Almost!

It’s been a long winter, and it doesn’t seem to want to give up without a fight.  After beautiful temperatures last weekend and Monday, the snow flurries on Tuesdays were a bit of a shock to our systems.  It seemed so unfair to the shooting sprouts of tulips in the park!  Indoors, we’re moving ahead with our spring-themed explorations.  We have a wonderful love of recycled art since our week of recycled projects.  This week’s kiddos used egg cartons to make paper tulips!  We added delicate tissue paper, which felt soft like flower petals, and foam shapes to make the pollen-y center of our flowers.  We also moved our plant studies from the theoretical to the practical.  Erin helped us plant our peas that we sprouted last week into our plot at the Bremen St. Community Garden–our inaugural planting!  We also planted our window bean sprouts from last week into plastic cups that we each are taking home.

In addition, we investigated the letter I this week.  We made a list of I words, including everyone’s favorite: ice cream!  On Monday, we celebrated I week by preparing the ingredients needed to make our own ice cream with Ally’s machine. We carefully chopped strawberries, then cooked sugar, cream, milk before adding our creamy mixture to the refrigerator.  Once it had cooled, Ally poured it into her machine, which churned and churned until it was ready to freeze.  We can’t wait to taste it next Monday!  Thursday’s group had a double treat of Chinese class in the morning with Zhi and music class in the afternoon with Renee.  Zhi taught us to count from 1-10 with words and using our hands…only one hand for all 10 numbers!  We learned a silly song about tigers as well.  Later in the day, we flexed our vocal muscles in our first music class with Miss Renee, who joins us as part of a collaboration with the Countdown to Kindergarten program.  Renee showed us how she makes a variety of sounds with her guitar, Sandy, and we sang along to some of our favorite songs.