Spring sprung in a BIG way in our classroom this week! Of course the highlight was that our chicks hatched! Nineteen sweet little “peeps”.
In honor of our chicks, we had lots of spring and egg-themed things going on around the room. There were flower/chick/bunny/egg erasers in the tub, along with various containers for filling and dumping.
At the building table there were pastel bunnies that could hop “tiddleywink” style into baskets. Models of frog and butterfly life-cycle stages were out at the light table.
We left the farm toys from last week in the texture table because everyone was still enjoying them.
Something else the children continue to enjoy is the keyboard, which we have moved to our Book Nook. We’ll leave it there as long as we see them using it. We love hearing them making music!
After two weeks of losing our fine motor/writing center to the grocery store and pizzeria, the kids were happy to see those activities on the shelves again. The office was as busy as ever!
The Creation Station is also always busy! These kids have no end of ideas for new projects!
Here are a few other photos from our free play time:
Our parent-led activities this week were also very chick/spring-centered. On Monday, students dropped socks full of rocks into a box. The socks had been dipped into yellow paint, so when they hit the paper at the bottom of the box they made a bright yellow SPLAT. The kids added beaks, eyes, and legs and voila we have a wall of baby chicks.
Children learned to play a game where they spun a spinner and moved a mama hen around a game board, helping her gather her chicks and return them to the henhouse.
On Tuesday they played a letter matching game, opening plastic eggs to find the magnetic lower-case letter inside and then matching it to it’s upper case “mama” on a cookie sheet.
They also painted wooden frames to make into bird feeders, using a variety of colorful acrylic paints.
Wednesday they got to hold chicks! They all did such a great job that we let them do it again on Thursday if they wanted to!
They made tissue paper collages and put bunny silhouettes on top, with little pom-pom tails as the final touch. These are on display in our classroom.
Thursday they drew/wrote thank you notes to Dan, the man who gave us the eggs and who I took the chicks to on Friday. He had a space all ready for them and they are very happy in their new (bigger) home!
They also added string to their bird feeders and filled a bag with some birdseed. These came home in their school bags.
During our story times this week we read some silly chicken stories, danced with our shaker eggs, learned the “chicken dance”, heard from our friends who took Panda home, and talked about what is happening with our caterpillars.
Speaking of our caterpillars, we have learned that after molting 4 times, they will climb to the top of the habitat, and then molt one more time to expose their “pupa” layer. Most of our caterpillars are now at this stage which means that our next phase will be watching Painted Lady butterflies emerge!
We’ll close with some recess photos – we had quite a range in weather this week!
The week ahead is all about flowers, bugs and butterflies! May Day is just around the corner!
We’ll see you soon,
Lisa & Jelena
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