Cry Wolf!

Barter Stage II

At Miss Amy’s we are so lucky to operate in a town that has so many interesting things to do and see. One of our favorite experiences is the Barter Theatre. The Barter is  one of the longest running professional theatres in the nation. We are very blessed that they offer a troupe of actors (The Barter Players) that specialize in performances for young audiences.

Every year the children look forward to watching the plays. It’s a big deal to them! They get a little “dressed up” and they work on using their best manners. We walk through our wonderful town exploring the sights.

Virginia is for Lovers

Walking

Behind the Scenes

We couldn’t have a trip to Stage II without stopping at the “wishing fountain”.

Then we were off to the show. We saw “Cry Wolf“. It’s a fantastic play written by the wonderful Catherine Bush. It was a mash-up of many classic stories. The kids absolutely loved it! They were on the edge of their seats for the entire show. It’s my absolute favorite thing to watch first timers when the lights dim. They have no idea what’s about to happen, but are immediately captivated  every time.  It is so rewarding for them to witness kind of art!

This quote from a Huffington Post article, entitled How Theater for Young People Could Save the World  really illustrates the benefits the children get from the experience.

” Theater is like a gym for empathy. It’s where we can go to build up the muscles of compassion, to practice listening and understanding and engaging with people that are not just like ourselves. We practice sitting down, paying attention and learning from other people’s actions. We practice caring.”

We had a fantastic time at the theatre. You might have heard us howling all the way home…

-Miss Amber

 

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Trike-A-Thon

Recently we held our annual Trike-A-Thon. We have done this for 22 years. We use this as an opportunity to raise money for St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital and to teach the children about bicycle safety. We have raised over $31,000 over the past years. The children look forward to this every year. They are always very excited to show off their bikes and helmets. Every year I am astonished at how determined they are to help the children and families at St. Jude’s. Even our smallest friends seem to know they are riding for a purpose. The children did a total of 874 laps between all three classes and would have probably doubled that if it hadn’t started raining!

 

Thanks to all the parents, family and friends that made and have made donations!

Snowy day fun.

We have been watching the snow come down from inside Miss Amy’s Child Care and we have tried to catch snowflakes on our tounges outside in our playground. We have made tracks in the snow with our feet and played with snow and ice in our outdoor kitchen. We made snow angels and looked for our sandbox (hidden under all that snow). Where was it? We made snow balls and contemplated why our mittens became wet after having played outside in the snow for a while. Where did the water go and where did the ice come from? We discussed the difference between snow on the ground and falling snow. We designed snowmen and looked hard for snowmen parts – sieves with long handles for the arms and tin buckets for hats as well as sticks and anything else that may look good on a snowman. What does a snowman taste like? Today some of the children decided to find out for themselves by licking one of them! Miss Susie started a game of snow soccer on our snow clad lawn, the children had not lost their touch!

– Miss Maria, teacher for the 2’s class.

What does a snowman taste like? Have a lick and find out!

Snow soccer!

 

The Rain Finally Came!

After having watched the clouds in the sky for many weeks now and only dreaming of rain, it finally did rain! We have had two big rains this week and our vegetable garden sends its thanks!

Look at how well our vegetables are growing in our garden!
We have carrots, which very reluctantly showed themselves at first but they have steadily kept growing and they really perked up after the rains.
The Swiss chard, the beets and the broccoli are all looking well as are our sugar snap peas. Our cauliflower is being eaten by caterpillars! Something will have to be done about this. We will probably have to resort to some kind of non toxic homemade bug spray. We are 100% organic in our garden!

Our garden is flowering! Tomato, potato and pepper flowers!

What to do on a rainy day? Go outside and make rainy-day-art! It was barely sprinkling so we decided to make art outside this morning. We used clothespins to attach large pieces of paper to our fence. The children used spray bottles filled with paint to make their art. At first the pictures looked a lot like clouds with rain falling from them. The children enjoyed watching the paint mix with other colors and drip off the paper.

A lot of caring is going on here at Miss Amy’s Child Care. The teachers care for the children and the children care for there teachers. The children care for eachother, for our hen Minerva Louise and for our two remaining goldfish. We care for our vegetables and for our school, for our toys and for ourselves. There is an aweful lot of caring going on here, and that is how it should be.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!

– Miss Maria

The Last Week of May.

We have had an other death in the preschool family. This time it was our catfish that died. We dug a hole, picked flowers and said our farewells. The children wanted to know why the fish had died and I explained that it was probably because it was very old. We talked about life and death for a while and some of the children concluded that it wasn’t just fish that died when they were very old, people did too.

We had our second harvest from our vegetable garden. This time we harvested radishes and lettuce. I had excellent help picking the produce.

