Caterpillar Update

The caterpillars are growing! Check out the pictures.  I hope that by Monday some move to the top and begin making their chrysalis.

You could draw pictures of the caterpillars or build them out of different materials.

Here is a great quick video of process a life cycle of a butterfly.

https://youtu.be/kVm5k99PnBk

Read Alouds and Questions

Good morning! Here are a few read aloud stories from some of our teachers at school!

Ms. Kelly reads Where The Wild Things Are
Here are some questions to answer about this story:

• Who was your favorite character?
• What was your favorite part of the story?
• Can you draw your favorite part? 
• What was Max's problem?
• How did Max solve his problem?
• How does the story make you feel?

Ms. Lacey reads Pigs Make Me Sneeze by Mo Willems
Here are some questions to answer about this story:

• Who was your favorite character?
• What was your favorite part of the story?
• Can you draw your favorite part? 
• What is Gerald's problem?
• How does Gerald solve his problem?
• What happened to Piggie at the end of the story?

Guess What I Ordered?!

I ordered something so exciting and I can't wait to share with you! Check out the video:

Here's a little read aloud video of The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Enjoy!

Scavenger hunt with a family member!

Good morning! We hope everyone had a great weekend and continues to stay safe.

Let's do a scavenger hunt! Read the clues while your child hunts for the items in your house! Feel free to change any of the clues, need be.

Enjoy the scavenger hunt! Here are the clues:

• Find something with letters on it
• Find something from nature in your house
• Find something that is soft
• Find something that turns on and off
• Find or point to a picture of you and someone from your family
• Find something that lives in your family room
• Find something that is the shape of a rectangle 
• Find something that has dots or a pattern on it
• Find something that makes noise
• Find something that is green
• Find something you can put on your body

If you have time, we would love to see pictures of your child doing the scavenger hunt on the google photos album!

Forest Friday with Ms. Liz

Forest Day- A River Walk

Check out the video linked below to see Ms. Liz go on a walk through the forest!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NWt06gYg5trsuNrCugDSR4i7ORTmWwEo/view?usp=sharing

On my Forest Day, I went walking on my family’s property in Leasburg, Missouri through the forest right down to the Meramec River. While I saw lots of cool stuff that can be seen in the video such as flowers, deer tracks, and a very beautiful Meramec River, on my walk back to the campsite I saw lots more!

During my walk down to the river I saw many different deer footprints. In fact, I followed the deer prints all the way down to the river! 

But on my way back I saw prints from a very different type of animal. These are turkey footprints! I hoped that I would see a turkey, but no luck...but I found something else!

A turkey feather!

Look at this over the trail..it’s a tree bridge! I wonder if animals use this to get over the trail…

But this bridge is too small for me to go over, so I had to go under the bridge.

One last thing to share. In the forest I found this little forest pond. Isn’t it so lovely? I did not see any animals or footprints around it or anything so I did not think there were any pond residents…

But then I saw these sticks around the pond. Look closely, does it look like something chewed on part of the sticks or pulled bark off of them? What sort of animal do you think would do that? Are there animals that eat or chew on bark that would live in or near a pond? What do you guys think?

Thank you for joining me on my walk through the forest today, I hope you guys enjoyed watching my walk! I really miss you, my friends. Nothing brings me more joy than seeing you kiddos at school, hearing your stories, and getting classroom visits to the office. I hope to get to see you again soon and until then, stay safe!

Ms. Riann's Banana Bread!

Enjoy watching this video from Ms. Riann and her son, Forrest! Ms. Riann is a teacher in the Sycamore room and is with the majority of the students at the end of the day. If you find the time, enjoy baking this yummy treat!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9HnAH7FqPI

Almond Flour Banana Muffins

Recipe via Seeded at the Table https://www.seededatthetable.com/almond-flour-banana-muffins/

Ingredients

-  2 medium ripe bananas mashed

-  3 large eggs lightly beaten

-  1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce

-  1/4 cup coconut milk or cream    ** we use whole milk **

-  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

-  2 cups almond flour

-  1 teaspoon baking powder

-  1 teaspoon baking soda

-  1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

-  1/2 teaspoon salt

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F
2. Line 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners; set aside
3. In a large bowl, mix together all ingredients in the order listed then scoop mixture evenly into the muffin cups  (We use a medium sized cookie scoop)
4. Bake 20 minutes or until thoroughly set in the middle

While baking you utilize many skills. Some of these skills include reading, measuring, closely observing and listening. You even learn how to utilize kitchen tools! But our favorite parts are working together and, of course, tasting the finished product!

We love to bake at our house. We have recipes we bake together each week such as breakfast muffins, waffles, bread, granola and oatmeal.

What are your favorite recipes to make at home?

Are there any special recipes from your family?

If so, please share those recipes as well as any photos or videos with us!

