81!

The MWF class wins the award for the MOST "T" words. Unbelievable. They thought of 42 during transition circle and then during snack they came up with the remaining 39. There was no other conversation during snack, it was all thinking about and saying "T" words. It took 2 white boards to get all the words in.

So cool!

That should say 81, not 91. oops!!

family night - April 9

You are invited to

Hesston college preschool family night

Thursday, April 9  

6:30-8 p.m.

Hesston Mennonite church (309 S Main)

Community Room and sanctuary

(Enter church through the east door – directions on back)

Food – POTLUCK!

(Meal begins at 6:30 in community room)

o  BRING 3 dishes of food to share with your family and others

o  Table service for your entire family

o  Drinks will be provided

PROGRAM (7:15-8:00)

Following the meal the children will give a small program consisting of several activities from our preschool routine.

Families – enrolled preschool children, siblings, parents and grandparents are all welcome to attend!!

now enrolling!

We are now enrolling 

for school year 2015-2016.

Contact Larisa Lawrence for more information:

larisa.lawrence@hesston.edu or (620) 327-8161

parachutes

We ended the week with a bang!! The MWF group made parachutes. On Wed, the children painted coffee filters; they dried and then Ms. Bethany attached yarn and paper clips and ta-da...parachutes! They could hardly wait until the end of preschool when we walked over the CAC to test them out!!

disclaimer: the photos may be a little blurry - action shots!!

Ms. Bethany showed us how to hold them up high and let them go!

 twisting, twirling, whirling, spinning! 
So much fun to play with parachutes!

Taking off!! This one ran for a ways and then let the parachute go!!!

recipes

Here are a few yummy recipes 

we've used at preschool for snacks.

hummus 

1 can of chick peas (Don't drain juice - you'll dump it all in!)

1 small garlic clove

dash of salt/pepper

2-3 T. olive oil 

1 tsp. lemon juice

2 large T. Tahini oil (sesame seed oil)

a dash or so of curry powder (depends on how "spicy" you like it)

Blend all ingredients together in a mixer/food processor/ or whatever you have until its smooth and just the right consistency for dipping veggies or pita bread. 

fruit smoothies

1 can of orange juice

1 can of pineapple juice

sliced bananas (2)

frozen strawberries (substitute other favorite fruits)

Add about 2 cups (each) of orange and pineapple juice to blender. Add bananas and about 1/2 bag of frozen strawberries. Blend until smooth. I made two of these batches for 19 children/teachers - about 6 oz. each serving. There was quite a bit of juice leftover after I made the smoothies. 

engineers

Once again...the MWF class is at it, engineering some pretty cool things! Materials: car ramp, large wood wedge block, 8 long blocks, and a marble.... put it all together and this is what you get!

"The NEW and Improved Marble Roller"
The marble starts at the top of the ramp, rolls around the yellow ramp and blue ramp, drops down to the bottom and rolls right through the wood wedge ramp. Every time. (See the marble there on the right?) The long blocks are there to stop it from rolling too far. This all happens within a matter of seconds.
Impressive, huh?

rolling out!

The designer is on the right and the guy on the left is the assistant executor!

I think they are ready for college! :) 

42

On Wednesday, during the transition circle, children think of words that start with whatever the letter of the week is. They thought of 42 "S" words this week and they were still going...

Pretending to be a teacher

Each year I anticipate that some children will imitate and pretend to be the teacher. They enjoy sitting on the teacher spot, having their captive audience (a few kid "students") and go through the routine of circle time. It's fun to watch how they perceive the teacher - repeating what they've seen and heard.  
There was some discussion over who the teacher was - a good problem solving/taking turn learning experience.  

Put your name card on this side

A teacher must wear a princess dress  

Time to count the name cards

Saying the car rhyme they learned this week.
Each "student" got a turn to place a car on the board.
Notice the two teacher team work going on here?!

They make teaching look easy.  

Inclined Plane activities

After learning about inclined planes, we had to do activities to go along with....so, we did some marble rolling for ART!

If you hold your tongue just right and move the tray like this, the marbles roll! :)

Even the sensory table had rolling - I pulled out tubes, connectors and encouraged the children to put them together in ways that made the water roll out and boy did they have fun!!

A teacher had to help stabilize this water tube!

Let's try it this way

A square tube - thanks Ms. Anna!

And small group activities even involved rolling - Ms. Bethany's group tested marbles and how fast they would roll down the ramp, and then measured to see how far they traveled. 

And finally, WOOD art with loads and loads of wood glue - dripping and puddling everywhere!!

Can you say drippy glue?

Teamwork!!

Here's my creation

All smiles!

The longest worked on and drippiest creation of ALL times! 
Here are some of this guy's quotes as he was working:
"This glue is sure dippy-dippy. This is the drip station. And this is gluetastic!" Gotta love fun with words!!

Inclined Planes

We are not trying to get too advanced here with our academics, but I will blame it on the MWF 12 boys who build ramps on a daily basis. That was my inspiration for learning more about inclined planes! Why not? Of course we discussed gravity, height, weight, rolling, sliding, speed, etc., just leaving out the abstract mathematical equations and physics of it all. (They can learn that later!) 

We had a blast of a week.

First off - what is an inclined plane? Anything with a slope!  (As one child described it!)
I made a book of pictures I'd printed off of the internet of different inclined planes...roller coasters, slides, stairs, ramps to move a piano, pictures of our own ramp creations at preschool, etc.

We did an experiment during circle time: 

Prediction, Testing and Results! 

Yes. We are getting very scientific here at preschool. I collected a tub of items that would roll, not roll or roll if placed just right. Then I built a simple ramp (a wedge and a long flat wood piece) and we tested away!!

Ramp and materials ready to go!
I adjusted the long wood piece up or down
as directed by the young scientists.

What will happen? Roll? Not Roll? Roll if placed just right?
(This is the PM session - they thought we needed a higher ramp than just one wedge)

MWF results

TR AM results

TR PM results -- oops! We forgot to tally the results. :) 

It was interesting because 2 out of the 3 results concluded that "placed just right" had the higher amount of items.