F is for Fire Safety

 New Preschool Friends!

Fire can be good and bad . . . but either way it's important to know how to be safe with fire! We brainstormed good and bad fire . . .

 Good Fire:

• Birthday Candles
• Camping Fire
• Cook hot dogs and marshmellows
• Fireplace fire gets us warm with hot chocolate!

Bad Fire: 

• house on fire
• burns trees and chipmunks (animals)
• hurts people

 What if you get fire on your clothes?!? STOP DROP AND ROLL! We had LOTS of fun practicing that! :)

We also talked about 9-1-1 . . . only call in an emergency! Then we had fun taking turns and practicing . . . 

Oh no! Look, the house is on fire! Call 911!

 Here comes fireman Brigham, ready to put it out!

This would be a great discussion to continue at home! Some things I've learned from our local fire fighters about discussing fire safety with children. . . 

• If your child finds matches, a lighter (show them what these look like) or a burning candle . . . don't touch them and go tell a grown up!
• Stop, Drop and Roll (don't run!) if you have fire on you.
• Let your child hear the fire alarm--and talk about what it means and what to do if they hear it (get out!)
• Practice multiple ways to get out of your house from all the different rooms.
• Have a meeting place outside away from the house that everyone goes immediately to.  Our family meets at the mailbox across the street. Practice getting out and going straight there. This allows parents, the firefighters, etc to know who is out and who is still in and helps avoid a lot of chaos and confusion.
• If you see fire, GET OUT before you call 9-1-1 (or do anything else--get a toy, pet, etc).  You can always borrow someone elses phone to call, but you can only save yourself once! 
• Show them a picture (or take the to the fire station) of a firefighter in ALL of their gear . . . this is someone NOT to hide from (even though the mask can look and sound scary--very darth vader like) They are there to help you! If you see one if your house--he's there to help you and get you safe!
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• These things should be practiced and talked about regularly so they won't forget when the time comes!

F is for Food!

"Look, Ms Tamra, I'm making waffles for Daddy!"

Today we explored Dr Sears Traffic Light Eating. (For more information click here)

This is such an easy way to help kids remember 

what foods help them grow and 

what food should be saved for special occasions like parties or celebrations. 

So many foods to choose from! But which food will help our bodies the most? Like Lightening McQueen, we need the right kind of gas to go fast!

Green Go foods are things a farmer could grow--your body needs LOTS of these!

We found pictures and divided them into the right categories.  For simplicity in this discussion, we only briefly touched on the yellow light foods.

Making Playdough--a great Math activity with all the reading numbers, counting, comparing sizes and turn taking!

So much fun to watch the food coloring turn it green!!

Freeze & Melt

Our science focus for the month is temperature. 

Today we explored it through the freezing and melting properties of water/ice.  

Oh no! Look! Yellow and Red Bears are frozen in the ice!

How did they get there?

How will we get them out?

We remembered that ice starts out as water that gets super cold
so the bears must have been put in the water before it froze.

We brainstormed lots of ways to get them out.
The most popular involved some sort of busting-up action :) 

Hit them with a hammer! 

Throw them at the wall! 

Throw them on the floor super hard! 

My personal favorite: Put them on the track of a speeding train--it will smash the ice and turn it back into water! 

Then we remembered that for the water to turn to ice, it had to get super cold--

so we could warm them up! 

We brainstormed ways to do this too-- 

Put them in the oven! 

Put them in the microwave! 

Put them out in the sun! 

Feed them to the baby! :)

We tried an experiment.  

Ms Tamra covered one of the ice-cubes with salt (lowers the melting temperature) 

and pretty soon yellow bear looked like it was in a pile of snow instead of ice.

We played a game passing ice-cubes around to the music 

while we waiting for the salt to do it's magic . . .

The heat from our hands warmed the ice-cube and it started to melt (we could feel the water!) 

and the coldness of the ice-cube made our hands colder!

Brr! Cold hands! 

Getting smaller!

and smaller . . . 

Almost gone!

Then like magic--the ice was gone! 

Nothing was left of it but our cold wet hands.

And look! 

Because of the salt, yellow bear is out of his ice-cube, 

while red bear still has lots of it on his back.

  

Wow! It's temperature magic!!

F is for . . .

Friends and their Fabulous Feet

Finger Painting FUN!

Journaling page: My Funny Foot!

Farms

And our FAVORITE . . . Fantastically Fun FOAM!

F is for Flag!

We say the pledge every morning . . . so here's a recording of the kiddos 

reciting it (totally on their own in honor of F week. 

On the calendar: Oct 24th-Nov 4th

Family, Fire, Flowers, Feet, 

 Field Trip and Food--it all begins with F!

Here's what ahead the next 2 weeks:

Monday Oct 24th

NO SCHOOL (MISD HOLIDAY)

Wednesday Oct 26th

Fire Station Field Trip

**Please remember to meet at the fire station at 9 am and arrange for your child's transportation.**

Friday Oct 28th

Snack: Celebrate Christopher's Birthday!

Show & Tell: Letter F

**Don't forget to send in your family pictures!**

Monday Oct 31st

Halloween Party! 

Come dressed up for some Halloween fun!

Wednesday Nov 2nd

Snack: Bode

**Tuition Due**

Friday Nov 4th

Favorite Foods Fancy Feast!

**Please send your child with a favorite food to share.  We'll be eating these at a fancy feast!**

Show and Tell: something Funny!

Funny, Fabulous Letter F!

The Letter Ff is so much fun to explore! Here's a sampling of our adventures today . . . 

What happens when you mix five sets of fantastic feet . . . 

fabulous flowers . . . 

 and furry feathers?

 You get some very fantastically fabulous oh so funny feet!

Snack time involved a visit to the letter Fancy Letter Ff restaurant where we ate fruit and food flowers on Ms Tamra's fancy dishes and had a fizzy drink! We had to use our best manners, were served by a very funny but fancily dressed waiter, listen to fabulous classical music and watched a fancy but funny dance :).  

Then one of the students reminded waitress Tamra that FIRE starts with F, so we added candlelight do our meal :)

And here's a little peek at the kind of craziness that happens at school--

Letter F with funny feet, flowers, feathers, fuzz, fire and a flag!

Fireman Eric!

We had so much fun learning all about fire safety with a special visit from 

FIREMAN ERIC!

We learned the importance of having a fire escape plan and a designated meeting spot outside (mom and dad--do you have one at home?  Do the kids know what to do and where to go in a fire at your house? Do you have a specific place outside everyone will meet to make it easy to know if anyone is still inside?)

We learned not to be scared of someone who looks like this . . .

We even got to try on his uniform . . . 

Thanks Collins for sharing your dad with us!

Can't wait for our visit to the fire station in May!

F is for Fish!

This was a really fun craft that the kids really got excited about and it was a nice change from the usual color and cutting activities.

Preparation: I made a copy of a page with 4 various fish for each child. With white crayon I then wrote their name on one fish and Ff on the other fish.  

Craft: Each child painted their page of fish with water color paint.  They were so excited to see the letters and their name magically appear as they painted!  In fact, some little painters were so excited about the magic letters that after the paint dried, they painted over it again and, much to their disappointment, the magic letters disappeared.  I'll have to watch more carefully for that next time!  After the paint dried, I cut these out and put them aside for later.

Later in the day they used blue and green finger paint to make an ocean.  I encouraged them to fill the page completely. 

Then, while the paint was still wet, they placed their previously painted fish in the ocean.  The wet paint acted like glue to hold the fish on. 

Ta-Da! An ocean Full of Funny F Fish!