May 29, 2009

Parents,
I want to thank all of you for this wonderful year and for allowing us to spend our days with your children. Today will be my last blog entry for the year. I LOVE doing this blog and hope to find time in my changing schedule next year to continue it. Thank you for all of your positive feedback!

This morning we ate breakfast together and then did our fine motor work by creating structures with oval Lego's, putting two large ocean puzzles together, creating ocean scenes with felt board characters, and using a magnetic net to fish for fish in a puzzle. We went outside this morning and observed our older friends participating in field day. We also played on the playground with Pre-K. For story time today we had a special guest reader, my son, Nicholas. He read "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish". We completed work on our sharks and then worked in the science center with things that float, sink, and squirt. We also practiced hoola-hooping, and jumped on a chalk hop scotch. We had lunch and played on the playground with Pre-K. After rest we'll wrap up our sinking/floating unit.

On Monday, be sure to wear PJ's for spirit day.
On Tuesday, it's our water day, so don't do the dress up day that's scheduled.
On Wednesday, dress like you're going to the beach!

Have a wonderful weekend!!!!
Kali Parsons

May 28, 2009

Parents,
This morning we had a wonderful breakfast and then did our fine motor work by stringing buttons on pipe cleaners and shoe strings, creating structures with snap-together people, creating scenes with felt board under sea characters, and creating ocean scenes by cutting out pictures of sea shells and sea creatures and gluing them on to blue paper. During circle time we determined that it's sunny today, counted to 28 during calendar and continued our color pattern, and danced to "Boogaloo". We played outside with our Pre-K friends. During story time I read the book "Aquarium". We noticed that there was a shark in the book and that's what we created in art center today. We started with a rectangle shape, cut a triangle out of one side to create a mouth, glued that triangle to the top to create a dorsal fin, cut little triangles to create teeth, drew gills with a black marker, and added a googly eye. We also had speech therapy for some of us today and we worked in the science center with things that float and sink. We had lunch and played on the playground with Pre-K. After rest we'll continue our work on the concepts of sinking and floating.
Reminder: tomorrow is tie dye day. Thanks to those of you who have emailed me that you need to borrow a shirt for the day.
Have a great night!
Kali Parsons

May 27, 2009

Parents,
We enjoyed breakfast together this morning. After we finished we did our fine motor work by counting frogs, examining and exploring sea shells with a hand lens, drawing with dry erase markers, and working with play dough. During circle time we determined that it's windy today, felt the breeze from a fan, counted to 27 and continued our color pattern during calendar, and danced to "Number Game". We weren't able to play outside this morning because it started raining, so instead we stayed inside and worked with shaving cream. We had frogs, macaroni, ducks, and even a little purple paint in our shaving cream! During centers we completed our scaly fish, worked with things that float in our water table, and assembled an ocean puzzle in the big toys center. We had lunch and played on the playground with Pre-K. This afternoon we'll join Pre-K for math centers.
Enjoy your night!
Kali Parsons

May 26, 2009

Parents,
This morning we ate breakfast and then did fine motor work by adding to our "underwater sand castles", counting fish, retelling "Swimmy" with stuffed fish, and creating scenes with ocean felt board pictures. During circle time we determined that it's windy, felt the breeze from a fan, counted to 26 and added to our color pattern during calendar, and danced to "The Freeze". We played outside with Pre-K on the playground. I read the book "Ten Little Fish" during story time. We counted fish on every page. We had two centers open today during centers. We worked in the science center with water, fish and scoops. In the art center we created fish scales on fish with pieces of tissue paper and then added glitter to make the sparkle. We had lunch and played on the playground with Pre-K. This afternoon we'll play beach BINGO in Pre-K.
Have a great night!
Kali Parsons

May 22, 2009

Parents,
After eating breakfast together we did fine motor work by gluing small beads and glitter on our structures. We used our pincer fingers. We also created structures with bristle blocks, oval Lego's, and colorful cubes. During circle time we determined that it's sunny today. We counted to 22 during calendar and continued our color pattern. We danced to "Tooty Ta" for our movement song. We played outside with Pre-K on the playground. During center time today we made coral. We traced our hands, cut out those shapes, and glued buttons on. We also worked in the science center exploring seashells and sand. Just before lunch we all independently read and looked at books about ocean creatures. We had lunch and played on the playground with Pre-K. After rest we'll finish up our work with our "Swimmy" math projects.
Have a wonderful 3 day weekend!
Kali Parsons

May 21, 2009

Parents,
There will be no blog entry today. I'm taking the day off to go on a field trip with one of my kiddos. Ms. Avots is my sub today.
Kali Parsons

May 20, 2009

Parents,
After eating breakfast this morning we did our fine motor work by painting three dimensional structures, drawing with chalk on a big chalk board, lacing big buttons on shoe strings, and we also looked at a very special book about one of our friends. During circle time we determined that it's sunny today, felt the warmth of a flashlight, counted to 20 during calendar and continued our color pattern, and danced to "Old McDonald Had a Farm". We played outside on the playground with our Pre-K friends. For story time today I read "Swimmy". I also used little stuffed fish props to tell the story. We were lucky to go see a 4th grade performance of "The Tempest" this morning. They were amazing! We had lunch and played on the playground with Pre-K. After rest we'll go to Pre-K and continue our counting fish counting work. Ms. Mitchell is also having us dissect squids. Wow!
Have a great night! Please continue bringing in the juices/waters for Water Day! Thanks!
Kali Parsons

May 19, 2009

Parents,
After breakfast this morning we did our fine motor work creating structures with oval Lego's, creating structures with people blocks, moving cars around the table, and measuring worms with a tape measure. During circle time we determined that it's windy today, felt the wind of a fan, counted to 19 and continued our color pattern, and danced to "The Bear Hunt". We played outside with our Pre-K friends. During centers today I worked with students individually to conduct assessments, Ms. McGuire had some students for speech therapy, and some played in the science center with the shells, scoops, and sand. We had lunch and played on the playground with Pre-K. This afternoon we'll work on a fish counting activity in Pre-K.
I hope you all have a great night!
Kali Parsons