We would love to see you working in the kitchen with your family.

Happy Earth Day!

Today is Earth Day! To celebrate our beautiful planet Joe and I created animal feeders using Cheerios and string.  We hope we get some bird visitors but our guess is that the squirrels will get to them first.  This is a great activity to practice those fine motor skills!

Here is an Earth Day recycling challenge! Go through your recycling bin and see what you can create with whats there.  Maybe a house for an animal.  Maybe use the paper towel and toilet paper tubes to make a marble run.  Make a bird feeder out of plastic bottles. Share your creations with us!

Also the St. Louis Aquarium is celebrating Earth Day by showing-off different animals everyday on their Facebook page and Youtube channel.  Here is a link to a video from yesterday where they fed the sharks lunch!

Lunch with Sharks

What can you stack?

We have a challenge for you today! The challenge is, what can you find at home to safely stack? How high can you get your tower? Did you build one big stacking tower? Or can you do more than one stacking tower? How many pieces of material did you use? (ideas for materials: plastic cups/containers, cushions, blocks, boxes, shoes, clothing, coasters).

My computer was giving me a hard time uploading these photos so please click on the link to see the items I stacked!

Ms. Abby stacking plastic cups!
In this photo, I used 15 plastic cups to create a big triangle tower.

Ms. Abby stacking plastic spice containers!
I built two towers out of my plastic spice containers.

Ms. Abby stacking shoes!
I created one tower of shoes.

Ms. Abby stacking books!
I created one tower of books. Can you create your tower of books in a different way? Have fun building and creating your stacking towers!

Chicken Friends

Did you guys know that Ms. Katie has chicken friends at her house?!  She wanted to share with you some pictures and videos of her chickens. 

This is Anges and Oda                                                        This is Billina

 

 Here Ms. Katie's cat and chickens watching each other through the window.

 






Ms. Katie is feeding her chickens a snack:

What do you think the chickens were eating?
Why do you think Ms. Katie has chickens? 
Do you know anyone else who has chickens at their house?

If you have questions for Ms. Katie about her chickens, let us know and we can ask her to answer them for us!

Family Friday

Welcome to Week of the Young Child! This is a fun-filled week celebrating early learning, young children, their teachers, families and communities! Join us in celebrating this week by performing these fun activities at home!

Family Friday
Have a movie night - pop popcorn, make treats and sit together to enjoy one of your family’s favorite movies

Here are some pictures of the work kiddos did over this week:

MB and her family did the shoe stack challenge!

PH built a ladder outside with large sticks

MC Worked on puzzles and built a fort 

 

MM made a family portrait 

RM also made his family portrait 

And LC and her brother celebrated Artsy Thursday by painting outside!

We love seeing everyone on our Zoom calls and can't wait for our next one on Monday! Have a wonderful weekend!

Artsy Thursday

Welcome to Week of the Young Child! This is a fun-filled week celebrating early learning, young children, their teachers, families and communities! Join us in celebrating this week by performing these fun activities at home!


Artsy Thursday: Create a family portrait with your family! We would love to see your beautiful portraits! Feel free to send us a picture of the final product via email or google photos. Have fun creating!

Artsy Thursday: Color Mixing

Listen to Ms. Angie read White Rabbit’s Color Book

Get out your crayons, paint or playdough and see what colors you can mix!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi_4YRlaICQ

Work Together Wednesday

Welcome to Week of the Young Child! This is a fun-filled week celebrating early learning, young children, their teachers, families, and communities! Join us in celebrating this week by performing these fun activities at home!

Work Together Wednesday: Work with your family members to complete a puzzle or build a fort! Send us a picture (via email or google photos) of this fun activity!

Here is a video of Ms. Susie and Joe building a fort in her basement.

Tasty Tuesday

Welcome to Week of the Young Child! This is a fun-filled week celebrating early learning, young children, their teachers, families, and communities! Join us in celebrating this week by performing these fun activities at home!

Tasty Tuesday: Cook something yummy with your family! Feel free to share the recipe with your teachers (via email or google photos) and we will collect the recipes to create a "Birch Room Cook Book!" Have fun making your delicious meal/treat!

Music Monday

Welcome to Week of the Young Child! This is a fun-filled week celebrating early learning, young children, their teachers, families and communities! Join us in celebrating this week by performing these fun activities at home!


Music Monday: Today, we are celebrating music! Play musical chairs with your family members! Here's some fun Kidz Bop tunes to dance along to!

Old Town Road

Thunder

Can't Stop the Feeling

Uptown Funk

Sidewalk Paint

Happy Thursday! I don't know about you but my family has spent the last two days outside all day! We had to break out the sunscreen and summer clothes!  We made some sidewalk paint as another way to decorate our driveway and get messy! This is super easy and you probably have all the ingredients in your pantry.

