The rakes, balls, trucks, frisbees, tricycles, and hoppy balls were finally brought out from storage, much to everyone’s delight.  The Armstrong family also donated a wagon, wheelbarrow, and peddle bike, so there was a lot of activity this week.  The worm hunters were busy tipping over stumps and digging in the garden for creepy crawlies, and were delighted with their finds.  After examining their collections, most of the worms ended up in the garden to aerate the soil.  Sandcastles were constructed in the sandboxes, and buckets full of water were turned into potions and stews.Monday students watched a time lapse video of a Holton Rower pour painting.  Rower’s artwork is done on a fairly large scale, but we imitated his style with small blacks and acrylic paints.  The children selected their mat board bases, blocks, and paint colors after donning T-shirt smocks.  They then squeezed paint over the block, which flowed down over the sides.  As each color was added, the paint was layered and pushed further out, creating beautiful patterns.We celebrated an upcoming 4^th birthday.  The birthday boy shared his new age, then carefully orbited the sun with his globe while we listed the seasons and counted his age.  After singing Happy Birthday, he blew out his candle, then we enjoyed some delicious cake.
In anticipation of Mother’s Day, we introduced a flower making art project.  The children used the rotary cutter to slice strips of paper, which they then glued to a piece of mat board.  After assembling them in a circular radial pattern, they then rolled them over and glued the other end down, finally selecting a circle color for the flower center.  This project took some intense focus and coordination with the placing, rolling, and gluing.  Many children wrote Mother’s Day notes.  Keep a look out for these special gifts being sent home next week!On Tuesday morning the children each took some time to write and/or draw thank you cards for officer Glen Lucas and Andy Schafermeyer for their visit with trout a couple of weeks ago.  They children had such a wonderful time, and they worked hard to draw some beautiful trout pictures for Andy and Glen.The dramatic play camping area continued to be busy.During Spanish Zeanny continued to sing songs with us about the body parts and colors.  We also read the book Mi Madre es Fantastica!  Zeanny then played a hide and take away game.  She covered up the little family member finger puppets, as well as an elephant and hipopotamo and a gigante baby, then removed one. We then guessed which family member (or animal) was missing.  The students who wrote familia were each given a prize.We started to wrap up our reptile unit with a story about alligators and crocodiles called SNAP!  We learned that although they are very similar, they have two main differences.  Alligators have rounded snouts, like the letter U, while crocodiles have more pointed snouts, like the letter V.  We also learned that the crocodile’s fourth tooth on the bottom sticks up into a notch on the outside of its’ upper jaw, while the alligator’s fourth tooth is inside the jaw.  We did a sorting activity with some pictures and our crocodile and alligator toys.  Each child was given a picture or animal, then determined whether it was an alligator or crocodile.We read about turtles as well, learning that they lay eggs in the sand, which hatch many months later.  Most turtles are amphibious, except for tortoises, so after hatching, they make their way to water as quickly as they can.  We learned about turtle predators, and how most turtles (though not sea turtles) can pull their head and legs into their shell.  We then played a game where we pretended to be turtles trying to make our way to water before any predators (birds, raccoons, crocodiles, and jaguars) could eat us (remove a sock).  We ducked into our shells to protect ourselves, then waited for the predator to leave us alone before heading for the water again.We did some animal movement activities to work on our gross motor skills.  We pretended to be giraffes reaching up to eat leaves from tall trees, pandas reaching down for bamboo, zebras galloping, flamingos standing on one foot, and hopping frogs.We continued to practice for our end of year performance with Susan.  The kindergarten students met with Susan to make some decisions about the performance and select which songs and animal classes they want to present.  Each student chose which song they wanted to perform in, and we practiced our roles, holding duck puppets, pictures, etc.Friday students were given marshmallows and toothpicks and challenged to build the biggest structure that they could.  We quickly discovered that it was rather difficult to get very high without proper support, so the children began building shapes and ladders and constellations.  They had a great time using their fine motor skills and imaginations to come up with some crazy structures.As rain was predicted, we went out for a very early recess, anticipating the arrival of a storm.  When it didn’t blow through, we decided to bring our work outside, rather than heading in.  We read the story Lifetime about animals and numbers.  We learned that caribou will shed 10 sets of antlers in a lifetime,  woodpeckers will drill 30 roosting holes, and a seahorse father will birth 1000 babies!  We then each took a little book and made our own animal books.