In the Garden!

The theme for the first full week of July was "In the Garden". Summer camp has officially started! This year I decided that I wanted to make it more of a camp feel, and less of an extension of the school year, so I created themed days that rotate throughout the week. I'm excited!

This week we read: My Garden by Kevin Henkes
                                        Backhoe Joe by Lori Alexander
                                        Living Sunlight by Molly Bang
                                        Build, Dogs, Build: A Tall Tail by James Horvath
                                        Mortimer's First Garden by Karma Wilson

The older children that join my class for Summer Camp do not nap during rest time. They have time in the gym in a small group while my class does. To keep them working on their skills, I make them  packet to bridge their grades.

The games that we played this week at morning meeting were so fun!
"Pop!" is a really fun game, and definitely a favorite. We stand in a circle and each child says one number as we go around. But each round there is a pop number. Instead of saying that number, you POP! the person that would be next, out. We work very hard on having good sportsmanship, and the kids have fun even if they're out because they know they get to play again in the next round!

"Pass the Vader" is a fun game. It's just like Hot Potato, except we do it with a small stuffed Darth Vader that children gave me this past Valentine's Day. Love it!

We played "Find the Clothespin". I found this game on KindergartenSmorgasboard, and I thought it just sounded so fun! While the children are not peeking, I hide a clothespin one myself, on a child or somewhere close around us. When they look for it, they can't yell out where it is, they put their finger on their nose! They have so much fun searching.

We played "Crocodile Snap". I found the idea for this game last year and adapted it to be my own. I turned a box into a crocodile with bulletin and construction paper, then filled it with little cards that have a letter, number or shape on them. The children have to reach into the crocodile's mouth (while he's sleeping of course), pull out a card and name what's there. Also hidden in the belly of the crocodile though are SNAP cards (the crocodile wakes up and SNAPS his mouth shut!). Once we pull three SNAP cards, the game is over!

We played "1,2,3" which we have played before and is definitely a fan favorite! We stand in a circle and each child says 1,2 or 3 consecutive numbers starting with 1 up to 9. So for example: "1,2,3" "4" "5,6" "7,8,9" and the next child who would have to say 10 sits down and is out of the round. Then it starts back at one. My class really loves this one, and usually if we play it in the morning, I will hear them in centers or at their lunch tables playing their own facilitated versions of the game.

The special activities this week were a blast. Since we are the oldest in the school, I thought it would be great to take over the little school garden. We spent time weeding it and getting it ready for all the things we had sprouted in the classroom during our Going Green week.

I thought having a bubble day would be so much fun each week. This week I brought out this adorable small bubble machine that I found for $3, and just let it do it's thing. the children had an amazing time running around in the hundreds of bubbles.

Every Wednesday my class has sprinkler day. This is always a fan favorite. The children wear their bathing suits and water shoes, run around in a sprinkler outside, and play in a water sensory table. It really helps beat the summer heat!

Exercise is very important, so I thought it would be fun to have some kind of special exercise activity each week as well. This week, the children moved their bodies like insects. This pin gave me great ideas of what to call out, and the children really enjoyed it! 

I LOVE having a movie day in the summer. It gives the kids a chance to relax, wind down and just enjoy themselves. Plus we have snacks and make it feel like the movie theater... who doesn't like going to the movie theater? This week we watched A Bug's Life.

Our question of the week was "What do you want to grow in your garden?"

For our theme "In the Garden",  we talked about things happening in a garden! In small groups the children played "The Ladybug Game". We've played this before, and the children really enjoy it.

On TeachersPayTeachers I found a great FREE worksheet that is not only a cool coloring, cutting and gluing project, but really helps kids with those tricky teen numbers!

The children wrote in their journals about what they would plant in their own gardens.

We sang "I'm a Little Watering Can" to the tune of teapot.

I’m a little watering can, Tall and thin.
To fill me up, Just pour some water in.

When you tip me over, And the water sprinkles out.
“Thanks for the drink,” The flowers all shout!

(C) 2001 - 2011 Jean Warren www.preschoolexpress.com

In the summer I have elementary children that join my class. While my pre-k students write in their journals, the older children work on a reading response page based on the book that we read at morning meeting.