  

You need cornstarch, water, food coloring or liquid water colors, cups or trays (old muffin tins work really well) and paint brushes or sponges.

1. Dump cornstarch into the cups or trays.  I did about 5 big spoon fulls.
2. Add water, maybe 1/3 cup.  The less water you add the more the paint shows up
3. Add food coloring or paint and stir. We had to add a little more cornstarch to make it thicker.

And then  paint.  The best part is when it rains or you wash your car, it all washes away!! We practiced writing our names.  I also drew some circles for Joe to jump, hop, and skip in and over. 

Heres a picture of Allie, she's with us too, but we do most of these activities when she naps :-)

Here's a story I recored the other day called Elmer.

Finally, here a link to the video Ms. Abby and I created remembering Ms. TC.  If you have not viewed it yet, please do so.

Singing Day!

Friendly reminder that Friday's are "catch up" days for all teachers and families. There will be no GOLD activities or blog posts every Friday. Enjoy this time with your family!

Have your child perform several of our class songs! These songs are very popular in our classroom and we are sure your child will enjoy showing you how well they know these great tunes!

Hammer and Saw by Jim Gill.

How to perform:
Hammer--open up one hand flat. Make the other hand into a fist. Bring your "fisted" hand to your opened hand to pretend like you are hammering on your hand.
Saw--make your hand into a fist and move your arm back and forth, pretending like you are using a saw.
Sandpaper--rub your two palms together, creating a rubbing sound like sandpaper.

Hands Are for Clapping by Jim Gill.

How to perform: Listen to the directions and follow along to this fun song!

Spaghetti Legs by Jim Gill.

How to perform: The singer sings about different body parts in each verse. Pretend that the given body part is like spaghetti and giggle along to the song!

Hopscotch

Over the weekend Joe and I played the game hopscotch.  This was a new game for us to play together and he loved it so I thought you guys would enjoy it too.  There are so many different variations of the game online that you can use, but we just created a simple one.   When were were drawing out the game we worked on our numeral identification and the order the numerals go in.  (great math concepts!) It took a couple demonstrations of hopping on one foot, then then two feet for him to get the idea.  It's a lot of motor planing for them. (I see one box, so that means jumping on one foot; two boxes means jumping with two feet).

 

As the kids get the idea of the jumping patterns you can then add the rule of throwing the rock, sick, beanbag, coin, whatever.  This is where people play differently.  For now we are just throwing the rock, identifying the number and jumping the boxes correctly.  And taking turns, another great skill! If you can't do a hopscotch outside you can make one inside using tape, pieces of paper, sticky notes, placemats, or whatever you can find.  Enjoy! 

Read Aloud

Hello Birch families and good morning! We hope you had a nice weekend with your families and you are all doing well.

Today, Ms. Brittany has recorded herself reading a story! Sit back, relax and enjoy Little Quack's New Friend by Lauren Thompson.

Questions about the story:

• Who is your favorite character in the story?
• When was a time that you included a friend during your play?
• What are some fun activities you like to do with your friends?
• What is your favorite illustration? 

Friday Fun

Happy Friday!! It was so good to see many your smiling faces and hear your voice yesterday on our Google meet.  We will be working on making these a regular occurrence through Zoom.  We will keep you updated on this.

We hope everyone had a great week and was able to do a few of the fun activities we have sent over either on the Blog or from the GOLD menu.

Here is a video of an activity Joe and I did out on our driveway earlier this week.  We used sidewalk chalk and created a path for his dump truck to follow.  Later I had Allie in a stroller and we followed the path. We also practiced our skipping, hopping, jumping and walking backwards on the path. So much physical activity!  You could create a path on your sidewalk or driveway and do the same.  If you can't go outside how could you create a path to follow in your house?

Here is a video of Ms. Brittany reading a story called Step Gently Out. 

Step Gently Out

Have a wonderful weekend!

Hard Work and Great Fun!

Good morning everyone! We love all of the photos and videos you are sharing! We thought we would take some time to highlight your great work and adventures at home!

Several friends have been building with toys and other materials, how creative!

Other friends have found a chance to go outside and enjoy some bike riding,  exercise, and stopping to smell some flowers. Spring is definitely on its way!

We have been seeing a lot of painting, creating letters/words out of small objects, paper and tissue! It looks like there are some great coloring masterpieces happening as well! Other friends have taken some time to sit back, relax and enjoy a good story.

It looks like other friends have continued our baking and restaurant project that was happening in the Birch room! Some students have been participating in cooking, baking and working on setting the table for their families and animal friends! The food sure looks delicious!

It is so nice to see all of the Birch friends enjoying their time at home with their families. We love seeing everyone's hard work and smiling faces! Please continue to share your child's work, it definitely puts a smile on the Birch teachers' faces and warms our hearts. We miss everyone so much! Remember to take some time to breathe, relax and laugh!