The ramp, Rosie watching us, building robots and a rainbow hunt: THURSDAY R WEEK

On Thursday we finished up R week and the month of February! That means it was the last day for the pink things….next time we have preschool all those things will be green!

Roy G Biv, our new Alphabet Friend, got their eyes and name tag along with stripes in ROYGBIV order (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet)! The afternoon friends found all 18 of our Alphabet Friends and got them in alphabetical order with Grandma Mona.

Some friends worked in their journals with the giant rainbow marker and smelly markers from Annie. Thank you, Annie!

Our dancing scarf rainbow quilt is back in the classroom for colorful play with our rocking boat (and brooms for pretend oars!). We had ramps for play dough balls and rocks to balance. The quilt Grandma Bonnie helped us make was very popular today…

We’ve got five Golden Letter friends this week and one of them came to school this morning! Happy Golden Letter Day, Rain! 

Read on to find out what else we did with our robot friend whose name starts with R!

Our Coping Skill is Rainbow hunt. By taking time to look around for specific colors, we come back to the present moment. This can be done anytime, anywhere and can also be a gentle distraction technique.

Our Clean Up Song this week is a reggae version of Row, Row, Row Your Boat and we welcomed back Rosie the Robot! She’s made out of cardboard boxes and fits on top of our garbage can. Since the garbage can is on wheels, Rosie can go anywhere in the room to help collect our trash. Thank you, Rosie!

Conversation Starter: Snack Time

Morning class: We had a preschool snack of round donuts, rainbow cereal and rainbow goldfish! Some friends enjoyed putting the rainbow cereal on a straw.

Afternoon class: Thank you Malcolm for the ranch rice cakes, raisin bread and red peppers! We had ranch dip from Owen we used again and Grandma Mona also brought us rabbit food (carrots)! Thank you, everyone!

Conversation Starter: Story Time

What controls the robots in our book? 

Computers!

This book from 1987 invited children to imagine a future with robots…and it is here! We talked about different robots in our world today like a Roomba vacuum as well as artificial intelligence devices like Alexa, Echo and Siri. The children really seemed to understand that as humans we have a brain that tells us what to do while robots do not: they have to have a machine of some sort to tell them what to do.

Conversation Starter: Project Time

Who watched you do your project today?  

Rosie the Robot!  We used a lot of rainbow colors and rectangle shapes to make robots. 

Conversation Starter: Circle Time

What did you do with the Show and Tell things today?  

Put them on a ramp! Most things slid and some things rolled. A few things got stuck due to friction but when we raised the ramp they slid right down! We all moved off of our dot spots to sit in a clump so we could watch the ramp.

A rainbow puff quilt, a lost dog, red roses and a rainbow hunt: WEDNESDAY R WEEK

On Wednesday we welcomed R week and due to our 2 snow days, merged some Valentine’s Day, P and Q things in. Grandma Bonnie has a Quilting Corner for children to see and help with a real puff quilt full of rainbow colors!

Our dancing scarf rainbow quilt is back in the classroom for colorful play with our rocking boat (and brooms for pretend oars!). Roy G Biv, our new Alphabet Friend, is getting their stripes in ROYGBIV order (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet). We have a ramp for playdough balls and rocks to balance We’ve got five Golden Letter friends this week and two of them came to school this afternoon! Happy Golden Letter Day, Rex and Roo!

Read on to find out about a robot friend whose name starts with R…she’s back this week!

Our Coping Skill is Rainbow hunt. By taking time to look around for specific colors, we come back to the present moment. This can be done anytime, anywhere and can also be a gentle distraction technique.

Our Clean Up Song this week is Row, Row, Row Your Boat and we welcomed back Rosie the Robot! She’s made out of cardboard boxes and fits on top of our garbage can. Since the garbage can is on wheels, Rosie can go anywhere in the room to help collect our trash. Thank you, Rosie!

Conversation Starter: Snack Time

Since our Wednesday friends haven’t been here since before Valentine’s Day, we celebrated during Snack Time. R week is the perfect week for our poem: Roses are red, violets are blue, I hope you know how much I love you!

Morning class: Thank you, Everett, for bringing puppy chow (with a very detailed description of how he, his mama and sister made it) and Babybel cheeses…we played with the red wax casing!

Afternoon class: Thank you, Owen, for bringing red peppers, rainbow popsicles and rainbow goldfish! Thank you, Scarlet for adding in some chocolate rocks!

Conversation Starter: Story Time

What did the little girl lose during the night?   

Her stuffed dog named Sally! We watch a little girl’s new quilt transform into the backdrop for a dream where she is looking for her lost dog. When she wakes up in the morning, she AND the dog are cozy on the floor wrapped up in her quilt.  

