The next day for writing time, we made name snowman. Each child received pre-cut snowman shapes with letters to spell their name. Then they glued them on a piece of paper to create their own snowman. We did a science experiment to see which snow was cleaner. We had snow from the front yard in one container, and snow from the back yard in another container. We talked about which one we thought would have more snow in it, and what might be in the snow once it melted.
Before taking our two week break, we had a Valentine's Day celebration! For Writing Time, we picked a sheet of letters with hearts on it and placed candy hearts on it to practice writing the letter. We made dancing heart Valentine's to take home. The kids really enjoyed making their Valentine's dance once they had their crazy arms and legs on them! We did a science experiment with the candy hearts. We filled 3 containers of water, vinegar, and salt water then guessed what would happen to the candy hearts in each liquid. We have some very good guessers in our group, and everyone made a great attempt at guessing what would happen. All the candy hearts were dissolved in the liquids, but did so at different speeds.
It was great to see everyone after our two week break, and everyone was pretty excited to see the new baby! So we started our Community Helpers theme exploring Doctors. We had a little doctors office set up complete with a doctors bag filled with doctor equipment, q-tips, cleaning pads, and bandages for the children to use in their play as they pleased. For Writing Time, we put matched letter bandages on a bear. Each bear had several letters on it, and bandages with the letters on it to match. The children did an excellent job matching the correct bandage to the letter on the bear! For our craft, we made a Boo-Boo Bear. Everyone drew a face and boo-boo's on their bear, then used bandages to cover up the boo-boo's. We also made skeleton's in play-doh using different sized q-tips! The children had a ton of fun rolling out the play-doh and cutting out a shape then placing the q-tips to create the skeleton. We also talked about how we go to the doctor for a check up and the things they do; check our heart, look in our ears, weigh us, and measure how tall we were. We worked together as a group to arrange ourselves against the wall from tallest to shortest.
Next we explored Dentists! We played a math counting game with marshmallows which was a big hit! First they had to set up their marshmallows as teeth on the circles drawn around the mouth and then they rolled a die and removed the correct number of marshmallows according to the die. Of course, they got to eat the marshmallows as they took them off (the best part!). We talked about the importance of brushing our teeth to get rid of all the sugar bugs, and finger painted a tooth pretending that the paint was toothpaste. They did a pretty good job of covering the tooth in toothpaste to get rid of all the sugar bugs! We also talked about what happens when we don't brush our teeth. The night before I had placed a hard boiled egg in root beer, and a raw egg in vinegar. We discussed how we needed to brush our teeth every day and eat sugary things in moderation as they can turn our teeth brown, just like the egg in the root beer had turned browned. We tried to brush it white again, but had little luck. We also talked about plaque and how it will eat away our teeth if it isn't brushed away. The egg left in vinegar had it's outer shell eaten away, just like the plaque eats away our teeth. The kids loved touching the vinegar egg! "Squishy", "bouncy", and "weird" were some of the descriptions that were expressed as it was passed around! We also practiced flossing our teeth by putting playdoh in the spaces between duplo blocks.
Next we talked about Vets and Pets. We discussed what we needed to do to keep our pets healthy and happy. We thought about different animals and sorted them into whether they were pets or not. For our craft we made our own pets out of egg cartons, buttons, googly eyes, and feathers. The children definitely made some pretty interesting looking pets! We played charades, and acted out different animals that could be pets. We had a pretty noisy place with all those animals! While we waited for parents to pick up we made collars out of beads for our pets at home.
A little leprechaun visited us at Preschool on St. Patrick's Day! He danced on our tables, and left us coins around the room. We tried to see if we could find him, but he must have snuck away. To celebrate St. Patrick's Day we made a rainbow on the wall with coloured squares and contact paper. We also made 3D rainbows out of strips of paper and cotton balls. The kidlets had some creative places of where they wanted to put their clouds, one wanted to put them on top of the rainbow! We made salt-glue shamrocks. The children had fun spreading salt on the glue, and we had salt all over the tables! They had even more fun using eye droppers and green water to add colour to their shamrocks!
Next we talked about the Mail. We took out the doctor's office, and replaced it with a Post Office. In the Post Office was envelopes, paper, and stickers to use as stamps. It also had a price list for buying each of the materials. We decorated stamps and wrote letters on the back to send to ourselves. We walked down to the Post Outlet to mail the letters. Unfortunately Tuesday kidlets didn't make it to the mail as it was snowy and cold, but they did a great job trying to get there! So the Monday/Wednesday kidlets mailed their letters for them. Everyone was pretty excited to receive their letters and pictures in the mail a few days later! On our way back from the Post Outlet, we found a beautiful icicle tree!
Firefighters were our last topic! We practiced what to do if there ever was a fire in our house, or if our clothes caught on fire. The children had a lot of fun doing the "stop, drop and roll"! For our craft we made a fire on black paper by cutting and gluing red, orange, and yellow pieces of paper onto it. We also went upstairs to watch a movie all about fire fighters and the equipment that they used. We also spent a lot of time working on spelling our names with the new letter beads.
