Fun in the Sun

FUN IN THE SUN!

This unit will cover basic scientific information about one of the most important things int eh natural world - the Sun. Children learn why the sun in important to all, how we must sometimes protect ourselves from its rays, and its important to life on Earth. In addition, there are fun experiences with recognizing letters and numbers, hearing phonetic sounds and making simple graphs. Talking and learning about the natural world is interesting to children. It builds science knowledge while providing a meaningful context for increasing vocabulary and for learning reading, writing, and math skills. We will be discovering that the sun gives us light and warmth. We will be talking about how we can see the sun in the sky when we go outside. Sometimes the sun is hidden from us by the clouds or trees. We will also be learning that the sun is our daytime star. It is the only star that we can see in the day. We eill be learning about protecting ourselves from the sun by waring sunscreen and hats and by drinking lots of water when we play outside. the sun can be so hot and bright that it can burn us or make us too hot. There will be the discovery that plants need the light form the sun to grow. During the summer the sun spends a long time in the sky and we have long days and short nights. During the winter, the days are short and the nights are long. We will also be talking aobut how the sun moves across the sky, moving from east to west and hiding from us at night.

Our Nemo hanging in the classroom.

Our Sperm Whale hanging in the classroom.

Our Dolphin hanging in the classroom.
Our Star Fish hanging in the classroom.
Our Shark hanging in the classroom.

Sand Toys for our sand pile outside. Books about the sun and what it does for us.More books about the sun and what it does for us.
What our classroom looks like. Our beach bags.
Beach Ball.
Let's go Fishing!
Floor puzzles showing the sun in each season.
Bright flashlights to use with the globe. We help children pretend the flashlight is shining on the earth as the Sun does.
The summer would not be complete without a good BBQ!
We show how to hold the prism in sunlight to create a rainbow.
Stuffed Sea Animals
Real Sea Fossils!
Sea Shells Let's not forget the sunscreen. This bottle it empty and put in the dramtic play so the kids can pretend to put some on.
Sunglasses to shade our eyes.

We care about your child's HEALTH, SAFETY, and NUTRITION

Garden of Blessings Child Care cares about your child’s health, safety, and nutrition. For this reason we teach hygiene skills to reduce the spread of contagious illnesses. Research shows that healthy children are better learners. We discover that germs are what make us sick and that we need to be good germ fighters to stay healthy. In order to take care of ourselves, we need to be good germ fighters and do things to keep viruses and bacteria from attacking us. One way we teach children to take care of themselves from viruses and bacteria is teaching proper hand washing techniques. We wash our hands various times throughout the day. For example, when we come in from outside we go into the dinning room to wash our hands. After potty we will wash our hands in the bathroom. Before and after eating we will wash our hands. When we wash our hands we 1st wet our hands, 2nd put soap on our hands, 3rd rub and scrub our hands and wrist. It is recommended that you wash your hands for at least 20 seconds. This is a perfect opportunity to sing the ABC song. We then rinse our hands until all the soap is removed. We take a paper towel, dry our hands, use the towel to turn the water off and then throw it into the trash.

Garden of Blessings takes many precautions necessary to ensure that illness and communicable diseases are kept to a minimum within our home. However, sickness does happen and is to be expected. Therefore, the safety of all the children within our care is planned for and guidelines are in place. Each child will be observed daily for illness. Children are considered ill when there is a fever in excess of 100.4 degrees, vomiting, excessive diarrhea, or any potentially contagious disorder (www.health.state.nm.us). When a child becomes ill during his or her day, parents will be notified and expected to pick up their child as soon as possible. The child will be kept isolated from the others as much as possible to try to prevent the spreading of the illness. If a contagious disorder has been diagnosed a plan based on the State of NM (www.health.state.nm.us) will be discussed with parents/gardians as to when the child will be able to return to class.