We were so lucky to read the story while Grandma Bonnie was finishing sewing our real quilt.

The quilt in this book was a perfect opportunity to practice some bilateral leg tapping. When she was scared of the tunnel we moved our hands on our legs more quickly and when she was even more scared of the forest, we moved our hands as fast as we could! I bet they could show you how they did it!

Conversation Starter: Project Time

Is that real fabric on your rainbow quilt project?  

Yes! Grandma Bonnie brought hundreds of squares of fabric for us to use in making our own rainbow quilt creations. Each piece was chosen by the children. How many different colors can you find?  

Conversation Starter: Circle Time

Why did Ms Kristin take some of the color scarves away?  

If there weren’t any Show and Tell things on a certain color pile, we took the scarf away!

We put them into color groups (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, brown, white and pink). Since most items were more than one color, we determined what there was most of. If there wasn’t a clear main color, the person who brought it got to choose which color grouping it went in or if it had multiple colors, it got to go in the rainbow pile! Show and Tell is such a sweet time for children to share what and how they want to.

Printing rainbows, making a rainbow puff quilt, sorting colors and a rainbow hunt: TUESDAY R WEEK

On Tuesday we welcomed R week and due to our 2 snow days, merged some Q things in. Grandma Bonnie set up a Quilting Corner for children to see and help with a real quilt full of rainbow colors! Children had the chance to choose which square they wanted to help fill and then got to help Grandma Bonnie sew it shut. What a treasure this quilt will be! I am so grateful they had this opportunity…thank you, mom.

Roy G Biv, our new Alphabet Friend, is getting their stripes in ROYGBIV order (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet). We have a ramp for playdough balls and rocks to balance. Our dancing scarf rainbow quilt is back in the classroom for colorful play with our rocking boat (and brooms for pretend oars!). We’ve got five Golden Letter friends this week: two of them came to school this morning and another in the afternoon! Happy Golden Letter Day, Ruthie, Rory and Rex! Read on to find out about a robot friend whose name starts with R…she’s back this week!

Our Coping Skill is Rainbow hunt. By taking time to look around for specific colors, we come back to the present moment. This can be done anytime, anywhere and can also be a gentle distraction technique.

Our Clean Up Song this week is a reggae version of Row, Row, Row Your Boat and we welcomed back Rosie the Robot! She’s made out of cardboard boxes and fits on top of our garbage can. Since the garbage can is on wheels, Rosie can go anywhere in the room to help collect our trash. Thank you, Rosie!

Conversation Starter: Snack Time

Morning class: Thank you to Golden Letter friend Ruthie for rice chex cereal, red raspberries and raisins (which she informed us will help us poop!). We had very busy snack stores.

Afternoon class: Thank you to Annie for edible rainbows! We had baggies of fruit loops and marshmallows to make rainbows that we could eat! Then we glued the papers into our journals.

Conversation Starter: Story Time

What kind of pet does the little girl in our book have?  

A turtle named Myrtle.  We watch a little girl discover new colors as she fingerprints including her own beautiful skin color! We easily practiced our Coping Skill by finding rainbow colors.  

After Story Time we used smelly markers and the big rainbow marker:

Conversation Starter: Project Time

How did you get the lines on your project?  

With a Q-tip! Since we missed last Tuesday, we added a Q thing to our rainbow roller art. 

This project is called gel printing (or gel press or monoprinting with a gel plate). It is a form of printmaking that involves applying paint to a gel plate, drawing designs and then pressing paper onto the plate to transfer the design. 

Conversation Starter: Circle Time

What did you do with the Show and Tell things?  

We put them into color groups (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, brown, white and pink). Since most items were more than one color, we determined what there was most of. If there wasn’t a clear main color, the person who brought it got to choose which color grouping it went in or if it had multiple colors, it got to go in the rainbow pile! 

Quitting, snow absorbing sound, q-tips in glue and finding quiet: THURSDAY Q WEEK

After two snow days, we finally welcomed Q week on Thursday by finding a huge dancing scarf quilt was at the rocking boat and both classes enjoyed incorporating it into their play. Read on to see how else we used the dancing scarf quilt. We will merge Q and R next week to give everyone a chance to learn about another Q friend: the infamous and fictitious Queen Quartence. Our Journal Time prompt this week is “Q is for Quit” where children draw and/or dictate things they think should not happen. We will work on this until all children have had a chance to give their ideas. You know there will be some good ones!

Our Coping Skill is Quiet. Our school boxes have been moved permanently to the shelves so we have a space to easily sit in our cubbies when we want containment and quiet.  As always, the children all have access to a variety of noise reducing headphones and we can hang afghan blankets across to create a hide out too. 

