Hello all,
“Letter Z is for Zebra Week” was Zany, Zesty, Zippy, Zestful, and certainly Zoological! Read on below to learn about the fun that was had and leaning that took place.
After studying the alphabet for nearly nine months, it finally was Letter Z Week! The students arrived at school on Monday morning extremely excited to learn all about the last letter of the alphabet! With a share box full of alphabet books, zucchini, zeroes, and more, the Letter Z shares sure were plentiful! Of particular abundance were the various zoo animal shares including tigers, lions, monkeys, rhinos, and of course, zebras!
The students spent Monday and Tuesday morning working one on one with the teachers to complete their Letter Z identification/fine motor activity pages. The teachers were so impressed with how easily the younger students recognized the letter Z and also how well the older students remembered all things “Z” during their morning work! In the afternoon on Monday and Tuesday, the students created the twenty-sixth and final letter list of the year! As a group, the students took turns brainstorming and contributing words that begin with the letter Z. They also hunted around the classroom for letter Z items! Do you see any Z shares below?
On Wednesday, the students came over to the art table to see an animal that looked just like a plain white horse. The students were perplexed as to why they were making horses on letter Z week. With a little help from some black paint, the students turned the white horses into ZaNy Zig-Zag ZeBrAs! When the ZaNy ZeBrAs had dried, the students added a colorful googly eye. They were so proud of their work!
On Thursday, the students created the second Z-craft of the week – a zebra puppet! The students turned paper bags into life-like zebras by adding ears, eyes, eyelashes and a big black snout. Once all of the pieces had been glued on, the puppet looked more like a French bulldog than a zebra. This was not the case for long! The students painted black stripes on their puppets. The dog puppets quickly transformed into authentic looking zebras!
On Friday, the students got a jump start on their SuPeR SpEcIaL SuRpRiSe Mother’s Day projects in preparation for next week’s Mother’s Day Celebration! While we cannot show you a photo of the project, we can certainly show you the aftermath. Please pardon the mess, we were learning and working hard over here… 🙂
During the afternoon on Friday, the students participated in a technology presentation all about – you guessed it – Zebras! The teachers showed the students pictures of zebras in Africa. When asked why zebras have stripes, one student said, “Because they couldn’t make up their mind what they wanted to wear”. Another guess was, “to scare the lions” and another was “for camouflage”. Various high definition photographs of zebras standing together in herds certainly helped answer the question. The teachers explained that all zebras have unique stripe markings similar to fingerprints on a human. The students also learned that zebras travel in herds and their stripe markings help protect them from predators, animals trying to attack them. All of the zebras in the herd run close together so that it is hard for the predators to attack them. When zebras run, the moving striped patterns on their bodies make it very difficult to see where one zebra begins and another one ends. The students experienced this first hand thanks to some amazing footage from various nature websites! By far, the silliest/most exciting part of the presentation was when the students learned what sounds zebras make! Click the link below to hear! It will surely surprise you!
Zebra Sounds
Well, that is all for “Letter Z is for Zebra Week”. As always, thank you for reading!
-PPA
Reminders:
Next Upcoming PPA Event:
PPA Mother’s Day Celebration – Friday, May 12th
2:00-3:00 p.m.
(Aftercare is not available today)
🙂 ALL PPA STUDENTS AND MOMMIES WELCOME! 🙂
2 Day students and Mommies should arrive at 2:00 p.m.
Due to a predicted 100% turnout, we kindly ask that attendance is limited to the PPA Student and his/her Mommy. Please lock strollers outside the school. We thank you in advance for your cooperation. 🙂
Theme for next week:
