Keep Calm and Teach On: Creepy Crawlies! (G, 4, Hexagon)

Our theme this week was "Creepy Crawlies" and we focused on the letter Gg, the number 4 and the shape hexagon.

We read this week: The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle
                               Grandpas are for Finding Worms by Harriet Ziefert
                               Grandmas are for Giving Tickles by Harriet Ziefert
                               Curious George by Margret and H.A. Rey
                               King Bidgood's in the Bathtub by Audrey Wood

Our question of the week was "What is your favorite song to sing?"

for our theme of the week, we did all sorts of activities dealing with bugs and crawly, creepy things. Yuck!

We sang the 'Itsy Bitsy Spider" and made spider webs! They came out so cute! First I gave the kids a square of newsprint paper and told them to ... scribble!! I also told them that this was probably going to be the only time they heard that out of my mouth, so to take advantage. =]. I folded the paper for them and drew lines for them to cut on. Everyone had to try to cut their paper by themselves first, and if they needed i was there to help. Then we unfolded and even though they knew it was going to be a web, each child was so happy with how cool theirs was!

I make sure to take my kids outside at least once a day unless it's pouring rain... I love being outside and so do they! We took advantage of our beautiful fall weather and dug around for worms. (I have to say, I don't know what's in the dirt there.. but those worms could moonlight as small snakes.. I've never seen such big worms... shudder.)

We played with play doh and I challenged the kids to make me some bugs. When we do activities like this I make sure that I'm not pressuring them to make an exact replica of a butterfly or something. I want them to make their own creation, but then they have to walk me through how it is a big. Where are it's legs, antennae, eyes, what kind of bug is it... these are all things that they have to tell me.

Here's my bug....

We marched around outside and sang "The Ants go Marching".

We walked around outside trying to find bugs to see what they do in their natural habitats. Look what we found!

We talked a lot this week about the shape hexagon. I found this cool song on Pinterest to the tune of "Head, shoulders, knees and toes."

"A hexagon has 6 sides, has 6 sides.

A hexagon has 6 sides, has 6 sides,

The sides are equal and angles are the same.

A hexagon has 6 sides, has 6 sides!"

The kids practiced recognizing hexagons out of other shapes.

When we worked on our number activities, we practiced writing the number and word for the number 4.

I made these worksheets that reinforces the one to one concept. The kids practice writing the number and have to color a square for each picture that they see. (I forgot to get a picture)

For our letter activities, we used our handwriting sheet for the letter G, and 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 G.

We made a class list of animals and colors that started with the letter G. Then the kids each picked what they wanted to make for a page in our class book.

We played "Goose Egg on the Loose", also known as hot potato but with a plastic Easter egg.

We painted "Shades of Green" I put spots of green and white paint on their papers and they used their paintbrushes to spread it out and mix the colors together. When they were done, we pointed out the different shades that they made.