Gale Center Museum field trip

We learned about our home state this week, the Beehive State, Utah. We were excited to learn about where we live, and even more excited to visit the Gale Center Museum for our field trip!

We traced the shape of Utah with our toothpick dot art. This was a center that the children visited. Sometimes they leave their work in the preschool room, and I am not always sure who it belongs to, but every child had some practice with the shape of the state, along with the letters in its name.

We recite the pledge of allegiance every morning. We also talk about how many stars are on the flag, and why. Here we had an interactive map that named the 50 states as we touched them, so your children became somewhat familiar with where Utah is located in the United States. 

We also had a globe that the children looked at, and this puzzle of the world they worked on.

This week was our first introduction to money. This week I simply let the kids play with the money and do their own exploration of what things they found as they looked at it. This giant sized money was a great way for them to see what is on each of the coins and bills. We will continue to talk about currency and what the coins are each called and what they are worth.

We talked about some of the things that Utah is famous for, like National Parks. We had a memory match up game with many of the national parks of Utah.

This center was filled with moon dough, which is flour with oil added to make it mold able, along with some trucks and construction workers. We talked about what materials are mined at Kennocott, and how it is big enough to see from space! 

And, our week ended with a fun trip to the Gale Center Museum. This is a great little museum with some fun interactive hands-on learning stations where the kids learned about the cultures of Utah. They had a lot of fun, as you will surely see from their big smiles on their faces!

We can't wait to go again!

We have 5 Senses, yes we do!

We talked about our 5 senses this week! I love to do this potato head project during this theme becasue it is such a cute way to display our 5 senses. And, just as each of your children have their own little personality, each of our potato heads was unique too!

For a reading center, we talked about sight, and how not all mammals see the same. I had several books at this center that the kids could look at through 5 different pairs of glasses. These glasses imitated how other animals might see. There was one pair similar to what we wear if we humans need glasses, like Hilary is wearing below.

This pair that Jack has on imitates how an owl might see. We discussed how owls do not have very good peripheral vision, and can only see straight ahead.

Brielle is wearing a pair that illustrates how an insect with compound eyes might see. 

And, Bridger is just testing out what it would be like to see the world in just one color....like red.

Noah is wearing our 5th pair of glasses, these imitate how a mole might see. Moles are almost completely blind, so we wanted to see what it would be like to only see a tiny bit of what we usually can. 

Rocky is 'rockin' these glasses!

Since I wanted to utilize as many senses at each center as possible this week, we traced our letters with something edible! They were allowed to each the licorice, of course, but not until they had traced some letters!

We also had a fun time at this writing center! We used our touch to find our letters and place them on the overhead, our sight to see the letter shadows on the wall, and our sight to trace them.

We practiced our numbers 1-20 with our magnetic chips and magnetic wands. 

We had a center filled with different textures and smells. You can see the kids feeling waterbeads below to make some letters.

And, we are smelling some Fall and Winter scents here such as sugar cookie, pine tree, peppermint, and cinnamon and spice.

You can also see that behind Spencer here we had many items to touch and feel. We had balloons filled with honey, flour, beans, marshmellows and more. Along with some hard, soft, bumpy and other textured items. 

This center is all of the 5 senses in one! We filled the sensory table with cheerios, and we had miniature items for each of the 5 senses hidden within the cheerios, which we then placed on our 5 senses mats. And, in the meantime, we tasted, touched, saw, felt, and even heard the cheerios as we moved them through our hands.

These 5 senses boards were fun to fill with our 5 sense picture cards.

And, these tanagram mats and tracing cards were perfect practice for our little hands to touch and feel!

We are still working hard on our journaling each week. I hope that you are noticing their hard work as they practice at home too!

Play parts have been sent home for the Christmas program.  If you have not seen a part for your child, please contact me. Our program will be held on December 19th in the evening, so save the date!