Countdown to the Pumpkin Patch!

09/27/2012

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Preschool Countdown to the Pumpkin Patch
    The kids are so excited for our upcoming fieldtrip to the pumpkin patch, that one of the first things they all say when they get here in the morning lately has been, "Are we going to the pumpkin patch today?!"  So to help us all get through the waiting a little bit easier, today we made a countdown chain so that we can always see how much longer we have to wait.  First, I made some strips of paper, each with a number of days written on it and the final one with the words, "Pumpkin Patch Day!"
    We then used these strips to make a paper chain, counting and identifying the numbers as we added each loop.  Then the kids used some fun fall stickers to decorate our chain.
Today there are 12 days until the pumpkin patch, and each morning we will pull off another loop of our chain to reveal the number inside telling us how many days are left until the big day!
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Sticky Pattern Blocks

09/18/2012

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    The kids enjoyed our Sticky Suncatcher so much last week, that we continued the activity this week, substituting in some patterning blocks.  I also used their interest in "Sticky" to focus on the letter "Ss" this week.  We have a growing list of words that begin with the letter S and have been having fun with our sticky window shapes, peeling stickers, and we might just have to mix up a batch of slime this week, too!
    Some of them really got into the pattern making, which is great since creating and recognizing visual patterns is such a vital pre-reading skill, as well as the math concepts it presents and the fine motor work it takes to get those shapes all lined up just right! :)
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Color-mixing Water Science

09/07/2012

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    On Friday we set up a science demonstration with these cups of colored water and a couple of paper towels.  The activity is similar to the Walking Water Science we did last fall and some of the older kids even remembered doing it the other way and asked if we could do that again, so we'll probably have to try that out again next week! :)  The ones who remembered our previous setup knew that the paper towels were going to soak up, or "absorb" the water and that they would carry it into the center cup.  They also "predicted" (we used lots of fun science words!) that the blue and yellow would combine to make green!
As we checked on our cups throughout the day, we "observed" the colors slowly start to travel into the center cup...
where they would indeed continue to mix together to make green!
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Aluminum Foil River

09/04/2012

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    After seeing how much fun the kids had digging their very own sandbox river this summer, I thought we might try out another kind of river.  So today we got out some heavy duty aluminum foil and stretched it out to see if we could make a river out of it.  The kids all helped to roll it out and curl up the sides so that it would hold water.
    Once we had it all ready to go, we turned on the water and added a few bottle-cap boats to float. 
We floated boats, we splashed our toes in the cool water,
...and we even jumped OVER the river! :)
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