The Science Centre!

   For our last day of preschool, we went to the Science Centre! The kids had so much fun exploring and checking out all the cool exhibits they had. Here's a sneak peek at the fun we had while we were there!

Tuesday's Adventures!

Both classes a ton of fun on the self lifting chairs. Each chair had a different level of difficulty and were weighted as if we were on different planets. It was fun to see how much more effort we needed to put in to move ourselves!

The sand and water table was a popular spot, and we played for quite a while creating rivers in the sand!

Checking out the new turtle that's come to the Science Centre!

Building a pretty cool car out of K'NEX.

Making bubbles was a big hit! We had lots of fun exploring the different bubble stations, and trying to create the biggest bubble we could.

This is Wednesday's adventure at the Science Centre!

   Working together to try and lift the world. It was a lot of hard work!

Wednesday kidlets LOVED the tractor! Once we explored the whole Science Centre, we had time to revisit an exhibit, and this was the one they choose!

Air hockey was another favourite the boys had.

While we were at the Science Centre we had an opportunity to see the "Space Show". The science explorer had asked for a volunteer, and our Logan got picked! The science explorer wanted to drop the two bags he's holding onto Logan just like that to show gravity, and just as he was about to drop the bags, he stopped. The look on Logan's face was great! He really thought the bags were going to get dropped on him, but the science explorer told him that he didn't have the safety equipment.

Now Logan has the safety equipment on, and thought the science explorer was going to drop the bags at a normal height. But instead, the science explorer went to the top of a tower to drop the bags. When Logan saw where the science explorer had gone, he got really nervous! And then the science explorer dropped the bags from the top!

When we left the Science Centre to return to the park to wait for parents, we saw a very unusual sight, thousands of caterpillars grouped on the trees! Of course, the boys thought it was super cool to see all those caterpillars in bunches on the tree, and wanted to take them home. But I (and their parents) thought it was better to leave the caterpillars on the trees.

May

   It's hard to believe that May has come and gone already! Our last month of preschool has finished up, and we sure had a fun year learning and exploring together! During May we explored bugs, and to start off we read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle. We used a flannel board set to retell the story during the week. We talked about the life cycle of a caterpillar, and acted it out. For writing time we created name caterpillars. Everyone was given a set of colourful circles with the letters of their name on them, and were encouraged to glue the circles onto a piece of paper to write their name. We also worked on caterpillar patterns and discussed what makes a pattern. For a craft we created egg carton caterpillars.

   Next we talked about butterflies, and read "Waiting for Wings" by Louis Ehlert. We revisited "The Hungry Caterpillar" flannel story, and reviewed the caterpillar life cycle. We discussed symmetry and practiced it by creating Lego butterflies. We played a couple of gross motor games working on matching and colour recognition. One of the games we played was called "Butterfly Match". Pictures of butterflies were placed around the room, and everyone was given the matches to the butterflies. They sure had a lot of fun looking around the room trying to find the match to their butterflies, and were so excited to announce "I found one!". The other game we played was "Flower Find". Everyone was given a butterfly cutout, and had to find the right coloured flower called out so their butterfly could get something to drink. For our craft we created coffee filter butterflies.

   Spiders were our next topic. We read "The Very Busy Spider" by Eric Carle. We also played with another story board all week to revisit the story. We had spiders come and visit, and the kidlets had a lot of fun finding them hiding around the classroom. We played with them while we sang "The Itsy Bitsy Spider". We talked about who liked spiders, and some of the reasons why we liked them or didn't like them. We worked on our math skills by playing a counting leg game. Everyone received a legless spider, and 8 pieces of pipe cleaner for legs. Everyone took a turn rolling a die, counting the dots, and then placing the right number legs onto the spider. Everyone got really excited as they started to see the legs on their spider was greater than the legs they had left. We also created a spiderweb together as a class! The kids had a ton of fun helping choose which way the yarn was to go next and help tape it. After we had built our web we had fun playing games inside the web. For our craft we painted with little plastic spiders. The children had a lot of fun dipping their spider into the black paint and then painting their paper. Although, near the end they ended up painting with their fingers. We also painted spider webs by dipping yarn into paint and then dragging them across the paper. We had some pretty interesting webs created!

   Ladybugs were our last topic! We read "The Grouchy Ladybug" by Eric Carle, and talked about what it means to be a good friend. We sung a rhyme called "Five Little Ladybugs" and acted it out.  We played "Ladybug Musical Chairs" and the children had a lot of fun trying to quickly get a chair once the music stopped. We also played a couple of math games. One of the games we played consisted of the children matching up shapes. They had several ladybugs with different shaped dots on the one side, and had to match the correct shape for dots on the other side. The other game we played was a dice game. Everyone was given a handout with several blank ladybugs on it. We took turns rolling a die, and then drew the correct number of dots on each ladybug. For our craft we made ladybugs using a cut potato to create the ladybug shape, then used our fingers in black paint to create the dots. The children enjoyed creating their ladybugs with a different method. At first they didn't understand why we were using potatoes to create them but soon thought it was lots of fun!