Letter Experts Continue

The letter experts just keep on coming...
Introducing:

Mr. Uliver

Try to pronounce it with a long U and a short U.

This is a tricky one...

Mr. Xal

Mr. Aoshua (long A)

Mr. Meodore

Neighborhood Clean-Up

We took a brisk walk this morning with our big buddies 

and cleaned up the school neighborhood.

Who knew that litter could bring so much 

joy to a group of children? :)

Thank you God, for this beautiful world!

Tremendous Truffula Trees

Who doesn't LOVE reading The Lorax?

It is a creative tale written by Dr. Seuss with 

magical characters and whimsical words.

It teaches a valuable lesson about caring for the gifts of the Earth.
'UNLESS...
someone like YOU cares a whole awful lot, 
nothing is going to get better, it's not!'

The story focuses on the beautiful TRUFFULA trees 
which sadly were all cut down. 
So, we decided to have a truffula-focused afternoon and 
tried to build as many truffula trees as possible.

 It was sooooo fun that our full-day friends said that the half-dayers NEED to try these truffula challenges on Fun Friday:)

Challenge #1...

It always amazes me how many different ways the 

children can use the same materials.

 Check-out the intense concentration.

Part of the challenge was seeing how tall we could 

build the truffula trees, so these little smarties 

decided to combine their tree towers.

 A new twist on using the same materials.

Challenge #2...

One of our busy boxes was filled with wooden 

spools, craft sticks, and pom poms.

How can we use these materials to create a truffula tree?

Challenge #3...

One group of kiddos asked if they could use the Earth 

tinker tray to try to build truffula trees.

These children never cease to amaze me!!

Challenge #4...

Can you paint a truffula tree?

We couldn't pass by an opportunity to make 

beautiful truffula tree paintings.

 Some children printed with sponges and pom pom poofs.

While others used fingers.

The 5K kiddos visited this afternoon and this 

was their take on the challenge...

You gotta' love creativity!!

Earth Week...

We are celebrating Earth day all week long by engaging in many activities reminding us of the importance of taking 

care of the Earth God has blessed us with.
The first thing we  needed to do was to commit to 
doing our best to care for the Earth.
We made a promise and sealed it with our handprints.

We are learning about the 3 R's... Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

One way we can reuse items is to turn them into 

something else. We used some food boxes and cut 

the front panel off and made them into puzzles. 

So easy. So fun!!

Exploring loose parts and an invitation to create an Earth 

produced these results. So cool and so creative!

Our pretend lab has turned into a recycling center.

To help us to understand HOW to sort the different items, 
we have been playing a sorting game and now we are
 officially able to work in the recycling plant.

The children accept recyclables from the community.

The items get dumped into a giant dumpster.

From there the employees at the center sort the items into crates... 

newspaper, cans, bottles, plastic.

Sometimes people get paid for collecting aluminum.

Having a bit of fun with our literacy activities too!

'Write-the-Room' has the children going on a hunt for alphabet trash cans around the room and marking a recording sheet.

Our mini sensory bin is a silly game of pick-up-the-trash.

The children need to find a piece of trash, identify the sound (or letter) on the piece of trash, and then crumple it up and toss it into the sensory bin.

The finger gym gets our hands and fingers going by 

grabbing little pieces of trash with a mini tongs and 

dropping them into a small can.

Our week will end with a neighborhood clean-up with 

our big buddies on Friday:)