Buzz Buzz Buzz!

Another day without Ryan!  We really miss our buddy and hope that he is back in action next Tuesday!  Ethan started his super busy day playing with flowers and yellow and black puff balls in the touch and feel pool.  We talked about the types of flowers that were in the pool, their colors, and the parts of a flower (stem, petal, leaf).  We pretended that the puff balls were bumble bees that landed on the flowers.  Some of us teachers were also allergic to the flowers, and they made us sneeze. Achoo! During touch and feel time, we also all took turns getting our hands painted for our bumblebee hand craft.  We added the wings and antennae later on in the day.   

  Ethan is making incredible progress with his calendar concepts.  Today, during morning circle he was able to name all seven days of the week, and he can count all the way to 30.  Good work!  

One of Ethan's favorite things to do during centers now is to practice his cutting.  He has great attention span during this task and is very self motivated to try to get it right.  I continue to prompt him to open and close his fingers, and he is starting to be successful at this fine motor task.  

 It was chilly but dry enough for us to hit the playground today.  Ethan was clearly missing his friend Ryan today and initiated play with me on several occasions saying, "Come on, Annie." and "Cook" to tell me that he wanted to make me something at the "take-out window."  We went through the tunnel.  We played with balls in the playhouse, and Ethan had fun playing with some new friends as they went down the slide over and over again.  I also brought bubbles out today, which are always a huge hit among all the children, and we worked on requesting more bubbles by saying, "I want more bubbles."  

I am making pizza for Annie!

Up, down, and around over and over again with my friends.

For our language lesson today, we read Buzz Said the Bee by Wendy Cheyette Lewison.  This story begins with a bee who sits on a duck.  When the duck can't get the bee to scat, the duck sits on a hen who sits on a pig, who sits on a cow, who sits on a sheep until there is a tall tower of animals stacked on top of each other.  Then each animal rolls off the other while saying their animal sound (moo, oink, cluck, quack) and the bee ends the story with "BUZZ!"  This story was a great review of farm animal vocabulary and their corresponding sounds.  We used plastic farm animals as our story props and then re-told the story using the animals once we had finished the book.  

After we finished the story, Ethan enjoyed making his own bumble bee at the art table.  As we were making the bee, we reviewed that bees have black and yellow stripes.  They use their wings to fly, and they say, "buzz!" 

First, he painted the paper plate yellow.

Second, he glued on the head.

Third, he gave the bee some stripes.

Last, he added wings, eyes, and antennae.  

 As usual, we summarized out "Bee lesson" with this short video.  

We had just enough time before lunch to end our day with some much loved water play.  Ethan enjoyed playing in a tub of water that had all the bugs that we learned about this month (spiders, frogs, caterpillars, butterflies, bees, flies, ladybugs, and beetles) and some other ones too!  It was a great review of the vocabulary that we have been targeting for several weeks.  Ethan pretended to give the bugs a bath and also enjoyed pouring water from a teapot into cups and mixing some bug soup!

Ethan was a busy bee and was super tired by the end of the day.  I can't wait to start another fun week on Tuesday as we learn all about transportation...specifically things that fly in the air!  Have a great weekend!