May 18, 2009

Parents,
After a wonderful group breakfast this morning, we worked on our fine motor skills by counting fish, creating structures with bristle blocks, and created art in our creation station. During circle time today we determined that it's sunny and felt the heat and roundness of a flashlight, we counted to 18 during calendar and continued our color pattern, and we danced to "Wheels on the Bus". We played outside with Pre-K. I read "Fish Wish" for story time. We've officially switched over to our water unit. During centers today we worked as a group painting a water background for our new bulletin board scene. We used dark blue, light blue, and white when we painted with our hands. We also made observations about sea shells as we looked at them up close using hand lenses. And, we looked at picture books about ocean animals and plant life. We had lunch and played on the playground with Pre-K. After rest we'll continue our frogs on a log activity in Pre-K.
Have a great night!
Kali Parsons

May 15, 2009

Parents,
This morning we ate breakfast together and then did our fine motor work by stamp painting insects on paper, moving metal circles with a magnet, creating structures with people blocks, and creating representations with colored cubes. During circle time we determined that it's cloudy and windy, counted to 15 and continued our color pattern, and danced to "Disco Limbo". We went really, really low today! We played outside on the playground with a second grade class today. We noticed that we're almost as big as they are!! For our center activities today we each cut out the first letter of our name and then chose objects that start with that letter to put on our cut out letter. We were working on letter sounds. We also worked in the science center with plastic insects and scoops. We had lunch and played on the playground with Pre-K. After rest today we'll create logs (toilet paper tubes) with 5 speckled frogs on them. We'll be working on counting and patterns and retelling a story.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Kali Parsons

May 14, 2009

Parents,
After breakfast this morning we all worked with shaving cream. We created shapes in the shaving cream, drove cars in it, talked about how it felt and smelled, and had a wonderful time with friends. We also hung our dry dragonflies on our garden scene. During circle time we determined that it's windy today. We knew this because the trees were moving outside. We counted to 14 during calendar and continued our color pattern. We danced to "I Like Potatoes" to finish up circle time. We played outside with our Pre-K friends on the playground. During centers we worked as a group to create headbands. We requested materials (markers, paper, scissors, glue), colored little insects, cut them out, created a pattern, glued them on a sentence strip, and then wore it as a headband. We also worked in the science center outside pouring sand and working with plastic insects. Some of us had speech therapy. Ms. Pundt, our counselor, came today. She talked about people we trust and who we feel safe with. Everyone drew a picture of someone they felt that way about...someone they'd like to be on a roller coaster with. We had lunch and played on the playground with Pre-K. After rest we'll go to Pre-K to observe the chicks and finish up the frogs/turtles/pond math activity.
Enjoy your evening!
Kali Parsons

May 13, 2009

Parents,
Happy Wednesday, everyone! We had a great breakfast together this morning and then we did our fine motor work by working with small cars, building structures with bristle blocks, and assembling Mr. Potato Heads. During Circle Time we determined that it's cloudy today, counted to 13 during calendar, and danced to "Button Factory". We played outside on the new playground. For story time today Ms. Mercer read "Pattern Bugs". Then, for centers everyone created their own dragon fly by coloring a craft stick with markers, coloring wings on laminate sheets, then cutting and pasting and gluing on googly eyes. They're wonderful! We also worked in the science center with sand, shells, and big plastic bugs. We talked about how spiders have 8 legs and insects have 6. We did lots of scooping and made big piles. This afternoon Pre-K is off campus so we'll be finishing up some projects in our room.
Have a great night everyone!
Kali Parsons

May 12, 2009

Parents,
After a lovely breakfast today we did fine motor work by stringing small beads on pipe cleaners, creating structures with oval Lego's, creating structures with big blocks, and completing our caterpillars from yesterday. During circle time we determined that it's cloudy today, counted to 12, and dance to "Peanut Butter". We played outside with our Pre-K friends. For story time today, Ms. Mercer read two bee stories. In centers we created our own bees by drawing, cutting, and pasting, and then we hung them on our garden scene. We also had the big toys center open and the dove watched us play with toy insects and create structures for them to live in and around. We are having lunch with Pre-K and will go to the playground afterward. After rest we'll continue our counting work in Pre-K with the turtles and frogs. We'll also observe the chicks again.
Have a great night!
Kali Parsons

May 11, 2009

Parents,
Hope everyone enjoyed Mother's Day this weekend! We had a nice start to our day with lots of breakfast conversation. We then moved to our fine motor work and threaded big beads on strings, created big structures with big block pieces, put pom-poms into a cone with tools, and sorted bugs by color and created patterns. During circle time we determined that it's cloudy today, counted to 11 in calendar time, and danced to "Popcorn". We played outside with our Pre-K friends. Ms. Mercer read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" for story time. During center time we drew and cut circle shapes and created caterpillars. We also filled the muddy science center with water and scooped the water out and watered flowers. We counted scoops and talked about the terms scoop, measure, and pour. We had lunch and played on the playground with Pre-K. After rest we'll continue our work with counting frogs and turtles in and out of ponds. We'll also observe the chicks. I think there are 9 now. Wow!
Have a great night!
Kali Parsons

May 8, 2009

Parents,
We ate breakfast together and then did our fine motor work by assembling Mat Man, counting and sorting flowers, creating insect stamp stories, and creating structures with colored cubes. We went to the library this morning with Pre-K and Ms. Kraal read a book about a mom and a book about a dad. We played on the playground with Pre-K. During circle time today we determined that it's cloudy with the sun peeking through, we counted to 8 during calendar and continued our pattern, and we danced to "Five Little Ducks". During centers we created snails by coloring a snail body shape, cutting it out, creating a pattern on a shell shape, cutting it out, and assembling it. We all chose where we wanted our snail to be on our garden scene. We also added our lady bugs, worms, and spiders that we made earlier this week. Our garden scene is looking great! We had lunch and played on the playground with Pre-K. After rest we'll be able to see the chicks in Ms. Mitchell's class. Five of them have already hatched! What an exciting day!
Have a wonderful weekend!
Kali Parsons

