One Potato, Two Potato, Three Potato, Four....

The touch and feel pool was full of beautiful fake flowers this morning.  We pretended to smell them and sneeze because of them!  We tried to share them with friends, and we talked about the color of their beautiful petals and leaves.

As always, we went to our own morning circle, which now takes place in a cozy little nook right before you reach the restrooms.  Bristol and Ryan are much more attentive when they don't have the distractions of some of our open centers in our classroom.  We continue to sing the same songs targeting concepts surrounding the days, weeks, months, weather, and our schedule for the day. After morning circle, Bristol and Ryan are required to carry their bean bag chairs from the hall into our classroom where they start their "free" center time.  By "free" I mean that they get to choose activities that I have set-up for them before the start of the day.  I then follow their lead by using their chosen toys  to target various language goals with them.  

  

After a busy center time, we headed to the playground!  Bristol and Ryan were both very excited about the latest addition to the playground this morning...a new grill!  They enjoyed playing together, and put some of the rubber mulch on the grill to serve as either their food or their charcoal.  They were also both interested in what the other children on the playground were doing, and they always readily participate when others are blowing bubbles or playing with balls.  

In keeping with our "Foods that Grow" theme,  we read Potato Joe by Keith Baker.  This is a super fun rhyming book about a group of potatoes that count themselves up from one to ten and then back again.  These energetic potatoes are so excited to be out of the ground, and we read about them in the snow, high and low, doing a doe-si-doe, and playing with Tomato Flo and Watermelon Mo.  But...by the end of the book, they hop back into the ground where potatoes are supposed to grow.

After our book we talked about how potatoes grow in the ground.  We held a potato and described its color, and how it felt.  We then played with Mr. Potato Head, and I also brought my special Potato Head collection from home which has a Mr. Carrot Head and a Mr. Corn Head to decorate (just perfect for our foods that grow theme)!  Ryan and Bristol made lots of silly vegetable faces while targeting our vocabulary for body parts and colors at the same time.  

After tons of fun with Mr. Vegetables, we headed to the art table to paint some beautiful pictures with potato stamps.    

For a science project today, we grew our own sweet potato in a jar.  Bristol and Ryan took turns pouring water into a large mason jar using a pitcher.  Then we "pushed" toothpicks into the sides of our sweet potato so that it would have support to dangle its end into the jar of water.  We are going to track its progress over the next couple of months, and we will get back to all of you on its success.  

Bristol and Ryan were very attentive and engaged in all of our potato activities!  As the grand finale to our language circle full of potatoes we watched the following video:

We did not have music therapy today because Ms. Gretchen and Ms. Kylie are on fall break.  We did miss them, but we were so busy with our potato activities that Bristol and Ryan didn't even notice.  I hope that you all have a relaxing weekend, and I look forward to seeing your sweet children again on Tuesday when we will be talking all about apples!