♪ Good morning to a brand new day ♪ ♪ Time to learn and games to play ♪ ♪ Learning things is so much fun ♪ ♪ Learning is good for everyone ♪ (upbeat music) (playful music) - Hello, little learners.

Welcome back to our learning space.

My name is Miss Lara.

Can you tell me your name?

I'm so happy that you made it back this morning.

I'm gonna have my friend Gerald help us sing our good morning song.

Are you ready to sing too?

Okay, here we go!

♪ Good morning, good morning ♪ ♪ It's a sunshine kind of day ♪ ♪ Come join Miss Lara ♪ ♪ For some learning and some play ♪ ♪ Will we sing a song ♪ Probably too many songs.

♪ Make our brains strong ♪ So super strong!

♪ So come along ♪ Yes, come on, friends!

♪ For some learning and some play ♪ Hey, Gerald, you ready to go through our plan?

All right, here it is.

This morning, we're gonna do our feelings song to the tune of "The Wheels on the Bus."

I wonder what picture I'm gonna show you and what feeling we're gonna feel when we see that picture this morning.

Next, we're gonna do our weekly investigation.

We've been studying the enormous turnip, which is a plant.

So we've been looking at how plants grow and using beginning sounds and rhyming with our book.

Last, we're gonna sing our goodbye song, and if we don't have time, we'll do a goodbye smooch, mwah!

All right, let's start with our feelings song this morning.

Remember the tune?

It goes.

♪ Na na na na na na na na na ♪ Here goes.

♪ The feelings in my body change all the time ♪ ♪ All the time, all the time ♪ ♪ The feelings in my body change all the time ♪ ♪ How am I feeling now ♪ So I want you to imagine that you went out to your garden.

You've been learning all about plants with Miss Lara, and as you're digging up a seed, out comes a spider, and it's a brown spider, one you do not recognize.

How do you think you would feel?

I know if you're like me, you'd be scared.

I know spiders are good for our environment, but they still scare me.

So our feeling for the day is scared.

So let's do our song, ready?

♪ Today I'm feeling very scared ♪ ♪ Very scared, very scared ♪ ♪ Today I'm feeling very scared ♪ ♪ I want to scream and run ♪ I've seen lots of spiders in my garden.

Have you?

So, now we're gonna watch a video together, but I'm gonna use a letter to introduce our video.

So to make our letter today, we're gonna need one big line down, one little curve on top.

It's not the letter P, tricked ya!

And one little line.

What letter have I made?

The letter R, that's right!

R is for rhyming, and I want you to see if you hear any rhyming words in this video we'll watch together, let's watch.

- Hi, friends!

It's me, Ms. Southern.

Can you say "Hi, Ms. Southern"?

Before we get started, let's put on our thinking caps, lock 'em in, and type in let's grow.

Well, do you know that there's different parts of a flower or a plant?

First there's a seed, then there's a sprout, then there's a plant, and then there's a flower.

I made up a cool song.

Do you guys want to sing it with me?

All right, let's go.

(upbeat music) ♪ Growing like a flower, flower, flower ♪ ♪ Growing like a flower ♪ ♪ First I am a seed ♪ ♪ Growing like a flower, flower, flower ♪ ♪ Growing like a flower ♪ ♪ Then I am a sprout ♪ ♪ Growing like a flower, flower, flower ♪ ♪ Growing like a flower ♪ ♪ Then I am a plant ♪ ♪ Growing like a flower, flower, flower ♪ ♪ Growing like a flower ♪ ♪ Now I am complete ♪ ♪ Ooh, look at me ♪ Wow, friends, you did an amazing job!

Remember, the parts of a flower are seed, sprout, plant, and then the beautiful flower.

So you can do that song anytime you want, and don't forget to show your friends and your family.

All right, friends, before we leave, let's say our affirmation.

I'm brave, I'm smart.

No one can tell me different.

When you look at me, you see the future.

Okay, friends, until next time.

Bye!

- Thank you, Ms. Southern.

I love learning all about plants, their parts, and listening to some rhyming words.

Now, speaking of rhyming words, that's our next topic right now.

Rhyming words are words that sound the same at the end.

When I was in my classroom, I used to do a chant.

Rhyming words sound the same, rhyming words sound the same.

And that's how our kiddos would remember.

So I want you to think about rhyming words.

Flower and shower.

Do you hear how they sound the same?

Flower, shower.

They both say ower.

Let's see.

Plant and ant.

Plant, ant, they both say ant.

How about sun and one?

Sun, one.

They both say un.

All right, now let's see, which one rhymes with sun?

Would it be bun, like our little old lady?

Or would it be mouse, also a character in our story?

Sun, bun, or sun, mouse?

Hmm, yes, it's sun, bun.

Those are rhyming words, and they sound the same at the end.

Now let's go to our project place, and I'll tell you, we're gonna make an activity that's gonna help you remember.

So for this activity, which is gardening for rhymes, these are the materials you'll need.

