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September 29 - October 2
September 29 - October 2
Introducing Box Turtle #99: BUMPY
Introducing Box Turtle #99: BUMPY
Our field trip last week was extra exciting since we discovered a new box turtle on our nature hike! This week the class discussed our field trip experience and specifically where and when we met the new turtle. The children used magnifying glasses to examine the turtle picture and describe his features. We then moved to the chart paper to continue our discussion and decide on a name. Because the name had to start with the letter "B," this process proved to be more difficult than just deciding on a name. The concept of "a name that starts with B" or a name that starts with the "Buh sound" is a very abstract for preschoolers, so we used an ELA strategy of replacing the first sound of a word with B/Buh to get the conversation started. While some of these are "nonsense words" that's perfectly fine - its the strategy that matters! Once we started doing this with words they shared they got the idea and we decided on "Bumpy" since his shell was bumpy looking.
Our documentation of our observations (blue post-its) and our discussion of what we learned about turtles.
The children used the magnifying glasses to examine the features of our new turtle. Their observations were documented on post-its at the table.
We had our first STEM experience this week! We modeled the story "Planting a Rainbow" in the garden. Connecting a book to an experience gives the children a better understanding of the process and purpose behind the task. We were also able to refer back to the book as we planned and implemented our garden experience.
To introduce the concept of a rainbow and sorting our materials by color, we had the children explore and sort the animals into color matching trays. This math experience required teamwork and motor skills, all with the focus of color and color order.
After sorting the animals and arranging the trays in rainbow order, we moved to the book. As we moved through the book we emphasized the planting process, the rainbow order and the bulbs since that is what we would be planting.
Next we examined the bags of bulbs and their picture labels and sorted them by color like we did with the animals. This time the children led the sorting task and used their prior experience to easily sort the bulbs.
Once the bulbs were sorted, the children used the magnifying glasses and their hands to examine the different bulbs. We discussed shape, size, texture and appearance as they moved around the table to explore the color trays.
The next day we took our bulbs and headed to the garden! We started off by weeding the preschool flower bed and then preparing the dirt for planting. We named each color of the rainbow and added a colored stick to each end of the row of bulbs. These colored sticks are a reminder of what colored bulb we planted in each row. We will predict and draw what we think the flowers will look like and then compare their pictures to what actually grows in the spring!
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