a few examples that I had made.  Then, they went to work.  They all looked so spectacular.  I was so proud of them for being so creative with a given shape.  What little artists we have!  And they all chose a different animal, all on their own.  We wrote the Spanish name of their animal on the paper and sent them home.  Lily's giraffe  monkey (I must have been tired.  Giraffe is her favorite African animal but she did, in fact, make a monkey.  Bad mom)  is one of those that I will keep forever.

Overheard in the Preschool

"Can we do this everyday because I just don't know it yet!"  (Cambell, after counting to 20 in Spanish)

October

I guess I was a bit of a slacker in the October posting arena.  I think it is because I hate to download pictures from my camera.  I really do.  I don't know why.  It isn't hard.  I just don't like it. We did have a lot of fun in October and I did like that. We went to Africa.  Or at least as close as we could get.  We learned the names of African Safari animals in Spanish, studied the pyramids of Egypt and made an African Aguapa doll

 (whose handmade jewelry we used as an abacus to help us practice adding.)

 Some highlights: Art: We studied the cut out works of Matisse and made our own Matisse-like jack-o-lantern window hanging.

Picasso Pumpkins:  I cut out ears, eyes, noses, mustaches, jewelry, mouths, etc. from magazines.  At our field trip to the pumpkin patch the kids reviewed their Spanish body parts and glued the parts on their pumpkins.

 They were maybe my favorite thing we did all month.  They all turned out so darling and unique.  The best part?  They needed very little help.  They really could do it all by themselves.  A great alternative to carving for little ones. . if I do say so myself.

Our Aguapa Angolan Fertility dolls. Children in Angola carry these around (they are made of wood, not cereal boxes, in Africa) in hopes of having their own children someday. Much like our little baby dolls!

Math:
The kids are getting so much better at counting (several can count to 100 already and most can identify any number 1-100) and adding.  We are still working on adding with manipulatives but we had fun practicing with beans, handmade beads (the kids rocked the handmade bead project! ) and jack-o-lanterns.  The kids are all doing really well telling time, and identifying the coins.  They loved singing "Five Little Pumpkins" and learning those ordinal numbers.  We have been counting all the way up to 20 in Spanish and last week one little preschooler had to correct me!  They all loved that.
I tried to get tricky and ask the kids how many legs I would have if I had 2 zebras or 1 elephant and 1 ostrich.  They are too smart for me, but it make them think.

History:
Um. . .ANCIENT EGYPT!  I loved teaching this.  The kids loved learning about it.  It was pretty much awesome.  I ordered a kit that came with hieroglyphic stencils, stickers of Egyptian stuff and lots and lots of info.  The kids each became an "expert" on 3 Egyptian topics and went home with the stickers that corresponded to their subject.    We practiced using the stencils and making hieroglyphics.  We made our own cartouche (name tag) and had fun thinking about writing with pictures instead of ABC's.

Our Cartouche and some random hieroglyphics (from stencils).
Writing:
Still practicing our numbers and our names.  We have been trying to learn the correct way to make letters and have even practiced that by doing a few dance moves.  We have practiced our sight words and short vowel words by using letter dice, wood letters, scrambled words, color by word worksheet, and lots and lots of games.

Phonics:
We finished up our review of short vowels and have started learning digraphs.  TH, SH, WH, CH man, that letter H is tricky.  The kids loved making their own flash cards to use while singing the TH, SH, CH, WH song and they loved playing the flash and dash game with their cards.  They love to try to beat me!  Parents, keep reading the Sam books and send them back as soon as they are ready for the next one so they can get a sticker on their reading chart.

Music:
Beethoven.  The kids really enjoyed learning about his life, listening to some of his intense pieces and learning some sign language (Beethoven was deaf).  They thought it would be hard to learn songs if you couldn't hear them.  We will be doing a little more Beethoven this coming week as well.
We learned The Garden Song  as our folk song this month.  It is sort of long and has some harder lyrics but the kids love to sing it.  They like to help me strum the guitar and use the actions to plant their own garden.  This is one of my most favorite songs and I was so happy to teach it this month.  I think it will be one to perform at the closing show.