May 7, 2009

Parents,
We had a delightful breakfast today. We followed that with find motor work creating faces with magnetic facial parts, counting frogs in pools, and counting with cakes and candles. We also observed our dove again today. During circle time we determined that it's windy today, counted to seven during calendar, and danced to "The Freeze". We played outside on the track today. We went around and around and around. We had a special activity today. A mobile dairy farm came to Zilker and we got to learn all about where milk comes from and we even got to see a real cow hooked up to a milking machine! So cool! During centers today we drew pictures of our dove and we also worked in the big toys center creating structures for a bunch of insects to live in and around. We had lunch and played on the playground with Pre-K. This afternoon we'll work on counting groups of frogs and turtles in ponds. We'll also observe the eggs in Ms. Mitchell's room. They have cracks now and are moving and shaking.
Have a great night!
Kali Parsons

May 6, 2009

Parents,
This morning we had a wonderful breakfast together and listened to the sounds the dove (our new classroom pet) made in his cage. Our fine motor activities included creating structures with Lego's, stringing beads on strings, manipulating small toys, and drawing pictures of the dove. During circle time we determined that it's windy today, counted to six during calendar, danced to "Where is Thumbkin", and heard the book "The Very Grouchy Ladybug". We played outside with our Pre-K friends at the new playground. During centers today we created ladybugs that we'll put in our garden scene that we've just begun. We also created flowers using our hands. We had lunch and played on the old playground with Pre-K. This afternoon we'll do counting and addition work by making frogs jump into a pond and then adding up how many were in it plus how many were out of it and get a total.
Have a wonderful night, everyone!
Kali Parsons

May 4, 2009

Parents,
This morning we ate breakfast together and met our new student intern, Ms. Mercer. She'll be with us for the next two weeks. Welcome! After we ate we worked with counting birthday candles/cakes, built structures with Legos, clipped clothespins on boards, created structures with magnets, and painted grass on a big white piece of paper. We started at the top of the paper and did big green lines down (just like when we're writing letters!!). During circle time we determined that it's windy today, felt a fan on our faces, counted to 4 during calendar (we don't know what our pattern will be for this month, but it starts with blue, white, black, blue...hmmmm), danced to "Bear Hunt", and I read a book called "Butterfly, Butterfly" to introduce our new unit. This month we are going to learn about insects. The book had many, many insects and we're going to create them and make a wonderful garden scene on our bulletin board. We played outside with our Pre-K friends. I read a book called "Inch by Inch" today for story time. I had little pretend inch worms and a big tape measure (pictured). As I read the book we took turns measuring different things in the book. We also measured different parts of our bodies (nose, ear, finger, foot, smile). In art center today we all created worms to add to our garden. We mad big ones, medium ones and little ones. We predicted which one would have a bigger number of inches and then we measured them. We did great math today! We had lunch and played on the playground with Pre-K. After rest we'll go to Pre-K and continue working on the concept of symmetry.
Have a wonderful night, everyone!
Kali Parsons

Just a quick note: I'll be out tomorrow, so there won't be a blog entry. See you Wednesday!

May 1st, 2009

Parents,
This morning we ate breakfast together and talked about what we are going to do over the weekend. We observed beetles, dragonflies and other bugs in sand with a microscope, and counted and sorted bugs of different colors and shapes. We also had a small cardboard copy of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar," and a big felt board with the characters and objects from the book. We read the story to ourselves and created the scenes by looking at the pictures. We went to the library today to visit Ms. Craal, and she read us two books about frogs! One was about a frog who thought he was a huge dinosaur, and the other was about a girl who turned into a frog. After library, we went outside and played with Pre-K on the playground. During circle time, we decided that it was really cloudy outside, so we placed the big, white, fluffy cloud over our classroom tree, and we sang and danced to "Number Game." For centers, we finished making our butterflies and their pupa's, and we worked on our letter of the week activities. Since our letter of the week is "Z," we place big black zebra stripes on our big while "Z" and for our little "Z" we glued on the letter "Z," zebras and zippers! We went to lunch with Pre-K and then went outside to play on the playground with them. This afternoon, we will be making more big leaves for our classroom tree!
Have a wonderful weekend!
Lauren Avots

Ms. Avots' Last day is Friday

Parents,
I just want to celebrate with you what a wonderful job Ms. Avots has done in our classroom. She is and will continue to be a wonderful teacher! We love you, Ms. Avots!!!!

Don't worry...she'll be back. She'll be substitute teaching for us in the near future.
Kali Parsons

April 30th, 2009

Parents,
This morning we ate breakfast and created all kinds of bugs and insects to put in our corn field. We made sure that each insect had 6 legs, each spider had 8 legs, and each centipede had lots of legs! We worked on our fine motor skills by moving circle magnets with a magnetic wand, and by tracing farm animal stencils with crayons on paper. We also created neat farm scenes with felt animals on our felt board. During circle time, we said that it was kind of rainy outside, so we placed the big rain drops over our classroom tree. For calendar, we counted to the number 30, and figured out that we needed a purple number today. For dancing and movement, our song leader chose to sing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," and he showed us which motions to do. We went outside with Pre-K to play on the new playground, and we enjoyed climbing and going down the fire pole! For centers, Ms. McGuire came into our room for speech, and we created big leaves to put on our classroom tree. Right now, our tree has tiny little leaves on it from the beginning of spring, and that is not what the trees outside look like anymore! The trees outside have big, bright, green leaves, so we drew our own leaves to look like the real ones, and we will put them up later. We also acted out the story we read yesterday, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar," with a felt board with all of the food the caterpillar eats! We had lunch with Pre-K and then went outside on the playground with them. This afternoon, we will be going over to Pre-K to look at our caterpillars, pupas, and butterflies progress, and we will work on symmetry.