We talked about how plants and flowers drink their water up from the ground and I thought the best way to illustrate that would be the celery experiment! SUPER SIMPLE TO DO!
I got 4 celery stalks (full stalks with the leaves at the top) and put one in plain water, and one in each dyed water blue, yellow and red. I showed the class the set up and we made hypotheses about what would happen to the celery. (I made the worksheet up for this one).

Then we looked at the celery that had been sitting in the water for a few hours t osee what actually happened. That was what we recorded on our papers.

Just for fun I kept the celery around to the end of the week and it looked SO COOL!

The children painted flowers.

We have begun using the Creative Curriculum's Studies, which seem pretty cool. Each study lasts as long as the children are interested in them, and they can be customized to the class's interest in the subject. We decided as a school to start with the  study "Buildings". In the sensory table I put some building blocks in dirt to make a construction site.

We began by exploring the topic. We went outside our school and sat in front of it, and each drew an Observational picture of it. It was really cool to see the the children take such an interest in it.

Using different size and shape blocks, the children worked in pairs to build.

We talked about different kinds of buildings and the types of things that happen inside them.

The children each picked a kind of building to draw the inside of, and we turned it into a book.

 Leave a comment below and let me know that you stopped by!

The Pumpkin Plant (a year long project!)

Probably my favorite thing from this past school year, was our year long Pumpkin Project. I had found the idea to "plant" a pumpkin from this blog.It was so fun to have this growing in our classroom and the class LOVED watching the growth and changes in the plant. I posted periodically about this project over the year, but I thought it would be great to see it all in one place.

WEEK 1:
Just put dirt in the pumpkin and let the seeds sprout. Genius! I cut the pumpkin open and we talked about what was in there, what it looked like, what they thought about the inside of the pumpkin. Then they each got to put some dirt in the pumpkin... and we're just waiting for a sprout! (All that day they kept coming to tell me that we didn't have anything growing yet. I don't think they really believe me that it's going to take a couple weeks. =])

WEEK 3: There was nothing more fun than coming in each day to see if anything had changed in our pumpkins. This week we finally saw a sprout!

WEEK 4: The original sprout got so tall quickly and we had some more popping up!

WEEK 5: Right before the long Thanksgiving Weekend, I noticed that the pumpkins were starting to get soft on the bottom and sides, so I decided to plant them under some dirt. They were sprouting like crazy.

WEEK 10: I had been regularly watering the plants, and unfortunately we had a little bit of a set back when the first batch of sprouted plants died. They seemed to mostly come from one of the pumpkins, and then the other one began to sprout! On these sprouts we also got to see the first real pumpkin leaves. Very exciting!

WEEK 15: The pumpkins really started to comeback strong after half of the sprouts withered away.

WEEK 18: The pumpkin plants had been growing steadily and were doing really great. This week we had noticed that there were little "bud pods" and the kids could not wait to see what they would become.

WEEK 19: The pumpkin plants had been growing like crazy and were quite full of sprouts, and we were still getting some sprouts. We learned that the flowers can be either male or female. The male flowers are on the end of just a long vine, and the female flowers have that small little ball at the base of the flower (what becomes the pumpkin).

                                                 

WEEK 26: Our school does an art show every year, and this year's theme was "In the Garden". One of my class's projects for that was to paint pictures of our amazing pumpkin plant.

                                                

WEEK 28: The pumpkin plant had really been thriving and had filled out their container. I wanted to make sure that they could grow more, so I moved them outside into the school garden!

                                         

WEEK 30: The pumpkins took to outside really well! They basked in the sun and flourished!

WEEK 33: It seemed like everyday I looked at the plant outside it just got bigger and bigger. Some of the leaves were so large that they were bigger than my head. Incredible!

WEEK 34: A baby pumpkin!!

WEEK 36: The main part of the pumpkin plants unfortunately became infested with some sort of bug and was starting to rot. Most of the plant had to be pulled and I was only able to leave a few of the sprouts in the ground. At that point there were two pumpkins on the vine.

WEEK 45: I didn't do anything with the pumpkins, because I heard that the pumpkins might keep ripening, even off the vine. I waited as long as a I could (until I noticed that the stem was starting to get a little moldy). It turned orange! Even the little one started to change to orange.

