Small Friends School News: Families and Flowers in the OC

We had so much fun celebrating families this week and we hope that all of you wonderful moms were feeling the love!

There were babies in the tub for bathing, drying and diapering.

At the building table children could arrange people and furniture in the dollhouse.

There were paper dolls out at the creation station for dressing and drawing on.

In anticipation of our flower shop Friday, we had silk flowers and vases in the texture table all week.

The other theme in our classroom was "growing and changing" as was evident on the light table where tadpoles and caterpillars turned into frogs and butterflies.

And speaking of butterflies...by the end of the day on Friday two Painted Ladies had emerged from their cocoons! We made sugar-water for them and can't wait to see how many are out by Monday!

The kids worked so hard on special surprises for their mothers this week. On Monday they used watercolors and Epsom salts to make "step one" of a Mother's Day card.

On Friday they chose colored paper to attach their paintings to, and then each wrote their own special message. We were so proud of their efforts!

They also wrapped gifts they made - we sure hope you like them!

And of course there was the Flower Shop. Thank you all for your contributions to this - it was so sweet to see them creating their bouquets.

Our other parent-led activities this week were painting flowers at the easels and playing an alphabet game.

After carefully observing the flower of their choice, children mixed colors and painted their own representations. They all did such a great job! Their beautiful artwork will provide the backdrop for our promotion program.

The alphabet game involved reaching into a mystery box, pulling out an object, identifying the sound at the beginning, and then finding the letter that makes that sound on a game board. We'll keep it out in the classroom for a while so that they can keep playing and practicing these literacy concepts.

You may have heard that we had some special guests on Wednesday. A group of 8th graders from OES (one of whom attended Small Friends) came with their adult chaperones to do some face painting. This was part of a larger project they had completed, and it was lots of fun for all involved!

Here are some other pictures of your kids around the room this week:

During our story time we read stories about families, learned a new song (ask your child if they can remember "One Bottle of Pop"), and danced with bean bags to a song about letter sounds.