How is a pond different than an ocean?

Happy Monday, 4K Families!

The last two weeks the children have learned about the ocean and different ocean animals. This week we are going to be focusing on pond animals. The children will be learning how a pond is similar to and different from an ocean. We made a list of animals that we thought we would see in a pond. 

During opening circle, we read the book Jo MacDonald Saw a Pond. This book is sung to the tune of "Old McDonald Had a Farm." The only difference is that in this story, Jo MacDonald tells us about all different kinds of pond animals that she sees. 

After reading the story, the children sorted pond animals from ocean animals on the SMART Board.

Monday through Wednesday the children will be having centers. The children will visit one center each day in a rotation. Ask your child which center he/she visited today!

At the first center, the children read the book Splash!, which is a great counting book. After reading the story, the children hopped around large lily pads like frogs to collect different pond animals. After collecting all the pond animals, we sorted and graphed the number of each animal. We talked about how many there are of each and which has more or less. They loved being able to hop around like frogs!

At the second center, the children painted a green and gold glitter Gg for his/her alphabet book page. After completing their Gg page, the children played a lily pad letter memory game. The children took turns flipping over two lily pads, trying to match uppercase letters with lowercase letters. 

At the third center, the children made suncatcher turtles. Each child cut out a shell shape from wax paper. He/she painted on watered down glue and then added tissue paper of different shades of green and brown. Finally, each child cut out a head, four legs, and a tail to attach to the shell. They had lots of fun making their turtles!

Then it was playtime! The children had lots of fun playing in our sensory table, which was transformed into a pond with frogs and lily pads. Some of the children also enjoyed making a frog art project! 

Today we celebrated Tara's 5th birthday in the afternoon class! Thanks for the treat, Tara!

During closing circle, the children learned about the letter Gg! They got to meet glittery gold Gg. We also read our Gg books. 

To end the day, we learned our new poem, "I Had a Little Turtle." We got to say this poem using finger puppets! This is an important nursery rhyme to work on with your child at home because it is an unusual rhyme that most children have not heard before and it is one your child will be assessed on later in spring. The words to the rhyme are located in the weekly newsletter that was sent home in your child's folder today.

Tomorrow is Southern Door's Child Development Days. There will be substitute teachers in the room on both Tuesday and Wednesday.

Have a great night!