5-Day: Happy Earth Day!
Dear 5-Day Families,
It’s been a wonderfully busy week! We started off on Monday by celebrating Earth Day. We’ve read several books about recycling and taking care of our planet Earth. The children each wrote a page about something they could do to take care of our planet. Check out our board in the hall! Some of their ideas include recycling, taking proper care of trash, planting a garden, using compost bins, bringing our own bags to the grocery store, using less water, and choosing to walk or bike.
On Tuesday, we talked more about recycling. We learned what the symbols look like and found them on some of the materials children brought to school. We sorted them into groups of cardboard, plastic, cans, and others. We followed up our discussion with a project to reuse some of our own recyclable materials to create something new. The children absolutely loved this project and were so excited to build, paint, and play with their creations! Here is what each child chose to make:
Marlo - firework maker
Caleb - boat
Connor - boat
Ashwin - motorboat
James - a shooting oil gun
Minna - rocket
Lucas - staple guy
Kaia - silly robot shrinking ray
Asher - water hose
Wren - robot
Alex - rescue bot
Madeline - rocket ship
Marie-Sophie - blue dolphin bus
Mia - robot that can do anything
Margot - water helicopter
Nate - robot
Some of our other Earth Day activities included: a group bingo game, a literacy activity tracing the words RECYCLE and EARTH, dramatic play with doll houses, creating animal homes at the block area, a special viewfinder with photographs from countries around the world, and a math game counting frogs onto lily pads.
Wednesday was our "Double-Steve Day", and the children were absolutely thrilled! First, we had our music teacher Steve come to our classroom and sing some of our favorite songs. Next, Steve the Science Guy joined the whole school and performed many humorous magic tricks. Ask your child to tell you about his monkey named Bananas, juggling apples, the amazing water, pulling feathers on strings, the magic rope, and the invisible scissors! Everyone enjoyed lots of laughs and left with big smiles!
On Thursday, we introduced our new class pets - Lilly and Gilly the tadpoles! We are so excited to watch them grow into frogs in the coming weeks! Ask your child what they observed and what they know about a frog’s life cycle. We will be focusing more on this topic next week! We finished our week with Creative Movement on Friday.
Reminders:
Please review the emails sent regarding this month's Showtime all about nature as well as a message with details for our upcoming field trip to the Arboretum on Tuesday, May 7!
Sincerely,
Kristi and Cathy
