In PreK-4 we have a mystery guest visiting us every Thursday from 2:00-2:30! This year, we introduced the mystery guest program by inviting members from family, school and local communities to enrich our students’ learning experience through their participation. Mrs. Curran, our environmental science teacher exhibited vegetables harvested from Unquowa’s own garden and led our students to plant their own lettuces. Chef Peter Gorman shared a book with us about food and treated our lucky students with toasted pumpkin seeds. Jacob’s dad, Mr. Dylan Cotton, rocked PreK-4 with all time favorite songs including Neil Young’s Harvest Moon. Gwen’s mom, Mrs. Kelly Kenny, t  aught our students all about reptiles by reading a book from Dr. Seuss. In November, we look forward to having Jack’s grandma, Mrs. Barbuto,   show us how to make meatballs, composing a children’s story about our students with George’s mom, Mrs. Marilynn Halas, and reconnecting with our beloved PreK-3 teacher, Mrs. Janice Shannon, and her bunny!

Last week as part of our colors unit, our friends were learning all about primary and secondary colors. We dyed large napkins using only yellow, blue and red dyes. But WOW - those were not the only colors that we saw when we opened up the finished products! A rainbow of colors and some beautiful designs…every one is different.It was a great way to see the practical results of color mixing.

For the past two weeks, we have been studying about the role animals play on farms as we continue with our integrated unit on farms. We kicked off with a hay ride pulled by an imaginary horse. Next, we milked a cow made by PreK-4A class and turned milk into butter! We also assembled roosters by using ordinal numbers and woke up everyone with our crows. Finally, we visited New Pond Farm where we brushed Lucky the cow, visited with a very shy baby calf Lu Lu, observed five sheep grazing in the meadow, and made our own wool bracelet after we washed sheared wool, combed them and weaved them by hand!

Paralleling the PreK-4 study of the farm, students are studying farm animals in Spanish. Students are able to classify the animals based on whether they are big (grande) or small (pequeño). Students took a closer look at the cow (la vaca) and talked about how milk (la leche) comes from the cow. Students focused on the head (la cabeza), the eyes (los ojos), and the tail (la cola) of the cow as they created their own on paper. Finally, students loved singing about a cow named Lola. Beware! This is a tune that is sure to be caught in your head for days!

Over the past two weeks, PreK-4 students have been studying about the origin of our food. Our diligent learners traced popcorn back to kernels that we plant to grow corn stalks, ketchup back to tomato seeds we grow into tomato vines from which we pick tomatoes, and honey back to nectar that bees gather to bring back to their hives. In addition, our mystery guest, Mrs. Curran enriched the learning journey by leading our classes to tour Unquowa’s vegetable garden and directing our students to plant lettuce seeds. In summation, the children worked together to create an “Above, On and Below” garden to demonstrate their newly acquired knowledge about food found in farms!

PreK-4 students have been busy learning how to count in Chinese! Numbers in Chinese are the foundations for other complex expressions, including days of the week and months in the year. Our budding linguists have been using their newly acquired knowledge in Chinese numerals to learn days of the week. Soon, they will learn months in the year!

This week PreK-4 has been thinking about how we can be aware of what is all around us. We discovered the 5 Senses and explored how they can work in combination, how we use them and how they help us every day. For our Reader Theater this week we acted out the story of Brown Bear and how he the other animals at the zoo can see and hear what is around them. Our friends had so much fun pretending to be different animals. We could SEE who they were by the lovely masks made for us by Miss Kim. We could HEAR who they were by the excited animal sounds that they made.

The prekindergarten classroom now has twenty objects labeled in Spanish thanks to the help of prekindergarten students and their eighth grade buddies. Big buddies came ready to share personal drawings of the classroom and to practice pronunciation of some common items in the class. After practicing with the drawing, each little buddy helped to hang a few labels up in the classroom. Now we can practice naming these items in Spanish all of the time!

Our PreK-4 students enjoys PE class 5 days a week. Physical fitness class begins each day with warm-up exercises.  They immediately form circles that prepare them to lead their peers through age appropriate stretches. This promotes routine and life long healthy habits as they prepare their bodies for sports. In the the first semester, students learn how to control their bodies in motion. They eagerly prepare to be future soccer players as they work on their locomotive skills in the “Kicking Unit” They participate in various games that assess their ability to dodge, chase and flee while in motion. They focus on pathways of escape without a soccer ball at first and then a soft soccer ball is added to the mix for more added fun and games.

During week 2, both PreK-4 classes began learning about the alphabet, with a focus on the letter “F.” Separately, we talked about how to be a good friend and work together as a team. Our studies culminated with a fun group project for which the two classes came together to create their very own Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree! To accomplish this big task, our students used their fine-motor skills to trace, cut, stamp and glue to make coconuts, leaves and letters for our tree. In addition, everyone learned how to help each other tracing their hands, drawing circles, holding scissors, finding the right letter stamps and cleaning up! Please stop by our tree with your children the next time you drop them off to commend them for the job well done!