The highlights for this week are based on the continuation of our chicken studies. We focused on completing the life cycle of a chicken. We learned that after the chick has hatched from the egg, the mother hen takes care of it and provides food for it. Children learned that chickens do not have teeth but they have strong beaks to eat seeds, green plants, insects, and worms. In our outside environment we were able to find some real worms and observe them moving. We then pretended to be little chicks by exploring the worm sensory bin. Children practiced their fine motor skills by digging, finding, and picking with tweezers some life-like worms and transferring them to a bowl.
We also learned the different parts of an adult chicken including vocabulary words like comb, beak, feathers, legs, wings, claw, tail, and wattles. Children were able to observe a real chick coming out of the egg shell through an educational clip and through books in our environment and then reinforced this lesson by using an object-picture matching work in our language area.
In addition to various new spring works in the environment, children learned how to use a mortar and a pestle in our practical life area. They worked hard to crush eggshells very small and transfer them into a container. We will use the crushed egg shells next week as part of our care of plants lessons.
For a fun sensory activity, the children chose their favorite color egg and filled it with rice to create musical egg shakers. We then introduced the song, “I Know a Chicken,” by Laurie Berkner and we had so much fun dancing to it with our own eggs shakers.
Lastly, the children seemed to enjoy exploring snow peas during our food tasting lesson. The shape, size, and crunchiness of them gave the feel of eating chips, which seemed to attract the children to explore this food item.
Enjoy the pictures of your beautiful children, take some time to dance, and have a great weekend!
Mrs. Hood and Ms. Maria