A Nocturnal November...

What we learned about bats:

RF- A bat can fly.

EV- Bats can hold their babies when they are flying.

EC- Bats fly with their wings fast (flap them fast).

GA- Bats sometimes use the moonlight to find their way & their eyes. 

         GA- Bats have super duper finger bones that go into their wings.  

SB- The mommies hold their babies so they don't fall.

CS- Bats fly at night time.

LC-  They have wings

ELB- They can see in the night time.

AK- They have long wings. 

MC- They are furry.

A personal accomplishment for me: 

several students now think bats are cute not scary!

What we learned about owls:

AK- Owls sleep in the day.

LC-Owls have feet because they need to land on trees.

MC- Owls have wings and feathers.

ELC- Owls eat mice. 

I made a Smart Board sorting activity for choice time & circle.
Students had to sort the animals by when they were awake.
This helped us to learn which animals are nocturnal and which are diurnal like us.

These are some of the books we read about bats & owls
We also watched quite a few short Discovery Ed. videos.
We learned there are so many types sizes of bats and owls are birds of prey.

Some Team 3 students show of the bat and owl masks they made.

Students have been exploring magnetic shape block on the light table.


The block are excellent for learning about 3D shapes.
G & A show the cubes they made.
They also figured out how to make 2D trapezoids on their own...
"Mrs. Dix, come see! We made trapezoids!"

As always the block areas is a busy place:

"We made a zoo."

The garden set has renew interest in the doll house.

T demonstrates the new scooping tools we have in the sand table.

A sneaky way to add more scissor practice opportunities.

We explored the physical details of owls with these art projects:

The students were eager to make Thanksgiving cards for their families.
They drew a picture & completed the sentence "I am thankful for ____".
For some students I took dictation,
others were able to trace or write on their own.

A bit of pre-Thanksgiving baking in the sand table.
"We're making pie! Mine is pecan, my favorite."

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Farm & Garden

Here are photos from our final unit.  We learned all about plants and collected seeds. We even had a garden for our doll house.  Many students were interested in helping plant flowers for our little playground.  They raked the soil to make it nice and loose, then planted starters for marigolds and lobelia.

One Team 5 student made a record of our seed collection from the science center.  She used the initial letter sound to show what type of plant or fruit the seeds came from.  Great writing and science work!

Fruit & flower sponge painting

Nice team work

Bubble blowing in the house

Observing worms

Working on # 11

Ending Our Merry Month of May

The Students have been enjoying the (mostly) warmer weather this week. Our outdoor time gives us lots of opportunities for science & nature exploration.  We've been blowing bubble & fuzzy dandelions, inspecting insects, worms and even found some newts.  During these last few weeks of school we're learning about farms and gardens.  We are sprouting sugar snap pea seeds and documenting the changes we notice every day with a drawing, photo & verbal description on our smart board.  We've had samples of fruits in our science area  so the students can count, compare and observe the seed we find.  We're also collecting seeds from our snacks and the playground.  

        

Art was free choice for the past two weeks.  Lots of play-dough & painting!

This week's books:

We ate some cantaloupe for snack so the children could examine the melon rind seeds for themselves! 

This student is demonstrating excellent early literacy skills as she retells  "Growing Vegetable Soup" to her friend.
She used a "reading-like intonation" and could remember many details from the story.

Still building beautiful structures in the block area.
A "best of  the block area" post will be coming soon!

Observing wildlife on the playgound...

& setting up a comfy habitat for some insects.

Did you know blowing bubbles is a great way to explore viscosity &  improve motor skills?

Team work defeated this challenging puzzle.

These boys goal was to create an elephant chain around the whole table.

"Shhh, it's okay this doctor is very gentle"

Checking in at the reception desk.

Apparently the doctor is the person to see when your hair has turned  pink.

A little "Creamee Stand" dramatic play.

"It's cooler under here."

Queen of the climber!

Dover Pre-K's "Egg Story"

Here are the photos of our egg/chick hatching adventure.  We kept a Smart board calendar to count how many days they were in the incubator.  We also learned other five dollar vocabulary words like temperature and thermometer, which we checked every day.  I think we got more student, family & teacher foot traffic in our classroom in one week than we get in a month.  The science/discovery center was the most popular center in the room, providing lots of opportunity for observation and discussion.  The students were really great about following our guidelines for keeping the chicks safe, happy and letting them rest. 

We marked the egg with an X on one side & an O on the other...

so we could turn each egg evenly.

We turned them every day for almost 20 days!

On Tuesday morning (5/14/13) one little chick had hatched.  

By the end of our morning there were three chicks!

By Tuesday evening there were eleven!

By Wednesday morning there were about 16!

They had to move to a kiddie pool!

The most frequent observation was "they're so cute!" followed by "they poop a lot".

Students helped grind up the feed to make it a little easier to eat.

A little math problem helped us count the chicks.

By Friday 20 of the 23 eggs had hatched and only one little chick needed a bit of help.  The results amazed us all.  How quickly the chicks developed and grew was impressive to witness.  I think learned even more than the students.  I certainly have never given a struggling chick a warm sponge bath before in my life.  On Saturday E's family (Traci, who made this whole adventure possible!) met us at school to pack up the chicks and take them home.  Below are some photos Colby Dix took.

The pool party finished, time to head to the farm!

It was a lot of chicks to catch.

The chicks were getting so agile, the risk of them hopping out & having a chick filled pre-k room
was becoming a real possibility.

Young love.

After weeks of hard work, the incubator could finally be unplugged.

All packed up and ready to move to their new home!

Archer says goodbye to his new friends.

The chicks will be in E's very capable and caring hands.