Have a great day!
Lauren Avots

April 29th, 2009

Parents,
This morning we ate breakfast and we pretended we were a bunch of farm animals by mooing, oinking and clucking. We worked on our fine motor skills with our leaping frogs by having them jump into a bucket, and we also practiced counting to different numbers with ladybugs. We worked on farm themed puzzles, and glued our ears of corn and corn stalks onto our mud we made yesterday! During circle time, we all put our right hands on our head and got a stamp of the letter of the week, "Z." We decided that it was really windy outside today because we saw trees moving, so we placed the big windsock over our tree. We counted to the number 29, and found out that we needed a purple number by reading our pattern. Our song and dance leader chose to play "Popcorn" and she stood in front of the class and showed us the dance movements. We went outside with Pre-K and had fun looking for bugs and playing on the new playground. For story time, we read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar," by Eric Carl, about a little egg that hatched into a caterpillar, and he was very hungry. He ate lots and lots of food, and when he was stuffed, he made a cocoon, and turned into a butterfly! In centers, we worked on our own butterflies to have come out of their pupas, and washed and scrubbed the farm animals that were really muddy. We ate lunch with Pre-K, and went outside with them on the playground. This afternoon, we will be going to the Library with Pre-K and Kindergarten to have a special story time presentation!
Have a wonderful day!
Lauren Avots

April 28th, 2009

Parents,
This morning we ate breakfast and used our hands to smear brown paint all of a huge piece of paper to make dirt for our corn field. We also worked on our fine motor skills and counting by feeding apples to horses, and worked on sorting with small and large colorful farm animals. We created a farm scene with felt farm animals and worked with play dough and cookie cutter farm animals, so we made lots of animals! During circle time, we decided that it was rainy outside, and we placed the big gray cloud and the rain drops over our tree. For calendar, we counted to the number 28 and read our pattern to learn what color our number should be. Since it was really wet outside, we couldn't go play on the playground, so we sang and danced to two songs during dancing and movement! First, we played the song "Lettercise," and then we sang and danced to "Twinkle, Twinkle." We learned that farmers do not only take care of animals at the farm, but they also grow crops, so we planted our own Lima bean plants in plastic bags! We hung them on the window, and we will get to watch them sprout! During story time, we read "Big Chickens," about four chickens who were scared of everything! For centers, we had speech with Ms. McGuire, and we worked in the big block center creating towers and homes for our farm animals. We also started painting cylinders green, to become the pupa for our butterflies! We went to lunch with Pre-K and went outside on the new playground. Ms. Mitchell had a pupa that was so close to becoming a butterfly so she took it outside with us, and we actually got to see the butterfly unfolding out of the chrysalis. Her legs started moving first, and then her wings came out and they were really tiny! After a while, her wings unfolded and became full-sized, and she started flapping them! This afternoon, in Pre-K, we will be releasing our new butterfly, and making symmetrical wings for our butterflies in one of our math centers!
Have a great night!
Lauren Avots

April 27th, 2009

Parents,
This morning we ate breakfast and talked about what we thought the weather was going to be like today. Some of us said it was going to be rainy, and others said it was just going to be cloudy. We worked on counting by planting different amounts of flowers into gardens, and worked on our fine motor skills by threading large beads onto strings and by stamping with farm animal stamps. We also played a few games of classroom bingo, where our bingo pictures were objects around our room like backpacks, shoes, journals and more! During circle time, we decided that it was really windy outside because we saw the trees moving, so we placed the big windsock over our classroom tree. For calendar, we counted to 27 and when we read our pattern, we realized we needed a purple number. Our dancing and movement helper chose to sing "Where Is Thumbkin?" and she showed us the movements. We went outside with Pre-K on the playground, and afterwards, Ms. Mitchell, the Pre-K teacher told us that a pupa came out of one of the pupas we were watching and we needed to release her! We went over to the Pre-K classroom, looked at the empty pupa casing, and saw the beautiful Monarch Butterfly flying around the net! Ms. Mitchell got the butterfly out of the net, and we all went outside and sang "Happy Birthday" to her as we released her into the wild! For story time, we read "Cock-A-Doodle-Do, Barnyard Hullabaloo" about all of the different animals at the farm. For centers, we worked in the science center by cleaning muddy animals, and we created ears of corn for our bulletin board! We are going to put them up in rows tomorrow when they dry! We ate lunch with Pre-K and since it was raining, we did not go outside. Instead, we came in and danced to some of our favorite songs, and made more ears of corn. We also created a tent by putting a sheet over one of our tables, climbed inside the tent, and read a story, by flashlight, to get us ready for rest time! This afternoon, we will be going over to the Pre-K room to learn about symmetry by looking at and making our own butterfly wings!
Have a wonderful day!
Lauren Avots

April 24th, 2009

Parents,
This morning we ate breakfast and worked on our fine motor skills by feeding bales of hay to cows. We also counted different amounts of ladybugs and put them on leaves and sorted red, blue, yellow and green farm animals. We went to the library, and Ms. Kraal read us two stories! One was about a caterpillar that turned into a butterfly, and the other was about a lazy ladybug! We went outside on the playground with Pre-K and had fun swinging and going across the monkey bars. During circle time, we decided that it was cloudy outside, so we put the big, fluffy, white cloud over our classroom tree. For calendar, we counted to the number 24 and realized that we needed a purple number to follow our pattern. Our dancing and movement helper chose to sing "5 Little Ducks," and we each held a tiny stuffed animal duck while we sang and danced. For centers, we worked on our letter of the week activities, and put yarn on our big yellow ''Y" and put yo-yos on our little "Y" paper. We also created a pig out of a paper plate to put on our farm bulletin board, and worked in the big block center creating towers and shelters for our farm animals. This afternoon, we will be going over to Pre-K to count ladybugs with Ms. Mitchell, and work on other math activities!
Have a great weekend!
Lauren Avots

April 23rd, 2009

Parents,
This morning we ate breakfast and sang the "5 Little Monkeys" song, but instead of 5 monkeys, we had 11 monkeys jumping on the bed! We worked on our farm theme puzzles, counted different amounts of frogs on lily pads, and made silly faces with our magnetic eyes, noses, and mouths. We also played Feelings Bingo, where the bingo cards were made up of different emotions! During circle time, we decided that it was sunny outside, and placed the big yellow sun over our tree, and we counted to the number 23. Our dancing and movement leader chose to sing "Baa Baa Black Sheep," and he showed us what motions to do. We went outside with Pre- K and played on the playground. For story time, we read "Duck On A Bike," about a duck who showed all of the other farm animals how to ride a bike! During centers, we made our own yellow ducks with feathers, and we played in the big block center with farm animals. We also had speech with Ms. McGuire today. We went to lunch with Pre-K and then we went outside with them on the big playground. This afternoon, we have an extreme weather drill scheduled, so we will be practicing what to do in case some bad weather comes along.
Have a great day!
Lauren Avots