I wanted to cut the pumpkins in half, because one of our projects during Halloween week was to talk about the parts of the cross section. 

The pumpkin was still good so I saved some for the bunnies and my rats (they'll be psyched!) and I was able to save most of the seeds from the large pumpkin. Not sure what I'm going to do with them yet... Maybe plant some more pumpkins? =]

Gardening!

 Our theme this week was "Gardening" and it was the first week of our school's Summer Camp!! Who-hoo!

During summer camp, we always have a Yoga day where the school all together does a child centered yoga workout. The video we've been using is great because most of the poses are named after animals, like a lion... RAWR!

We also have splash day, where all the kids put on their bathing suits and we play outside in water tables and have a fun squiggly sprinkler to run through.

We read this week: My Garden by Kevin Henkes
                              Mortimer's First Garden by Karma Wilson
                              Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman 
                              Living Sunlight by Molly Bang
                              The Story of the Root Children by Sibylle von Olfers

Our question of the week was "What do you want in your garden?" This worked really well after reading the book "My Garden", because that's what the little girl talks about, flowers that can change color, chocolate bunnies, a jelly bean bush etc.

For our theme of the week, found worms outside and made them a habitat. We will observe them over the course of the summer and then put them back out in the woods in August. The kids really had fun digging for the worms! Here is a great step by step of what to do.

On TeachersPayTeachers I found a great FREE worksheet that not only makes a cool project, but really helps kids with those tricky teen numbers!

We planted seeds for flowers that hummingbirds will really like once they can go outdoors, and we watched a cool video about hummingbirds that talks about how they fly. It has great closeups of the birds. Worth a look!

We made hand print flower pictures.

Using toilet paper rolls, peanut butter and seed, we made bird feeders!

We played The Lady Bug game.

We wrote in our journals about what we would like to have in our own gardens.

 This summer we have some older kids on our class with us. While my kids are working on their journals, the older kids work on this reading log where they respond to the book we read in the morning.

And for Movie Friday we watched The Lorax! Yum, we had popcorn!!

Our song of the week was "Planting Time" (Row row row your boat), I found it here.

"Dig, dig, dig the earth (make digging motion)
Then you plant your seeds (pretend to drop seeds)
A gentle rain (Flutter fingers down)
And bright sunshine (Circle arms above head)
Will help your flowers grow."
(Hold one arm parallel to ground and move other arm up behind it with
fingers extended to represent a flower growing)

We had fun with all things outside this week!

I had a leaf nose! =]

The younger class grew grass this week! When it was all finished, they let us give it to the bunnies for a snack! =]

The games that we played this week at morning meeting were so fun!

We played "Alphabet Catch" with a beanbag. We toss the beanbag around the circle and the kids have to say the next letter in the alphabet. We started tossing it to the person next to use, once the kids get more comfortable with the game we'll stand in a circle and toss the beanbag across to friends.

"The Weather Changed" is a fun game. The kids decide on certain movements for weather, and we continually do the movements until the weatherman changes the weather. This week I started out as the weatherman, but I will have the kids be the weatherman too.

We played "1,2,3" which we have played before and is definitely a fan favorite! We stand in a circle and each child says 1,2 or 3 consecutive numbers starting with 1 up to 9. So for example: "1,2,3" "4" "5,6" "7,8,9" and the next child who would have to say 10 sits down and is out of the round. Then it starts back at one. My class really loves this one, and usually if we play it in the morning, I will hear them in centers or at their lunch tables playing their own facilitated versions of the game.

"Zoom" is a fun and quick game to play with a class of any age. First you need to pick a direction that the zoom is going to go around the circle. The person starting says zoom and turns their head the the person next, and it goes around the circle. Once the class gets comfortable with this game, I will record how long it takes us!

"Number Ball" is a lot like our alphabet catch in that we toss a beanbag to our friends. This game is a little different. The goal is to get to 30, but if the beanbag is dropped we have to start back at 1. I wonder if we will be able to get to 30 by the end of the summer?!

We are keeping up our work on our sight words! Every morning we go over around 10 of them. Once we've mastered them, they will go on our sight word wall! So exciting! We're working our way through the 220 Dolch sight word list.