Weeds!

The kids love listening and dancing to our circle time song.

M is explaining how a weed can be harmful to a plant.

L is showing M where to put the date for today.

I showed the children the friendship feather. I told them something that was not true about myself. I told them my pants were white, when in fact they were blue. I explained that I was not being truthful with them. Then, I told them something that was truthful. This helped the children to see what it is like to tell the truth and a lie. Each child got a chance to say something truthful about themselves. K decided to point to her blue shirt.

C pointed to her shoes.

The children found a partner, so they can pull each other back and forth to simulate pulling weeds.

You cannot tell here, but K is sitting directly in front of me. We are pulling each other back and forth.

Each child got to take turns digging and pulling for weeds (yarn).

L  found 2 weeds.

The curriculum suggested we use dirt, instead I chose to use the colorful rice. 

The children learned that weeds can crowd plants. Weeds can steal sun and water from the plants which can cause them to die.

Where do you think you can find weeds? I encouraged the children to retell the story in their own words. I used prompts such as, "What happened next?. 

C & K did very well telling the story in their own words. L was very helpful by assisting the girls in telling their stories.

C arranged his story sequence cards, and now he is re-telling the story.

M told the story by looking at each picture. Then, he told us what happened in the picture.

L is telling us something truthful that she sees on our daily topic poster. She said there is a duck on the page.

C is pointing the weeds.

The children are displaying their honest friendship bracelets. They are proud they can be good friends by telling the truth.

Each child received a stick and yarn. They learned that weeds sometimes get tangled around the roots of a plant. The children are using the yarn to wrap it around the stick, and trying to see how they can unwrap it without hurting the yarn. 

Weed or fruit? How can you tell the difference between a weed and a fruit? The children learned that weeds look similar to plants and are sometimes hard to spot. The activity set for the children is a mixture of snacks. The children worked together to weed out the popcorn (weeds). Afterwards, they enjoyed a tasty snack. 

The kids are digging for weeds.

I forgot to post the pictures from our leaves activity. The children were excited to see how much water collected in their bag. 

L was excited to show me she found a root. Way to go L for recognizing what a root is. 

Flowers!

Circle time!

K is helping with the calendar. She's pointing to the carrot. 

C is helping L locate the first letter in her name, so she can sound it out. 

D is pretending the cotton balls are pollen. All of the children are having fun tossing them into the air and trying to catch them with their hands. 

K arranged her cotton balls in a row, so she can count them.

 The children are getting ready to play a game. I placed the letter F on one side of the room with all of the cotton balls (pollen) sitting on top. Then, I placed a picture of a flower on the other side of the room. Each child is taking turns picking up pollen with a pair of tongs, and quickly running the pollen over to the flower.

All of the children were engaged in this activity. They enjoyed it so much, they decided to play the game one more time before we moved onto the next activity.

C figured out that it was easier to hold the cotton ball in one hand, while squeezing the tongs with her right hand to grab the pollen. 

K did a great job squeezing her tongs to pick up the pollen.

We did it! The flower has all of the pollen on it. 

Making flower patterns with our shape manipulative's!

C is almost done making a flower with his shapes.

The children learned that sunflower seeds are edible. They are tasting the seeds first before they glue some onto their flower band.

K is doing a great job applying glue on her flower.

L applied her seeds in a circle. 

The kids had so much fun learning about flowers and pollen. Now, they are busy creating colorful flowers with chalk.

M was so excited that he could climb the ladder all by himself. Way to go M!

I love K's smile!

D & L love their new sunflower bands!

Leaves!

The kids are playing a game where they get to explore shapes, and build flowers using pattern blocks. Each player gets to roll a die, then they choose the same amount of blocks. Their job is to create something with the blocks, then trace around the objects to make a plant. 

L made a flower shape. She did a great job tracing her set of blocks.

C picked 5 blocks and is attempting to make a flower. 

D made a bow tie with her pattern blocks.

D said the blade of grass is alive because it is green.

The kids are watching me place a clear plastic bag over some leaves on the tree. We are doing this to see what happens to the plant leaves. Over time, the bag should collect water from the leaves. This all ties into what we have learned so far about leaves. We learned the stem of a plant carries water to the leaves. 

C is pointing to the stem.

I asked C to pick up the star. She went over and picked it up with ease. I was amazed she knew the star shape.

Singing a song called "One leaf, Two leaves". The children are walking in a circle until the song comes to a hault. Then, they have to name the letter they stopped on. 

The children are taking turns naming different parts of a plant. At first, they had a hard time just naming the parts by themselves. So, I started calling out different plant parts and let each child take turns pointing to the different parts of a flower.

Busy at work!

C has done a great job organizing his plant parts and labeling them.

K is proud of her work.

So far, our bag has become foggy on the inside with a little bit of moisture. We are going to let it sit out a little longer before we attempt to take the bag off.  

L pointed out that the differences between these two leaves. 

K made it up the slide.