Utopia Preschool

Today was a super busy fun filled day. We celebrated Teacher Theresa’s birthday, had a grand opening of a pizza restaurant, and showed off our dance moves in a dance party.

The Pandas ans Koalas were busy decorating cookies today! Sydney L. and her parents vsisted the classroom this morning and brought yummy treats to decorate. The children got to choose between a fancy square cookie, a pig cookie or a cow cookie to decorate. Using a plastic knife the children spread frosting on their cookie. When they were ready, they cold sprinkle all sorts of candies and sprinkles on top. Once done they could eat their cookie or save it for later! Thank you Sydney and family for a fun and delicious activity!

Today we played with balloons at PE with Teacher Sharon! We practiced throwing and catching the balloons, as well as dribbling them in the air. All of us were very careful not to pop them as we moved around the gym.

Problem solving is an important skill for children to acquire. A fun way for us to model problem solving in our classroom is by using puppets! The teachers observe real conflicts between children and will replay the conflict through puppet play! Today, teacher Andrea used our lizard Gerald and Gina the elephant to portray a problem. Gina and Gerald were playing outside. Gina missed Gerald a lot and was giving him a lot of hugs. Gerald told Gina that he needed some space and was going to play in the sandbox instead. Gina was sad. Andrea then asked the children for advice for the puppets. Ellie: Maybe you could take a break because Gerald seems like he wants to take a break! You can play leap frog with another friend. Ingrid: How about when they’re done, they can play?

Since we did not have PE as usual on Tuesday last week, Teacher Sharon provided us with two days of PE this week! This week, the children got to have PE on Tuesday as well as today, Friday! A few of the children who do not attend school on Tuesdays were able to experience PE with Teacher Sharon fo the first time today. They were full of excitement learning different ways to maneuver their bodies in the gym. They practiced walking forwards, backwards, and side to side all while keeping their bodies safe. The children were especially enthusiastic about crawling and stepping through hoops that were propped up. At the end of PE, they calmed their bodies down with some stretches and then got to say goodbye to Teacher Sharon’s dog, Angel.

Darien’s Dad, Dr. Bobby visited our classroom and brought Leon the skeleton to teach us about the bones in our bodies. Dr. Bobby began by asking the children “Does anyone know what a physical therapist is?” Ellie: “A doctor” Colin:”Do you help people?” Afterwards, the children were invited to touch and locate the head, shoulders, knees and toes. They also learned other names for the bones such as skull, patella, humerus and phalanges. After touching the skeleton a few children said “It feels soft.” “ It’s too sharp over here.” Dr. Bobbie asked the children to guess how many bones there were in the skeleton. Elliott: “1,000” Caleb: “100” At the table, the children constructed their very own skeleton with pretzels and marshmallows and ate it afterwards stating what part of the skeleton they bit off.  Dylan:”I ate the hand.” Callum:”I ate the head.”

This week Teacher Stehpanie has been inviting the children to help her make clean mud. What is clean mud? It’s only three ingredients: one grated bar of white soap, one roll of torn up toilet paper and some warm water. The children helped tear the toilet paper into small pieces and squish the paper into the soap shavings and water. This creates a wet, gooey texture. Some children said it was sticky and others said it looked like gloop! Sensory activites like this support fine motor development and cognitve development.

Today we were given the sad news that four of our fish passed away suddenly last night. We took the whole morning to talk about what happened to the fish’s bodies and why they might have passed away. We also talked about ways we could remember them like drawing pictures and burying them in our yard outside. We will miss you fishies, and thank you for your time with us at school. Grayson: What happened to them? They died? Kennedy: We could draw a picture of them. Cassidy S: They’re dead, but they still have eyes! Emery: I think they were sick and needed medicine. Colin: I think they ran out of oxygen. We used our outside time to examine our fish and ask any questions about what might have happened to our fish, and what happens after they die. Emery: The sign of the cross of for the fishies. Kazu explains his drawing: The fish is in the ocean.

At the art table the children have been exploring watercolor and corn starch. Exercising their fine motor skills, they used droppers to carry the liquid and squeeze onto wax paper.  They each chose the colors they wanted to put on their wax paper, and when they were done, they carefully pressed the cardstock over the droplets to reveal a beautiful spread of the colors they chose! Isaiah: Mine looks like red paper Zack: I think it’s going to look like the mayor... Zack *After pressing down the cardstock and looking at what he made*: Wow!

During inside time, the children were particularly interested in drawing on whiteboards with dry erase markers. Sydney B. and Robert learned how to navigate sharing the space on the whiteboard, so that they could both use it at the same time. They found that visually dividing the whiteboard by drawing a line down the middle helped them share in a way that was fair. They created their separate doodles on their own sides, but when the line was accidentally erased, they worked together to recreate the line. Other than utilizing the whiteboards to draw, at the writing table Ryan and Caleb engaged in drawing magnetiles with regular markers and colored construction paper. Ryan traced the square magnetiles whereas Caleb drew squares as he looked over at the magnetiles in front of him.