Our minds are very imaginative this week! We went storytelling in the park. Now that we have practiced storytelling using rocks with images painted on them, I have noticed that they are now using rocks without images to create stories! In this story there are two people, whom I do not recall the names of, that are going to the carnival, but the rain starts to fall and the thunder comes (banging rocks together to make thunder!). A car comes to protect them from the rain and take them home, but then the sun comes back out and they all go back to the carnival.

We have also been storytelling using ocean creatures, water beads and playdough. It's a great work out for their little fingers and their imaginations. There were some very creative stories are being played out here.

These same little fingers had a messy, fun time mixing up a batch of “Sea Foam” to play with our shells in. We measured ingredients, took turns stirring and watched as bubbles began to grow. We used our sense to see, smell, feel, hear and even taste the sea foam. The sea foam definitely didn’t taste as good as it smelled! The looks on their faces were priceless. Sea shells were then added to our fun, where we examined the texture and patterns on the sea shells, used them as scoops and pretended the be in an ocean. It was so much fun that we even played in it when all the bubbles had gone.

On another day, we investigated dry sea shells using our senses and a magnifying glasses. We learned what sorts of creatures used to live in these shells and how come they are not in them anymore. When we talked about hermit crabs a couple of us thought we should and were to take the shells to the ocean so that other hermit crabs could live in them when their shells became too small. How very thoughtful.

We went on a hunt to find sea shell letters and numbers, which we had to discriminate between letters and numbers. We then matched the letters to foam, cookie cutter and magnet letters. We also used ocean creature number cards and water beads to count and represent the numbers 1-20.

For our word work with the letter O this week we created an octopus with 8 legs. We counted 8 cereal pieces for each of the 8 legs the octopus had.
We learned how long a Blue Whale can be and that it is the biggest creature in the ocean. Everyone was amazed to find out, as a long piece of yarn unraveled, that a Blue Whale would not even fit in the backyard! We had to go to the sidewalk to unravel the yarn to see how much space this animal takes up in the ocean.
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Some other things we did this week include; word work with letter N, worked together to build alphabet puzzles, played a memory/sequencing board game, built letters with playdough, sang and created actions to our ocean song and made a paper bag jellyfish.
 
I hope everyone is staying dry this weekend!
Xoxo Miss Audra

It’s Father’s Day! Everyone has been working really hard to make gifts for the most important men in their lives. They painted bird houses, made I Love You cards and added footprints to a Father’s Day poem on which they wrote a few words. Great job guys!

Have you ever been to the ocean? That’s the question we asked our friends. We used a bar graph to find out if more people have or have not been to the ocean.

We read Mister Seahorse by Eric Carle and learned that many daddy ocean fish are the ones who takes care of the eggs and babies. We also learned that daddy seahorses have a pouch, much like a kangaroo, where they keep the eggs safe until they hatch. Very fascinating!

We used counting mats to identify a number and put the corresponding amount of water beads on the mat. The higher the number the more bubbles (water beads) the fish on the mat seemed to be blowing. We also practiced making patterns with the blue and green beads.

Fresh water vs Salt water…What is the difference? We used our senses to taste the difference, see the difference, smell the difference and feel the difference. The consensus was that salt water doesn’t taste very good and that the salt water definitely looked different than the fresh water. We played around with different materials to see if they would float or sink. When the egg went into each of the waters it sunk in the fresh water but bobbed, then floated in the salt water. That was clearly puzzling, but we learned that it is easier to float in salt water than fresh water. We also talked about where salt water can be found, which sparked the discussion about whether lakes had salt water or fresh water.

Tin foil is an interesting medium to paint on…We painted an ocean on tin foil and added small, medium and large foam fish to it. We also used varying shades of blue to create this artwork. How do we make blue lighter or darker?
Mr. Pointy came out of his bucket to say hello, when we re-visited the Bucket Filler concept. We talked about what it means to fill or dip out of someone's bucket. We each told Mr. Pointy one thing we did today that filled someone's bucket.

Some other things we did this week include; building letters with playdough and our letter construction pieces, practicing what sounds the letter L and M make and what words begin with those sounds, as well as a Flower Hunt in Nosehill Park (there are so many different types of flowers growing in the wild there).

