Meeting Families, Eating from the Garden

This week in preschool we moved from learning about ourselves to learning about our families. The kids made family portrait rubbings by using sandpaper cutouts of people and pet shapes. They found a shape for each person and pet in their houses. After arranging them on the table, a teacher placed a piece of paper over the sandpaper shapes. Then, the kids used the side of an unwrapped crayon to rub over the shapes. Like magic, the people and pets showed through. When they were done rubbing, the kids named everyone and we had a representation of the people who live in each of the kids' houses.
The other ongoing activity this week was weeding the preschool garden and harvesting some of the vegetables from the community garden. Whatever we harvested, we brought to the science table to look at with magnifying glasses. We cut gourds in two, pulled broccoli apart, and tasted everything. We also made zucchini bread on Tuesday from a giant zucchini from the garden. Most kids like it when they tasted it on Wednesday.
We had our first visit from the Bookmobile this week, as well. The kids met Tasha, a volunteer on the Bookmobile. We sang a few songs and then she read us a book about apples. After the story, everyon was allowed to choose a book to borrow from this library on wheels. The kids put their book in a special book bag to keep track of that book over the next four weeks.