I sent home a note today saying each child would need to bring in a small pumpkin for an activity next week. I also said I would post the pumpkin activity so you could see what we would be doing....but it was not on the magazine's website. I will have the magazine in the classroom if you would like to see the activity.

Thanks!

gordo gorilla week!

Here are some pictures from our week with gordo!



One objective I am trying to teach the children here is that letters make up words and words make up sentences. We do this in different ways. Chase and Kylie are circling words on this poem about geese.

I gave each student a bag with the letters a-g. They were to put the letters in order. It was fun to listen to them sing the song as they completed this activity.

We couldn't pass up the opprotunity to use gold and green glitter on our g!

Chase is adding the correct labels to the pages in his "Goofy Glenda" story. Each page had a different creature that popped out of the witches black pot. Each creature's name started with /g/ so I stressed the final sound to help them distinguish which word to pick. (i.e. the /n/ in gremlin or /t/ in ghost)

Sometimes I will enunciate the sounds heavily which will probably sound pretty funny. I have heard from some parents that their child will do the same at home and today Kylie demonstrated how to sound out "necklace" for me. It is like we have our own language!! Too funny...but they are learning, right!

The weather has been absolutely beautiful and the leaves are beginning to change. Last year I took some pictures of 3 different trees nearby as their leaves changed colors and then fell off. I made these into cards for the children to see the changes the trees go through. After discussing the changes in the leaves' colors the children made their own trees.

The highlight of the week was our fieldtrip to the grocery store-Piggly Wiggly! They were so wonderful to the children! It was even fun for the adults too!

I didn't get pictures at every stop we made but here are a few. The children could get their face painted. Then we went to the floral dept. where they each got a foam turkey(it doesn't sound cute but it was;)). Then they took us to the meat dept. where the meat manager cut up a chicken for them. The children also got to feel how cold -25 degrees felt like when they went inside the big freezer!

Today when I asked the children what their favorite part of the fieldtrip,most said the cookies! Mr. Tim from the bakery let the children help decorate their own sugar cookie. When we were done they had made up a "goody bag"-from the red reusable shopping bags- for each child with 2 mylar balloons, candy, a ruler, and a group shot with the Pig. It was such a fun time!!

Here is the thank you card we made for them this morning. I want to take this fieldtrip each year!

Francy Fish week!

This week was all about /f/ and Francy Fish!

I placed objects with the /f/ sound on the table. After identifying each one(and exaggerating the /f/ sound) the children drew pictures in their booklets of /f/ words.

Addy is painting with a feather.

My children helped me color and laminate these fish. On the back I put one of our zoo animals. When the child would catch a fish they would say the sound and signal. Some I had tell me a word with that sound also.

Everyday we read the book "Rainbow Fish" . In the story the rainbow fish refuses to share his shimmering scales with his friends. He soon becomes very lonely and visits the wise octopus for advice. He instructs Rainbow Fish to share his scales with his friends. This made him very happy.

The children made their own Rainbow Fish with scales they could share with their friends. After every fish was assembled the children took turns asking their friends to share a scale with them. In the end they all had a different scale....one from each friend! Their fish turned out beautiful!

And we couldn't have a francy fish week without goldfish crackers! The children sorted their crackers and discovered which color they had the most of.

learning objectives: covers an area with shapes; cooperates with others in a group activity; uses different colors, surface textures, and shapes to create form and meaning

It's Ellie Elephant!

This week went by very quickly! I can't believe we are already 5 weeks into the school year!

Here are a few pictures from our adventures with Ellie Elephant!
On Mondays (during Circle Time) I introduce the animal/signal/sound we will focus on for that week. While the children are playing in centers I will work individually or with a small group talking about the letter again, the animal, its sound. We will look at how the letter is formed and depending on the ability of the child we may look at some words that have that sound in them or the child may practice identifying the letter. I encourage them to take the paper home and share with their family the sound and signal of our weekly animal. If the sound is an easy one to detect(and again if the child is ready) I will encourage them to look for words at home that have that sound in them. It takes time for a child's ear to be trained to hear certain sounds in words.