April 22nd, 2009

Parents,
This morning we ate breakfast and talked about today being Earth Day! We learned about taking care of our environment and picking up trash. We worked on our fine motor skills by working with our leaping frogs and by feeding apples to a horse. We drew different objects on chalkboards, and we worked on teamwork by putting a farm puzzle together. During circle time, we decided that it was sunny outside because it was really bright, and we placed the big yellow sun over our tree. For calendar, we counted to 22 and discovered that our 22 needed to be purple to go along with our pattern. For dancing and movement, our helper chose to play "Ride That Pony," and he stood at the front of the class and showed us the movements to the song. We went outside with Pre-K and played on the playground, and had lots of fun playing in the tunnels and on the monkey bars. Since it is Earth Day today, after playing on the playground, we each got our own plastic bag, and searched around our school campus for trash. We picked up lots of trash! We found tiny pieces of trash, and really big pieces too! When we came inside, we finished our farm animal stamp painting and our chick stencils, and we went outside to the science center where we had farm animals in mud, and we cleaned the animals with sponges. We also put some rosemary in the mud, and we all smelled it's scent and planted it in the dirt. We went to lunch with Pre-K and then went outside with them on the big playground. After lunch, we will be going over to the Pre-K classroom to finish creating our farm animal bar graphs, measure caterpillars, and observe the eggs in the incubator.
Have a wonderful evening!
Lauren Avots

April 21st, 2009

Parents,
This morning we ate breakfast and worked on our fine motor skills by feeding corn to pigs, stamping farm animals, and working with bristle blocks. We also worked with the birthday cakes, and each cake has a number on it which tells you how many candles to put in it, since it is Ms. Parson's birthday! During circle time, we decided it was sunny outside, so we placed the big yellow sun over our tree and felt the warmth from a flashlight. During calendar time, we counted to the number 21 and read our "pink, purple, purple, purple" pattern, and decided that we needed a pink number today. Our dancing and movement helper chose to sing "Popcorn," and we had a lot of fun jumping and dancing to the song! We went outside and played with Pre-K on the new playground, and enjoyed climbing and laying in the tunnels! For story time, we read "Click, Clack, Quackity-Quack," an ABC story about silly farm animals and what they like to do. We had speech today with Ms. McGuire, and during centers we spot painted a baby chick, and created a farm scene with farm animal sponges! We also played in the big block center with all of the toy farm animals. We went to lunch with Pre-K and went outside with them on the playground. This afternoon, we will be going over to the Pre-K classroom to measure caterpillars, and to create a bar graph with farm animals!
Have a great day!
Lauren Avots

April 20th, 2009

Parents,
This morning we ate breakfast together and we talked about being great helpers by helping a friend open up their cereal when they ask, and getting friends paper towels when they spill. We worked on farm puzzles, practiced our counting by putting different amounts of airplanes in the sky, and worked on our fine motor skills by tracing stencils of farm animals. We also had farm animal cookie cutters that we used to make animals out of play dough! During circle time, we decided that it was sunny outside, so we placed the big yellow sun over our classroom tree and felt the heat from flashlight. Our calendar helper pointed to all of the numbers as we all counted to 20, and we decided we needed a purple 20 according to our pattern. Our dancing and movement helper chose to sing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," and then he sat in front of us and showed us what hand movements to do. We went outside with Pre-K on the new playground, and we had fun playing on the monkey bars and sliding down the slides. For story time, we read "Mrs. Wishy-Washy," which was about a lady who washed a pig, cow and duck after they got dirty in the mud. During centers, we all became Mrs. and Mr. Wishy-Washies, and we cleaned muddy farm animals with sponges and soapy water! We also created horses with manes and long tails for our farm bulletin board. We went to lunch with Pre-K and then went outside with them on the big playground. This afternoon, we will work on math centers, and look at the eggs that we are waiting on to hatch!
Have a great day!
Lauren Avots

April 17, 2009

Parents,
My apologies. There is no blog entry today. I'm out sick, and a brief power outage shut Ms. Avots out of my computer. Have a great weekend, everyone!
Kali Parsons

April 16th, 2009

Parents,
This morning we ate breakfast together and practiced our counting with frogs on lily pads. We also drew with chalk on chalkboards, and worked on our fine motor skills by playing with the linking men manipulatives and by using our fingers to squirt water from our farm animal squirt toys. During circle time, we decided that it was cloudy outside, and placed the big, fluffy, white cloud over our tree. We counted to the number 16 during calendar time, and read our pattern to discover that we needed a purple number today. For movement and dancing time, we danced to "Disco Limbo," where we actually play limbo with a broom stick! We went outside and had a lot of fun with our Pre-K friends. During story time, we read a big book called "The Farm." It was a lot like the song "Old McDonald," and we got to practice our farm animal noises! For centers, we played in the big block center and made houses and shelters for farm animals with the blocks and we started making cows for our bulletin board. We also got to work with Ms. McGuire on speech, and Mrs. Pundt, our counselor, came in and taught us a lesson about community workers. She read us a book about different jobs in our community, and then had us draw objects from a box, and we had to guess which worker might need them! We ate lunch with Pre-K and went outside to play on the playground with them. This afternoon, we will be going over to the Pre-K classroom to do a math activity about eggs, and to practice milking cows with rubber gloves!
Have a great day!
Lauren Avots

April 15th, 2009

Parents,
This morning we ate breakfast together, worked on our counting by putting different amounts of fish into fish tanks, and sorted lots of miniature farm animals. We also drew pictures and letters on whiteboards with dry erase markers, and finished painting our big paper mache eggs! We also cut out more pictures from our field trip, and looking at the pictures made us laugh a lot about all of the funny farm animals we saw. During circle time, our weather helper told us that it was really sunny outside, and we placed the big yellow sun over our tree, and felt the warm heat from a flashlight. We also counted to the number 15 and decided that our 15 needed to be purple to fit our "pink, purple, purple, purple" pattern. Our movement and dance leader chose "I Like Potatoes" for our song, and we sang and dances to it. We went outside on the new playground with our Pre-K friends and had a lot of fun climbing on everything. We came inside and read the story "From Grass to Butter," about the process of making butter. We then made our own butter! We put heavy whipping cream into baby food jars, and placed a marble inside. Then, all of us took turn shaking the jars really fast! While we were shaking, we played the "Shake Your Beanbag" song to encourage us, and we also read the story "The Little Red Hen," which taught us the importance of teamwork. Since the dog, cat and pig didn't help the little red hen make her bread, they did not get to eat it. It took us a long time, but we finally made butter, and since we all helped make it, we all got to eat it! We really enjoyed our butter on salty crackers, and almost everyone asked for seconds and thirds! For centers, we had the science center open, where we played with farm animals in dirt, and we also had the big farm center open, where we played with animals in a barn. We ate lunch with Pre-K and then went outside and had fun with them on the playground. This afternoon, we will be going over to Pre-K to finish our egg toss into small, medium and big containers, and work in fun math centers!
Have a wonderful night!
Lauren Avots

