finally 4!

Sweetie finally turned 4!  She’s the youngest in my class…and she was sooo excited that she finally turned 4 and she was a “big girl like all her friends”!  She was even more excited to share mini chocolate cupcakes and juice with all her friends at snack this morning!  You would have thought she’d won the lottery!

And she got to wear our class birthday vest and birthday hat and she stood in front of the class as we sang happy birthday to her!  Our birthday vest has balloons on it and our birthday hat is shaped like a cake with candles on top (I got two hats at the Dollar Tree last summer – great find).  Everyone knew it was her birthday and this made her even more excited!

She also got to pick a sticker and pencil from our birthday box.  Our birthday box is a shoebox I wrapped in birthday wrapping paper and I keep our hats, vests, pencils, stickers, and birthday cards (from the teachers) in it – very handy!  I try to make them feel special on thier birthday – after all,  it is the day they were born and it only happens once a year!  I think Sweetie was very happy with her day and I got the feeling she felt very special!

For those of you that might want to purchase a birthday vest or two this is the website I got them from.  I also got two star of the week vests for my leader of the day.  Not incredibly cheap – but well made and totally worth it in my opinion!

bumble bees

Today was a good day.  We started making bees for “art” – I use quotations because it’s not really free art where they can do what ever they choose – it’s more of a craft.  I see it as cutting practice and shape review.  I’ll explain.  I die cut yellow ovals for the body, the children cut out circles for the head and wings, and they were each given a black triangle as a stinger.  Today they cut out the head and wings and painted black stripes on the bodies.  So far, so good.  They look cute.  We’ll assemble them tomorrow and then hang them from the ceiling.

I couldn’t find a book in my own collection about bees.  So, I went to work this morning hoping to find something I could use.  After asking 3 different teachers, my persistence paid off – the kindergarten teacher had a science book with two pages in it about bees.  So I paraphrased it for my kids and we learned that bees live in groups, or colonies,  they collect pollen and nectar to make honey, they live in beehives, and the honeycomb is made of wax – just like candles.

We had a short review before lunch and they remembered most of what I had told them.  I’ll review again tomorrow to see how much they really listened!  We also did a quick review of the ladybug and they remembered quite a bit – I was pleasantly surprised!  🙂  We also talked about the stages of caterpillar to butterfly – which was review for them – and they were able to recall most of what we had talked about!  YAY!  They seem to really be enjoying learning about insects and bugs – which is just great!

If I didn’t have a phobia of all creepy crawly creatures – I would bring some live bugs into the classroom for them to observe – but I know now that will never happen!  So we just try to observe as many bugs as we can when we’re outside and it seems to be working.  I’m glad they’re so excited about this unit!