The Ocean

Dear Parents,

We began our week in the yard creating sand pictures to use as the beach for our ocean mural. We covered our paper with glue and then sprinkled sand. Everyone chose between red, yellow, black, white, and a more authentic look of sandbox sand. We admired everyone’s pictures drying in the sunshine. 

In the yard looked for insects, played Duck, Duck, Goose, and made a long train by holding hands and letting the conductor lead us around the yard. We took turns being the conductor and the caboose.

We read The Bears Go To The Beach, The Three Little Fish and the Big Bad Shark, The Grouchy Ladybug, Life In The Sea, and 1001 Things to Spot In The Sea. 

We talked about what colors the ocean was in each book. We went to the big room and used rollers and large paint brushes to paint an ocean mural. Someone said while we were painting, “This is going to be the best ocean ever!” We used blue, white, and a little bit of yellow to get some green hues. The next day we added white caps to our waves using glue, sparkles, foam, and some old Velcro pieces. 

Benji’s birthday fish came off of the wall and took a swim in our ocean in preparation for his trip across the sea. We sang Sixteen Little Fishes in the Deep Blue Sea, and went out to play in the yard.

Have a full weekend,

Therese and Nicole

Spiders Are Not Insects

Dear Parents,

On Monday we played in the yard all morning. We read two books about spiders, sang The Itsy Bitsy Spider, and made spiders using pipe cleaners. The children chose between making black or red spiders. When we came in from the yard, someone found a teeny tiny spider in our classroom. After we all got close observations of him, we left him on the windowsill.

While Emily was taking pictures of everyone, we added eyes to our spiders. The children pretended they were all babies of our big spider that has been hanging in the classroom since October.  Most of our spiders have one or two eyes although we read in a book that spiders can have up to eight eyes. We saw pictures of two, four, six, and eight eyed spiders. We read Please Don’t Step On Us! and Be Nice To Spiders. Both books said spiders like to eat insects that bite us. 

On Wednesday, while half the class was in music, drumming and dancing, the rest of us played with green play dough in the classroom. Children made snowmen, snakes, a tarantula, a scorpion, pancakes, balls, snails, a drill, and a volcano. 

We’re also reading: The Very Busy Spider, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, When I Feel Angry, Be Kind, Rotten Ralph, and Your Brain.

On Thursday morning we got three sticks from the yard, and took turns weaving ribbon around and around the sticks, to create a big spider web. During circle everyone took turns putting their spider in the web. 

In the big room we had turns playing in our dirt bin. We added pretend worms to it. Someone asked, “Is this a compost bin?” 

On Friday we started the morning building magnet tile homes for our bugs, playing with our potions, and saying good morning to all the spiders in our web. Some of us joined the tangram table where we built a giant honeycomb. The bees were busy buzzing, and one friend found a single tangram block that was not like the others. We decided to make that one our queen bee. We built castles with blocks, buried worms in our compost and ran laps in the big room.

Have a nice long weekend,

Therese and Nicole