Mrs. Reynolds Pre-K

I would like to expose a situation. If your children (or grandchildren) don’t learn to play with children with special needs at school, maybe you should spend 10 minutes tonight explaining it to them. Because, although they don't currently live with these children at school, they will find them in their lives for sure.
In light of recent events regarding the exclusion of a child with autism from attending a school trip and a child with Down Syndrome being expelled from dance class because she couldn't keep up with it, I feel the need to share this. There are boys and girls that no one invites to birthday parties. There are special children who want to be part of a team but are not selected because it's more important to win than to include these children. Kids with special needs aren't weird, they just want what everyone wants: to be accepted!
Can I ask a question? Is there anyone willing to copy and paste this post on their wall without sharing it, like I did, for all the special children out there?
Please teach your children to be kind to these beautiful children!
Everyone needs love and kindness. ❤️❤️❤️

Well, Pete and I packed up the room and are headed on to new adventures! Thank you so much for being part of my Andover journey! From Martin Primary South, to Sunflower, to Prairie Creek - I've had the opportunity to work with some talented teachers and supportive administrators. And I have been blessed with fantastic co-teachers - Beth Meares, Kari McBride, Susie Carney, Keesha Kitterman, Mary Leigh, Erica Young, Deanna Crawford, Deb Sokolosky, and Amy Schoonover! You supported my dreams and went along with my sometimes crazy ideas! We laughed, we cried, but most of all we made memories that I will never forget.
Thank you to all the parents and families I've had the opportunity to know and work with. You shared your greatest gift with me - your child! For that I'm grateful! I have loved watching them grow and seeing all that they have accomplished! (Although in my mind they will always be 4 or 5 years old). I got to view the world through their eyes and play for a living! What could be better than that?
I'm not sure what the next chapter will hold, but it the words of Pete the Cat - I'll keep walking and singing my song cause it's all good!
Have a wonderful summer and please keep in touch!

We finished the year with a day of fun in the sun! What a perfect day! Thank you to Mrs. Harshaw for organizing a fantastic finish! It was a wet, wild and wonderful day!

Pirate adventures continue! Today's task - who can build a boat that holds the most pirates???

Ahoy mateys!! The Fantastic 5's boarded the pirate ship in search of Pirate Pete's treasure! Pirates used their math skills of counting, measuring, graphing and number sequence to unlock various chests containing clues to where the key for the treasure chest was hidden! We have a very smart crew and were successful in our endeavors! Plus we had a lot of fun!

What a perfect day for a field trip to the park! We had a blast playing games and on the play equipment, digging in the sand, and exploring nature! We released some ladybugs and left our kindness rocks for others to find! Thank you parents that went with us! What a fun day!!

Our field trip may have been cancelled due to chance of rain, but exciting things were happening in our classroom on Thursday! We have baby chicks! Five of our eight eggs hatched! Look for more photos and official names coming this week!

"Hoppy" news! Mrs. Sharping took some frog photos when I was gone!

We're in the midst of our pond study - here's a peek at the pond! Students created ponds, explored duck feathers and experimented to figure out why duck's feathers don't get wet, learned about frogs & fish (sorry no photos), and wiggled with worms! We had some very smart worms! You should have seen all of the letters and numerals they were able to form! Worm day was definitely a class favorite - especially our dirt and worms snack!

Yee-haw! It's been a rip-roaring week here with the Fantastic 5's! We hit the range and learned all about "cowboy"ing! Cowpokes panned for gold, matched letters and sounds, blended _at words, lassoed numerals and even received the official Reynolds' Ranch brand! Today we celebrated with a Pre-K rodeo - complete with bull riding, calf roping, bandana squeezing, barrel racing, cattle round-up and even some horseshoes! Then we finished off the day at the chuckwagon for some grub! Thank you parents that sent items in or helped out today! Yippee-ki-yi-ya! It was a rootin-tootin day!

What a "Glow-ious" way to end our space unit! The Fantastic 5's completed a variety of activities - painting planets with glow in the dark paint, using chalk to make galaxies, stringing glow bracelets, playing with glow slime and play dough, highlighting hidden numerals, using addition to pop pop-its, comparing rockets, building shapes with foam, creating constellations and dot pictures, exploring glow water, and building with cups and other glowing materials - just to name a few! Special thanks to Mrs. Brown and Dr. Adler for sharing their room with us and to Mrs. Schoonover and Mrs. S for helping us with our stations! It was a glowing success! Enjoy your weekend!

Reminder! Kindergarten Preview is Tuesday evening. If you have an incoming kindergartener, his/her school is the place to be!

The Fantastic 5's aeronautical teams were busy today launching rockets and flying saucers. We had to adjust some of our activities due to the windy weather conditions but didn't have to scrub the launch entirely! Mrs. Brown also helped us program robots to find the planets - unfortunately we didn't get any photos! It was an out-of-this-world day!

It's astronaut training day! Our astronauts explored floating in space by writing upside down, pulling themselves back to the space shuttle, testing out the moon rover, walking (stomping) on the moon, dodging an asteroid shower and counting down to blast off! We exercised our fine motor muscles by writing in moon sand, filling up craters and creating our own space scenes.