We love blowing bubbles! It is very interesting to watch the children as they develop their bubble-blowing-technique, from sucking on the bubble wand when the children are very young, to skillfully blowing several bubbles at one time as they grow older and more skilled. Sometimes, two bubbles stick together and fly off hand-in-hand! Other times, the children manage to catch bubbles with their wand, study them for a while before re-launching it. Some children have even figured out how to insert a finger into the bubble without breaking it. Science is at work here, every day!

Some children turned a puppet theater into a library! They selected several books from our outdoor library to offer to their prospective patrons. I saw money changing hands a time or two. Late fees perhaps?

I laminated several pieces of construction paper of different colors. The children started off by comparing the different colors to different objects around our classroom. Before long though, the game had changed and now two girls had lined up the sheets of paper on the floor, like a hopscotch game of sorts. I watched the girls as they kept re arranging the pieces, putting some colors next to a certain other color, carefully planning every step. I watched the girls stepping back from the game to get a better view, changing things around until they were completely satisfied.
We got some puppets out to play with, and most children happily tried them out. Some of the youngest children were a little wary of the puppets at first: they somehow came alive once you had your hand inside them! I noticed that the puppets soon were hugging other puppets!💟 The two puppets pictured, a baby elephant and a baby koala, quickly became good friends. They soon befriended a xylophone alligator, (a child who was not all that into puppets). The xylophone alligator played the ABC song and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”. The baby elephant and the baby koala both sang!

The end of May is here and June is just around the corner…

Until next time!

– Miss Maria

Math is everywhere!

Some of the most obvious math games at any preschool or daycare have numbers on them. Pegboards is are good examples. The pieces match depending on how many holes the piece has or how long the peg is and if the colors match. The number of pieces also match the corresponding number printed on the pegboard.

Here we have five cards depicting ducks in pleasant settings,  from one duck to five ducks. Each card has a rhyming verse on it.

On the back of each card I wrote the corresponding numeral, for number recognition. I added dots for counting as a way for the child to double check that they were right about the numeral, or simply for counting, for the child who does not yet know his or her numerals.

Number lines are also interesting, even for quite young children. Who doesn’t want to know if they grew a little taller since yesterday? Rulers are also good tools to measure how tall or how long something is. We let our children measure away! Blocks are also great for counting, and building with. How tall can we make it before it topples over? Let’s ask Miss Jess for some help. Look, the tower is taller than Miss Jess!

Refrigerator magnets are good for sequencing. Toy animals work well for grouping as do pretend fruit and vegetables, that you can also sort according to color.

Stacking cups are great for sequencing; small to large or vice versa. They also work very well for comparing different volumes.  Stacking cups are also great for serving pretend food in!

Memory games are of course great tools for improving memory skills and concentration. If two cards are the same, you have a match. Memory games match in different other ways too. The back of all of the cards of a memory game are all the same. They match. This is especially useful when several memory games have been mixed up and it is time to sort them out.

A shape sorting bucket is a great way for children to match a block to a hole of the same shape. It is also good for practicing patience and perseverance. When all else fails, the child can open the top of the bucket to deposit the blocks this way, and try again an other day.

You can count the petals on a flower too!

The children help to collect the eggs that our clever hen Minerva Louise lays. After the eggs are washed, we write the date the egg was collected on the egg, and then the children count the eggs.

Today we harvested some of our vegetable crop, for the very first time this season, that we have been caring for in our vegetable garden. We picked lettuce, kale and radishes. All the children who have helped to tend our garden get to take some of our vegetables home with them, to share with their families.  Of course we counted all of our vegetables!

This owl is both a color matching game and an engineering toy of sorts. The toothed wheels detach, revealing a matching color underneath. When all the wheels are connected you can make them turn all at once, just by turning any of the wheels in either direction.

Math really is everywhere!

You do not need any fancy toys; your fingers will do just fine when counting! You can count friends, ants on the sidewalk or clouds in the sky!

You can practice volume by measuring how much water will fit in the watering can before it overflows, or while filling up a bucket with sand to make a pie!

We can compare who has the biggest hands or feet when using finger (toe) paints and making hand prints or foot prints.Who has the longest hair, Rapunzel  or Sleeping Beauty

Children learn by doing, by hearing and by seeing, over and over again .

Wishing you all a great weekend!

– Miss Maria

A farewell to our butterflies.

Our caterpillars turned into butterflies over the weekend.

On Monday morning we gathered all the children at Miss Amy’s on our lawn, and let our butterflies go. Butterflies can fly very fast!

This is what the empty chrysalises look like. The little black blobs are the exuvia,  which contains the head capsule from when the butterflies were caterpillars.

Our garden is growing very well. We are growing kale, lettuce, potatoes, Swiss chard, carrots, radishes, peas, cauliflower and beets.

The children are doing a good job, helping to water our garden and to monitor our plants’ progress.

Today, Friday, we had our annual Field Day. We played games and had a picnic lunch with ice cream cones for dessert.

Wishing everyone a great weekend!

– Miss Maria

Life and death at preschool.