Our Clean Up Song for the next 2 weeks is a quintessential quiet resting song, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star (which is also the same tune as the Alphabet Song and Baa Baa Black Sheep).This week we are also working on our sweeping skills…instead of just moving the debris around the room (lol), we will start moving it into a square taped on the ground. Next up: practicing using a dustpan!

Conversation Starter: Snack Time

Morning class: We had a lot of crunching sounds this morning…kind of like our boots on snow. Charlie brought us Quaker oatmeal cereal and Cheetos. Thank you, Charlie! We also ate Honeycomb cereal which we called snowflakes.

Afternoon class: We celebrated another friend turning 5 with applesauce, red peppers (a couple of friends tried them for the first time today!), cheese sticks and 2 kinds of cookies! Happy Birthday and thank you, Willow, Annie and Eleanor! We heard from Eleanor that it took her mama 30 years to make our quilt cookies.

Conversation Starter: Story Time

What very quiet thing happened to Peter’s snowball?   

It melted! 

In honor of the snow we got earlier this week, we read The Snowy Day. This one of the books we have several copies of so children could look at any teacher to watch the pages change.  We looked through the book and noticed all the things that happened quietly and which likely made more sound. Snow absorbs sound waves so things actually are quieter when there is snow.  

Conversation Starter: Project Time

What did you dip your Q-tips in?  

Colorful glue! Ms Kristin added washable liquid watercolor to the glue. Children dipped the ends in and placed them on the paper. We kept them in cubbies to dry until next week. Quinn the Alphabet Friend got more Q-tips added throughout the day too! 

Conversation Starter: Circle Time

What did you make the Show and Tell things into?  

A quilt! Ms Kristin sewed 12 of our dancing scarves together so children could pick which square they wanted their Show and Tell item to be in. What beautiful and unusual quilts we made! It was delightful to listen and watch children share about their items from home.

We are starting to incorporate Show and Tell into our Circle Time activities. Here are a few reminders:

  • It is completely optional. 
  • Your child can bring any item (but please no weapons).
  • Your child is not expected to share their items from home.
  • The Show and Tell basket will be at the base of the stairs just outside of the bathroom. 
  • Help your child choose one item to put in the basket (this gives us the best chance to have the attention span to hear from everyone). If you need support in helping them choose one item, feel free to call me in! 
  • If your child is in distress about not bringing something for Show and Tell they can tell me about it and we can draw a picture, they can pick something out from the room or they can wait and bring it next time. Again, call me in for support if this is the case! 

Making a new color, matching pizza, swirly eyes and pillow time: THURSDAY P WEEK

On Thursday, Pablo, our new Alphabet Friend, was all the way pink and got his eyes and name tag! We finished up P week with the P shaped balance beam path to walk on, enough pillows for everyone, pink playdough and heart cutters, pink water play table, pink scoops and treasures to find in the cloud dough, pretend pizza in the Family Corner and puzzles galore! 

Our Coping Skill is Pillow Time. It can be helpful for figuring out what our bodies need in a certain moment by picking up a pillow…notice does it feel good on your belly or to squeeze or to hold? We added more to our All School Pillow Talk Chart…these kids sure know about their own pillows!

It was the last day for our Clean Up Song, Skinnamarink. We have some sweet actions we like to do as well as hit that high note on “mooooon” while we clean. Since it is our preschool love song, we’ll still be singing it all month.

Conversation Starter: Story Time

What food had Baby Bear never eaten before?  

In our book, Pizza, Baby Bear had never tried pizza before. Before we read the book, we made tally marks to notate who of us has and has not tried pizza before (not whether or not we liked it).

We can tell by the illustration that he did like it…his eyes got all swirly and he smiled. 

Conversation Starter: Snack Time

This week is our Valentine Party Week where our projects, books and snacks are all coordinated. Thank you so much to the families that signed up to bring special party foods all week. Today we had a pizza party with fresh strawberries! Baby Bear would have loved to be there!

Morning class: Thank you to Nessa for bringing cheese pizza and Rain for bringing strawberries and applesauce! Afternoon class: Thank you to Heath for bringing cheese pizza and Annie for bringing strawberries! We all also enjoyed pretzels from preschool!

Conversation Starter: Project Time

What happened with your red and white paint? 

We made a new color….pink!

The children were given a paper with a blob of red on one side and and blob of pink on the other. They dipped back and forth or slid the paint together to create masterpieces that will need a weekend to dry.

Conversation Starter: Circle Time

What matching pictures did we have to find?  

Pizza! We played a matching game as a whole group and managed to find all the matches. The pizza game had three kinds of pizza: cheese, pepperoni and veggie. Those weren’t as silly as the ones in our book, though:

The game will be in our Puzzle Corner the next time we have preschool!