April 14th, 2009

Parents,
This morning we all had a wonderful breakfast together and talked about what animals we needed to put on our barn bulletin board. We also worked on our fine motor skills by scooping corn to feed pigs, and scooping bails of hay to feed cows. We also created our own farm scenes with felt farm animals and objects, and created a rock trail to lead up to our barn. During circle time, we put our right hand on our head so we could get a stamp of the letter "X," since that is our letter of the week. Our weather helper decided that it was really sunny outside, so we placed the big yellow sun over our tree, and felt the warm that the sun gives us by touching a flashlight. For calendar, we counted to the number 14, and read that today's date is Tuesday, April 14th. For our movement time, our song leader chose "Mary Had A Little Lamb," and we sang and danced to the song. We went outside with Pre-K, and had a lot of fun playing frisbee and playing with hula-hoops. While we were outside, we each got our own plastic bag, and filled it with dirt. We will be using this dirt later on this week in one of our lessons! During centers, Ms. McGuire worked on speech with us, and we played in the big block center that had a huge toy farm in it! We had lots of different farm animals, and we had fun acting out the different animals. For story time, we read, "Click, Clack, Moo, Cows That Type!" It was a funny story about cows that learned to type on an old typewriter in the barn, and they wrote notes to the farmer! We went to lunch and ate with our Pre-K friends, and then we went outside to the playground and practiced going across the monkey bars. This afternoon, we will be going over to the Pre-K classroom to observe Monarch butterfly caterpillars, and make drawings of what they look like. We will also toss plastic eggs into different sized containers, and count how many eggs land in each!
Have a great Tuesday!
Lauren Avots

April 13, 2009

Parents,
I hope you all enjoyed your wonderful 3 day weekend! This morning we ate breakfast together and then we did our fine motor work. We created structures with bristle blocks and created funny faces with feature magnets. We also looked through all of the pictures that Ms. Avots took on the field trip to Crowe's Nest Farm. We had many fun memories to talk about! During circle time we determined that it's sunny today, put the big yellow sun over the tree, and felt the warmth of the flashlight. We counted to 13 during calendar and added to our pattern. Our movement song was "The Bear Hunt". We screamed really loudly when the bear came. We played outside on the new little playground. For story time today, Ms. Avots read "Russell the Sheep". Russell had lots of trouble falling asleep, but he finally did in the end. During center time we each created our own Russell the sheep. We cut a sheep shape out and glued cotton balls all over it. We added googly eyes at the end. We'll be adding these to our farm scene soon. Our chickens are already happily living there. We also cut out many of the pictures from our farm field trip. We glued them on paper and Ms. Henderson, our substitute teacher, wrote down the stories the children had to tell. We ate lunch and played on the playground with Pre-K. This afternoon we're working on our math skills in Ms. Mitchell's Pre-K class.
Have a great night!
Kali Parsons

April 9, 2009

Parents,
We had a wonderful breakfast together this morning with lots of great conversation. For our fine motor work we strung letters and numbers on laces, put people blocks together to create shapes and structures, and moved metal circles of different colors with a magnet. During circle time we determined that it's cloudy today and put the white cloud over the tree. We counted to 9 during calendar and added to our color pattern. We danced to "I like Potatoes" - and the best thing is that today there were baked potatoes in the cafeteria for lunch! Yay! We played outside on the new playground. For story time I read "On the Farm". We practiced making different animal sounds while we read the book. We also talked about the dog who slept with one eye open because he was on guard duty. The two centers we had open today were the art center where we continued painting our eggs, and the science center where we had lots of scoops, colored rice, and farm animals in a tub. We used the scoops to cover up the animals and then we'd look for them. Today AISD had a bus safety drill. We all went outside, boarded a bus, fastened our seat belts, and listened to safety rules. We had speech therapy with Ms. McGuire. After lunch with our Pre-K friends we played with them on the playground. This afternoon we'll continue our morning centers as we ran out of time. Have a wonderful three-day weekend! See you on Monday!
Kali Parsons

April 8th, 2009

Parents,
Yesterday, we did not have a blog because we were on our field trip! We went to Crow's Nest Farm and we went on a hay ride, saw how they milk cows, and took a walking tour to see lots of farm animals! This morning we ate breakfast, and worked on our fine motor skills with our leaping frogs and with farm animal squirt toys that were in water. We also practiced our counting by planting different amounts of flowers in gardens and counting bunny rabbits. During circle time, we decided that it was sunny outside, and placed our big yellow sun over our tree, counted to the number 8 and decided our pattern for our numbers is pink, purple, purple, purple. Our music helper chose to sing "Lettercise," and she stood in front to show us the movements to the song. We went outside to the new playground, and had a lot of fun playing with our Pre-K friends. For story time, we read, "What Is That AWFUL Smell?" about farm animals trying to figure out what smells so terrible in their barn. For centers, we created structures in the block center for our farm animals to live in, and created roosters with our hand prints! We ate lunch with Pre-K and then went outside to the big playground and played with them. This afternoon, we will be finishing up our hand print roosters, and making a big silo for our bulletin board. We will also be filling out the rest of our farm chart, about what we learned from taking our field trip to the farm!
Have a great Wednesday!
Lauren Avots

April 6th, 2009

Parents,
This morning we ate breakfast and worked on our fine motor skills by working with bristle blocks and feeding bails of hay to cows. We also sorted miniature farm animals into groups of pigs, cows, donkeys, horses, geese, chickens, goats and sheep, and worked with large farm animal toys in a pasture. During circle time, we decided that it was cloudy outside because we couldn't see the blue sky, so we placed the white puffy cloud over our tree. During calendar time, we counted to the number 6 and decided that our 6 needed to be purple to match our pattern, and we sang and danced to "5 Little Ducks." We went outside on the new playground with Pre-K and we practiced taking turns going across the monkey bars. For story time, we read "Big Red Barn" by Margaret Wise Brown, which was about all of the different animals that lived in the barn. We talked about what we already know about farms, and we wrote everything down on the "What we know" part of the chart. On Wednesday, we will write down what we learned or saw on our field trip on the other side of the chart. For centers, we painted our paper mache eggs, and worked in the big block center making fences and shelters for our farm animals. We ate lunch with Pre-K, and went outside on the playground with them. This afternoon, we will be staying in our classroom to work on the farm bulletin board by making a huge barn!
Have a great night!
Lauren Avots

