Happy New Year!

I realized after looking back at my blog posts that I had not done much...since November:( One of my New Year's resolutions is to do a better job at keeping my followers and fans informed about what is going on in the Ladybug classroom. We began 2011 by learning about the season of Winter in science. In math we began creating AB patterns. It was great today when one of the students created a stick/pecan pattern on the playground. We are beginning to see patterns everywhere. Next week, the students will be learning all about Winter weather and doing some great investigations with ICE. Since our weather forcasters are predicting temperatures in the mid 20s and low 30s, we will be experiencing water freezing in REAL time.

Stone Soup Builds Community

After reading the traditional folktale Stone Soup, the class discussed the importance of sharing with others. The children were very sad that the villagers in the story hid their food when the soldiers came to their town. We talked about the importance of sharing and how we could share, too. One child said that he could share his toys with other children who did not have toys; another said that she had extra food at home and she could share it with a person on the street corner. We re-enacted the story and added a variety of vegetables to the large soup pot. The aroma of hearty vegetable, beef, and barley soup filled the pre-k hallways. After making the cornbread the feast was ready to share. I was happy to see that most of the children tried and liked the soup. At a time of the year when we learn the importance of giving, sharing, and being thankful, I am very proud of these little children. I hope to see them apply sharing in their everyday life in the ladybug classroom.

Pre-K Scientists Pollinate the Flowers With Bee-Sticks

Today (day 18 of our project) was a big day for our Fast Plants. The children took bee-sticks (dried honey bees glued onto a skewer) and gently moved it (the bee-stick) from flower to flower carrying the tiny pollen which will help our flowers complete their life cycle. After they swirled the bee around for a while, they looked at it under the digital microscope. They were excited to see all of the yellow flecks clinging to the bees body. New vocabulary introduced with this activity: pollen, pollinate, pollination. The children now understand how important bees are to plants and to animals.

Pre-K Scientists at Work

We are in the third week of our plant unit and the children's understanding of what plants need continues to strengthen with each passing day. Their Wisconsin Fast Plant project is in its 10th day, their potato heads have sprouted rye grass hair, some of their beans are now 10 cubes high, they are harvesting lettuce and turnip greens from the Ladybug garden, and today they became "real" scientists. With 5 snapdragon plants in 4" pots, we decided to take away some of the things that plants need: One will go without water, one will go without light, one will be in a plastic bag (no fresh air), one was taken out of its pot (no soil to grow in), and one will have everything (our control plant). Over the next several days, the teams will be looking for changes being brought about by omitting some of their plants needs. They predicted that all but one of the plants will die. We shall see if their hypothesis is correct. Stay tuned:)

PreK Student Plays Violin

Let's Play and Hear Music!

One of our little Ladybugs and her mother played their violins for our class today. The mom, Ms. Hwang, is a teacher at Travis Heights Elementary School in Austin and is a Suzuki violin teacher. It is not surprising that her daughter is learning how to play the tiny violin, which is appropriate for her size. We are learning about sound and our sense of hearing, so it was thrilling to hear the high and low sounds as they plucked the strings. The children were also delighted to sing along to two of their favorite tunes, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and the ABC Song.

Making and Observing Drops of Water

During our 3rd week of using Exploring Water with Young Children (The Young Scientist Series by Ingrid Chalufour and Karen Worth), the PreK children began to explore an important property of water...that it sticks to itself (cohesion). When the children first saw the drops, they said they looked like rain drops and like little bubbles. They found out that they could move a drop around to join another drop, making an even bigger drop. They challenged their friends to make the tiniest drops. They jiggled the plate to watch the drops jiggle and shake. I notice that it took great concentration and fine motor skills to control the amount of water coming out of the eyedropper. Next the children will make and observe drops on various surfaces, like waxed paper, aluminum foil, plastic wrap, paper towel, and fabric. The children will also be recording their observations in their science journals.

iPads in PreK

iPads have come to PreK. Yes, the children are using the new iPad that I got for being a part of an Austin ISD program - Technoscientists. This is my 3rd year in the program and it really helps encourage teachers to get the latest technology into the hands of their children. These little "digital natives" had no problems finding an app that they wanted to work on together... an alphabet and number matching game. There are so many free or almost free applications on iTunes that they have many choices. I have found apps to support children as they learn to write the alphabet letters and numerals, count objects, sort shapes and colors, draw pictures, "write" their own tunes, talk to a talking Tom Cat, who will echo their words, listen to ladybug songs, complete puzzles, listen to animal sounds, and so much more. During center time, the iPad and the iPod Touches are always a favorite choice, as well as the classroom computers which have starfall.com on them. Next Tuesday, the children will go to our new Mac computer lab. This is a wonderful time for technology in education.

