Holiday Fun

The month of December was spent doing fun holiday activites. We did talk about /l/ and lizzy lizard a little because the children were talking about our next letter! They love their animal friends! Here are a few pictures of some of our activities!



Making candy cane ornaments with pony beads and pipe cleaners!

Sorting and counting with the number 12.

One of our big projects was making playdough ornaments to hand out at Popular Creek-an assisted living home in town. Here Kylie and Chase helped me measure and mix the ingredients.

They all had a great time painting and decorating the ornaments!

Here Isabel is decorating her Christmas tree.

Chase and Addy are playing a counting game with numbered stockings. The cards have "presents" on them with a cooresponding number. They were to match the card with the stockings. We also played addition games with the cards.

For our service project we gathered items to send to the troops fighting to keep us free. The children also colored a picture for the soldiers to also go in the boxes.

The children practiced singing holiday songs to perform at Popular Creek. They residents were so grateful that the children came and shared some holiday magic with them. Here they are shaking their bells to "Jingle Bells".

The residents love the hugs and ornaments!

I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!

learning objectives: experiments with new language sounds; recognizes initial sounds; identifies 10 or more printed letters; predicts what comes next in a patters; combines, separates, and names "how many" concrete objects; predicts what will happen next based on previous experience; uses a variety of material to create original artwork.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had some special visitors Monday to share with us how the Thanksgiving tradition got started.

Mrs. Harris told us the story about the pilgrims coming to this country on the Mayflower. She brought along her indian friend "Runs Alot".

The children listened so well!

Today we talked about what Mrs. Harris taught us about the Pilgrims and the children made their own Mayflower ships. We also talked about the indians and wrote our own Indian story using Native American symbols.

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

kayo kangaroo week

Here are some of the activities we did this week!

This book has been requested everyday for storytime. It is about a firemen trying to fix thanksgiving dinner but during the day they are interrupted numerous times by calls to put out fires. The children started acting out the story with the dress-up clothes Mrs. Harris made for the class.

Kylie is the dispatcher who took the calls. She then told the fireman where the fire was and who was hurt. Dr. Trent and nurse Chase are ready to take care of the patients when they arrive.

Officer Addy is transporting the victims with Firemans Todd and Isabel.

Dr. Kylie is writing a presctiption for Pee-Wee Penguin while Nurse Addy keeps him calm. Trent is manning the phones this time. They loved taking turns with each part.

We have a number line on the wall that we add to each week. Here the children were making their own number line.

We did some counting with kittens. The older children worked with number sentences and some wrote their own. The younger students just counted with the kittens.

I have begun to work with the older students on auditory discrimination. Here we were working on beginning and ending sounds. I would call out a word and they would hold up a sign to indicate whether the /k/ sound came at the beginning or the end. Another listening game we started playing this week is called the "Silly Name Game". We took the /k/ sound and put it in front of everyone's name(or different words)....so Todd became Kodd; Isabel became Kisabel; table became kable.

This activity was to help the children "see" what 11 looks like. They would sort the objects, line them up and count. For some children we are working on one-to-one coorespondence with this actitvity. For others it may be the sorting skill or left-to-right counting.

Addy is paiting her turkey. First they painted their hand brown and added orange, red and yellow feathers.

Trent created his kayo kangaroo complete with a pouch for holding words /k/ words.

learning objectives: perceives differences between similiar sounding words; identifies the beginning sounds in words are the same; begins to create and invent words by substituting one sound for another; begins to recreate stories using simple props

jerry jellyfish week

Here are a few highlights from our week with /j/ and "jerry jellyfish"!



First we created a collage from cold weather clothing.

We did some math activities using jellybeans...

First we sorted the colors to see which color we had the most of. Then we did some number sentences that were in the number 10 math family. This was a little much for them but it doesn't hurt to try!

We also created our own jerry's using the crayon resistant technique. First the children drew on their jellyfish with crayons. Then they brushed water colors over the paper. It gave their creatures a cool look!

Then they added crepe paper tentacles and google eyes.

Isabel giving her "jerry" his tentacles. She loved her jellyfish and didn't want to hang it in the classroom!

Next we created an ocean habitat for our jellyfishes by finger-painting blue paint on a banner.

Addy and Trent really got into this! Thank goodness the paint is washable! I didn't think they would get it on their clothes or I would have put on the painting shirts!

Here is the finished product! I think they turned out so cute!

learning objectives:

The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything!

As part of our Halloween party the children presented the book "The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything" by Linda Williams. The children practiced very hard and were excited about showing off for their parents. Chase asked me if he should make a sign for the door. Of course I agreed that it was a fabulous idea! He wrote out the title of the book and then Kylie wrote the names of all the performers.

