From Jungle to Desert

Continuing from our last project with the worms, we asked the children what they want to do with the worms and dirt that we got, they wanted to plant some seeds because we learned that worms help plants grow so we want to plant some plants. After discussion of what plants we want and how we are going to do it, we narrowed it to 4 planters that the children loved decorating them (which was one of their ideas to draw worms on the planters). We planted broccoli, peas, tomato and flower (marigolds) and we have been taking care of them everyday. We added jobs called gardeners and they will water the plants and make observation on the growth of the plants everyday. We asked the children what they wanted to know about plants and little by little we are learning about them. We brought different seeds (pumpkin seeds, bell peppers, peas, maples and oaks for them to explore. Some of them brought them home to plant, I hope they're growing nicely. Apart from learning about plants, we also learned about animals, we learned the different places they live and what they eat. Our pretend center was a veterinarian clinic where children pretended to be animal doctors and took care of sick animals. We made a collage of animals that live in the water, land and animals that fly. We also did a cut out of half of animals and had the children finish the other half. We tried to nurture our creativity by asking them creative questions such as after the end of our read aloud, we asked what might happen next and create art works for it. Other fun things we did this theme were we made gingerbread cowboy who ran away from the oven and we had to look all over the building, good thing we found it so we ate it right away! We also had a visit of volunteers from Tradition Bank, Edina. We learned a little bit about money, we had different games and activities and we created our own piggy banks.

The letters we learned this theme are...

The books we read this theme are...