Rain Forest

What's really green, has lots of trees, rains and lots of different animals?   .... a RAIN FOREST!!  This past week the preschoolers learned about rain forests and the animals that live there. 
Our letter of the week was the letter Cc.  We made a simple cotton ball Cc.  We glued cotton balls to form a letter C.We discussed the sound that our letter makes and then went around and found some items that began with the letter Cc.
As we journeyed our way into the rain forest we first watched a video about.  The video was a 'tour' of the rain forest and all of the trees and waterfalls!! (Waterfalls were a huge hit during the movie, there were a lot of 'WOOAH's!!!)  The background music to the video was the sounds of the rain forest - including the rain and all the animals.

The main animals that we focused on were the snakes (boa) and monkeys!! We made patterned snakes using our shapes.  After we did our patterns I let the students make their own snakes.  Here are some of their creations.
We talked about the Boa and saw some pictures of it.  I had some boys say that they have a boa in their backyard and that their dads ran it over with a lawn mower.  Oh the things that they say! :)

 

 

 

 

 

We also watched a movie with clips of monkeys.  We learned that monkeys carry their babies on their backs.  We grabbed our bean bags and started to walk around like monkeys with our "baby" on our back.  We bent over, placed the bean bag on our back and started to walk.  We had some very cautious mommy and daddy monkeys during this activity. :)  We also tried crawling with our baby monkeys.  It was a lot of fun!

 

Our craft for our monkey theme was a very simple monkey on a vine.  These hung very low, low enough for the preschoolers to take a little jump and hit it.  :)  These monkeys really added to our rain forest theme!

 

 

Since there are a lot of trees and vines in the rain forest, it tends to get pretty hard to see all the animals.  So we just had to make binoculars!! We glued two toilet paper rolls together, painted them, added stars and string and waalaaa instant binoculars!!  We shut off the lights, had the rain forest movie going with the sounds and went for an adventure in the rain forest using our binoculars.

 

 

 

Rainbows and Leprechauns

What a fun long week!  We haven't had preschool on Friday in a long time!  I planned on having a 3 day preschool week this week but we got some snow Sunday which made us have a late start and no preschool :(  I had so much planned for Monday, we just squeezed the activities in on Wednesday and Friday!  It worked out well!  

The last two weeks we have been learning about Rainbows and Leprechauns, as well as the letter Ww, number 8, focusing on the color gray and also our RAINBOW (rainbow) colors!!!

We learned to write our letter Ww and also did a craft, which has nothing todo with our theme, but it was fun making them!

 

 

 When we were making these wagons, I asked them question, a rather silly question.  Remember this school is in a VERY rural area.  I asked them what pulls our wagon.  I was hoping for them to say a handle....... NOPE I got the answer from ALL of my preschoolers.... A TRACTOR!!  I couldn't help but giggle!  Silly question!! :)

 

 

 

 

When we learned about rainbows we reviewed where rain comes from...clouds.  We did a very simple but very fun activity.  We created our own rain from a cloud.  They each got a cup of water and a cotton ball.  They knew exactly what they were suppose to do.  They had to dip the cotton ball in the water and then SQUEEZE out the water and WAAHLAA!!.... instant rain.

 

 

 

Our experiment could not just be squeezing water from a cotton ball.  Atleast that is what they told me, "this is all we are doing with the water?'  They didn't know what I had up my sleeve. :)  We were going to make colorful rain!!

I added shaving cream on top of their water, and they all got to choose the colors they wanted to squeeze into their cup.  They all choose, blue or green or even both colors.  I was pretty sad when no one wanted to choose red or yellow, but oh well, they still turned out neat!

 

 

While learning about rainbows, I also introduced them to those sneaky little leprechauns.  We talked about how they like to play tricks, hard to catch, what they look like and of course had to mention something about their pot of gold!! :)

 

We made name rainbows with our very own pot of gold.  On each color they wrote a letter to their name.  They also had to follow the rainbow pattern when they glued on their colors.  They turned out really neat!

 

I also had to add in the very easy project of watercoloring a rainbow.

 



 

I introduced the clover to them.  They all called it a leaf, which is pretty much what it is.  I showed them what makes it so special than just any leaf, it has many leaves to it!  We compared a 4 leaf clover and a 3 leaf clover!  We also went searching around the room for their name clovers.  They each had a clover with their name on it.  They were given someone else's clover to go hide and then come back to the carpet.  Once everyone hid the clover, they then had to go find the clover with theier name on it!  I have some very good hiders in my class! 

 

During our stories all I heard a lot of "Miss Jansen I see a 4 leaf clover" or "There's a 3 leaf clover right there!"

:)

 

Since we learned so much about clovers, we made our own! The name clovers are the ones that we used for our hiding game.  They painted the clovers green and then we added some green glitter to bedazzle it. 

 

 

The last day of our fun Leprechaun, we did an experiment where we mixed two colors. I showed them all the ingredients and then the two colors I had. We made pudding as a class. I told them we were going to make green pudding, but only had the colors of yellow and blue. They made sure they let me know that I did not have green. I told them we are going to see what happens when we mix these two colors. Here the pictures!  Everyone got to dump the milk and help stir!

 

 

When we left to go to recess, our room was normal.  When we came back, we came back to this......

 

 

 

Those pesky leprechauns!!!  Happy St. Patrick's Day Everyone!!!