Halloween:
You know when you prepare a lesson and you think "I hope someone asks this.  . ." or "I hope someone says this" or "I hope they make this connection.".  Halloween was that day.  The day when everything was perfect.  Scripted almost.  Besides misplacing 2 books I wanted to read just before class (turns out Baby Noli stole them and brought them to me right after all the kids left. . .of course) everything was perfect.
I started by pretending I had forgotten all about Halloween.  "I just can't remember what it is all about!" I lamented to the costumed kids amid the Halloween bedecked preschool room.  "Can you help me remember some Halloween words?"
Then, as the called out the words I asked them to try to spell them, even if they could only get the first and last sound.  They did really well and as they spelled the words I wrote them on some special cards I had prepared and posted them on the chalkboard.  Our words were:
Mummy, Bat, Boo, Ghost, Jack-o-Lantern, Pumpkin, Spider
See what I mean about scripted?  Not yet?  You will. . .
Then we played a game with our word cards I had made.  I also had pre-made some cards that had a pumpkin on them and one that had a witch hat.  At the back of the room I had 36 foam jack-o-lanterns hanging on the wall.
I would show them a card (flash card style) and they would say the word on the card.  I wanted to figure out a way to make flash cards fun, and motivate the kids to actually look at the cards.  Even if they cannot read the word, they benefit from hearing the kids say the word. . .but only if they are looking.  This is where the witch hat and pumpkin cards come in. . .if a pumpkin card came up they had to all yell PUMPKIN! and race to the back to grab the foam jack-o-lantern and bring it back to their seat.  If they saw the witch hat they would have to cackle like a witch and take a jack back to the wall.  I do a lot of copying of ideas from the internet, books, people smarter than myself so when I have an idea like this one, I really feel proud of myself.  I mean, come on, reading, Halloween, addition, subtraction and running all in one game?  You know!  So they were loving life.  Yelling, running for pumpkins, giving me an updated total of how many they have, etc.  I rigged the game so each kid ended up with five and then I pulled the word 'pumpkin' from the stack and we sang "Five Little Pumpkins" and "Pumpkin on the Vine".
Then, I asked one kid to pick another one of the words that we had written on our cards.  The next word picked was "Spider".  I posted it on the board next to "Pumpkin".
I turned over one of the bulletin boards that I had covered in spider webs and had 6 spiders on it.  None of them had 8 legs.  I started to tell the kids about spiders.  "Some people think spiders are scary, but I don't" I said. "Spiders help eat insects that eat my garden.  I love spiders.  Most spiders don't bite us and they help keep other bugs from making too much trouble."  We had already talked about insects so I asked if they remembered how many legs an insect has.  "SIX!" they said.  "Spiders all have 8 legs.  Are spiders insects?"  They thought about that and decided that they were not.  Smart kids.  Then, as if I had prompted her, Sweet Cambell says "Miss Meg!  Miss Meg!  That spider does not have 8 legs!  Hey, neither does that one, or that one!"  I could not have been happier.  I said they were right, those spiders had a problem, they were missing some legs, but we were in luck, I just so happened to have some extra spider legs hanging around.  The kids then helped me figure out how many more legs each spider needed until they had 8.  They were doing math and they didn't even know it.  They thought they were just helping out a few spider friends.  This is where I would have liked to read my spider book, which is a great non-fiction with big bold words they could actually read and then name a spider at the end. . .sigh. . . my sweet Noli!. . .I read them the book the next week when they came back and they still seemed to love it.
We then picked another word from our cards.  Bat.
I had them all go under the bunk bed and into our Bat Cave.  I had a cut out paper bat (that even folded it's wings over its body) and asked them if they thought bats were scary.  They said 'yes' but after we learned about them, they all said they did not think they were scary at all.  We even learned what vampires were.  Vampire bats, that is.  Science rules. . .even on Halloween.  Again, as if I had given them a script, one of the kids said "I don't think that there are bats around this part of the world, I never see them."  Many of the kids already knew the word 'nocturnal' but it was new to some.  We learned that their nocturnal habits is why we don't see bats too often, but they do live near us. This is where the other book was to be read. . .oh well, it made a good supplement on the next preschool day.  I guess you just cannot expect everything to be perfect.  Not with a Noli to help anyway.
Back to the chalkboard to pick another word:  Mummy.
Up to the top of the buck to hide in our Egyptian pyramid.  We talked about mummy's, who made them, how, why and where (we have been learning question words so that worked out).  Then we played a fun game of mummy making (minus the embalming. . .which I did not discuss with preschoolers).  They loved wrapping each other up in toilet paper.  I expected more sillyness at this game, but they were very serious about their mummy wrapping.  It kind of cracked me up.
We ran out of time for 'boo' and 'ghost' but I did have something planned (really!  See how perfect the words they suggested were!  I thought for sure no one would say spider or mummy and that we would have a few random ones like candy or witch and I would have no activity for those.  It was CRAZY how perfect it was).
We had our snack of goblin meat (honeydew melon), ghosts (bananas with craisen eyes), and Mummy Wraps (refried black beans in white corn tortilla strips).   Then I let the kids play while I cleaned up and waited for our special guests.
For our Halloween Party I had each of the kids invite a grandparent to come.  Each grandparent came prepared with a Halloween story, tradition, game, song or story about their special preschool grandchild. It was awesome.  I was worried that it would take too long and the kids would get bored and have to get up and wiggle around but no one made a peep.  They all were totally fascinated with what the grandmothers had to say.  Everyone did an amazing job.  We had a variety of things from a great song/story book, to my mom who brought pictures of me as 4 and 5 year old and some of the toys I played with at that age, to a jack-o-lantern decorated by Mr. Potato Head parts to Halloween traditions.  It was quite magical.  Then, the grandparents helped the kids make a Halloween craft.  It was a spooky tree with a full moon (a perfect segue to our discussion on trees of all seasons that we did the next week).

Phew!  Now. . .NOVEMBER!

Bring it on.  We venture to South America!