Thursday, March 26, 2009

Vegetables!

For our /v/ week we learned all about vegetables! We used the book Tops and Bottoms by Janet Stevens as the basis of our study for the week. It is a great book about a lazy bear and a hard-working rabbit.
I brought a variety of fresh vegetables that we used for different activities from counting and painting!
After exploring the vegetables, we cut them apart and used them for painting.
The previous week we talked about what is underground and discussed different plant roots. I planted a few pea seeds previously that we dug up to see how the roots were growing. Then the children all picked a vegetable seed to plant in their own pot.
We also created this vegetable mural. Each child was to make a root vegetable and one that grows above ground like the ones Rabbit planted for Bear. We had potatoes, carrots, radishes, and even a head of lettuce! We looked at pictures of the internet of the roots and tops of the vegetable they chos; then I gave them some options on how they could create their vegetable. I am always amazed at their creativity and indivuality! I had a few ideas on how to make the corn roots but what they chose looked way better than my ideas....and I love how it was their own!
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learning objectives: observes changes in weather; begins to recognize that living things have similar needs for water, food and ait; begins to perform simple investigations; uses various materials to create artwork;

Monday, March 23, 2009

Spring

We had a great week learning about Spring....but I could not find all my pictures so I will just explain most of the activities!!
I found a great song/poem that we recited each day. It had 3 verses that talked about how we know it's Spring by what we see, hear and feel. Each day we would focus on a particular verse and take a walk outside to discover what that verse described. Then the children drew a picture of their findings in their Spring Journal . Some of the pictures they drew were flowers, bees and leaves for what they could see; birds and bees for what they could hear; rain and sunshine for what they could feel.
This was followed by another activity-a craft- that went along with the verse of the song. For what we could see the children made flowers using coffee filters and water color paint. For what we could hear the children made birdfeeders out of cereal and pipe cleaners to feed the birds! For what we could feel we made the wind socks...that is what Trent is playing with in the picture above.
Another activity we did for "what we can feel" was to make wind painting using paint and a hairdryer. At first I diluted the paint a little and we discovered that it was too thick to move with the "wind". Together we discovered how thin the paint needed to be for it to move in the wind and how fast it would move.
We also experimented with different objects blowing in the wind. It was such a fun week and I sure wish I had more pictures to show for it!!
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Monday, March 16, 2009

Underground

This week we focused on the sound /u/. The animal that goes with U is the Umbrellabird. This is actually a bird found in Central and South AMerica. We call her "Umber". In our study of this sound we focused on what is underground!
First we learned a song about the wonders found underground such as foxes, mice, ants, worms, rocks, sticks, seeds, etc. This led into a discussion about seeds. We will be planting seeds in the near future.
I purchased a few different seeds for the children to sort.

One fun animal that lives underground are earthworms. For this math game the children had 5 gummy worms that they were to hide under their "ground"-the brown paper. I would pretend to be a bird and try to eat their worms....unless they were hiding underground! Check the next post to see the worm farms the children made!

learning objectives: begins to use words that indicate where things are in space;recognizes and reproduces simple patterns using concrete objects; sorting.

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Worm Farms!

On Monday the children helped me create a class worm farm. We cut a 2 liter bottle in half and then scooped layers of sand and potting soil. Then we added 2 earthworms and covered the bottles with black construction paper.
In our reading about earthworms we learned how beneficial they are to plants, how they hate sunlight and how they mix the soil together as they dig their tunnels. We were going to give them 2 days to mix the soil and dig tunnels!
Isabel would have carried her worm around in her pocket if she could!
On Tuesday we made predictions of what the worms were doing. Then we compared our predictions to what really was happening on the next day when we uncovered the bottle. We weren't able to see many tunnels....maybe we needed more worms in there? The process sure was fun though and this was an activity that everyone enjoyed!!
We also took a couple of nature walks to discover what was under rocks and sticks and dirt. We did find some ants and termites! Then we came in and the children created a picture of different items that are underground. The children also LOVED digging for buried treasure last week.
learning objectives: begins to use words that indicate where things are in space; describes observations; asks questions about objects, events and organisms.
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More Seuss...

Here we are making patterns and matching colors with red and white!
In the book "Hop on Pop" there were lots of action words. I found this idea for "Exer-dice" on the internet. The colored cube has pictures of different movements (running, walking, crawling, etc). One child would roll the cube and the other the die. The die would tell us how many circles we would complete while doing the movement. This was a huge hit!
"The Foot Book" is full of opposites! Here the children are making their own book with opposites.
This book was requested the most. It was my first Dr. Seuss book that I remember checking out from the school library! After reading, the children drew a picture of what they might see on Mulberry Street.
learning objectives: explores moving in space; enjoys listening to and discussing storybooks; frequently requests the re-reading of books; percieves differences between similar sounding words.
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Thursday, March 5, 2009


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Dr. Seuss

This week we focused on the wonderful literature of Dr. Seuss!! We started out the week with the book The Cat in the Hat. The children made their own cats and hats. We talked about the problem the children had in the book(it was a rainy day and they couldn't go out to play) and what they would do on a rainy day.


We tried balancing objects like the Cat did in the book.
The most exciting part of the day was when The Cat came to visit!! The Cat(aka Sue Harris) read Green Eggs and Ham to the children and then they got to eat green eggs(only 3 wanted to even try!)
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