PIzza! Pizza! Pizza! it's a lots-a lots-a fun

The pizza parlor is looking pretty good. The kids are busy in their chef hats. They are taking orders, talking about favorite ingredients, baking pizzas in the oven ans dividing them into slices. We used hole punches in yellow paper to make cheese for a shaker and we punched red and orange for hot pepper flakes. 

We acted out the story of of The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza as we read the book last week. We've been singing. "Pizza Pizza Pizza!" Here are the words:

Pepperoni and zucchini and a lots of mozzarella

Pepperoni and zucchini and a lots of mozzarella

Pepperoni and zucchini and a lots of mozzarella

Pizza, pizza, pizza it's a lotsa lotsa fun!

Pizza, pizza, pizza it's a lotsa lotsa fun!

Pizza, pizza, pizza it's a lotsa lotsa fun!

We had the same question: Who puts zucchini on pizza? 

We made some English muffin pizza. The kids had a choice of pepperoni or plain cheese. Some chose to just have sauce (no cheese). They tasted great.

Our Wild Selves

     When Kristen Hughes came into the read The Chicken in the Family last week, she shared the website Build Your Wild Self with us. On this webpage, you make a kid who looks like you. You pick you eyes, hair, mouth and clothing.

Once you have an avatar, you can add various animal body parts to build your wild self. When you are done choosing head dressing, arms, legs, bottoms, wings, ears and a background for your wild self, you can print it out.

The site will print the picture and a description of each animal the body parts you chose. for example, we had a, "Lio-wal-ringo-antula-fly-tiger."

Around this entry are some various examples of our wild selves that we made on the site. We decided to use our wild selves to be new name tags in the classroom. Now when the kids use the planning board to choose the area in which they are going to play, they mark it with a picture of their wild selves.

Family Soup

Our Family Feast day was a great event on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. We invited adult family members and younger siblings to come enjoy friendship soup with us. We made the soup by having each student and teacher bring in a vegetable that was chopped. We added these to basic chicken stock and simmered it on the stove. Simmer was the word of the day.

This year our soup contained carrots, celery, jeruselem artichoke, purple cauliflower, corn, parsnips, green beans, jicama, onion, potatoes, yellow squash, and probably some other veggies I am forgetting now. We also enjoyed some chocolate chip banana bread that the kids made the week before when I was in Washington DC. If you are interested in learning what I learned at the National Association for the Education of Young Children Conference, you can read it on the Early Childhood Programs blog.

While we enjoyed the culinary delights of preschool, we also celebrated Thanksgiving with Tasha and Erica from the Bookmobile with our donation check for $450.00. It was wonderful to share are soup and celebration with them.
We also saw a video of "I Can Do It," a song the kids have learned this fall. Beth also read I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie, which has become a Family Feast tradition. Thanks to everyone who helped sing "A Thanksgiving pie, which was really too dry. Perhaps she'll die." Beth's voice was fading fast.

We also collected all of the food that we used in our grocery store this month in order to give it to the Fairfield Food Shelf. When we gathered all of the cans, boxes, jars and bags, it filled three boxes. The kids helped haul it over to the food shelf and we let Nancy know it was there for the next pickup.

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.