West Richmond Preschool

  We began the week by planting some scarlet runner beans and bush beans in a clear plastic cup with paper towel so we would be able to see the bean sprouting process over the next few classes.      After the children had a chance to plant the beans and place them on the window sill, they were waiting for it to sprout and found it challenging to understand now that the bean is in sunlight and it has water why is it not sprouting? Lots of great questions and discussions had the children thinking. I decided to read the children a story about The Enormous Potato by Aubrey Davis while they still stood by the window waiting for the beans to sprout!! The story is about a farmer who plants a “potato eye” and it begins to grow and now he needs the help of his family to pull the potato out of the ground. We decided that after planting our bean, imagine the bean grew as big as the potato and we now needed the help of others to pick these beans, so th...

Spring is here!   During playtime the children were able to create their garden using different shapes of felt on the felt board.   At circle, we read the book My Garden by Kevin Henkes. In this book, the girl grows chocolate rabbits, seashells, jellybean bushes and strawberries that glow. That is not your ordinary garden!   After the story, I asked the children “ What would you grow in your garden?” They responded through drawings. Boaz - blueberry   Keira: flower   Ruka: flower   Jeffrey: watermelon     Chantel: flowers, ice cream, blueberry and strawberry     Claire: ice cream   Sarah: sunflower   Benjamin: cheese and apples   Chloe F: watermelon   Just like in the story, some children used their imagination in what they wanted to grow in their garden. Anything can be grown! They were also able to enhance their artistic abilities...

The children in our Four year old class recently had fun in the sun and sand. On this particular day, the warmth of the sun could finally be felt and that sense of Spring was most definitely in the air.     It had rained the night before and the sand was prime for sandbox play. There was loads of sharing, team play, and strategizing happening this morning.     We all know it takes plenty of skill, strength, and trial and error, to flip over the bucket of sand without losing the bulk of the sand in the process!   A simple puddle in the sand was icing on the cake, and was well utilized by the children.   Hands can't always and shouldn't always be clean. Being allowed to get down and dirty is an important excercise in play. With the anticipation of more sunshine and warmer weather, Spring is an exciting time of year. We look forward to many more sandbox days ahead! Barbi

 After many days of rain we began to notice that alot of worms had made their way onto the playground floor.  Our curiosity was piqued! In order to bring this discovery into the classroom the teachers brought in bins of soil to play with.  After some digging around we found some real, live worms in the bins!  That was when the questions began.   What do worms eat? How do worms see? Can a worm live when it has been cut in half? We took a book out of the library to find some answers. Here are some of the things that we learned about worms: they don't have eyes they can grow a new head or tail, but will not survive being cut in half they eat leaves, grass, dead trees (and roots), and food scraps they do not like the sun and will die if they are exposed for more than an hour or two their poop is ok to touch there are no "girl" worms or "boy" worms - all worms are both! the reason that worms squirm around in your hand...

In our classroom we are always looking at how to incorporate the outdoors into the classroom. One of the ways we have been doing that is by bringing in the planter boxes from the deck and discovering what happen to the bulbs we had planted back in the fall.       We showed the children the bulbs they had help planted back in the Fall to remind them what they looked like. We then showed the children the planter box, most of the children were amazed at how the flowers had grown from a bulb. How did the petals fit inside the blub? How did the flower get to be yellow?             We thought to further our observation of the planters box we would put some material that would inspire the children to create their own art with the planter box inside the classroom.     Christy is inspired to make a daffodil as she sees in the planter box.   Chloe is inspired to make a tulip....