And the winner is...

The votes are tallied and the result is in. The recipient of our $450 donation from the money we made selling Snowflake Fudge is (Drum roll please.......)

The Franklin-Grand Isle Bookmobile!!!!

The other organizations that were in the running for the donation included The Fairfield Recreation Department (and playground committee), The Vermont Special Olympics, The Bent-Northup Memorial Library, Fletcher Allen's Children's Hospital, Ronald McDonald House in Burlington, and The Fairfield Center School Music Deparment.

The kids learned a little bit about each of these organizations and the good work they do. Then they each voted for their two favorites in the first round. The top two vote-getters went into the final round and everyone got one vote for their favorite. The runner up, in the end, was the Ronald McDonald House of Burlington. 

Beth has invited the Bookmobile staff to join us for our Thanksgiving soup on September 24. At that time, we will present them with the check for our donation. We are thrilled to be able to support the Bookmobile and the great work they do bringing library resources to the rural communities in the northwest corner of Vermont.

What does Isabella do on the weekend?

Since Isabella does not visit anyone's house on Thursday and stays at the preschool over the weekend, we had been wondering what she does when we are gone. The preschoolers found out the answer to that question on Tuesday. When we started meeting on Tuesday, there was a blanket and a pillow sitting on the couch. I asked the kids if any of them had carried it down from loft. No one had. Hmmm....a mystery!

The kids took guesses as to who may have brought the blanket down. Some thought maybe it was a robber. We figured that was probably not the case because nothing was missing and it looked like the only thing he may have took was a nap. We checked with Carol and Grandma Freda and neither of them had been around. So, the mystery remained unsolved.

The kids went on to play for the day. At closing meeting, when we checked in Isabella's backpack to make sure she had everything to go home with another child, we noticed these pictures in the album.

One of the kids said, "It was Isabella who brought the pillow and blanket down to the couch. Apparently, Isabella is pretty busy in out classroom over the weekend, but it is clear she misses us. Is she looking out the window waiting for us to come back? 

Library Visit

Today, the town librarian visited and shared the book Flotsam by David Weisner. This was a book that did not have any words. The kids had to pay close attention to the pictures, which were beautiful watercolors of the scenery on Long Beach Island in New Jersey.
In the story, the main character, a boy, is a collector. He looks for things on the beach.  He has a magnifying glass and microscope to help him look at the small things he finds. As he is looking at a crab, a huge wave crashes over him and in its wake, it has left a camera--an old-fashioned film camera that works underwater. He takes out the film canister and goes to develop the pictures.
There is a picture of a boy who is holding a picture of another kid, who is holding a picture of another kid. The boy uses his magnifying glass and he can find two more even smaller pictures of kids holding pictures of kids. Then he gets his microscope. As he magnifies he finds 5 or 6 more pictures of people holding pictures, until he finally sees the last person--a black and white image of a man on the beach.
He also sees a bunch of pictures of sea creatures in amazing underwater cities and environments. 
The boy decides to take a picture of himself holding the picture of the kids holding the picture. Just as he finishes, another wave crashes over him and all of the pictures get scattered in it. The boy decides to throw the camera back in the water. After a bunch of sea creatures find the camera, it eventually washes up on another beach in another place. On this beach, and the last page, a new child finds the camera.
For the activity to go with the book, the kids made a picture of what they think the boy who finds the camera will take for a picture. As we were talking about the story, we also decided to take pictures of kids holding pictures of kids to make a book. Since we are going to be purchasing a digital microscope for the classroom, one of our first projects will be to see if we can see the pictures within the picture that are too small for our eyes. We are also going to experiment taking some underwater pictures, since Beth has a waterproof camera. We are looking for a big fish tank or some other large receptacle to put a bunch of water into.
We want to thank Kristen for sharing this book. It was really amazing and gave us so many cool ideas.

