9/18 Soil, 3, S

We made lots and lots of messes today but it was SOOOO fun, I totally don't mind the clean-up time.
9:30 Gathering – Dig in my "soil" in the backyard. I had various shovels and buckets out. Fill a bucket full of dirt for later activities. 

9:40 Welcome Time -song - one of the kids suggested Monkeys jumping on the bed. 
Who is here today -
calendar -
Read Aloud – I let my son choose the book, he LOVES helping me plan preschool. So we ended up reading the Berenstain's B book, even though our letter for the day was 'S.'

9:50 Literacy Activity – Made "soapy soup." Grate a bar of cheap soap with a cheese grater. I put it in a large plastic drawer that I had pulled out and put on my floor with lots of painters plastic under. Add 2-3 cups of warm (almost hot) water and wisk together. It makes a foamy, bubbly, super fun mess. Experiment with amounts of water, it's fun. We then added various "S" objects: sparkles-these were a hit with the girls!, sticks (craft sticks), spoons, stones, spaghetti, paper cut-out stars, straws. Make sure to use phrases such as "sprinkle the sparkles" "scoop the stones" or "sort the sticks." There are sooooo many great S words, this was really easy. Splash, stir, spread. There was even a time a paper star, wet with bubbles, got on one of the stones and one little boy commented "the star stuck to the stone!" Then we had the kids use any of the "s" objects to trace the letter "s" in the "suds." Then the kids wanted to add "soil" to the soapy soup and, well...it was gross but we did it. Yay for messes! The kids were coming up with all sorts of "s" words by the end so I think it was a success.

Transition-EW! Look at that mud! Did you know mud can be used in building things? Like straw houses? Let me tell you about someone who did that! [move soapy soup outside and have the kids sit down inside for story time.]

10:05 Math 3 Little pigs story. Discuss the 3 pigs, 3 houses, 3 times the wolf tried to blow things down. I noticed that there was some dust on my floor from sprinkling the soil in our soapy soup, so I had the kids get down and trace the number 3 in the dust. They thought it was fun that they could just "erase" it and do it again.

10:20 Break/Snack – I made some chocolate pudding and told the kids it was mud. I know, I'm mean. 3 of the kids wouldn't even touch it after that, even though I did eventually tell them what it really was. Most of the kids preferred the apple slices, anyways. 1 kid requested no snack. Weird, but I'm not going to force it on you. I found out after I made the pudding that one girl wasn't supposed to have too much dairy. I worried a little bit but it turned out to be ok since she just wanted apples, just like 2 of her friends.

10:40 Science/Social Studies – Used the bucket of dirt from earlier, and had the kids use magnifying glasses to compare it to some potting soil. What is the same? What is different? We poured a little water over both and could see that the backyard dirt soaked up the water, while the potting soil let the water go through. We also made a small "mountain," poured water over it, and showed how to make a river. The boys loved that, the girls weren't impressed.

11:05 Choosing Time
1. Make mud pies (all the girls chose this one). They chose to use the "soapy soup" from earlier for their mud pie materials (remember we added dirt? Well it made quite the perfect mud for mud pies), which was great since it was already contained in one box and they weren't sitting or stepping in the mud.
2. Dig with shovels
3. Make rivers in my backyard. (I limited the mess by only giving them 1 bucket of water)
4. Other such messy fun. One girl decided she was in charge of "washing the dishes" in my bucket of clean water I had set aside for washing hands. I also had some cookie cutters out to make shapes, as well as our sticks, straws, spoons, and stones from our s activity, which were great for drawing in the dirt.

11:25 Clean up. Haha, no time for reading or singing here! Hopefully your kids weren't too messy when they got home!