Garden and Ocean

Our garden is beginning to take shape. It takes courage to plant in April but this has been an unusual year. The Blue Class was the first to take the plunge. On a warm April morning they planted carrot and radish seeds in their garden plot. (The rest of us planted indoors in peat pots.) They have been very faithful about watering their seeds. Six children are given the task each day they are in session. They are hoping the radishes will be grown by the time school ends!

Our other classes have now begun to plant their small plants outside. One class is growing sunflowers, which are growing super fast! Another class is growing zinnias. Another cosmos. The three year olds (okay, some have turned 4) are planting pumpkins which they can harvest in the fall.

This week we are learning about (Can you guess by the photos?) the ocean! We are all familiar with Nemo but there are many more "cool" things in the sea. However, we haven't seen any mermaids yet!

Owl Baby

Check this out! Tessie Rodkewich emailed me these pictures of a young owl that they found stranded in one of the tunnels at Driftwood Park on Thursday. The baby was frightened and the mom was concerned. The Raptor Center from the U of M came to the rescue. They placed it in a tree where Mom could take over!

MINNESOTA TWINS DAY

A you all know, last week was our Minnesota week at Pre School and one of the days was designated as Minnesota Twins Day! It couldn't have been more exciting with the opening of the new Target Field and all the talk about the opening of the Twins season in the new stadium! We had a great response from everyone and the twins/red, white and blue day was really fun. Here are some pictures we thought you would enjoy!

OUTER SPACE WEEK

As you can see by these pictures, Pre School had a fun week learning about space. We learned about astronauts and how they lived in space. "Gravity" is a new word we talked about at school. It's what holds us down on the Earth. In space and on the moon there is no or very little gravity so everything floats! During space week everyone had a chance to make their own rockets out of many different types of materials and we had "space food" for snack (dehydrated foods.) It was out of this world!

PAJAMA DAY

Once again, Pajama Day was a success. Let me assure you, there is no napping on this particular day! We did read stories about naps and we decorated cut outs of pajamas. Our snack consisted of cereal and milk. To tell the truth, we did lay around with our blankies and bed time buddies but there was NO NAPPING ALOUD! It was a really fun day and we thought we would share a few pictures with you!

Wonder and Mystery

SALEM PRE SCHOOL NEWS

March is the in-between month. It’s can be very wintery or rather springy. It is also the month of our spring break, March 15 - 19. Our goal this month is to find some exciting topics to learn about. Dinosaurs are certainly exciting! Big (at least many of them,) and mysterious, these guys really get our imaginations going. If there really were no people alive when the dinosaurs were on Earth, how do we learn about them. That, too, is a mystery.

Air and space travel is our second unit for the month of March. It is another frontier with many unanswered questions. That qualifies it for being both mysterious and exciting. Sorting out fact from fiction (sci-fi) is sometimes hard. Are there really aliens out there?

Last, but certainly not least, we will celebrate Easter! Again, wonder and mystery are a part of the story! The assurance that Jesus loves us so much that he was willing to die for us, and then, amazing as it seems, he rose from the dead and went to live with God in heaven, where he is waiting to welcome us some day, is almost too hard to imagine!! Children love to hear the story and are more accepting of the wonder than many adults.

March is considered by many to be a very boring time of year. At Pre School it is going to be very mysterious and exciting!

With Valentine's Day almost here, we at Pre School needed to know how the postal system worked (just in case we wanted to mail a Valentine!) The teachers covered the basics, like put your Grandma's name and address on the outside of the envelope, put the stamp in the upper right hand corner of the envelope and don't forget to put your Valentine inside the envelope. Then, to get the full lowdown, we had postal worker, Karol Johnson, come to our classes to explain how our Valentines actually get from the big blue mailboxes, through the post office, to the mail carrier and finally, to Grandma and Grandpa's house! Karol also had some safety tips to share. She wore a real mail person's uniform so we could learn how to identify a postal worker. We were reminded that only postal workers can put anything in our mail boxes. It was also suggested that we keep our dogs in the house or on a short leash during the expected delivery time so the mail person doesn't need to worry about our pets.

We want to thank Karol for visiting our classes to teach us about the US Post Office. Happy Valentine's Day to all of you!