 With four legs and many toes THESE newts are made for walkin', and climbing and scurrying along ponds, trees and ground. This week began our study on the letter "N" and Newts! The children have been very intersted to learn about these little known amphibians. They have called them lizards, monsters and iguanas. We have learned that they lay their eggs in ponds, hatch and breath with gills and swim. As they get older they grow lungs and breathe just like you and me! They can be red, orange, green and brown. Newts love to eat all kinds of insects, worms, snails and small fish. The above picture shows an activity we completed yesterday. We cut the newts out following the gray lines. I cut out the newts for the younger children and our older children followed the lines themselves. We then placed the newts into a letter "N" formation to fit into our letter "N" paper. We viewed this short on youtube that talks about the letter "N" is for newt and nest. We also made up a little song about newts...These Newts Were Made For Walkin'! Yes...it is sung to the song your thinking of "These Boots Were Made For Walkin'!" by Nancy Sinatra. It's just the chorus...but I did include the link to it simply because I LOVE it! It's such a fun song...however I didn't show this one to the preschoolers :) this one is just for you mommas and daddies! Here are the words to our song... These Newts Were Made For Walkin'! These newts were made for walkin' And that's just what they'll do! And one of these days these newts are gonna climb a tree with you! (we practiced walking like a newt, one all fours, and climbing a tree like a newt!)  We took all our amphibians out to the water table and we discussed what an amphibian is and that they begin living their baby lives in water only and then, as they grow up, they can still swim, but they have to come up for a breath just like we do when we swim in the water. 
In our welcome center we placed our salamander poster and noticed that only one of the salamander's listed is a newt. We looked at all the different colors, patterns and sizes. We also discussed that they all had lots that were the same. They all had four legs, talls and shiny skin.
 This water play session became VERY messy as we recreated the newt's habitat by adding lots of sand to the bottom of the water table. We squeezed and squished in the sand and talked about the fact that the newt must have very strong legs to be able to walk on sand! 
We also pretended that our blue playdough was the newt's water (pond) and our green playdough was the dry land. Mr. Newty stomped and squished in the playdough as we played!
And this picture is here simply because I love it. It's pretty much sums us up...a sweet little mess of shoes at the back door just waiting to PLAY!
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 So what letter "M" week would be complete without a bit o' Mickey?! Thanks to one of our families, and their recent trip to Disney, we obtained a Mickey mold. Our magnificent muffins were a delight in the shape of Mickey Mouse and the children were excited to bite the ears off these tasty treats!! Later that morning we again snacked and snacked on these. What a clever way to get my sweet monkeys to eat fresh blueberries....shhhhh, it's our secret ;)!! 
The concept of "M" is for monkey really made an impact with this craft. First we cut out letter "M's" with brown craft paper. We then matched its shape with a letter "M" , continued with placement of hands (or feet) a circle face and semi-circle ears, a black nose and of course...googly eyes!
The Power of Unity...Some days present a few more challenges than others and we had a few of those moments this week :). During those times we sing, and sing and sing, read lots of books, pass around the cranky cream (lotion can be very soothing to an upset babe) and engage in some sort of water play. This can be washing our babies in the sink...washing Sheppie in the water table, playing with various sprinklers and funnels, washing our kitchen center dishes in the sink or water painting with a soapy canvas. All of these calming strategies are helpful to disengage a preschooler's stress signals, soothe a tired toddler and redirect energy FROM conflict to peace. However, even with all our Conscious Discipline skills there are moments when a behavior simply, "Is what it is..." and we look around and find that the only one we can make sure stays calm is oneself. Is this ok? YES! When the adult figure in a child's life is expressing peace, safety and love in the midst of a child's meltdown that child is still learning. It may not be apparent at the time, but what is being taught is that "I accept and love you no matter how you feel at this moment in time." "We will get through this together"... it IS the Power of Unity in action...  More fun with food! It's funny how much better a child eats when their meal is "plated!!" Of course, who doesn't like a meal that looks a yummy as it is... As you can see from the plates to the left we are having oranges, spinach, tomato, grilled cheese and cheese slices. A serving of these is a bit more than what is on each plate, but I have been trying to get the children used to eating veggies and fruits that they may not normally eat (spinach). So I will place small amounts of these items arranged on their plates and add more as they are more inclined to eat them. 
We completed our week with foot tracings, toe counting. We also sent home a monkey counting bananas game and these CUTE little monkey puppets. We had a wonderful time welcoming a new friend to our school and another will join us next week as well. All of our children went home singing our favorite little monkey song, "Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed!" We will begin next week with the letter "N" and Newts! This will be a fun little chapter as we learn all about a creature I believe will be an experience for everyone!! Have a wonderful weekend and I wish you well!
 Over the past two days we have continued our "Monkey" theme. What child doesn't LOVE to play monkey (bouncing, jumping, pretending to swing from vines, monkey walk and talk), eat monkey food (bananas, oranges, apples, LOTS of fruit!!), and play monkey games (chase, picking bugs ((pretending!!) from each other's hair and snuggle)??? Each child took home five little monkeys yesterday to go along with our song Five Little Monkey's Jumping on the Bed! This is another little Youtube clip we viewed today. It shows a great example of monkeys using their tales to swing, climb and play. The children wanted to see it AGAIN!  We also played this little game of "Spot the one that's different!" We talked about the monkeys sitting, standing, pointing and scratching their heads and worked together to spot the ones that were the same and the ones that were different. To make it a bit more challenging for fine motor skill development we used clothes pins to mark the one that was different. We LOVE to READ!
