Garden Creatures

Look what Teacher Ellen brought to school! Two snails and a slug! Boy, one of those snails moves really fast. How does he do that without any legs, and only one foot?

They were really interesting to watch move around on the tray. One of them kept trying to escape!

When the snail went off the tray and onto the rug, it left a shiny trail behind it. The snail's eyes on the end of it's eye stalks really looked at us, as we looked at it! Funny!

Celebrating Mothers

In preschool, family is very important, and we took the time to let our Moms know how much we loved them.

We celebrated our moms by having a tea party for them. We all wore fancy clothes, and we made pretty party hats.

Even the littlest kids did something special. We baked heart-shaped scones to share with our moms for snack.

Two Daddies came and helped out in the Orca class. We had a lot of party hats to make!

We arranged sweet smelling flowers for the tables.

We wrote lovely things about our moms that made them laugh and cry (we talked about how, sometimes, people cry when they are happy).

We danced with our moms.

We opened presents. It was exciting!

Here's a toast to you, Mom! Thanks for everything!

Growing plants

The Orca class has worked hard learning about plants this year. First we made newspaper pots to plant seeds in. We planted heirloom seeds for peas, radishes, lettuce, rainbow chard, and kaliedoscope carrots. We put these little pots of seeds under a grow light. Every day we sprayed them with water. The seedlings are very tiny!

After a couple of days of sitting on the back porch to get used to being outside, we transplanted the seedlings into pots. We mixed potting soil with compost to give them healthy food to eat.

Here are our finished pots! We hope they will grow strong and healthy vegetables so we can eat them and become strong and healthy!

Magic at Preschool

The outdoor play in a 4-5 year old classroom can be very interesting to observe. There are a lot of powerful play themes, often including super heroes and such. Recently the Orca class has been playing Harry Potter. Teacher Kim is often Voldemort, and Isabelle is her helper, Quirl (forgive me if I get the names wrong. It's been a while since I read the books). These games involve a lot of chasing. The kids have been signing out colorful stir sticks to use as magic wands, and practicing all kinds of spells. They don't often work. One day we tried our hand at making potions. There were potions for all kinds of things.

Then we made our own magic wand. First, we had to find just the right stick that felt perfect when we waved it to make a spell. Then we added more magic to them, painting and doecrating them and adding sparkles and magic coming out of the ends.

Here are the finished wands, drying, waiting for a day of casting spells. The children drew their wands in their journals and told about what kind of spells they could cast with thier wands. Watch for more magical posts coming soon!

Learning about wild animals and playing at the zoo!

We have been learning about animals and creatures of all kinds at school this year. We learned that every living thing lives in a certain habitat, and that a habitat has four things: water, food, shelter, and a place to raise babies. We have learned about the wild creatures that live around our preschool, and about birds, and farm animals, and insects and creepie crawlies. Recently we have been exploring wild animals in a variety of ways.

Building a zoo is always fun! Here a family comes to the zoo to visit the tigers.

The Orca class (4-5's) each slected an animal that lives at Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. They all did some simple research about the animal's habitat, as well as something interesting about their animal. They shared this research with each other in class.

Here's another zoo. The zoo keepers give the animals TLC.

This zoo even has an animal hospital upstairs. Here comes the surgeon to care for an animal.

We went to the zoo. It was a fabulous day! Here we are watching the hippos. They were not very exciting, just sleeping.

The birds were amazing. Right above us the weaver birds were working on their nests and singing their hearts out!

We had marked maps of the zoo with our research animals. Following the map was a lot of fun. We had top plan which way we would go to see everyone's animal.

After our picnic lunch, we rode on the carousel.

And we ended that day with a roll down the hill. I am sure the animals were as fascinated watching us as we were watching them. Who is the wild animal?

A Butterfly Dance

I am not sure this video is going to come through this way. The Orca class embraced being butterflies one day, and they performed this spontaneous Butterfly Dance. Children learn best through their whole bodies. The concentration and intention on the children's faces is wonderful!

A busy day in the Sea Otter Class

The Sea Otter class is for children who are two and three years old. It is fun to have our parents take turns in the classrooms, especially daddies!

Daddies can be so silly!

We had a yummy snack picnic. It's fun to eat outside.

Woo, hoo! All abourd the choo-choo train! Wonder where we're going?

We took a walk in out Wildlife Sanctuary. Hey! I can see you through this tree? Who made these holes?

The bird bath is dry and empty. Poor birds!

There are all kinds of neat things in the Sanctuary, like these trilliums. The flowers start out white, and then they turn pink!