PRE-SCHOOL UPDATE WEEK 5

To finish off our Farm Animals week last week, Ms. Jenny's 3 & 4 year olds went to the Hatcher Dairy Farm in College Grove, TN (about 15 minutes from my house out in the country) to learn about cows. We had a dusty ol' time learning what it's like to be a modern day farmer. Thank you to all of the parents who drove & helped me out with the kiddos at the Farm.

This post is in reverse order of what we did. (And thanks for bearing with me as I've suffered with a sinus/allergy infection for too long and am now just getting the energy up to catch up on my postings).
At the end of the tour, the kids got to sample fresh chocolate milk made on the dairy farm and our hostess whipped up some fresh, homemade butter to eat with soda crackers.
Finn, the little brother of Will, had a little too much chocolate milk to drink I think.

Tyler liking and licking the homemade butter! YUM!

Henry's digging it too!

Here is our hostess, a 4th generation Hatcher Farmer, who was our terrific tour guide. I honestly would write down more of what we learned, but gosh, what did I learn? Not much since I was chasing 3 three year olds around. (I broke my own rule of "have to have a parent at the field trip or ask somebody else to bring your kid", because my heart is too big and I just can't bear the thought of leaving kids behind. That "No Child Left Behind Act" that was ingrained in my head as an elementary school teacher just keeps me moving and grooving for these kiddos, even if it does exhaust me mentally, emotionally, and physically. I believe in kids and want these kids to have the BEST pre-school experience EVER. The saying, "these kids are only 3 or 4 once in their life" runs through my head constantly. I just really believe in giving kids experiences and teaching them early on, because it does make a difference! Most people look at me like I'm the craziest person alive to do this job, but I really do love it and mostly for the sake of the kids. I really do appreciate the parents who came, stepped up, and helped me out- again THANK YOU!!!)

My twin Camille & I with our twin boys- Tyler & Nicholas.

Farmer Ms. Jenny & Farmer Boy Tyler
(I was so excited to have distracted him with a dart gun while I was getting him dressed the morning of the field trip, so that I could put him in overalls, a John Deere t-shirt, and luckily, he wanted to wear his big, black boots.
With all the dirt and cow poop, I think wearing those boots was a great idea!
As soon as we got home, we washed our clothes- we're not used to farming life I guess.

Tyler is always stopping to pick up rocks.

The road we traveled on to get from the dairy store (starting point) to the cow stalls.

One of the Dad's, TJ, let the kids climb the tractor (until they got in trouble- oops!)
I'm so glad some of the Dad's were able to come!!

The three that came with me- Tyler, Donovan, Rick- cute, cute, and cute!

We saw the pumping/milking machines.

Cute Nicholas wondering where are we?

3 busy and interested boys!

Walking from the baby cow stalls to the milking area.

Even though I'm the teacher, I couldn't help take the most pictures of my cute lil' farmer boy as I was keeping him in line! If anyone else has cute photos of their kids that you want to add to the blog, please send them to me!

The baby cow is getting a bottle of milk to drink.

Jonny, Tyler, & Eliott (sister to Jonny) trying to feed the baby cows some hay.

The kids were able to touch this Momma/pregnant cow and watch her get milked. Rick & Tyler enjoyed touching her and then screaming in delight!

Girl cows are like Girl people- you have to have a baby to produce milk. (Okay, I learned one interesting fact! :))

Along the beautiful country road, we stopped to investigate cow poop. Rick stepped in it, Donovan touched it with his finger, and I just kept telling Tyler, "NO, don't touch." after the other two checked it out. They were very intrigued. Boys, boys, boys.

Henry, Zac, & Owen learning about the cows.

The second group of cows had a bunch of momma's and 1 bull. The bull kept kicking up alot of dirt and moving those momma cows around. Dust in my eyes.

The first group of cows were tame and hungry. The kiddos got to feed the cows. They at first squealed, screamed, & threw the food at the cows, but as they got more brave, they would wait for the cow's mouth and get a nice, juicy, slimey lick!

The bucket of food

The farm had a little play area where the kids played in feed in a plastic pool.

They got to milk a real cow, okay, just a fake one.

It was a great field trip and I hope everyone enjoyed it! We ate our picnic, sack lunches at the picnic tables and it was nice, sunny day for an outside field trip!
Now to the Trees part of the week:
A was our letter of the week. Here's all the things the kids helped me get out of my magic bucket that started with the letter A.

We talked about trees and why we have trees, who lives in trees, what grows on trees, etc.
We sang "The Hole in the Ground" with felt objects and learned about the parts of a tree.

We made apples & ants with our fingerprints and crayons. The kids did a good job of getting their fingers dirty and hopefully there aren't too many red & black fingerprints all over my walls :)!! We're going to make an ABC book at the end with all of these pages that we are making, so please save them!

The kids were fascinated with these books:

For singing time, I let the kids pick a number and we sing the song on the back.

They loved singing, "5 little monkeys swinging in the trees teasing Mr. Alligator" and each of them had a turn to be the puppet alligator and catch the monkey off of the tree.

We usually have one coloring/tracing letter activity a week.

The 4 year olds made apple-pie biscuits for apples!

Yummy & Warm! Most of the kiddos don't like to try new things they haven't had at home, but some of them loved them!
We learned about the different colors of apples, I cut open an apple and we found the star inside and the seeds, we ate the apples, and Cassy made cute trees for snack time with apples, and sang, "5 Rosy Apples hanging on a tree."
We've been doing alot of counting- counting objects, counting numbers, counting ourselves, and sorting activities. We're busy, busy, busy as always!