Owls and Spiders

Week in Preschool
October 20 &22, 2009
Mrs. Wood’s Tuesdays & Thursdays 3 Year Old Class
Highlighted Themes: Nocturnal Animals and Spiders

Hi there,

Awww this week’s newsletter…have my glasses on (can’t believe I need these now), my peppermint hot chocolate Starbucks in hand (my favorite), I won’t be interrupted for 45 minutes (let’s hope), and I am ready to tell you all about the week that your wonderful child has had the opportunity to experience. Our theme this week is “nocturnal animals” but I was worried that I wouldn’t have time to talk about spiders next week so I had them crawl over to this week. Next week we talk about pumpkins though we really only have one day to do so because our costume parade and party are on Thursday (you will be receiving a separate email regarding the parade…so you know what to expect) and what a fun week that will be.

Art:
Owls

On Tuesday we talked about the many different kinds of owls, how they can turn their head almost all the way around, and that they are nocturnal. We talked about the meaning of the word nocturnal. We also talked about some other animals that are nocturnal. For art each child received a cut out of a brown owl where they glued on large wiggle eyes, an orange beak and brown and white feathers.

If you are interested here is one of my interactive video called “Brown Owl What Do You See?” involving owls you can do with your child at home.

Spiders
On Thursday we talked about spiders and for art the children made Styrofoam spiders. Each child painted a Styrofoam ball black and then stuck black pipe cleaners into the ball for the legs. They worked on their small motor skills painting that ball and worked those muscles in their hands sticking the pipe cleaners into the Styrofoam. I have to say those are some pretty cute spiders and they will look cute hanging in your house for Halloween!

Itsy Bitsy Spider is wonderful spider song to do with your child that involves finger movements that work on your child’s small motor skills. Here is a video felt board story with the Itsy Bitsy Spider you can watch with your child.

Cooking:
We had a fabulous parent helper come in to do cooking with the children on Tuesday to make owls. Each child spread some brown frosting (can use peanut butter-but with peanut allergies we didn’t want to chance it) onto a half of a graham cracker, that was the owls head. Then the children counted out two banana slices for the eyes and stuck those onto the graham cracker. After that they added two (or more) raisins for the black park of the eye onto the banana. Your child worked the muscles in their hands by spreading the frosting, worked on following directions and counting. One child, when she was eating her snack said: “this is like a treat.” All the children seemed to enjoy eating their owls.

If you are interested here is one of my videos on making meals with children.

Spider walk:
On Thursday we talked about spiders and while it is wonderful to read about them in books I think it is even better to go and look for them outside. We saw a couple of amazing spider webs and spiders in the middle of the web. This webs were like the ones you see in books…simply amazing!

Dramatizations:
We pretended to be owls on Tuesday. I paired the children up and gave them a hoop that was going to be their nest. Each child decided if they were going to be a mommy owl or a daddy owl. They got inside their hoop (nest) and we turned out the lights pretending it was night time. The children flew around and collected pretend twigs and feathers to build their nest. Then they flew out and brought back food for their babies in the nests. Then we turned on the lights and went to sleep.

Spider web game:
We made a spider web out of yearn today. The children sat in a circle on the carpet and we tossed a ball of yarn to each other making a web. Now I have to say I was a little hesitant doing this with 3 year old’s because of the steps to take to made the web but they really did a great job. We sat in a circle and one child holds one part of the yarn with one hand and throws the ball of yarn with the other hand to another child. The next child holds onto the yarn and throws the ball of yarn to another child. As long as the children hold onto their string of yarn it will make a neat web that looks like a spider spun it.

Here is fun spider web art activity you can do at home.

Happy Weekend!
Cullen Wood