Mud and Worms in Preschool

We started our preschool day reading oodles of books about worms.  We talked about how they are important for the Earth and how to handle them.  We talked about their body parts, how they move and what they eat.  Then we opened up the worm compost bin and investigated the worms in there.  Outside we dumped a couple pitchers of water on the ground and up came a big fat worm!  CJ held it up for everyone to investigate. 

Then we were free to play in the mud.  We started off with a pool of clean water and a pool of dirt.  We also had our play kitchen tools available.  There was oodles of fun to be had with the self designated "work" of making mud.  There was an amount of transferring dirt and water from pool to pool.

 In the end this is about what we looked like.  Boy it was fun!

Be sure to check Facebook Wednesday morning for another quick giveaway!

Preschool Fruit Theme

What a fantastic day of school!  We've been learning so much lately in school.  Our theme today was "Fruit" (makes sense with the theme "Vegetables" on Tuesday).  We started with puzzles, a repeated activity we'll do for the rest of the year.  We read a few books about fruit including "End of the Rainbow Fruit Salad" a fantastic book that you'll find a post about (and a giveaway!) later today. We continued with our guided reading lesson working on level A pre-reader texts.  Wonder why we're working on these texts since we've been using decodable texts all year?  Check out V is for Vegetable for more clarity. 

Another super fun aspect of our day today was that on our property we have about 10 different fruit trees and plants.  We were able to go on a nature walk just in our little area and talk about each of the different plants.  We searched for flowers that were starting to pop out and talked about if we don't bother them the bees will pollinate the flowers and fruits will grow.  We talked about the different shapes and colors of the different leaves and flowers. 

After returning inside we talked about numeral 4.  There is a great little series of books I read from Scholastic called "Number Stories".  There is a number chant at the end of each book and the kids love it!  They get to clap and stomp and jump and turn all for the number of the day.  It's so much fun.  Check out our full lesson plans for the Preschool Fruit Theme here.