Research shows that children who eat good nutritional meals have more energy, can think clearer, and can focus better in order to learn effectively. Garden of Blessings provides an environment that allows children to be a part their nutritional choices. Eating healthy starts way before food is set before a child to eat. We have field trips to the farmers market and explore various selections of fruits and vegetables. Children are welcome to choose what they would like to bring into the kitchen. Then children are invited into the kitchen to be a part of food preparations. We encourage ownership in making a healthy meal by allowing children to wash, cut, pour, stir, peel, and serve the food to one another. We enjoy the social encounter of sitting down together to enjoy these choices. We encourage the children to discover the wonders of various tastes and textures that foods have to offer by encouraging them to discuss their experiences. Starting in the spring of every year we plan a garden. The children learn where some of their food comes from. They discover the importance of caring for the garden by watering the plants. They take pride in pulling weeds to prevent them from stealing water and nutrients from their plants.

Garden of Blessings welcomes the involvement and support of parents/guardians concerning their child’s health, safety, and nutritional well being. There are some simple things that can be done at home to show that involvement. One is encouraging the child to show what the steps are for good hand washing. Because sickness happens we suggest parents/guardians to consider establishing a family plan for when their child is sick. Whether that is setting aside sick time from work or established other adults within the child’s life to care for the child. Another suggestion would be to evolve their child in the grocery shopping and talk about the various foods served at the table and how they are nutritious.

Discovering Birds

These are our fish counters. We have used them for water play and sorting and catagorizing. The cards that come with this Bird Bingo are very detailed. We pretend to be flying as the nylon scarves are our feathers. This is a discovery tube with feathers in it.
Counting with Ducks in our water table.
This alphabet poster is a different bird for each letter.
Our stuffed Animal Bird collection.

The kids love for me to read to them.

More Books to read.

The blue bird in the cage sings to you every time you touch the cage.

Fisher Price Bird Bath sings and talks about Mamma Bird and Baby Bird.

Arts & Crafts

Quack Quack!, says the Duck

Pigs in the Mud

Rooster Barn

Discovering the Farm

This unit is filled with knowledge and information about nature, and people's roles in the production of food. Vocabulary is increased through the use of words within an interesting, meaningful context, such as words for farm vehicles, the various produce grown on farms and an introduciton to some words in Spanish. In addition, recognizing letters, numbers, shapes and introduction to concepts such as counting and sequencing are provided through fun activities.

Preschool skills emphaized in this unit:

Language/Reading

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  Reading pictures and symbols




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  Becoming familiar with printed words




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  new vacabulary, such as farm, farmer, vehicles, and names of fruits and vegetables




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  Learning new words in Spanish




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  Repetition of rhyming words

Writing

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  Fine motor development through drawing to encourage pre-writing




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  Connecting print with spoken language




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  Sequencing from left to right




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  new words to copy

Mathematics

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  Names of Numbers




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  Counting




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  Ordinal numbers and the relaitionship to counted numbers




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  Sorting things into related groups and arranging things in sequential order

Social Skills

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  Taking responsibilty for our health by eating healthy foods

Other

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  The similarities and differences of animals, such as size, color, sound and other characteristics




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  Names and characteristics of farm animals




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  Planting seeds and plant growth

Riding Horses. When you rub his ear he gallops for you.
Good old reliable "John Deer"

Cowboy/girl Costume
Books of Farm life

Books of Farm Life

Stuffed Animals found on the farm. We use these to sing the "Old McDonald" song. These various materials are used to inhance the children's

Tractor
Farmer Hats
Tractor with Farm and Farm Animals. The toy plays various animal sounds.
Farm People.
Farm Animals
Barn.

Puzzles. One of the puzzles makes the sound of the animal with you put the piece of the puzzle in the correct place. Another puzzle had the word of the animal on the inside of the puzzle.

One one side of the 24 piece puzzle is pictures and discription of farming things.

On the other side of this 24 piece puzzles is a picture of a fam.

Magnet Farm scene.

These duck go "Quack Quack" in our water play area.

Play dough toys. The farmer, cow, and chicken grow hair and feathers out of their heads with the play dough. The barn doors have molds of various vegatable found on a farm.

The Horse loves to be feed apples.

The pig loves being feed corn. "Oink Oink!"

The Cow "Moo's" for Hay!