Butterfly update: We moved our five chrysalises to a larger container, with netting on the sides and clear plastic on the top and bottom and with a zippered top. As we were watching the chrysalises one day they started to wiggle vigorously! This is normal. It is a way to scare off predetors.
The very first of five chrysalises hatched and our first Painted Lady butterfly was born! This all happened yesterday, while no one was looking. You can see the hatched chrysalis in the photo in the top left hand corner. The little dark blob that you can see, is the exuvia  that contains the head capsule from the caterpillar stage. We are hoping that the remaining four chrysalises will wait until Monday to hatch so that we can witness this amazing event. In the bottom photo you can see an orange-red liquid on the side of the mesh, it’s called meconium. It is not blood but the waste product of the chrysalis.

Our very first Painted Lady butterfly, or Vanessa cardui, as it is also known is beautiful, don’t you think? If you want to find out more about the Painted Lady butterfly, check out this website.

We had one birth this past week, but also one death. One of our goldfish died and was buried on Monday.

First we dug a hole next to our rabbit Flopsy, who died several years ago. Each child said good bye to our pet fish and put a flower on top of him/her that they had selected and picked themselves. The children took their time selecting their flowers, and decided to pick some for their Moms and their Grandmas at the same time!

Our hen, Minerva Louise has been very busy laying eggs every day for several weeks now.

The children enjoy feeding Minerva Louise special treats, as a thank you for the eggs she lays.

Wishing everyone a happy weekend!

Photo credit goes to Miss Susie, for taking the photos that I am in myself.

– Miss Maria

Butterflies will soon be fluttering by…

We have five visitors here at Miss Amy’s: Painted Ladies or as they are also known, Vanessa cardui.
They started out as tiny green eggs from which hatched tiny caterpillars.
The tiny caterpillars grew fast. Soon they suspended themselves from their last prolegs and started the molting process with can last as long as 24 hours. It is pretty hard to see it in my photo, but the chrysalis or pupa
are a brown or tan color with beautiful gold specks. When the chrysalis are almost finished the caterpillars’ heads capsule falls off! This is completely normal. After about 10 days the Vanessa cardui emerges. At the time of writing this the butterflies had not yet emerged. Please check back for an update next week!

We have been talking about how butterflies start out as an egg, how they hatch into a caterpillar, how they eat (a lot, and fast!), and how they make a sleeping bag, of sorts (the chrysalis or pupa) and how they change and turn into a butterfly which we will let go,so they can find nectar to feed on and meet up with their friends. We are hoping to be able to watch our Vanessa carudi emerge this coming week. Did you know that it takes about an hour for the butterflies’ wings to expand and ‘harden’ before  they can fly? The Painted Ladies live for between 10-24 days as a caterpillar.
They are one of the most widely distributed species of butterflies in the world and can be found on every continent except Antarctica and Australia.

We have enjoyed reading Eric Carle’s book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
We learned a very important lesson, namely that one should stick to eating foods that are good for you, if you don’t you might get a very bad stomach ache! See for yourself! Check out what the Very Hungry Caterpillar ate on Saturday…

I will post an update on our Vanessa cardui next week.

Until next time!

– Miss Maria

An unbirthday.

“An unbirthday (originally written un-birthday) is an event that is typically celebrated on any or all of the 364 or 365 days in which it is not the person’s birthday.
It is a neologism  coined by Lewis Carroll in his Through the Looking Glass, giving rise to “The Unbirthday Song” in the 1951 Disney animated feature film Alice in Wonderland.” [Wikipedia]

Today I celebrated my unbirthday, not my real birthday, but a bonus one that one of the children in my class presented me with. She made me a cake. It smelled so good! She put candles on it and asked me to blow them out, but then she suddenly remembered that when you have a birthday, someone is supposed to sing to you! She looked around for someone who could sing with her and spotted a little girl who did not turn two years old  all that long ago. My cake making friend tried to make her two-year-old friend sing, but the two-year-old just gave her a sort of blank look, before she took off to play somewhere else…
The birthday planner was by now very frustrated. She told me that she couldn’t remember how the Happy Birthday song went! I suggested that I sing it with her but she quickly told me that I couldn’t sing it because it was my birthday!
I tried to defuse the situation by suggesting that we cut the cake and eat some. As I was attempting to pass a slice of cake to her, she suddenly exclaimed; “No, it’s hot!”
She took the plate with my pretend cake on it and stomped away with it towards the play kitchen. When she was half way there, she stopped, turned around and came back to me. Looking very serious, she said; “And that’s the end of your birthday!”

Working at a preschool/day care center, there are many unbirthdays in a week and hundreds in a year!! Summertime is an especially popular time for unbirthdays, when it is easy to whip up an unbirthday cake in the sandbox.
With the arrival of warmer weather I am looking forward to many more unbirthdays!

Happy Unbirthday to you all!

– Miss Maria