I did get a video of the performance but unfortunatley it was deleted before I got it transferred to the computer!! I was so sad about that! So you will just have to take my word for it....it was adorable!

inny inchworm

Here are the highlights of our week with inny inchworm.

The children created an inny puppet and on the outside they either stamped their bags with inny's and/or added pictures with the /i/ sound in them.

One word we focused on this week was insects. We looked at books with insects and discussed what makes an insect. The main characteristics we studied were 3 body parts, 6 legs and 2 antennae. The children looked for insects around their house to bring in for us to study using our magnify glasses. Then we created our own insects using pom-poms and pipe cleaners. Isabel loved everyone's creations and would often say "what a cute little fella!".

Here the children are creating the dirt for their "icky" snack. I gave them some chocolate pudding and a gummi worm. They crushed their orea to make the dirt. It was icky!

Here the children are looking for the 3 body parts, six legs and 2 antennae of the bugs they brought from home.

We also did a sorting activity with pictures of insects and animals.

We also discussed what an inch was. We looked at a ruler and talked about what it was used for. I gave each student some 1 inch squares numbered 1-9. They put them in order and then drew a head on another square to make inny inchworm. We will do other activities dealing with measurement in the future.

Here Addy is sorting her pictures. We also sorted little plastic animals and insects.

We signed up for a leaf exchange this month. We mail out 1-2 leaves(laminated) from our area to everyone on the list and they will mail us a couple of leaves from their area. Here the children and I put together a puzzle of the USA and we pointed to each state as we stamped the envelopes.

I also have this USA map on the wall where we will put a sticker on each state we get a leaf from.

learning objectives: uses different colors, surfaces textures, and shapes to create form and meaning; participates in group activites involving movement; enjoys listening to and responding to books; counts by ones to 10 or higher; gathers information using simple tools; identifies similarities and diffferences amond objects and organisms.

Halloween week

This week we focused on lots of fun Halloween learning activities!

First we painted a small pumpkin to turn into a scarry bat!

OOhhhhh....they are fierce! It was fun putting these together!

I had Kylie take a picture of the process of making our spiders but then didn't get a pic of the finished product! We read "The Very Busy Spider" by Eric Carle, counted how many legs spiders have and then created our own creepy-crawly. We painted only the 4 fingers on each hand so when we pressed them on the paper it would make 4 legs on each side. THe children added eyes to their spiders and I hung them from the ceiling and doorway! They turned out very cute!

Here the children are completing simple number sentences and counting activities using Halloween stickers as counters.

Here we all are dressed in our costumes at the party. The children acted out "The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything" for the parents. I wanted to post the video but I accidentally deleted it from my camera!! We are going to do it again next week and get another video....which will be better because the children got a little nervous with everyone wathcing!

learning objectives: attempts to write messages as part of playfun activity; understands that writing is used to communicate ideas and information; begins to share and cooperate in group activities; begins to engage in dramatic play with others

Honey Horse

With the weather changing and the leaves turning colors we have been talking about the season of Fall. The children have been using different items to illustrate a book "Falling Leaves". Each page had a different colored leaf that needed to be brought to life! Here the children are covering their yellow leaf with tissue paper squares.

For the orange leaf Addy is mixing yellow and red together. We used glitter, markers and dead leaves to illustrate the other pages.

Here is their honey horse math rhyme. For some of the students I gave them 2-3 honey horses not cut apart and asked them if they had 2 already... how many more would they need to make 8. Then I would write that number sentence on their paper.

The children are using honeycomb cereal as counters in these activities.

We also discussed habitats this week. Each day we would take a few of our zoo phonic animals and sort them into 2 categories-land habitats or water habitats. Then they made this flip book.

They had fun observing these pumpkins with their magnifying glasses!

Here Addy is tracing a honey horse with honey. Every child learns differently so I try to provide various activities to cover all learning styles.

Our last activity for the week was to decorate a hat with words having honey horse words or pictures of those words. If the children were able they could stamp honey horse words onto their hat. It is fun to watch their face light up when they realize they can sound out a word and it make sense!

They all wanted their picture taken with their hats! It was a fun week!

learning objectives: shows a steady increase in listening and speaking vocabulary; listens to tapes shows an understanding through gestures, actions, and/or language; becomes increasingly sensitive to sounds of spoken words; begins to make some letter sound matches; begins to name "how many" in groups of 3 by not counting; describes properties of objects and characteristics of living things; uses a variety of materials to create original artwork.