Ornithology in Preschool In Mariposa, we finished our bird unit with a focus on local birds, nests, and habitats. For sharing day, Rebecca brought in an egg she’d found in her yard that she assumed fell from a nest. The children looked through several books to solve the mystery of what kind of bird it […]
Walking Field trips Something I have learned, in my years of teaching five years olds, is that they love novelty, especially in the Spring! We have been leaning into that with our recent Thursday walking field trip excursions. Our first walk was bird watching and playground fun at Ohlone park. On our journey there, the […]
Unicorn Sculpture We love collaborative projects in Mariposa! Over the past few weeks, we have been constructing a unicorn from recycled materials. We started by covering a laundry detergent container with newsprint and then made it colorful by covering it with bleeding tissue paper. The horn was wrapped with a string and painted a shimmery […]
After closing up our dinosaur unit, I asked the children what they might be interested in learning about next. They unanimously voted on studying magical creatures. Although I had never done this unit before, I decided to follow their lead and get curious about what they were so drawn to about this theme. We made […]
Love Letters The past few weeks the children have had several opportunities to write letters to their peers. There is a special work on the shelf and Julianne brought in supplies for making valentine’s for friends and families. We took a quick trip to the mailbox around the corner to mail love notes to parents […]
Dancing Dragon with Julianne Lunar New Year Projects The Mariposa children spent the few weeks leading up to our Lunar New Year parade making lanterns, dragon puppets, and a large dancing dragon. We read about acted out the zodiac animals and characters of each year. They were thrilled to find out the animal associated with […]
Since returning from Winter break, the children have been diving into learning about dinosaurs. We started with thinking routines to scaffold our investigations. The children shared what they know already and what they wonder about dinosaurs. These posters are hanging in the classroom. The children have been looking at dinosaur books, doing dinosaur puzzles, categorizing […]
Maker’s Cart Every week the children look forward to Friday afternoon maker’s cart creativity time. Each week the cart gets stocked with new materials including cereal boxes, yarn, pipe cleaners, coffee filter, craft sticks, and more. This video captures purses that they made into seed baskets which were used to plant seeds with Rebecca before […]
Nocturnal and Diurnal Animals With daylight savings bringing more darkness to our days, the Mariposa children have been focusing on night creatures. We have a new batch of library books about nocturnal animals. They have been sorting photographs of nocturnal and diurnal animals. We have been coloring, cutting, and pasting to sort them as well. […]
Practical Life Activities with Pumpkins We have been busy with pumpkins the past few weeks! A big thank you to the parents who donated pumpkins for our projects. The practical life area of the classroom has activities that promote independence, build fine motor skills, and build self-confidence through using real tools to perform practical tasks. […]
