Butterflies and houses in the YC - Teacher Meghan

The kids got to climb into our butterfly tent and hold butterflies this week. It was such a cool experience and it was so fun to watch how gentle the kids were when holding the butterflies and how fascinated they were when they got a chance to study them up close.

Here is a peek at your kids holding butterflies.

We have displayed the kids' baby pictures in the classroom and they loved looking at themselves and their friends and observing how much they have grown.

On Tuesday we played a really fun math game that involved making a "banana split". This game was an awesome way to work on one to one correspondence up to 10 and encouraged fine motor skills as the kids used tongs to scoop up the "ice cream" to put in their banana splits. After teaching the kids how to play this game it was available for them to play for the remainder of the week.

On Tuesday and Thursday we started a multi-day project. The kids are building houses. The kids completed the first step of the project this week by building their houses out of wood on a cardboard base. They used hot glue to secure the pieces of wood together. All the kids LOVED this process.

On Thursday the kids went out in the garden to plant sunflower seeds. The seeds will grow over the summer and hopefully we will have some giant sunflowers for the kids to return to in September. We are also sending home sunflower seeds next week that the kids can plant at home to help remind them of Small Friends over the summer.

We had bugs and bug catchers at our texture table this week.

At our water table we had more bugs, nets, pumps and scoops.

On our light table we had translucent acetate faces and facial features.

We had Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head on our building table this week.

On our flannel board we had the story of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar". The kids loved re-telling this story using the flannel board pieces.

Butterflies, rainbows and unicorns continued to keep little hands creating at the writing table and creation station this week.

Here are a few pictures of kids at play.

On Tuesday we had a special guest come to teach us about her life in Tanzania. This was such a wonderful experience!
First we looked at a globe to see where Tanzania was in relation to Portland.

We read a book about African animals and learned how to count to ten in Swahili.

We got a chance to look at wood carvings representing some of the animals you would find in Africa.

We sang "Hakuna Matata".

And we learned an African dance.

We also shared the last of our houses and celebrated a birthday!

We had a wonderful week with your little ones! Next week we continue our house project.
Hope everyone had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend,
Meghan and Christine