The Centerville Dayton Ohio Zoo

The children have been very busy building zoos in our block center, but we quickly realized that it was hard to keep our block structures from falling down.  While we still enjoy building cages for the animals and creating zoos in our block center, we decided we needed a different plan.  So, we decided to turn our entire room into a zoo by building giant zoo animals!  We've mapped out where we want each animal to live, taking into consideration which animals could live near each other and which animals shouldn't.  For example, we decided our lions and tigers should live far away from our elephants, giraffes, and zebras.  We've been collecting materials from home and now have quite a pile of supplies from which to choose.  We're very excited to start building our giant zoo creatures this week!

The children made a list of possible names for our classroom zoo and then we voted on our favorite.  The winner was The Centerville Dayton Ohio Zoo!  We worked at art, sketching our favorite zoo animals by looking at pictures and plastic figurines.  We took those sketches and used our overhead projector to make them really big.  The children then painted those creatures to hang near our zoo sign and along the hallway outside our room to invite people to our zoo.

We're also very excited about our upcoming trip to the Columbus Zoo!  Lots of families will be joining us on Satruday, April 30th at the zoo.  If you haven't sent back your trip form, there's still time!  We hope to see all our friends and their families there as we check out the real life animals that we've been studying.

As our study of the zoo and the animals that live there continues, we will be doing some research to learn about specific animals, what they eat, where they live, things they need, etc.  We're hoping to share all that we learn with our families at the end of the year!  Look for more information to come.


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Zoo Construction

Our discussions of communities and places within our communities that we can visit has led us to an in-depth look at zoos.  The children began building zoos in our block center after someone mentioned that they had visited a zoo.  This quickly sparked a great deal of interest in animals that live at the zoo and how to best build a zoo in our classroom.  As always, we're following the lead of the children, and so we've started discussing zoos in great detail. 

We began by talking about the things we already know about zoos and listing questions that we want answered about the zoo.  The children of course knew lots of the animals that live at the zoo and were able to come up with some other ideas as well with a little bit of guidance.  We've got some good questions that we want answered so we'll have to spend some time doing some research about zoos and the animals that live there.

The children got busy right away making masks of their favorite zoo animals.  Many students worked together to share ideas and lend a helping hand to their peers.  We have quite a collection of zoo animals masks in our classroom now and a few children have even started writing some books about zoo animals.

We've decided to turn our entire block center into a zoo and made a list of all the things we want in it.  We have a long list of animals, and the children were able to come up with some different ideas too once they were asked to think about the things that the poeple who visit the zoo might need.  Now our list contains important things like bathrooms and water fountains, food stands, picnic tables, and even a hat store in case the people forget their hats at home and need some shade.

Our next step is to map out exactly what we want our zoo to look like.  We'll be discussing which animals should go where and why, where we want our train to go, etc.  Then we'll start bulding!  We're hoping to coordinate a visit to a real zoo on a Saturday and hope that your family will be able to join us!  We're also hoping to have a day toward the end of the year when all the parents and families can join us at school to see our zoo and to hear about all that we've learned about zoos and the animals that live there.  We're very excited about our new project and as always we welcome any help, materials, etc. from home that you think might be useful! 

Look for more to come!


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Some people at a picnic table
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A pond for some of the animals
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Our petting zoo
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Creating Community

We took a break from our Water Project during the month of December to learn about how people in other countries celebrate the holidays.  While I planned to get back into water when school resumed in January, the children had another idea!  They have been busy building all sorts of things in the block center, as have Mrs. Reazin's friends, so we decided to encourage their creations and see where they lead. 

We have expanded our block center and provided a platform on which the children can save their work from day to day.  They now have a variety of blocks with which to build as well as people, animals, and vehicles.  We've been seeing lots of tall buildings, towns, and zoos being built and are looking forward to see what types of communities the children will continue to create.  So for now, we're taking a break from the Water Project to see where this Community Building will take us.  We'll soon be brainstorming what the students know about the community in which we live and reading many books to help us learn about communities and what they need.  If you have any materials at home that would lend themselves to building (small boxes, tubes, etc.), please send them in.  I am sure we will put them to good use!