Can’t wait for more ocean fun next week!
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Xoxo Miss Audra

We are excited to say that we had a new friend join the BB family this past week! It’s always great to see new faces.

We continued our learning about dinosaurs this week. I think that the floor now has permanent dints on the surface due to our famous Dinosaur Stomp song that we dance to every morning! Dinosaurs can be fierce creatures, but we have been learning that not all dinosaurs are mean. Dinosaurs use their roars to talk with other dinosaurs and also to scare them away when they are scared themselves. We know that some dinosaurs ate other dinosaurs, but that does not make them mean dinosaurs; that’s just what they have to eat to survive. While playing with our friends we have been learning that we do not always need to scratch or roar angrily in each other’s faces when playing “dinosaurs”, as there are other ways to play the same game that do not scare or hurt some of our friends.

Dinosaurs no longer here on Earth. We talked about the possible reasons why the dinosaurs are extinct and focused on the idea of an ice age. Everyone received a dino frozen in ice and then had to free the dinosaur from blocks of ice! Now how do we do that with no tools? Someone said the sun will melt it. Another said we can smash it on the ground. Someone else tried to use his nails to scratch at the ice. When the dinos revealed themselves it was quite exciting.

We had dinosaur eggs on afternoon on our table! We touched and smelled them; how rough and sweet smelling they were. How could we see what's inside? We used a syringe the put vinegar on the egg and also dipped the whole egg into vinegar. The bubbling caught a couple off guard. It was quite a surprise to them that that was happening.

What is a fossil? We made our own dino fossils with the help of our dinosaur toys. We discussed why only the bones are here and also why sometimes there is nothing but a fossil here to show where a dinosaur’s bones once were. It was a bit confusing at first, but once we understood the concept it was quite interesting. That led to some questions and deep conversation about what happens to our physical bodies when we die. There are some very curious and inquisitive minds here at Blooming Butterflies!

For math concepts this week we practiced identifying 2D shapes while we made our paper plate/foam shapes dinosaur craft. We are really good at remembering them now! We also went on a dinosaur hunt to find mini dinos outside. We had to collect and count only a certain number of dinos.

Some other things we did with dinosaurs this week include making a Stegosaurus hat, using playdough molds to make 3D dinosaurs, and painted ourselves some dinosaur feet out of Kleenex boxes and added foam claws.
This week we practiced the letter J and K; singing letter songs, brainstorming words that begin with the letter, writing the letter, and journal work to make a kite for letter K.

We also spent some time doing experimental painting using sponges and straws. Some neat techniques were used ie: circular motions, dabbing, dragging the sponge from one side to the other, using the straw like a paintbrush and blowing paint out of the straw.

What a great week! See everyone soon!
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Xoxo Miss Audra

RAWR!...go the dinosaurs…and the children for that matter! I think everyone has perfected their dinosaur rawr’s over this past week.

Learning about dinosaurs have added a new excitement! We have been learning about what different dinosaurs eat and how they can tell if they are an Herbivore, Carnivore or Omnivore. We even became paleontologists and dug through some dinosaur poop to find out!

We created a dinosaur skeleton using Q-Tips and were able to identify the dinosaur by name. While doing so we practiced identifying our large, medium and small sizes with the Q-Tips we used; we had to match the appropriate size Q-Tip to each chalked line of the dinosaur skeleton.

A couple other crafts we made this week are; making our own dinosaur footprint using our own feet and then adding claws, and painting paper tubes that became legs for our coloured paper dinosaurs.

We played Dinosaur games in the fields. That was a big hit and they definitely tired themselves out!

We celebrated a very special 4th birthday. We baked and decorated cupcakes, and of course sang Happy Birthday!
 
Friday was our last day of our Estimation Jars. Is was great see have such a variety of objects in the Estimation Jars! A special thank you goes out to all the BB parents for helping their children to organize this activity on their special days. Our Estimation Jars this week included marbles, pompoms, mini animal toys, ping pong balls and ponies. We got to practice sorting colours, sizes and types. With the marbles we learned about what opaque and translucent means and practiced picking up marbles with parts of our bodies without using our hands.

Some other things we did this week include; storytelling with painted rocks, journaling, colour mixing through marble painting, making our own playdough, Word work with letters I and J, and hula hooping in the fields.
 
See everyone soon!
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Xoxo Miss Audra