Your Children Are Growing Up

During the past two weeks, Mrs. Julie and I have seen your children mature and grow in such a manner that lets our hearts feel confident in their readiness for kindergarten. Just a few news updates from our busy classroom:

Honey from bees tastes so good! We ate it on Nutter Butter cookies when we learned about insects. Many of us had never tasted honey, but man do they love it. I finally had to bring my "honey bear" home because they loved it so much.

Planting flowers and watching them grow is amazing. Our lima bean greenhouse was a success and the children were amazed with their handiwork. They were able to witness God's miracle of growth right in our classroom. We couldn't believe that a seed actually opened and started to grow right before our eyes. They are in your hands now, so take care and nurture these tiny plants.

WE LOVE TO READ!!!!Many of us have started borrowing books from the classroom. Please be kind and return them after you enjoy sharing them with your child. They beg every day to hear more books and to try and read them on their own. They are so proud of being able to read words on their own. Nourish their love of reading and it will pay off in the future.

We can really count and do math. Some of our worksheets may look more advanced than preschool - but we are ready. Most of us can do these sheets with little help and are ready to move on from simple counting sheets. Let your child count money and count for you. We can count by 1's, 5's, & 10's.

Enjoy your children every day. Cherish their innocent smiles and share stories of God's work in their lives. Public school is a wonderful academic environment, but there is no faith education in the classroom. Encourage, uplift and praise as often as you can and pray daily with your child in thanks for God's goodness. These 16 children are so happy and confident and it is all thanks to your hard work. This year is coming to a close very quickly - take some time to share in your child's fun. This is the day that the Lord has made - let us all be glad and rejoice in it. Psalm 118:24

Thank You Parents!!!!

Thank you parents for a wonderful luncheon today and beautiful flower. Mrs. Julie and I are so lucky to be in this class with your children. We sincerely appreciate all that you do for us and your support in our room. Thanks especially to Mrs. Beverly, Mrs. Tricia and Mrs. Kelli for covering our class while we enjoyed your tasty lunch.

We Recycled A Water Hose

We recycled an old garden hose and made an Earth Day wreath. We also recycled some old newspaper for our handprints. Who knew you could use an old garden hose for a decoration? Try this at home for a funky and fun yard embellishment.
Here is a plant update. They are really growing and enjoying the bright sunshine. Watch them grow as you travel through car pool. Enjoy our wonderful climate this weekend.

Can You Tell That We Love Our Classroom?

Okay I can admit that the children love playing in our classroom - sometimes this is even called learning. (But don't tell them that.) We have found so many ways to have fun exploring centers that it sometimes even surprises the children. Doing puzzles, playing with playdough, having a tea party in home living or even coloring can help us with our social skills and thinking processes. We are so proud of these boys and girls.

Can You Tell That We Love Our Playground?

Okay - I can admit it. The children really only come to school to enjoy the glorious weather and play outside. They have so much fun running, screaming, walking, climbing, crawling and anything else they can imagine on the playground. Isn't it great to be a child? They love to use their imaginations and play so many different things. Sometimes it is just called "running in a screaming mob." I am so thankful the childhood is still about playing.

Check Out Our Flowers

This is our flower project from Earth Day. It is growing in the warm spring sunshine. The children are well versed in what is required for a plant to grow. Now we are just waiting on the tomatoes.

May Is Almost Here!

May is right around the corner and since we have been learning about the letter S, we made beautiful sunflowers. We learned how plants grow and made these bright flowers to welcome May. We also made birds to help us prepare for the "flight" from preschool into kindergarten. It is so amazing that this school year is almost over. You can feel the excitement in the air.

We Have Another Grandparent!

Here is another grandparent. We love our grandparents and don't want to forget to share them with everyone.

THIS IS THE FUN BUS!!!!!

After weeks of talking about it - the FUN BUS finally came to our school. What an awesome event. The Fun Bus is real and it is "real fun." We had lots of fun as we danced, moved and exercised our way through the activity filled bus.

A Trash Free Lunch?