I also want to let you know that we have a student teacher from the University of Dayton with us right now.  Ms. Monica will be with us for five weeks and will be helping us get started on our Community Project.  She'll be sending a letter home introducing herself soon.  Miss Beachler, a junior at Centerville Highschool has also joined our class to learn about becoming a teacher.  She will be with us for the entire 3rd quarter.  We are very happy to have both of them with us and will utilize the extra help!  As always, if you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact me!


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Exploring Water

We've been busy exploring water in our water tables around the preschool using scoops, funnels, and basters.  The children have enjoyed watching the water flow from the funnels and disvoering how to plug the hole in the bottom of the funnel and make it fill up. 

Our circle time discussions have helped us realize that we know a lot about water already, but that we do have several questions.  Where does the water we use come from?  How does it get to our homes?  Who cleans the water and how?  These are great questions and we will explore the answers to all of them using our classroom computer, library books, experts, and our own investigations.  Part of the project approach process is helping guide students to finding answers to their questions without giving them those answers.  This is an exciting process as they sometimes ask questions that I don't know the answer to either, so we explore and investigate together.  At the end of the project, not only do we know the answers to our questions, but we've also developed great problem solving strategies that will help us answer new questions and make new discoveries.  So as your children wonder about water and discuss our classroom investigations with you, encourage their curiosity!  Ask questions of your own and help them find resources to answer their questions.  We're excited to have you join our discoveries too!

We've been focusing on the water cycle lately, learning about some big words: evaporation, condensation, and precipitation.  The children are very skilled at clapping out the parts to these words to help them remember how to say them: e-vap-or-a-tion, con-den-sa-tion, pre-cip-i-ta-tion.  We're excited to know such big words!  We've learned all about how water turns into an invisiable gas as it warms up and rises into the air.  We know that as it cools way up in the sky it attaches to tiny dirt and dust particles, forming clouds.  When those clouds get too heavy and full, they drop all their water in the form of rain or snow.  The water falls back to the ground and the process starts all over again!  We even spent time sketching the water cycle on our white  boards.  We're also excited to watch as cups of water in our room evaporate.  The children want to see which evaporates faster - hot water or cold water, so we're trying it out with a cup of each.  Ask your child about it!

 


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Our Trip to Grant Nature

The children loved our exploration of Grant Nature and the neighborhoods (habitats) that we discovered there.  Miss Rosie was our guide for the day and she taught us all about the forest, the meadow, the creek, and the prairie as well as about the animals that live in each neighborhood.  We look high and low to discover some of the animals hiding places and homes.  We got to pretend to be deer in the prairie, we saw holes in trees in the forest, we saw where the rabbits and mice hide in the meadow, and we walked across the rocks in the creek. We hiked on trails with our slow and careful feet, watching out for rocks and roots.  We ended our time with a picnic and some delicious trail mix!  It was a wonderful trip that taught the students much about nature!  A big thank you to Miss Rosie and to all of our parent volunteers who came with us on our trip!!


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September

We spent a lot of time during the first few weeks of school just getting know each other, learning each others' names, learning about how to play and share together, and developing our classroom rules.  We made a list of things that friends like and things that friends don't like.  When we catch each other doing kind things and respecting ourselves, each other, and the materials in our room we earn kindess marbles.  Right now were 12 marbles away from earning a kindness party! 

We get the opportunity to use the art area on Thursdays and spend that time talking about how to create art and how to use our materials appropriately.  We've been focusing on painting these past few weeks and how to use paintbrushes, how to keep the colors separate in their jars, how to mix colors on our paper, and how to paint lines, squiggles, splotches, blotches, curli-cues, and most recently dots.  The children have enjoyed reading books about art, including one called Art and one called The Dot.  In the coming weeks we'll be talking about sketching, self portraits, and how to put shapes together to make pictures.

As September draws to a close and October approaches, we will move into our first dicussions about water, where it is found, how we use it, and why we need it.  Look for more to come!

Thanks to all the parents who made it to Curriculum Night!  I greatly enjoyed sharing about your child's day and showing you pictures and videos on our new classroom touchscreen computer purchased by our wonderful PTO!!!  Thanks for participating in our placemat making activity - we're excited to use them at snack! Most of all, thanks for your support! 

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