PreK Plants Their Fall Sq. Foot Garden

The Ladybugs added fresh compost to their square foot gardens today and planted purple asters, broccoli, cabbage, rosemary transplants and seeds - beets, turnips, lettuce, spinach, and chard. What was one big 8 foot x 4 foot rectangle, is now 32 one foot x one foot squares. Since we had marjoram and fennel is 3 of the squares from last year, we will continue to plant until we fill up all of the squares. The children will go to their garden several times each week to weed and water, as well as make journal entry drawings of what they are observing - both plant life and animal life (mostly insects and spiders). The fall/winter gardens seem to reap the best harvests because of our mild winters. We are already looking forward to the harvest...young children will get a sense of time and the life cycle of the plant as they wait for that harvest.

How Many People Are In Your Family?

We have been reading and learning about families this week. The children have used cubes to count family members, drawn pictures of their families, written little books about a fun time that they had with their families, and paint stamped the males and females in their families. This graph easily shows the children that some of them have very small families and others have very large families; some have more boys in their families, some have more girls. Read and using graphs help the children make comparisons between similar groups.

Digital Microscopes in PreK

Pre-K students are observing nature in a new way! By using digital microscopes, the students were able to get a "zoomed in" view of acorns, seeds, feathers, bark, various dead insects, frogs, and lizards. They soon learned that they could also take a picture of their specimen. It is the center of choice. Now when the children go outside they are looking for bits of nature to bring back to the science center. Listening to the conversations in the center can be very reveling..."Look, black, white, black, white (looking at a feather)." "I see the bugs eyes." "What is that green stuff (looking at bark)?"

PreK Cooks with Blue in Mind

This is BLUE Week and the prek students are cooking everyday. It started on Monday by making blueberry Jello for tomorrow's snack...and today's snack was a tasty blueberry smoothie. By adding one carton (from our cafeteria) of fat free milk, several large spoons of low fat yogurt, and 1/3 cup of fresh blueberries to a blender, the students were treated to a very healthy blue snack. They will be making blueberry mini-muffins tomorrow for Wednesday's snack. Since it is also our week to focus on our sense of smell, the students played with their new homemade play dough. The red smelled like raspberries, the blue smelled like peppermint, and the purple smelled like vanilla. They will have another wonderful smelling snack on Thursday - popcorn. On Friday, also YELLOW Day, the children will make their own YELLOW, lemon flavored play dough. They will also be squeezing lemons to make fresh lemonade to go along with their banana snack. Next week we will focus on our sense of taste...more opportunities to cook:)

Technology in the PreK Classroom

Using technology in our classroom might include using the classroom desktop computers or the computers in our school computer lab, iPod Touches, iPods, digital microscopes, digital cameras, flip video cameras, a Mimio Interactive System, or the Innovation Station shown here. Over the year, students will become more and more proficient using these tools. They are very fortunate that I participate in several technology/science collaborative groups which encourage and support technology in the pre-k classroom. Since I am not going to post pictures with student photos on this blog, I have used picnik.com to "hide" the face of a student using the computer on the Innovation Station. The student is clicking and dragging objects to a counting frame, following an oral direction on http://illuminations.nctm.org/ActivityDetail.aspx?ID=74.

I Can Label!

The students are learning all about their bodies and its parts. They have sung Head, Shoulders, Head and Toes, Put Your Hands Up In the Air, and various other body part tunes. They also have had an opportunity to label the parts of their body on the interactive bulletin board in the science center. The common assessment for the pre-k team this week was to label the body parts. I was amazed of the extra parts that some of the students names, such as wrist, cheek, and chest.

Learning Colors in PreK

First Red Week and now Blue Week. The students have been enjoying their focused color weeks. On Friday, every student had a shade of blue on...from turquoise to navy. They also brought in some blue items (see picture) to share with friends and will continue to look for blue around the classroom, the school, and outdoors. They will be surprised this week to find new homemade playdough...red that smells like strawberries and blue that smells like...I haven't decided:) I'm looking forward to Yellow Week next. We will be making fresh lemonade and eating bananas.

Magnets and Making Collections in PreK

Our week began by exploring the strength of magnets. The children learned about how magnets ATTRACT materials containing iron. After teaching a lesson, I heard a student telling another student that it (the magnet) attracted the paper clips because they had iron. Today we made "collections". I gave each group of 4 students a pile of objects. Their task was to group them into a collection of things that were alike. Most of the children began sorting the groups into collections by color, but a few students began sorting the objects by like kinds...all the cars, all the cats, etc. Again, I heard a student talking about her COLLECTION. Throughout a persons life, they learn the meaning of new words...this is also true about the pre-k students in the ladybug classroom!