Utopia Preschool

Day 14: Butterfly Emerges We arrived in school this morning to find one butterfly out of its chrysalis. It was truly an exciting event. Everyone huddled together and "ooohed" and "ahhhed" at the resting butterfly. It took 14 days for the first butterfly to emerge. By the time the children woke up from their nap at around 3pm, we saw a chrysalis break open and crumpled wings trying to break out. We were excited and watched in awe. It took only about 15 minutes for the butterfly to be completely out of its cocoon. It was a beautiful event. It happened right at pick up time too, so there were moms who witnessed the birth. After half an hour, the paper that the chrysalis was attached to had red droppings. The children wondered what it was. A couple of children thought it was blood, another thought it was poop. We read the pamphlet that came with our caterpillars and learned that the red liquid is a waste product left over from the butterfly's metamorphosi...

This was a sign written by a child who learned that for our caterpillars to survive, they needed to remain undisturbed. The child sounded out each letter for this sign. For the letters he did not know how to write from memory (but he knew what they looked like), he got a book to copy the letters from. If you were able to read this sign, there is no denying that you are a preschool parent! If you can't read the sign (or at least a part of it), the translation can be found at the end of this blog. When we came back to school on Monday, most of our caterpillars have turned into chrysalis. There were a few that were not quite there yet, but getting there. We learned during our research that caterpillars hanging shaped like a "J" at the top of the cover (or leaf, if they were in the wild) will soon turn into chrysalis. Not wanting to miss this important event, the students were quick to make observational drawings of the changes happening to our special creepy crawlies. Fo...

Tuesday was such a comfy pajama day! On this day we had the privilege to go upstairs to the science lab to see and test out the marble mazes the 8th graders created. We were amazed at how different they all looked. One in particular that stood out to the boys was the one named Marvelocity, which had different super hero figurines around it. The 8th graders were so nice and helpful! As the week went on the children continued to talk about the mazes and asked if we could make our own. So we decided to go back upstairs on Friday. We looked at the mazes, drew pictures of what we would want ours to look like, and then wrote a list of things we may need. The list the kids came up with was: "Toys" "Wood" "No, not wood metal" "Super man" A suggestion from one of our students was to turn our shoe store into a construction area. Hmmm....we'll see what develops from this.... On Thursday we had a Utopia parent come to school in his police officer uniform...

As always, it has been a very exciting week at Utopia Preschool! We have been practicing our song and dance moves for the always exhilirating dance festival. Teacher Ayla was back on Wednesday, and worked separately with the boys and then the girls. There is a part of our second dance where the boys pound their chests and say "Hee!" four times and the girls turn to the side and clap four times. Hopefully, the hula skirts we sent home with you are coming along well! Remember if you need any help please let us know and there are parents who have volunteered to work on more than one if needed. Here is an image of Maori women in their skirts, from a book we have in class. Notice the blacks beads on the skirts, on your child's skirt feel free to get creative and add black tape to different parts of the skirt to make a unique design. Reminders for the Dance Festival: *Please have your child at school by 6pm already dressed. We will open the Utopia sidegate for families to ente...

Shoe Store We got back from Spring Break and our shoe store was still the hang out area. This time around, more children pretended to be workers in the store. Here is a Utopian trying to clip a rope by the entrance of the store. He said he was doing this to let the people know that the store is closed. The store was a mess at the end of this business day. The customers did not return the shoes. They were everywhere! It was a good thing that this volunteer helper was eager to lend a hand. He worked with a partner and between the two of them, was able to accomplish the task. As a "shoe liner", he lined up the shoes while his partner, collected the paired shoes for re-stocking. When everything was put back in its place, the store was officially closed with this sign. Survey says.... The children were surveying the shoes worn. After looking at each shoe closely, they came up with three categories: shoes with velcro, shoes with laces, shoe with neither. After careful delib...