April 3rd, 2009

Parents,
This morning we ate breakfast together and worked on our fine motor skills by threading strings through letters with holes in them. We also made Mat Man and counted with flowers. We went to the Library and Ms. Kraal read us two books about friendship. One was about a bear and a mouse, and the other was about a bear and a goose. We played outside on the playground with Pre-K on the new playground, and then came inside for circle time. During weather time, we decided that it was really sunny outside, so we placed the big yellow sun over our tree. We counted to the number 3 and determined that we cannot tell what our number pattern will be yet. We shook plastic eggs with mystery objects inside, and guessed what was in the eggs. We found out that each egg had something different inside, and in the eggs were rice, a piece of chalk, a feather, bird seed, and water. We said that the bird seed and the rice sounded a lot alike, but the others sounded very different, and then we sang and danced to "Disco Limbo." We read "Green Eggs and Ham," and then we actually made and ate green eggs and ham! We stirred green food coloring into our egg mixture and on our ham, and cooked it! Everyone loved it and finished their plates! We put our final layer of paper mache on our eggs, and then headed to lunch with Pre-K. After lunch, we went to the library and found books about farms and farm animals, and then went outside with Pre-K. This afternoon, we will be making little chicks in plastic eggs, and doing letter of the week activities with the letter "V."
Have a wonderful weekend!
Lauren Avots

April 2nd, 2009

Parents,
This morning we ate breakfast and worked on our counting skills by placing different amounts of frogs on lily pads, and counting ducks in a pond. We also drew different characters from the movie "Monsters vs. Aliens" on whiteboards with dry erase markers to practice our writing grip, and played with felt characters on a felt dollhouse. We dressed the dolls, fed the baby felt doll a bottle, and put them all to sleep in their beds. During circle time, we decided that it was very windy, so we placed the big windsock over our tree. We counted to the number 2 on our calendar, and said that today was Thursday, April 2nd. For singing and dancing, we played the song "Tooty Ta," and our music helper showed us the motions! We played outside with Pre-K on the playground, and enjoyed the monkey bars and the fireman pole! For story time, we continued to read "The Pinkish, Purplish, Bluest Egg" and then some of us went over to Ms. McGuire's room for speech. During centers, we continued to paper mache our huge eggs to make them really thick with paper, and played in the big block center. We made towers that were almost as tall as us! Right before lunch, we looked at our egg that had been soaking in vinegar, and dropped it from different distances to see if it would break. We discovered that the egg actually bounced, and then we popped it and got to feel the soft, rubbery shell! We went to lunch with Pre-K, and then went out to the playground with them. This afternoon, we will be going over to Pre-K to finish working on our egg patterns, and work on math equations about chickens in a tractor!
Have a great evening!
Lauren Avots

April 1st, 2009

Parents,
This morning we ate breakfast and met our new friend who has joined our classroom! We all introduced ourselves and had fun talking to her! We worked on our fine motor skills by placing pegs into a peg board and making beautiful pieces of art with stamps. We also sorted dinosaurs by color and type, and then worked with different action figures that wind up and twist. During circle time, our weather helper saw the trees moving, so we decided it was windy outside, and placed the windsock over our big tree. We saw that today started a new month, so we placed a pink number 1 on the calendar, and read that today was Wednesday, April 1st. For music and dancing, we sang and danced to "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," and had our dancing helper sit in front of the class and be the song leader. We went outside and played with Pre-K on our new playground! We all enjoyed the slide and the tunnels to crawl through. For story time, we started reading "The Pinkish, Purplish, Bluest Egg," about a mother dove who found a huge egg and brought it to her nest to hatch. During centers, we played in the big block center and hid eggs for each other to find, and continued working on our paper mache eggs, which look like they are almost ready to paint! We ate lunch with Pre-K and went outside to play on the playground. This afternoon, we will be going over to Pre-K to make patterns with eggs that are different sizes and and colors.
Welcome to our new student and her family, and have a great evening!
Lauren Avots

March 31st, 2009

Parents,
This morning we ate breakfast on our new wax paper place mats we made yesterday! We worked on our fine motor with the Leaping Frogs, stacked different sized hexagon containers together, and worked with buses, garbage trucks, and police vehicles! We also made stairs out of the hexagon containers, and had bunnies hop up and down the stairs. We then made different silly faces with Mr. Potato Head, and pretended to make our classmates faces as well! During centers, we looked outside and saw that it was really dark and stormy, so we placed the big grey cloud over our tree, and felt the cotton ball cloud. We counted to 31 during calendar time, discovered that our 31 needed to be a black number to follow our pattern and sang and danced to "Heads, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes!" We made observations about the egg we placed in vinegar yesterday, to see how it had changed. At first, we just looked at it, and saw that it had little lines on it, but when we took it out of the vinegar to feel it, we noticed it was squishy! Our egg did not have a hard shell anymore, and we wrote down the differences from yesterday to today. We read the story "Eggs," which was about all of the different sizes, shapes, and animals that come from eggs. For centers, some of us had speech with Ms. McGuire, and we started making our paper mache eggs! We ripped up some newspaper, blew up balloons, and started covering our balloons with the newspaper. We ate lunch with Pre-K, and went outside to the playground. We noticed that the new playground was finished, and so we were some of the first students to play there! This afternoon, we will be going over to Pre-K to finish up counting the petals on our flowers, and to finish making finger print egg equations!
Have a great day!
Lauren Avots

