Chillin' in the OC - Teacher Lisa

"Have you ever seen a penguin come to tea? When you look at me, a penguin you will see!" (Ask your preschooler to tell you about this silly song.) We saw lots of penguins around our classroom this week!

They were in the water tub, along with icebergs made of foam, colored gems and stones, and pitchers for endless filling and pouring.

They were also on the light table with some other arctic animals, playing in Epsom salt snow.

There were no penguins in the texture table, but there was lots of rice "snow" for the dump trucks, front-loaders, tow trucks, buckets and shovels to dig and dump in.

We put new toys out on the building table that the children could connect to create all kinds of scenes. There was a "hill" for skiers to slide down, along with a forest of trees. We had several very exciting windstorms during the week!

The creation station had some new supplies which our artists and engineers put to immediate use.

On Friday we put out some liquid water color ice cubes that the kids could paint with.

There were wintry colors at the easels and the kids have been especially enjoying adding silver glitter to their paintings :).

There were some new snowman-building shapes at the flannel board, along with new puzzles to put together.

We added some new decorating accessories to the play dough table as well. There were lots of delicious-looking cakes going into the oven!

Here are some of the other fun things that were going on during our free play.

One of the coolest items we had out this week was our collection of huge building blocks! One of our parent volunteer activities on Monday was making sure that everyone had a chance to build with them, and learn how to stack them back on the shelf. They were out the rest of the week for open-ended play. We were impressed with the collaboration and creativity we saw happening.

Our other parent-led activity on Monday was using the Ivory soap snow we made last week to create all kinds of snow sculptures. There were snowmen, snow cats, snow dogs, snow queens, snails, robots and more! These are out in our display case so be sure to take a look.

On Wednesday, children used water colors to paint pictures of their snow sculptures. Some tried to re-create what they built on Monday while others got completely caught up in using every single color in the paint tray! Both approaches were awesome :).

After having the marble run at our building table last week, we thought it would be fun to bring out another version of this activity, so on Wednesday the children worked with our parent helper to create ball runs by arranging magnetic components on a huge oil pan. Some referred to the idea cards that were available while others invented their own designs. Either way, there was lots of trial-and-error experimenting and problem-solving.

The other activities we did on Friday both focused on letter/sound recognition. Out in the hallway the children played hockey, swatting paper plates with different alphabet letters on them into the goal.

In the classroom they were writing their names in shaving cream, talking about different kinds of lines and comparing upper and lower case letters.

During our story time we learned the penguin song mentioned at the top of the blog. We also learned some new songs to do with our scarves.

We acted out the story of the three little kittens who lost their mittens. Invite your child to tell it to you!

Some of the stories we read were, Polar Bear Scare, Annie and the Wild Animals, Miss Brooks Loves Books, and Huggly's Snow Day. We had a Friendship Circle and each shared something we like to do in the snow as we passed Snowy the Snowman around. The kids are doing such a great job with this!

It was cold and windy outside, but no one seemed to mind! Thanks for sending hats and gloves to school on these chilly days! Thanks, too, for sharing your children with us. We think they're pretty cool ;).

Until next time...
Lisa and Sheri