Samuel Morey Preschool

This week was all about ducks! On Monday, we watched as 2 of our ducklings poked their beaks through their eggs. We waited and watched all day long, but the ducklings didn’t come out! We learned that ducklings can take up to 2 full days to come out of their eggs, so that is why it felt like a very long process. We also got to go to the gym and listen to 3 members of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra perform music and talk to us about their instruments! There was a trombone, a French horn, and a trumpet. We learned about how brass instruments work, and the preschoolers even got to hold a very long hose with a mouthpiece on one end and a funnel (bell) on the other end while one of the orchestra members demonstrated how it could work like a brass instrument! It was so much fun and the preschoolers were amazing audience members! On Tuesday, we came to school to find one duckling out of its egg and another about to come out! The students got to watch as the second duckling pushed its way out of the egg. It was very exciting! We also notice that there was a beak poking out of a third egg, but since we already knew so much about ducks, we knew we had another long wait ahead of us. The students brainstormed names for the 3 ducklings and then voted on their favorite 3 names. The names that won were Sunflower, Zuma, and Fluffy. On Wednesday, Fluffy was finally out of his egg and we got to move him to the cage with his siblings! The ducklings were very social with each other and with us! They loved to poke their bills out of the cage and nibble on students’ fingers (which the students thought was hilarious). We got to hold and pet the ducklings, and we all found ourselves mesmerized by their cuteness. Wednesday was also May Day, so we learned about the holiday including the tradition of the May Pole. Since we didn’t have our own May Pole, we just danced around with ribbons during our dance party that day! On Thursday, we read a cute story called “Cold Little Duck, Duck, Duck” and talked about how and why ducks migrate south for the winter. On Friday, we read a very silly David Shannon book called “Duck on a Bike.” We also got to use our new mud kitchen outside, and since it was a very rainy day, it was the perfect day for mud play! Next week, we will have more new chicks! We will also start readying our gardens, and we will take our field trip to the Mountain School on Friday (*fingers crossed)!

The Vermont Symphony Orchestra trio

Zuma

Sunflower

A dinosaur castle with a trampoline

A block bed for superheroes

Snuggly ducklings

We could sit and watch them for hours

A portrait of a duckling

Fluffy

Witches making their brew

Holding duckies

Block buddies and their castle

Another great block castle

More snuggles :)

Hugs and May Day dances

Part of a much larger block village

Helping in the garden

Cupcake monster!

Playing in the new mud kitchen

This was a very exciting week in preschool! On Monday, we celebrated Earth Day with Mrs. Chris. She read us two stories about how we can take care of our planet, and later we played Earth Day Bingo and planted our own sunflower seeds! On Monday evening, Mrs. Leonard brought me the eggs that she had started incubating for us at different times throughout April Break. To both of our surprise, a couple of the eggs were already hatching! By Tuesday morning, we had 4 baby chicks in our classroom! We all had so much fun watching them clumsily move around the incubator and get progressively cuter as they dried off and became fluffy. I was able to get a video of one of the chicks hatching on Monday night, so we watched that together and noticed how much effort it took for that little chick to break open that egg. We also brainstormed names for all of the chicks, and individually voted on our favorite names. In the end, the chicks ended up with the names Chicky, Cotton Candy, Boo Boo, and Chicken Man. On Wednesday, the chicks were moved to a larger cage where they had food, water, and more space to move around. We talked about the importance of staying safe around the heat lamp and the cage since they could be very hot, and the students decided to make their own safety signs to hang above the cage. There were also some students who wanted to make pictures, letters, and books for the chicks. We ended up quickly running out of space to hang up all of our wonderful writing and drawing projects! On Thursday, we got a visit from Fynnlee’s family’s new bunny named Clover! All of the students enjoyed petting clover, and many even got to hold her! We all loved her soft fur and big, floppy ears! We also continued to enjoy watching the chicks in their cage, and we had fun holding and gently petting the them as well. The students become very serious around the chicks, and it is amazing to watch how gentle and caring they are toward them. On Friday, we decided to build a structure out of blocks for the chicks to walk around in. First, we worked together to make a blueprint like real architects. The students decided to build a structure with a castle in the middle, a barn on one side, a house on the other side, and a playground in the back. I drew this out as they described it, and then we hung up our drawing by the block center and started building. The structure ended up being a lot like the one we had imagined and drawn up with a few extra details and fun add-ons! I brought all of the chicks over to walk around inside of our castle/barn/house, and we all sat around and watched them explore the structure we had made! Sometimes, they would hop up on top of a wall, and we would have to quickly build it taller so they wouldn’t escape. We became engineers, architects, builders, and problem-solvers! Later that day, we also did a fun science activity where we went inside of the dark bathroom with one of our duck eggs and a flashlight, and we looked inside of the egg! When I held the flashlight to the egg, we could see a big shadow where our growing duckling was! We could even see some blood vessels inside the egg and what we thought might have been a beak or a tail! It was amazing to see! At the end of the day, we all said goodbye to our chicks and they went home with Panda’s family. Next week, we will probably have some newly hatched ducklings in our classroom!