Wednesday, the 18th, during Week of the Young Child was Work Together Wednesday! We have so many opportunities to work together in our classroom and work daily on being good friends. We also use partner work during small groups so we are sharing ideas and helping each other learn.

For our Work Together Wednesday activities, the morning preschool class worked together to create friendship rainbows. Each child was in charge of a color to create a class rainbow and a rainbow for each of their friends. We also created a block town using ABC town blocks. We had to decide where our houses would go and work together to create our community. We then added people and vehicles to our community.

The afternoon class also worked together to create a block community. They were very interested in where their houses were all located and some of them even made sure they had trucks and tractors just like at their real houses! This was great mapping and fit in great with a social studies theme about community. The afternoon class also worked together to clean up our playground and around the school. We decided to reschedule our community clean up day due to the wind so this worked great as a chance to work together as a class. This was another great social studies lesson about keeping our school and community clean and safe! The afternoon class had another chance to work together as they helped me create the poster for Week of the Young Child that is hanging in the lunchroom.

During Week of the Young Child, Tuesday the 17th was Tasty Tuesday! On this day, both morning and afternoon preschool classes made strawberry banana smoothies. During this time, we discussed ways to prepare food safely and with an adult. We talked about washing our hands before getting started, if we needed to wash our fruit (we decided we should wash the strawberries, but the bananas would be okay because they have a peel) and what parts of the fruit we should add to the smoothie. Some children were in charge of cutting up strawberries, some were in charge of cutting up bananas, and some were in charge of the ice and yogurt we added to our smoothies. To add a little science and math, we discussed the solid fruit during into a liquid we could drink while it was in the blender and we measured our ingredients to see if we would have enough smoothie for everyone. The morning class added language arts as they wrote the letter T for Tasty. This was such a fun experience and we love being able to cook in the classroom! The afternoon class also enjoyed a tasty treat during snack time. Elly even brought us some homemade chocolate chip cookies!

We have made tasty treats in our classroom in the past and I wanted to share those pictures as well! We have made gingerbread cookies, snow ice cream, a 100 day snack, and a birthday cake. For each cooking experience we followed a recipe and each child was invited to participate. Cooking can be a great math and science activity, as well as a fine motor experience while the children pour, stir, knead, and roll.

Yesterday, April 16th, was Music Monday during Week of the Young Child. Week of the Young Child is a national week created by NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) in order to celebrate and bring recognition to early childhood programs. We try to use music in our classroom daily and are able to go to music once a week with Mrs. Varvel, but had special music activities to celebrate this day.

For Music Monday, the morning class sang their favorite song/finger play Tiny Turtle. We use this song when we are waiting and transitioning to a new activity or to out of the classroom specials. We also picked musical instruments and marched around the classroom as a parade and made our own maracas using materials that we had in our classroom.

Afternoon preschool began their Music Monday by singing along with a song about the letter N. We have found a great letter song for each letter of the alphabet that teaches us whether it is a consonant or vowel, what sound(s) it makes, and words that begin with that letter! This has been a wonderful tool when learning about each letter and the kids enjoying singing along. The kids then made either maracas or a rain stick which we played while we sang different songs and while we talked about rhythm and beat.