Short week

This week we decided to skip small group time and concentrate on making some decorations for the Fairfield Harvest Dinner. The kids all made melted crayon fall leaves. The teachers placed template of a leaf on resume paper (which is a little translucent) on top of an old-fashioned dish warming plate (it gets pretty warm, but not burning hot). The kids then slowly slid crayons of red, yellow, green, brown, purple, pink and orange over the leaves. The crayon wax melted a little as it slid across the leaves. When they are done, the waxy leaf can be hung in a window (or at a harvest dinner).
Shelley (parent volunteer) came in and made leaf wreathes with the kids on Tuesday. She had orange, red and yellow leaves pre cut for the kids to glue on to a circle. In the middle was a picture of each child. At their house, they have a thanksgiving tree with the same leaves. People who visit their house in the month of November write something they are thankful for on a leaf and then add it to the tree. We may do this in preschool, too.
The monster cups are all growing very fluffy green grassy heads of hair. We thing we will haev to name them all Harry. If the kids will let us, we will add them to the harvest dinner decorations--they would look great on the tables.

Fudge for Funds

     We had a very successful Fudge for Funds fundraiser. We sold 181 boxes of fudge, which means we raised $905.00. Wow!  The top fudge seller sold 26 boxes and second place sold 22 boxes.

     Now the plan is to come up with a deserving cause to donate half of our proceeds (which comes to $450).  I would love to get some suggestions from the parents to find a deserving charity.

Here are the criteria:

1. It needs to benefit children

2. It needs to be a non-profit

3. It needs to be local (at least Vermont local).

     Bring your ideas into preschool over the next few weeks. If you are able to gather a little information on the cause of your choice, that would be great. We will be letting the kids know about the different places and how they help kids. On Election Day, (November 3), the kids will vote for the organization to which we will donate.

     Thanks to everyone for the hard work you did in selling the fudge. Snowflake will be done putting our order together on Sunday, October 25. You will have it to distribute to your customers on Tuesday, October 27.

     For anyone interested, here is more information on Snowflake Chocolates Fudge for Funds program.

Bring on the Wild Things

We have just started having some fun with monsters this week. We read Go Away Big Green Monster by Ed Emberly. We also listened to Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak as a book on tape with Grandma Freda. Rumor has there is a movie coming out this month based on this classic. I am reserving judgment on whether or not I think this is a good thing.

The project for the week was making monster cups. The kids each drew a monster face on a paper cup. Then they filled the cup with dirt, added some grass seed, and watered it. We will watch these cups and see how well the grass grows. As the grass grows taller and taller, it will become the hair for the monster faces.

The other hit this week was making gak--a rubbery substance--to explore with at the science table.
The recipe is:
In one non-metal bowl mix together
2 cups Elmers Glue
1 1/2 cups warm water
A little food coloring (your choice of color--we used red and then blue)

In another non-metal bowl mix together until dissolved
4 teaspoons of borax
1 and 1/3 cups warm water

When both bowls are mixed to a even consistency, pour the borax bowl mixture into the glue bowl mixtures. Quickly begin kneading the sloppy, slimy mixture with your hands. When the water feels absorbed and the substance feels rubbery, you have Gak
Keep this in an airtight container and it will keep for a long time. If it begins to dry out, you can add a little more water to revitalize it.

The problems with gak can come if it gets rubbed into carpeting, clothes or hair. If you catch it right away, it comes out easily, but if it has time to get ground in, it is as difficult to remove as glue (because, after all, it is made mostly from glue).

When the kids were playing with the Gak, some of them mixed the pink and blue batches together. At first, it looked a lot like two-colored cotton candy, with swirls of pink and blue still holding their color. Eventually, the kids noticed the colors completely mixed and made a light purple. It was also interetsing to listen to the words the kids used to describe this odd substance. I heard sticky, gooey, bouncy, icky, and weird.  

It's All Okay

This week we read It's Okay to Be Different by Todd Parr. The book is pretty straightforward with pages such as, "It's okay to have a big nose.", and "It's okay to do something nice for someone else." When we were done, I asked the kids if everything that was okay was in the book. They all said yes, of course, because they think that teachers do not try to trick them. Ha! I tricked them. I said, "I'm wearing a red shirt. Is that okay?" They all said yup. "Well, that's not in the book." Now they were getting it. We decided to think of more pages to Todd Parr's book. We came up with a bunch. In these pictures you can see the kids' ideas. I am going to email them to Todd Parr to see if he likes the improvements we made on his already excellent, but abridged, book.

Other things of note from this week:

• We made carrot muffins on Wednesday and they were delicious.
• Emma brought in a jar that had a salamander inside. We were able to observe it at science.
• We added Light Brights to the science area for the week.
• When we counted up all of our counting jar objects, we had 105. (Each of the 15 kids collected 7 items to match the number of people in our counting jar).