Imagine

This was a long term project that has taken us weeks to complete. It's awesome when an interest in a particular subject continues long enough to complete a project like this. In this case the interest was in turtles. We used the knowledge that we have gained over the past weeks to help us create our own sea turtles out of various materials. We started the project with the idea that we would try to make a sea turtles shell. We talked about the shape, looked at pictures and used tin foil to form something that resembled a turtle shell. The next part of this project involved paper mache. We dipped strips of newspaper into a mixture of flour, glue and water and placed them over our foil  shell shapes. After they dried we used a black marker to draw detail on the turtle shells. We painted our turtle shells a special "turtle color " using slightly watered down tempera paint. We supplied clay and asked the children to make a turtle body to go with its shell. Some of our friends ...

We have been working hard to create something special for our Moms for Mothers's Day.  Each child drew a picture of their Mom using a black marker. We used watercolor pencils to add color. Our seniors wrote sweet messages to their moms while our younger friends used the opportunity to practise writing their names. We also used watercolor paint to decorate the envelopes. We made a photo booth book mark of each child to put inside their card. In the process of all our efforts we had great conversations about all the things we love about our Moms. We love our Imagine Moms! 

One day we observed a group of children playing "restaurant" in our imaginative play area. This is the kind of thing we live for as teachers. What a great way to work on early literacy skills without it seeming forced. We jumped right in and started asking questions. Who cooks the food in a restaurant?"  They told us "A chef!" So a child was appointed the chef. "Who servers the food?" "Servers!" So some of the children served the food while others were the diners.   "If this was a real restaurant how would we know what to order?" "Menus!"  This is how we got the idea to make our own menus.   Some of our older students made their menus complete with descriptions and images, while our younger ones stuck to drawing pictures. This was an activity that went on for a number of days. Our new menus now have a permanent home in our kitchen area.

Our class visited the Sweetwater Wetlands Park on a beautiful Saturday morning. We have been talking about things that live in or around water in the preschool.  The park is home to dozens of varieties of birds, alligators, and snakes.  We ran across this sweet little bird who chose to make her nest on the path. The alligators we saw were huge and noisy! Some of our class had to wait for this guy to cross before they could proceed. What a great trip!

We were very happy to welcome Ben's Dad to our class to talk about turtles. He is a professor at UF and his specialty is amphibians and reptiles. The children had many questions and he answered them all. We had previously read in a book that a turtles shell is its backbone and today we got to really see how it's backbone is built into its shell.  We learned that turtles are reptiles and that all reptiles have scales. We noticed that the shell of a turtle are actually scales and they are made out of the same stuff that human fingernails are made from.  We also got to see a turtles beak which it uses to bite it's food but it doesn't chew it's food because they have no teeth. We also got to touch a fossilized turtle shell that is millions of years old and learned that turtles were alive when dinosaurs were on the Earth. Cool stuff! We want to send a giant thank you to Ben's Dad for coming to talk to us. We learned a lot.

Today we took a break from talking about things that live in the ocean and had a little fun with opposites.  Each child was asked to think of two things that are opposite from each other. We provided black paper and brightly colored oil pastels and they did the rest. We aren't sure whether we will laminate them or make them into a book. Either way look for them in the binder that we send home with families. They are super cute!

All our talk about the ocean has led the children to become very interested in turtles. On this lovely Spring day we brought our turtle books outside to look at. We provided chalk and the children created some of their first images of turtles.  We talked about the shape of their shells, how many legs they have and how sea turtles and land turtles are different. We found out that all turtles lay eggs.  Some of the children drew "mommy turtles with eggs".