Here the children are exploring an egg. We looked at a book about a duck coming from an egg. We talked about what might come out of a chicken egg. Then I gave them each an egg and a magnifying glass. We talked about what the shell looked like. Then they cracked their egg into their tray so they could examine it. Afterwards we made a venn diagram write down their observations.

We used the leftover eggshells(plus the ones you all sent in....THANKS!) to break into small pieces and cover an "e".

Ellie Elephant's signal is her grabbing a peanut with her trunk and putting it in her mouth. So when we signal /e/ our arm is the trunk and we pretend we are bringing a peanut to our mouth while saying /e/. We did some math work using peanuts as counters.

Since we were on the number 5 I introduced 5 pennies = 1 nickel. Here they are looking for different letters and numbers on their coins.

The children created their own "Ellie Elephants" using paper plates. We talked about how to get the color grey by mixing black and white together.

The finished Ellie...complete with a peanut!

learning objectives: begins to demonstrate part of and whole with real objects; enjoys listening to and responding to books; becomes increasingly sensitive to the sounds of spoken words; counts concrete objects to five or higher; shares observations and findings with others through pictures, discussions, or dramatizations

Scholastic Book Orders

I have set up an account so you can place your Scholastic Book Club order on-line. You may still order them using the paper form and giving me a check. After all orders are placed the books will be shipped to the preschool and I will distribute them when they arrive. Our class gets points for every order that we can use towards free books for the classroom!

Click here to get started.
Our class username is : learningadventures08
password: preschool

I am going to create a link to this post on the side so if you decide to place an order you can locate our username and password from there.

Thanks!

fun with dee-dee deer

This week I didn't seem to take as many pictures as I normally do! We had a great week filled with lots of learning opprotunities so maybe we were just too busy to stop and smile for the camera!

The children made a drum this week. First they painted the outside and then added dog, dinosaur and dot stickers. They used a dum-dum succor as a drumstick to drum the syllables of words with the /d/ sound.

The children each picked out 4 dinosaurs. Then they were to trade with their friends but had to use descriptive words when asking for a certain dino(i.e. the one with a long neck or 3 horns). I tried to get them to think of other descriptions besides colors. On Thursday we made towers from the unifix cubes that were 4 blocks high(last week they were 3 blocks high). The children were really getting into making patterns with their 4 cubes and also making a pattern from the colored cube that was on top as their cubes were lined up side by side.

To review the animal sounds I laid the large animal cards on the table. I would give a child a stuffed animal and they had to match it with the card and then tell me the sound it made.

Another concept I introduced to the children was time. Specifically what is a day and the days of the week. We started singing a song to learn the days of the week and read some great books about what happens during the day. This is a concept that we will be talking about every week.

Ask your child to sing the song "Today is Monday"....you may have heard them singing part of it already:)

learning objectives: begins to understnad simple number sentences; begins to distinguish between words with similiar sounds; begins to use descriptive words to describe objects; begins to understand the concept of time

Catina Cat week

This week we learned all about Catina Cat's sound. C is a tricky letter since it has a hard (cat) and soft(circle) sound but we will just focus on the hard sound of each letter. it is so fun to hear them recognize words with the "catina cat" sound at the beginning of a word and especially in the middle or end!

Here the children are practicing their "3" and they drew 3 objects on their paper.


The children created their own calico cats. We looked on-line at different pictures of calico cats to see their black, brown and white coloring. Then I gave the children those 3 colors to create their cats. After the plates dried, the other features were added.

I got out the unifix cubes for the children to make groups of 3. We counted, measured, and compared our blocks to our neighbors. One child was creating a whole row of 3's so we all joined her to make a "wall" of 3's!

Here the children are waiting for their "c" cookies to cool off. They each had some cookie dough that they shaped into a "c".

Each week there is a math rhyme that goes along with the letter and number. I would like for the students to create a mini-book with these rhymes so they can share them with their families. For the students who were ready I cut the rhyme apart and they put it back together.

learning objectives: matches objects that are alike; recognizing shapes; attempts to connect words to use a variety of forms of writing; begins to make size comparisons between objects