All About Eric Carle

We have come to the end of our author study on Eric Carle.  We read many books by this very talented author and illustrator.  The children worked very hard on creating their very own "Eric Carle" style art as they made a character from one of his books.  The children were very proud of their work!  We began by painting lots of different paper using rollers, sponges, blocks and brushes to create interesting effects on the paper.  Then we cut up these papers and assembled them together to make the characters.  

Here is a graph we constructed to show our favorite Eric Carle story.  The children had to explain their reasons for selecting a particular book as their favorite.  The Foolish Tortoise got the most votes in our class!

The completed bulletin board display featuring caterpillars, bald eagles, turtles, spiders, a red fox, a purple cat and many many more animal characters.  Fantastic display!

VISITORS TO OUR CLASS THIS WEEK!

This week we explored a few different creepy crawly creatures in our classroom.  Spiders, snails and frogs!  A special thanks to Mrs. Renaud, our lunch supervisor, for bringing a frog in to visit the class for one day.  At the end of the day we released the frog outside in the pond area.  We were super excited to see several other frogs in the pond, so we know our frog friend will be very happy there.  

By having these living creatures in our room, we have begun discussing some basic characteristics of living things.  We are also talking about the life cycles of different creatures, such as the life cycle of a frog and a butterfly.  

Loads of Learning in JK/SK

Lots of learning in our Early Years classroom this week.  Take a peek at some things that happened in our classroom...

Super Science Wednesday involved an experiment about "clouds" and "rain".  Very simple to try at home, you simply fill a container 3/4 full with water, top it off with shaving cream and then put drops of food coloring on the shaving cream.  The shaving cream represents a cloud and the food coloring represents the water molecules in the cloud.  As the cloud gets fuller and heavier, the water droplets come down, as shown as the food coloring drips down through the shaving cream into the water below.  

This became such as hit, that during our playtime, many of the children worked with Mrs. Main to create lots of different variations of this experiment using different sized containers and different amounts of water/shaving cream.  

Some of the girls worked cooperatively to piece together a puzzle showing the life cycle of a butterfly.  Way to work together girls!

Making beads was a very popular activity this week.  The children worked at this activity for a long time during our free play time.  Some of the children were making patterns with the beads.  We are looking for any donations of beads you may have at home, as we went through a lot of beads this week!

We are beginning an author study on Eric Carle.  We read the story "Little Cloud".  We made our very own cloud paintings and have put them on display on the bulletin board in the hallway.  To create these amazing pieces of artwork, we made a paint using 1/2 white glue and 1/2 shaving cream mixture.  We added words to identify what "Little Cloud" changed into using our best guess spelling and by copying print.  Take a look at just a few of our "cloud art masterpieces".

Here are some more friends enjoying our kindergarden!

Our Spring Walk

On Friday our class went on a walk to look for signs of spring.  This is what we discovered…

Buds on trees

A bird's nest

Dandelions

Tulips in our kindergarden

More flowers around the school

We also noticed that we are wearing lighter clothing in the springtime.  We heard birds singing and green grass.  These are all signs of spring!

A Time to Plant

As we continue to talk about the season of spring, we introduced the concept of plant growth.  This is a great follow-up to our Fighting Island trip as we talked about some of the things that grow on the island.  

In our class, the students had a choice to plant a bean seed or a sunflower seed.  We discovered most of the friends chose to plant a sunflower seed.  We wonder which type of seed will begin to grow first.  Each of the students recorded in their science journal the things necessary for a plant to grow.  Here are our little gardeners at work...