Fantastic Fish Swim Through the Last Full Week of School

We began the week by looking at our journals. 

The children enjoyed looking back at all of the wonderful experiences from the year!

Drawing a page about our visit to the pier aquarium was the next step at this center.

Creating Swimmy from a banner that the children created at exploring was lots of fun! Swimmy is the main character in a book by Leo Lionni. The children stuffed the fish cut out and stapled it together. It is proudly hanging in our classroom!

Creativity comes in many forms as the Fantastic Fish build hats with fish builders!

Creating a fish by cutting out a pie shape and adding triangles for fins and decorating the fish with markers was another favorite center time project!

Working on the computer was a center time activity that not only reinforced letter identification, but also gave the children an opportunity to practice using the mouse and the skill of clicking and dragging letters.

The End of the Year party was enjoyed by the children with the help of so many parents! We started outdoors with a fishing game, fish squirts, throwing bean bags at a target and scooping fish with pelicans.

The sandbox was open for creating soup and castles!!

Using bubble wands, beach balls, and shaving cream was lots of fun!!

Indoors the children painted bird houses using liquid watercolors.

They decorated treasure boxes with jewels and stickers!

 Number Bingo and number match were other activities that were enjoyed by all!

The children found a creature in the water table with a number on the bottom and matched it to the ponds that were numbered on the table!

The children decorated towels with sea life stampers and paint, and visors with sea life foam stickers. Each child became a fish, laid down on a towel, and was lured with a gummy worm dangling from a fishing pole. Snack was shell mac 'n cheese and a miniature octopus ( Hot dog cut at one end!)

We want to thank all of the parents that helped at the party and those that were with us in spirit!! Your children touch our hearts daily with their creativity, wit, talents, and humor!! It has truly been a FANTASTIC year. We treasure the memories!! 

Fish Tales 5/14 ~ 5/18

We started the week by looking at a wonderful sea life BIG book!

We celebrated another birthday by reading the birthday book and eating a yummy snack.

We weighed and measured the children! They have grown in so many ways!!

The sea life puppet stage is open in the exploratorium. Is's hard to tell which the children like to do best, be the puppeteers or be the audience. They change the pitch of their voices as they make the puppets talk and we have heard the puppeteers sing to each other!

  We opened the computer and talked about using it as a learning tool. The children worked on it with a program that reinforces letter identification and uses the skills of moving the mouse and dragging letters to different locations on the screen.

The birthday girl shared her birthday book and we all ate a healthy snack!

 We wrote thank you notes as a class and the children printed their names!

The children continue to make connections by matching letters to the rug and by creating words.

Making shapes from other shapes is an activity that the children originate weekly! We provide the materials and they demonstrate the creativity!!

Exploring was an activity filled morning on Friday! We drew pictures by lying under a table and drawing on a paper tapped underneath! Snack was spreading cream cheese, jelly, or peanut butter on a fish bread. We added sprinkles for scales. Playing number bingo was a favorite activity. Deciding which items sink or float was a center that produced lots of conversations!

Mr. Williams led the Number Bingo. Numeral identification from 1-20 was reinforced in English and Spanish!

 Looking at sharks teeth at exploring!

May 25 ~ 9:30 Outdoor Fun on the playground

 May 25 ~ 10:00 ~End of the Year Party

If you are going to be traveling next week and will not be sending your children to school, please write us a note.

May 28 ~ Memorial Day Holiday

May 29 ~ Full day of school

May 30 ~ Last day of school. You may pick up your child from the classroom at 11:30 or we will start car line at noon!

Another Busy Week in the Life of the Fantastic Fish!

The Marine Science Lab was open for the children to look at sea life specimens with magnifying glasses and to use their imaginations with caring for stuffed sea creatures!

We opened the TP tube chyrsalis from the bulletin board at center time with the help of Ms. Fenech and found the coffee filter butterfly the children created last week.

To our delight the real chrysalis on the basket handle opened on the same day right before lunch! It was one of those  wonderful coincidences!

We let the wings dry during rest and it wasn't quite ready to fly by the time we left the classroom. So we decided to release the butterfly the next day. Ms. Fenech came back from aftercare and said, "Where's the butterfly?" Later that afternoon, Mrs.Mundell found the butterfly on the shelf and these children were able to observe it!

 The next day we looked at the butterfly and found joy in releasing it!

Creating an octopus using the bubble wrap paper was a multi-process activity which incorporated cutting, stapling, gluing, counting, and singing!!

Creativity abounds with blocks. These girls created a sea life aquarium.

The boys created shapes and cars with the velcro builders!

The children delighted in creating names and words using the duplo letters. They used word cards that we have in the art center and name cards that we use for lunch!

We visited the pier aquarium and touched a chocolate chip sea star, a sea urchin, hermit crab, and a brittle sea star.

 Miss Grace was our guide and she read Charlie Clown Fish and Annie A. by Suzanne Tate. This book demonstrates how clown fish and sea anemone help each other!!

We fed the pelicans fish and traveled back to the bus on the trolley!!

We had our last lesson with Mrs. Smay. She read How Chipmunk Got His Stripes? by Joseph Bruchac!

Row, Row, Row Your Boat was sung as they rocked the rocker on the playground!

 

Painting sea life at the easel was another popular activity during the week!

Exploring activities this week included shadow dancing with sea life puppets, making bubble prints by blowing through a straw, creating an aquarium for snack, using keyboards, and printing t-shirts with real fish that we got at the pier!