We celebrated a very special girl's birthday this week!  Emma Jade (PM) turned 5!  

Happy Birthday Emma!

Space Adventures!

I wish I could describe to you how excited the kids become when we talk about space and the planets!  I definitely get their attention more during that 15 minutes than any other time during our day!  I love how interested they are!  We have LOVED sharing the moon bag!  The kids are so excited for their turn to take it home!  My many thanks to wonderful parents who support their children!

We started learning about the planets this week.  Tuesday was Mercury and our favorite fact is that it is really close to the sun but has really deep craters full of ice that never melts

Our favorite fact about Venus on Wednesday is that it is the hottest planet even though it isn't the closest to the sun AND it has poisonous acid clouds!

Thursday we learned about Earth and that 3/4 of it is covered with water and it is not completely round but flat at the poles!  The center is full of melted metal (in simple terms for preschoolers)

I only got one picture but here is Eli painting "SPACE!" with stars.  

Space shadow match

Rockets from big to little

Space writing - write the letter each space item starts with!  One had the dotted letters and one was missing the first letter and they had to write it in.  It surprised me how many kids in the morning class wanted to try the one that was missing the letter!

Clip the letter that begins the first letter of the Space item

SPACE SNACKS!

Here's Eli showing off his very cute sun, planets and stars!  (very creative Mom!)

Here's Liam with his fantastic rocket ship popcorn!  The kids were so excited to be able to take these rocket ships home to play with!  New toy!  (Thanks Mom)

We go Nuts for N Week!

N is a little harder of a letter to find fun and interesting things to do during center time so most of our focus was on NUMBERS! The kids had to do three activities each day before they could join the Neighborhood and play with the Neighborhood toys (You will  understand this once you see the last pictures in this post.) 

Here's Gabby showing off the Nut match

Noodle Numbers - the kids have to lace the numbers in the right order

Number bead lacing - the kids have to put on the number of beads it shows on the flags

This is our fun N poem this week - Nine Nightingales in a Nest sing all Night and then they rest.

This is our number count and test - they count the number of items on the front and then pull apart the card to test.

A great way to improve hand eye coordination - this is matching the buttons on the Numbers.

Fill in the missing Number!

Match the big number to the number of items on the card

Number jewel counting - There are numbers on each of the containers - they count that amount of jewels into the cup.

Welcome to our Neighborhood!  This was absolutely the Number one activity!  We got two new play centers so it was fun central!  There were a few kids that just couldn't be pulled away from the Spiderman town...yes, he is in all the pictures :)

Space fun!!!

Learning about SPACE is a blast!!!
We had such a good time learning about space this week! 

We started off by learning about what is in space and how we learned about it.  Then we learned all about astronauts and what it is like for them in space - how they get around, what they eat, how they got to be an astronaut (Mrs. G said they have to be really smart and then all the kids said they could be astronauts - I believe them!)  

Here's our planet song (almost like a chant):

Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars

Then comes Jupiter - Oh my stars!

Saturn, Uranus, Neptune too

The dwarf planet Pluto

Whoopidee doo!

Fun facts about the moon - We always see the same side of the moon.  It takes 4 days on the space shuttle to get there.  There is no air or wind on the moon so footprints will stay in the dust forever.  It gets VERY cold when the sun isn't shining on it because there is nothing to hold the heat in.   Did you know when we went to the moon, we left our moon buggie there?

We learned all about the different phases of the moon by using oreos!  After we saw what each phase of the moon looked like on our cookies, we colored them on our black paper.  We learned Full, Gibbous, Quarter, Crescent and New moons!  As we do the moon bag this month, the kiddos will begin to remember these names!  I still have kids from my class a few years ago that remember them all!  Can't wait to see how this class does!

Here is the AM class showing a gibbous moon!

Here is the PM class showing a cresceent moon.

Here is the PM class showing their colored and labeled moon phases.  Sorry, but you won't see these for a few weeks - we are going to put all the planets on the back!  I have to laugh because it took me about 5 tries to take this picture and it totally shows on the kids faces - they were all complaining that their arms were tired.

Making a sun

We learned about the sun this week.  A few things the kids may have picked up:  the sun is so big that if the earth were a tiny pebble, the sun would be a beach ball, the sun is a star - a burning ball of gas!  The sun is so bright because it is the closest star to us!  Sometimes the sun shoots out streams of burning gas.  We also learned that if we didn't have the sun, we wouldn't be able to live.  It gives us heat and light.

Here is our fun but messy activity to make our suns.  First we squirted red, orange and yellow paint onto a paper plate.  Then we put our hands into a bag and squished the paint all around.

Once the paint dried, we got to staple triangles onto the outside to make the suns rays.  You would not believe how excited the kids were to be able to use the stapler all by themselves.  The little joys that bring such great pleasure!

The Marvelous letter M and its magnificent moments

I always love M week with the MANY activities that can be done.  This year we focused on Monsters and Magnets.  We had such a great time making our Missy Mouse stick puppet and the kids loved putting the antlers on their moose and making moose noises.  If only we had time for another week of M - so many things that can be done, so little time!

Magnets!!!!

As part of our M week, we learned all about Magnets!  The kids had such a great time playing with them in the rice.  Magnets are a marvelous invention.  (and yes, the rice is a disaster but well worth it in the end!)

Match "boxes" and Mini cars

I loved how this activity progressed during the week - especially for the PM class.  It started out with all the kids playing with their separate match "box" and doing their own thing.  By the end of the week, the kiddos were collaborating to make a monstrous city that they could all use.  For girls and boys alike, it was a hit.  A few kids were absolutely enthralled with the Mini cars.  I guess I need to get a few more because there were never enough to go around.

Marble Mania

The object of this activity was to use their coordination to drop marbles into the container using a spoon.  This was a favored activity for the AM class.  They started out with just spoons and then graduated to filling the container as fast as they could with their fingers.  Then, once it was full, the fun began - they got to make a marvelous amount of noise shaking all the marbles out (and driving Mrs. G crazy ;)  I am pretty sure Sei was at this activity every time I looked up.  Even when he went to do another activity, the spoon went with him!

Monster color by number

Monster count and clip

In this activity, the students count the number of monsters on the card and then clip a clothespin on the correct answer.