Our parents rock! We did such a great job today with our trash free lunch project. Thanks so much for making this effort to show the children how to reduce our waste and take care of the planet. See our smiling faces - We are so proud of you!!! (Of course some of us really wanted to recycle our Tupperware - and after much explanation we understood that this was how our lunch was trash free.)

Earth Day 2009

Today was also Earth Day. For several weeks, we have been talking about things we can do to help take care of God's beautiful creation. We also learned about the important work of insects and how plants help our environment. In honor of the Earth's Day today, we planted some flowers and a tomato plant. It will be our job to take care of our work through the end of the school year and we might even be lucky enough to eat some of the fruit from our tomato plant. You can see our beautiful blooming flowers as you pass through car pool line.

Hooray For Spring Fling!

Today was Spring Fling and it was so much fun. We enjoyed the beautiful weather and had a great time playing games outside.

There were bubbles....
There was face painting...
There were games...
Happy Spring Fling 2009!!!!

Caterpillars To Butterflies

At the end of our insect unit we made beautiful butterflies and a really long caterpillar. Each part of the caterpillar was created by a child in our room - they cut out their hands for his crawling feet. It is posted outside of our classroom and helps us remember God's wonder as the furry caterpillar turns into a light and airy butterfly.

More Grandparents

We had another grandparent visit our classroom. It has been such a great thing to meet all of these wonderful and important people. I wasn't sure if I had gotten all of these pictures up so if some are repeats I apologize. You will never know what it means to your children to show off their grandparents to their classmates. Our "Grandparents Wall Of Fame" is still growing and there is time to get more pictures up before the end of the year. If I have missed any grandparents I apologize. Please bring it my attention and I'll get them up soon. We try to grab them and take pictures when we can.

All right, these three don't belong in our class, but aren't they handsome? They belong to me and I just had to show them off. This is a picture of my children and my dad all dressed up for Easter. Grandparents are the BEST!!!!!

Earth Day Is Coming!!!

We will celebrate Earth Day next Wednesday with our Spring Fling. (Don't forget that the "Fun Bus" Is Coming!!!) To help us get ready for Earth Day, we made a decoration for our door to show how much we love our Earth and talked about things that we can do to help take care of God's creation. It really is our job, big or little, to take care of what God has so freely given us and the children picked "no littering" as the number 1 job that we can do.

Playing On The Playground

After all of the rain, we just wanted to thank God for this beautiful day and for our playground. It was perfect weather to run and yell and hold hands and just be loud. We are almost ready to graduate from our class and enter the world of the "big school" so today we just had fun being four, five, or almost five.

We Are God's Workers, Just Like Worker Bees

"For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works..." Ephesians 2:8

Leading up to Easter we spent some time talking about Jesus' death on the cross as a sign of his love for each one of us and different ways we can help share this message with our friends. When we talked about the bee hive and the important work of each single bee, we talked about how we can each help God by using our own hands and feet. This was a fun way to find something that each one of us could do to share God's love.

Its Hard Being A Bug!

We have been buzzing around all week in our classroom learning about insects. We had a great time learning how spiders are not actually insects and the important jobs that even the smallest of God's creation do to help nature. We also learned that we are often scared of these little guys with no real reason to be afraid of them. Spiders eat flies. Bees make honey. Caterpillars turn into beautiful butterflies. Everyone has a job to do - even insects. We promised to try and not harm our little friends, but agreed that we probably would still be afraid of them.

We counted insects for a bug collection math project, even practiced pollination, and did a little "bee" dance to show how bees actually talk to each other. It was great fun to learn about how bee colonies work and even relied on a major motion picture to help us understand how it really all works - pollination, nectar and honey. (The Bee Movie) We made a bee hive and a bee to practice pollination with a flower and some sequins. It should be interesting to have your children explain how this really all works.
Little Miss Muffet...this was our spider creation. We had fun learning that spiders have eight legs and four pairs of eyes. The children also enjoyed acting out the silly nursery rhyme about "little miss muffet." Don't be surprised if they want to do this when our spiders crawl into your homes.

We made antennae and practiced using our "bug sense" navigating around our classroom. It is pretty hard to imagine being such a small object and being safe from big things around you in the air and on the ground. I think we gained a new appreciation for the jobs that our insects do every day.