Our Own Vegetable Garden

Touch and Feel was about pretending to be gardeners.  We had all kinds of tools.....shovels, rakes, gloves, and clippers.....and dirt.  The only complaint from the kids.....where were the seeds?

 Ms. Abby was back today with bouncy balls and relay races.  The kids are so excited when they see her because they know she has so many fun, ACTIVE things to do.  At the end, she brought out a big parachute, which was definitely the biggest hit yet!  We might have to invest in one of our own.  We counted as the parachute went up and down.  We listened as Ms. Abby called someone's name to run under the parachute.  We talked about directions and fast and slow.  It was a perfect language activity!  The kids were so wound up when we finished.....we went straight to the playground to get rid of some of that energy.

As we left the playground today, a moment of incidental learning happened when Ms. Lee Ellen spotted a lizard on the fence.  We all took turns looking at the lizard.....who was as cooperative as one can expect.....and even discussed where he might live.  With our excitement came louder voices and some fence shaking.  Our lizard didn't even move.....brave little thing.....or....more likely.....scared to death!!  We left him with promises to find him again tomorrow.  It was the topic of discussion all the way inside.

We have been talking all week about foods that grow so the book was Vegetable Garden by Douglas Florian.  This book walks through the steps of planting and growing a garden with action words.  It also teaches all the things that plants need to grow.  It has wonderful pictures of vegetables and animals.  The kids were very attentive and seemed to really like it.



We pretended that we were going to grow a class garden and made a list of some of the things that we might like to grow.  Now some of the vegetables made it on the list with great protest ("I don't like broccoli"), but we added it anyway!

Art was about planting our most favorite vegetable of the week.  Carrots.  The kids have really enjoyed learning that carrots grow underground....and you can's see the orange part until you pull it up by the leaves.  We took orange carrot cut outs and glued them on paper.  We gave them green leaves.  THEN......we painted them with MUD!!!  Now....as I have previously noted, some of our kids are big fans of messy and some not so much.  I'll let you make your own determinations by the expressions on their faces in the pictures.  We decided to leave the carrots at school to let them dry.  We wouldn't want to spread the mess any further than the classroom.....which the word "messy" does not accurately describe!

We were so busy painting today.....and cleaning up afterwards.....that lunch got started a little late.  It's true that time flies when you are having fun!  Today was a great day at preschool!