March 30th, 2009

Parents,
This morning we ate breakfast, and then worked on our fine motor by putting pegs into holes, and feeding hay bales to hungry cows. We also worked on counting to different amounts, with fish in fish tanks. During circle time, we decided that it was cloudy and windy outside, so we placed the big white cloud and the windsock over our classroom tree. We held a fluffy cloud made of cotton balls, and felt wind from a fan on our face! We counted to 30 during calendar time, and read our "black, green, green" pattern and decided we needed a green number 30. We chose to sing and dance to "Mary Had A Little Lamb." Then, we went outside with Pre-K, played frisbee, and went on a bug hunt in the mud. We found a few beetles, ants and a tiny worm! We made sure to put the insects back in their habitats when we were finished looking at them. Right before centers, we observed a real egg, and saw that it was hard, white, and smooth. Then we smelled vinegar, and placed the egg in a cup full of vinegar. Tomorrow, we are going to see what the vinegar does to our egg! During centers, we played in the home center, and made tissue paper egg place mats. We tore up little pieces of colored tissue paper, drew eggs on some wax paper, and covered the eggs with the paper. Then, Ms. Avots ironed the the wax paper together, and it made a place mat. We ate lunch with Pre-K, and then played outside on the playground. This afternoon, we will be visiting the Pre-K classroom for math centers to make flowers and count how many petals they have!
Have a great day!
Lauren Avots

March 27th, 2009

Parents,
This morning we ate breakfast, and went straight to the library to have some books read to us! The books were about farms and farm animals! We played on the playground with Pre-K and then came inside and used a magnetic wand to move magnet discs, made silly faces with Mr. Potato head, and stacked bunnies on different sized containers. We also cut out a huge egg that was cracked in half, and made a chick popping out of the egg for our bulletin board! During circle time, we decided that it was really cloudy outside, so we put our big white cloud over our tree. We counted to 27 during calendar time, and decided that we needed a green number to follow our black, green, green pattern. Our question of the day today was "What do you like to do outside?" Zero people liked the slide and walking the best, 1 person liked the swing the best, and 2 people liked the monkey bars the best! We said that more people liked the monkey bars, and walking and the slide had the least amount of people. We danced and sang to "Old McDonald" and practiced saying our animal sounds! For centers, we looked at a book that showed a lot of animals who are born from eggs, and decided which animal we were going to make. We chose to make a snake, turtle and a dinosaur! We cut out egg shells, and glued them inside to look like they were hatching! We also decorated our letter of the week, "U" with umbrellas, and The United States. We ate lunch with Pre-K, and since it was raining, we could not go outside, so we came in and dance to our favorite songs to get some wiggles out. We also cut out our painted eggs we created yesterday and put them on the bulletin board next to our chick, and looked at a bird's nest to see where mother birds protect their eggs. This afternoon, we will be heading over to Pre-K to finish up our fingerprint egg addition equations!
Have a great weekend!
Lauren Avots

March 26th, 2009

Parents,
This morning we ate breakfast, drew pictures of ourselves and robots on whiteboards, created Mat Man with our Handwriting Without Tears sticks, and counted to different amounts with airplanes! Ms. Miller brought in some really cool Monsters vs. Aliens cards and the backs of the cards can be put together like a puzzle to form the movie's poster! Each of us put the puzzle together and then we created a card trading game and took turns trading cards! During circle time, we decided that it was really cloudy outside, and we put the big white cloud and the dark grey cloud over our classroom tree. During calendar time, we counted to the number 26 and read our pattern to find out that today's number should be green. Instead of having a question of the day today, we each got an egg shaker, and when I called a student's name, I asked them to put the egg under, on top of, behind, to the side of, below or above the green chair. If the rest of the class agreed that we placed the egg in the correct spot, they gave us a thumbs up! Then we sang and danced to "Ride That Pony," and shook our egg shaker to go along with our moves. For story time, we read the story, "Who Has More?" with Humpty Dumpty, Jack and Jill, and Little Miss Muppet. During centers, Ms. McGuire came in for speech, and we played in the big blocks center and hid our egg shakers in the towers we built. We had a lot of fun building a tower around the eggs! We also painted a huge egg with glue paint! We went to lunch with Pre-K and went outside on the playground with them. This afternoon, we will go over to the Pre-K classroom to put different sized pigs in order from smallest to largest, and make eggs with our fingerprints to count and add!
Have a great night!
Lauren Avots

March 25th, 2009

Parents,
This morning we ate breakfast, made silly faces with magnetic eyes, mouths and noses, and played with different vehicles from around our community, like police cars and fire engines! We also worked with small colored cubes and made designs like robots and animals. We created magnificent pieces of art with our Creation Station materials, and had a lot of fun gluing different objects on to our masterpieces. During circle time, we decided that it was really windy outside, so we placed the wind sock over our tree, and felt wind on our face with a fan. During calendar time, we counted to the number 25, and determined that the color of our number should be black, according to our pattern, and then sang and danced to "Lettercise!" We went outside with Pre-K and played ball and frisbee with our friends. During story time, Ms. Miller read us "Umbrellabird's Umbrella," because the letter of the week is "U." For centers, we made towers with our blocks, and then used fire trucks to rescue the burning towers. We also dressed up as firefighters and made sure to extinguish all the fires around the room with our huge water hoses. We ate lunch with Pre-K and went outside with them on the playground. This afternoon, we will be going over to the Pre-K classroom to finish our counting in 1's, 5's and 10's with our hand prints, and to count pigs!
Have a great night!
Lauren Avots

March 24th, 2009

Parents,
This morning we ate breakfast and went to go get our school pictures taken! We took a class picture first, and then had our individual pictures taken. When we came back, we sorted bears of different colors and sizes, and worked on our fine motor skills with ducks swimming in a pond, and our flipping frogs. We also worked as a team to build a fire engine puzzle together. At circle time, we decided that it was windy outside and predicted that it would rain later, but since it wasn't raining yet, we put the wind sock over our tree. We counted to the number 24 during calendar time, and we sang and danced to "Wheels on the Bus." We went outside with Pre-K and threw the frisbee to each other and played chase. During centers, we played in the Zilker Fire Station and fought a lot of fires with our big water hoses. We also marble painted today with red, yellow and orange paint, and made fire designs! During story time, we started reading "People in Our Neighborhood," and learned about different jobs in our community, including firefighters! We ate lunch with Pre-K and played outside on the playground with them. This afternoon, we will be staying in our classroom to finish up our marble paintings and to make a huge fire pole for our fire station!
Have a great evening!
Lauren Avots