We read this week: Corduroy by Don Freeman
Curious George Goes Camping by Margret and H.A. Reys
The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss
The Pout Pout Fish by Deborah Diesen
The Pout Pout Fish in the Big Big Dark by Deborah Diesen
Our question of the week was "What is something that you're not so good at?" We talked about not being good at something is not always a bad thing, that with practice we can always get better. Some children raised their hands multiple times to tell me things. I love when we get a great discussion going like that.
In the beginning of the year I always like to have the students practice tracing and writing their names. I found this great website that lets me put in the words that I want them to practice. I choose the largest text and it gives three lines of tracing and one where they have to write the letters on their own. I like to do this activity a few times a year and keep them in their portfolios to see the improvement in their writing over the course of the school year.
For our theme of the week, we talked a lot about our different feelings, why we feel them and how to deal with them.
We made "Happy Cards" I found the idea at this blog. The kids loved getting smiley faces painted on their hands. After they made their hand prints, I asked them to tell me "Things that make me smile"and I scribed what they said.
We made water color relief sad faces. They used white crayons to draw sad faces on white paper. Then they used blue watercolor paint to make the faces "appear"! They loved the "magic" and it got us talking about why blue is a color associated with sadness.
We made our own class feelings book. In the same idea as those emotion posters, we practiced making happy, sad, mad and worried faces. Then I took their pictures for each child with each face, then turned it into a book! I got the idea from a blog online that I know can't find :(.
I cut out circles in different colors (blue, orange, red and green) and we talked about what happy, sad, mad and worried/scared faces look like. Then I asked them to make each circle into one of those faces. I let them decide which colors to make each face.
We talked a lot this week about the shape triangles. We sang the song:
"Triangles, triangles, triangles I see,
Count the points and count the sides,
Count them 1,2,3
Triangles triangles, just for you and me,
Count the points and count the sides,
Count them 1,2,3!
-Found here, to the tune of 'twinkle twinkle'
The kids practiced drawing triangles with this cool worksheet of triangles and squares, which I found here. We also worked on recognizing triangles among of other shapes.
For our letter activities, we used our handwriting sheet for the letter C, the sheet that helps work on letter recognition, both are from books that are mentioned in the "All About Me" post. The students also wrote in their journals for the letter C.
From one of The Mailbox books, I got the idea of having the students make a "C Collection" book.
We turned C's into Caterpillars!
We also made Crocodile Puppets!
For our alphabet wall we made clouds of white paint on blue paper. I showed the kids examples of the three main kinds of clouds (Stratus, Cumulus and Cirrus). We talked about the differences, where they are and what they look like. Then each child got to make their own cloud.
Our list for words beginning with C's was very impressive. Here it is!
