Dear Rainbow Families,

The Rainbows’ curricular focus on the Senses recently moved into the senses of smell and taste. For smell, the Rainbows made play dough with a lemon scent, and also played a game (with their eyes closed) of “Guess the Scent,” which included lemon, coffee, and cinnamon. They also discussed scents they remember – responses included food cooking, coconut soap, flowers, and mommy’s hair. For taste, they did two separate taste tests – one of sugar and one of salt – in which the children had to guess what they were tasting. They also used magnifying glasses to examine one another’s taste buds, and used markers to make pictures of favorite foods they like to taste. Some books the Rainbows have read include “Your Mouth and Nose” by Lydia Carlin, an instructive non-fiction book with clear and detailed pictures; “Taste (The Five Senses)” by Maria Rius, J.M. Parramon, and J.J. Puig, a very understandable book on taste; and “My Five Senses” by Aliki, an engaging and informative book that discusses the senses and how we use them, sometimes more than one at a time. Afterwards the Rainbows made their own books of “My Five Senses,” which they wrote or dictated to their teachers. And some recent Spanish words related to the senses include:

sabor – taste

lengua – tongue

dientes – teeth

nariz – nose

boca – mouth

Spring has sprung in the Rainbow Room – thank you for sending in the seeds on Monday! The Rainbows have read “How Do You Know It’s Spring?” by Allan Fowler and “It’s Spring” by Linda Glaser with beautiful cut-paper illustrations by Susan Swan. They also talked about what they do on a spring day and drew pictures with thin Sharpies, then painted them with food coloring. You can see these displayed on the closet doors in the classroom. And they made delightful pictures of spring flowers by blowing paint with a straw to create stems and then making buds and flowers out of tissue paper and gluing them to the paper. Please check these flowers out on the far wall.

And doesn’t it seem like yesterday that the Rainbows celebrated “Under the Sea” Day? The children did so much to prepare for their day – read wonderful books at school and home, then shared what they learned with their classmates at circle time; drew sea creatures with pastel crayons, then cut them out and taped them to the classroom walls; made fish and octopi out of newspaper, paper towels, pipe cleaners, tape, and paint; made a submarine out of cardboard; and created seascape banners out of chalk, spray-bottle paint, pastels, and crayons, that were draped across the ceiling. It was such a fun day – the children reveled in their sea environment, playing limbo, dancing and singing to sea-themed songs, and playing with their different creations.

Important Reminder – please let me know if you will be taking any vacation days with your child in the coming weeks so we can figure out our internal scheduling.

Many thanks – and enjoy this beautiful spring day,

Martha