3-2-1-Blastoff!!! Today the Fantastic 5's left the classroom in search of outer space! After brainstorming what we might see in space, students used pattern blocks to create space scenes. They took their own pictures of their creations! It was so fun to see what their visions were!

We finished our pet unit by finding homes for 15 pets! Thank you 5th grade buddies for setting up an adoption station and showing us how to care for a variety of pets. Before taking our pets home, students demonstrated they could care for them by creating a safe home, providing food and water, and even taking them outside as needed! We have some very caring and reliable pet owners! Other activities included identifying the initial sounds in "pet" words, patterning with dog bones, and writing about out pets.

Hope you can join us at the PTO Glow Dance! We will be having a classroom glow day on April 6th, but encourage your family to attend the PTO sponsored Glow Dance on the 14th!

It's Pet Week! Students counted pets, built pet habitats, fed pets, helped dogs identify letters and sounds, and guided mice to find cheese by coding! Students shared pictures of their pets. And we even ate like pets! Our 5th grade buddies provided information about different pets to help us choose which pet we'll adopt this week!
Finally, we said good-bye to Mrs. Leigh. We sent her off with one of our favorite pets - Pete the Cat! Mrs. Leigh, you will be missed!

The Pre-K Paleontologists are back again!
Welcome to the Dinosaur Dig!
Let’s look for bones – dig, dig, dig
Dinosaur bones – big, big, big
Clean the bones – chip, chip, chip
Back to the lab – zip, zip, zip
Put them together – so, so, so
We built a dinosaur – Oh! Oh! Oh!

We had a T-rexcellent day of learning yesterday! We got to zoom with Mr. Hawley from Casper College in Wyoming. He is a REAL paleontologist! He showed us dinosaur teeth, claws, skulls, eggs and shared a lot of information about dinosaurs - even some that lived in Kansas!!! We also cooked up some special dinosaur treats! It was a dino-mite day!

Pre-K Paleontologists were back at work this week completing a dinosaur dig! We dug to find skulls, bones and boney plates! Also included are photos of last week's adventures! Students experimented with herbivore(spoons) and carnivore (forks) teeth to learn how dinosaurs ate their food. We played a math game - How many are hiding - which helped us understand subtraction. And we enjoyed eating volcanos for snack!

We found some mysterious eggs in our classroom! We cracked them open to find.... dinosaurs!! Our Fantastic 5's paleontologists are digging up bones, skulls and fossils at the dinosaur dig site. We are practicing our math skills by counting dinosaur eggs and discovering how lava forms in volcanos. We're even setting up our own Jurassic Park! More fun dino days ahead!

Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum! Here the Fantastic 5's giants come! We finished our week of Once Upon a Time in a giant way! Students figured out rhyming words to draw a giant, built beanstalks by matching numbers to sets, put together giant puzzles, reached inside a giant head and identified the beginning sound of what they found, cracked golden eggs and compared what was inside, and played spill the beans! A special teeny-tiny snack was a highlight! We also enjoyed playing math games with our 5th grade buddies! Thank you buddies!!

Knights and ladies, queens and kings attended our Royal Banquet today! Special thank you's to our servants (parents) that provided the meal and served the food! Following the banquet, we completed the Queen's Quest! Students practiced balancing to walk across the moat, blew fire like dragons, lifted boulders and solved a mixed up sentence to find the jewels! A Happy Valentine's Day to all!

The Fantastic 5's completed knight training this week in preparation for our Royal Banquet on Tuesday. Students walked across the moat, crawled through a tunnel and moved a boulder to rescue the princess and return her to her castle by matching sets and numerals. We practiced using catapults and identified the numeral on the castle that the boulders landed on. Castle walls were rebuilt by matching upper and lower case letters. And a favorite event - learning to joust! Queenie Queen visited and knighted students for completing the challenges!

Welcome to the Kingdom of Reynolds! We began the week building our royal vocabulary words on magic wands. We also explored castles! Students used a variety of materials to create castles, defended them using catapults, and even ate them for snack! Mrs. Brown helped us build a castle and taught us how use our ozobot knights to defend them! Thank you Mrs. Brown for all of your help!

In the words of Tacky the penguin, "What's Happening???" For the Fantastic 5's - penguins is what's happening! We spent the week learning about penguins and enjoying several stories about Tacky! Students created nice icy lands for Tacky and his companions. We explored how penguins stay warm in the Antarctic and ocean by experimenting with blubber bags and the waxy coating on their feathers. Students researched 3 species of penguins - the little blue, emperor and macaroni penguin. We finished the week reading Tacky and the Winter Games, then participated in games of our own. Students rode bobsleds, tried ski jumping, had waddle relays, balanced on "snowboards" and caught balls, did the penguin slide on their bellies and had an indoor snowball fight. A black and white snack day was the perfect penguin ending!

Animals in winter was our focus for the week. We learned about adaptation, migration and hibernation. Today we created caves for hibernating bears! But the highlight of our week was making ice cream in a bag with our 5th grade buddies! Yum!!! Recipe coming home on Monday!

We're having "snow" much fun learning about winter! We reviewed numerals by having a snowball fight! Mrs. Brown taught us to program a robot to pick up items needed to make a snowman. During centers, we built snowmen out of play dough, created snowflakes at the light table and constructed winter habitats for animals.