A plastic tub, bottle caps, pool noodle, and of course, a couple of optional materials to make it fancy.

You can use pipe cleaners, you can use printed pictures.

All of those won't change how this thing is used, but it'll make it look pretty.

Okay, so I was at the store where everything's a dollar, and I thought, "Hmm, what can I do with a pool noodle?"

That often happens to me.

I thought, "Oh, I'll make gardening activity!"

So this is what it's going to look like at the end.

We're gonna have some beans, or other sensory things, and we're gonna have our little plants with a little letter in the middle.

So I'm gonna show you how to make the little plants that we're gonna garden for.

And I picked a purple pool noodle because we're studying turnips, and they have some purple tones to them.

So the first thing you're gonna do is you're gonna cut up your pool noodle, so you'll need scissors for that.

Now, remember, when using scissors, you want to be extra safe and extra careful.

You want to pretend like they're crocodile jaws cutting right in front of you.

So I'm using my helper hand to hold my pool noodle, and then I'm going to cut, cut, cut.

Takes a little bit of strength.

Oh, look.

See, I've cut my pool noodle to make my little plant.

Now, of course, this is optional.

You don't need to do this, but it makes it look more like a plant.

I used a small green pipe cleaner like this, and this one's really sparkly.

And I'm going to put it through my cut-up pool noodle like this, and twist it at the end to make it look like a leaf.

Is it starting to look like a plant?

A little bit, a little vegetable, huh?

Then I discovered that you can actually take one of these little bottle caps and fit it right in the middle.

So you can use the recycled materials to squeeze it in.

Now, this would be a good activity also for figuring out, oop, it's a little hard.

How to use finger coordination to really get it in there.

And of course, when you're playing with bottle caps, you have to be extra careful for children under three years old.

They are choking hazard.

So once I have my bottle cap there, it creates a surface where I can write anything I want.

So I decided that I want to write letters, 'cause originally, I was gonna use this as a letter activity.

But I'm gonna show you in a minute how are we're gonna change it to a rhyming activity.

So I'm going to write my special letter, which is the letter L. Now, I used a marker to write L right on my bottle cap, but I also found this sticker paper at the store where everything's a dollar, and I wanted to show you how you might use that too.

So I took a bottle cap and I put it right on top, and then I'm going to trace around it.

We've been doing a lot of tracing of shapes today, haven't we?

This time we're gonna make a circle.

Then I'm gonna use my scissors very carefully to cut around where I traced, using my helper hand to keep the paper up, and then I have my little sticker paper.

Now, this is a little tricky to get off.

Miss Lara doesn't have the nails to do it, so what I used at home was just a little pair of tweezers to take it off, and you'll end up with something that looks like this, see?

All right, so in the beginning, you could use this as a letter recognition activity to help you learn your letters.

So you can go.

♪ Digging in the garden, digging in the garden ♪ And pull out a letter, it's the letter A, that's right!

But how we're gonna switch it to a rhyming activity is we can do it a couple of ways.

So the letter A, can make one of these mats, and you can look for the letter A and look for the picture next to it.

A can.

Hmm, you can say a rhyme that rhymes with can.

You can go around your house and look for something that rhymes with can.

Let's see, what if I picked the letter E?

Hmm, what is E?

E is fig.

So you can say something that rhymes with fig, or you can look around your house for something that rhymes with fig.

Is there a wig in your house?

That would rhyme, wouldn't it?

Another way you might do this, parents, is you can actually label things around your house with post-it notes, with letters.

So for example, I have a sock here, so I can label that the letter A, and then, if your child pulls out the letter A, they can actually go and find something that rhymes with sock, or any other thing that you have around your house.

You can switch it up so that kids stay interested in it.

All right, and I wanted to also mention that normally, I don't use food to play, because food is for eating, isn't it?

But I happen to have these leftover beans, and because we're here at the studio, I didn't want to make a big mess with dirt, but you can actually take your little gardening vegetables here and dig them into some dirt outside in your yard.

Then you won't need a plastic tub, and you won't need beans or Play-Doh or dirt or anything else that you put in it.

All right, my friends, I hope that you will try this activity at home, and of course, if you do, make sure you send me a picture or a letter.

I just love to receive those, and if you send your address, you get one of these fun activity books from PBS.

Thank you, PBS, for providing them.

I know I loved getting mail when I was younger.

Okay, so we're in Thursday, tomorrow's our last day of studying the enormous turnip.

We're going to be doing a fun STEM or science activity, and I'm gonna show you what an actual turnip looks like.

And we're gonna try to move that turnip to a place without using our hands.

We're really gonna have to think like scientists.

Okay, my friends, until I see you again, Miss Lara sends you a big squeeze, a big smooch, (smooches) and reminds you to read and to play and to use your imagination every single day, goodbye!

(upbeat music) ♪ Good morning to a brand new day ♪ ♪ Time to learn and games to play ♪ ♪ Learning things is so much fun ♪ ♪ Learning is good for everyone ♪ (upbeat music)