We take our reading very seriously around here and LOVE to read. This sweet pic was just after lunch and before nap as I was preparing our area for rest. A few of the children gathered their naptime books and began to read all snuggled up and cozy :)
 Speaking of reading this little list shows our selected reading today, this isn't all our books though! We also again practiced naming our emotions and what situations might we feel that way with the book, On Monday When It Rained.
We didn't stop our learning day there, though! We also continued with our Hooked On Phonics lesson as we made Marvelous "M" with glue and glitter, naming the letter, sound and examples of words we found in our books that began with an "m" and words we could think of...like "mommy" (our favorite 'M' word!!). Have a great day and make sure you PLAY!!! -L This week we are discussing monkeys, and the letter "M". The below link I have shared with the children today as we have discussed, "What makes a monkey, a monkey??" We read the book, Monkeys Are a Lot Like Us, by Allan Fowler and learned that "Most monkeys have tails, but you will never se an ape with a tail." We also learned that monkeys like to play, take naps and eat fruit, JUST LIKE US! They bang on rocks and trees, can use tools and snuggle each other for love. We practiced being monkeys and swinging from a vine, making monkey sounds like "Ooh, Ooh, Aah, Aah," and giving each other lots of snuggletime. We practiced the sound that the letter "M" makes in the beginning of the word "MMMMMMmonkey!" We also cut the letter "M" out with our scissors during our play dough playtime and we shaped and molded the letter "M" with long pieces of rolled up dough snakes.  We also practiced this sound "MMMMmmmmMMMM," after we made a treat for ourselves of air popped popcorn. We think that monkeys WOULD like popcorn if they had the chance to try it! 
Once outside we also pretended to be monkeys taking care of one another. We painted each other's toes with pink paints and then carefully washed each others toes off at the water table. :))
This afternoon since it will be VERY hot outside, we will bring our painting indoors and paint rain forest pictures with light and dark green. We will observe the differences of the greens as we mix the paint ourselves using green and white paints. We will also continue our Hooked on Phonics lessons, and practice our new song Five Monkeys Jumping on the BED!!!  Painting, crafts and more while learning about L and Lions! We spent lots of outside and inside arts and crafts creating time this week. We played with many different types of sensory materials while discovering the letter "L" and learning all about LIONS! Monday we sent home some simple little lions we glued with triangle ears, a circle face and rectangle whiskers. We discussed these shapes as we glued and placed the brown and black colors papers onto their orange or yellow backgrounds. We also painted scenes from what we viewed Youtube of lions ROARING! We ROARED quietly and LOUD just like a lion and we stomped and walked just like lions do. We utilized our LOVE for playdough and compared and contrasted the footprints of our plastic tigers, lions and giraffes while mushing, smashing, cutting and molding our play dough. We also crafted our lion puppets and learned about lions' manes and that the male (boy) lions have manes but the female lions (girls) do not. We viewed and discussed the differences watching this Youtube clip. We also compared and contrasted the animal footprints with paint of different colors. We noticed that the giraffes feet were very small compared to the lions, even though the giraffes were tall and the lions are shorter. Our sweet friend as also visiting while we learned and played and the children thought the WORLD of her. She loved being a big helper and feeling like the oldest and biggest. She is a twin and the youngest of five children. I met her family when they were in search for childcare when their oldest daughter, now 18 and going off to college, was only a fresh faced two year old! I raised their children for some time until they transferred with their careers to another state. Through the closeness of our relationship that developed while providing care for their children grew, we managed to maintain close contact regardless of where life lead. Now, here we all are in Overland Park together! Its WONDERFUL!!! 
These heavily maned lions had LOTS of glue squeezed and painted all over the yellow and brown yarn to hold them together. Their safari friends were a little lesson in social/emotional skills...naming how we feel and putting the face to the feeling...
 During our letter learning times we cut out the letter, glued it...drew it in the sand, made it with leaves and sticks and their favorite were the "lovely letter L's!" Children LOVE glitter and we also sent home our clothes pin lovely "L's" on Friday for you to practice finding letter "L" words and clipping the letter to the item. This is wonderful fine motor skill, language and phonics practice at home with YOU :)!  We have also had TONS of mealtime fun this week. Since we seem to be on a turkey bacon kick, its makes a perfect opportunity to make all things into faces. We have been talking about how we feel. How we think our little faces on our plates feel and what we can do to help our friends if they are sad, mad, angry or frustrated! These are big emotions for little bodies and minds to figure out and we continue to sing our "S.T.A.R." song and Welcome songs daily to help us transition from our home family to our school family times.
Big Emotions and Little BABES!
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Life is made of moments..."There isn't anything more full of hope, joy and peace than a child's smile... It captures the mundane and makes it extraordinary." - LaDonna Woolsey I am a www.prekwithme.com blogger. I decided to become one after trying their products because I they are comprehensive and serve my mixed age group well. I do receive products to review from www.prekwithme.com and do so with my own honest and thorough opinions. For more information, please contact me at [email protected]
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