Reptile Birthday Slide Show

Mine is longer than yours!

"Mine is the longest, mine is longer than yours, and yours is short!"

These are all examples of what the children have been saying as they are creating their snakes...........

Look at Sam, his is longer than he is!

We started working on our chart..........

We needed a title for the chart.  We asked the children what the title should be, and some of them said, "SNAKES"........

We sounded out the word snake, and we each took turns writing the letters that spelled the word snake....When it was Tirza's turn, she was supposed to write the last "S" in Snakes.......but instead, she wrote "tohoi"!   What a perfect opportunity to sound out and spell the word SNAKE again.  We looked at the book to help us sound it out!

And our smart little Tirza got it right away!  She needed a PINK marker to write the word!  She spelled snake the way it was in the book, and here we have the title for our chart!

We all got to work measuring our snakes.........

Kiersten was the one who helped everyone make sure that the number 1 was at the beginning of the snake, we stretched the measuring tape out to see how long our snakes were...........

We wrote our names and how many inches our snake was............

When we were done with our measuring, we started to talk about the "environment" that our snakes could live in.  We looked in a book of different landscapes to find a "rain forest"!  The children all said snakes live in a rain forest........

We saw so much GREEN in the rain forest picture!  We saw trees, grass, leaves, and vines.......

Our teachers got together and gave us a collection of green materials to inspire us to make our rain forest!

Of course we wanted to get right to work!

Here is a sneak peak of the first tree of the rain forest!  This project will soon be hanging in the hallway for everyone to admire!

Snakes - Part II

Our wonderful children have picked up right back from where we left off, before the holidays!  Remember our project that started about snakes?  Here are two links in case you forgot.....

http://littlewondersschool-pre-k.blogspot.com/2010/11/snakes.html

http://littlewondersschool-pre-k.blogspot.com/2010/11/surprise-visitor.html

It is amazing how the projects develop and how much the children are learning when they are excited and interested in the subjects!  Noah's parents have seen his interest in snakes and reptiles since the projects, so for his birthday, they brought a reptile show to the school!

Stay tuned for  a slide show of the party!  You will be so surprised at all the animals the kids saw, and how they were able to handle the animals.

As we started talking about reptiles, the children started talking about different animals.  One of their favorites at the moment is frogs!  We are learning about the life cycle of the frog, and how the frog goes from living in the water as a tadpole, to a frog on land.  We have learned about how a frog eats, and what it eats, and so much more!  Take a look at some of our drawings below, notice the detail in the drawings and how advanced their art is for their age!

Here is the life cycle, by Ashley

Alexandre made a long tongue to show how the frog gets his food!  He said, "Frogs stick on lily pads and they have sticky toes to climb on trees!"

Notice the feet on this frog!  Ashley did this to show that the toes are sticky!  This turned into a great math project,  we counted how many toes she gave the frog, and found out that frogs only have 5 toes, so now we are redoing a picture with 5 toes!

Here is the frog life cycle and a picture of a frog by Kailyn M.

Trevor drew the lifecycle of a frog

We can all see that Kaelynn made this picture!

Ricky drew this lifecycle!

We are making more snakes, and here is a sneak peak of some of our creations!  We are counting how many spots, lines, and materials we are using to make our snakes, we are measuring them and seeing who's is longer and shorter.  We are in the process of making a "chart" in our class to see how many inches each person's snake is.

We have bee working on playing "games" in class where we look at animals and determine whether it is a reptile or a mammal!  We are making mammals and reptiles out of clay and categorizing them.  Look at this tiger, "which is a mammal"! ;0)

This project is going in so many different directions!  Some children have started a project on the frogs in the rain forest, frogs vs toads, and what is an amphibian.  This is helping us learn about the environment of a rain forest, what amphibians need in their environment to live, and the anatomy of frogs. 

 (don't tell anyone, its a secret, but we are expecting a delivery of two bullfrog tadpoles in the mail any day now!)

This is going to really help our project take off even more! 

We have been having such wonderful conversations about mammals vs reptiles:

We saw a picture of a snake and the children said, "He's a reptile!"  "He is sticky!" 

We asked, "Do snakes lay eggs or carry their babies in their tummies?"

Trevor said, "They lay eggs!"

We asked, "Do people lay eggs or carry their babies in their tummies?"

One child said, "lay eggs!"  So we said, "When you were all babies and your mom was ready to have you, did she go make a nest and put an egg in it?  Did you come out of an egg?"

"NNNOOOOO!"  "We came out of our mommies tummies!" 

But Will said, "I came out of my daddy's tummy!" ;0) (love that!)

Ricky said, "And I came out of my mommy's tummy and then I drank milk from her tummy!"

We asked, "So are people mammals, reptiles, or amphibians?"

They all started saying "A person!" But then Ashley said, "A mammal!"

We looked at a picture of a lizard, "Do lizards lay eggs or carry their babies in their tummies"

"They lay eggs!"  So are they a mammal or a reptile?  "A reptile!"

We continued the conversation about other animals like giraffes and crocodiles, and we talked about whether the animal laid eggs or not, and whether the animal drank milk from its mother, or if the mother found food for the baby animal.

So much is going on, it is hard to put it all in this post!  We are enjoying every minute of this project especially since the children are enjoying and learning so much!

The International Winter Festival 2010

Happy Holidays!

Everyone at Little Wonders wishes all of our friends and family Happy Holidays!

Thank you to all of the parents and friends of our parents for making our Winter Festival a huge success!

We should have a slide show of the pictures soon!

Just as a reminder, Little Wonders will be closed Friday, December 24th, Monday the 27th, and Friday the 31st.  We are looking forward to a wonderful new year!

Little Wonders International Festival

"A snowflake from the North Pole"
by Kaelynn

Our International Festival will begin at 3:00 p.m.,

Friday, December 17th! 

All family and friends are welcome to join the festivities!

To kick off the Festival, the children of Little Wonders will perform holiday songs! 
Toddler 1 through PreK classes will all be part of the performance!  This is a show you do not want to miss!  Please dress your child in the colors red, white, green or black. 

10,000 pounds of snow have been ordered from the North Pole! 

Please bring gloves, snow boots, extra pants, socks, a shirt, and shoes for your child.  For more information on the snow party and their rules click on the following link.......

http://www.iceexpress.com/snow_parties.html

Our snow fund raiser is going on every morning in the hallway.  Breakfast and ornaments have been provided by the children and parents to help raise money to cover the cost of the snow.

Our goal is to raise $700, and we have raised $186 so far.

Thank you to all of the parents who have donated money and breakfast goodies!

The International Festival is a great way for us to try new foods, and learn about tastes from around the world. 

Please sign up to bring a dish that represents the nationality of your family!

Sign-ups are available by your classrooms to bring in your favorite international holiday dish!

YUM!