Winter Numberland!

Our theme for the last week of December was "Winter Numberland". Because our school had a half day for New Years Eve and was closed for New Years Day, we did not talk about a letter, number or shape. *We also had a snow day because of storm Hercules, so we did not get to do all of our planned activities.* Yikes! It was such a short week, only 2 1/2 days!

  

We read this week: Chicka Chicka 1, 2, 3 by Bill Martin Jr.
                               1, 2, 3 To the Zoo by Eric Carle
                               How Do Dinosaurs Count to 10 by Jane Yolen
                               1-2-3 Peas by Keith Baker

We also got to compare December weather from 2012 and 2013. I love doing this, and so do the kids. It's really cool how they are starting to look more at the weather patterns rather than just the actual paper or colors.

Our question of the week was "What is your wish for the new year?" This kids had fun thinking about their answers during morning meeting. What they answered then, they wrote in their journals too.

Our song of the week was "The Months of the Year" I remember singing this when I was little too. To the tune of "10 Little Indians"

"January, February, March and April,

May, June, July, August and September,

October, November and December,

These are the months of the year!"

For our theme of the week, we did a lot with numbers!
We started off the week by painting with number stencils. The kids had fun painting on their numbers and then asking what they had created.

This was a challenging activity, but we worked through it! We used the letter clues in the number words to figure out what number it was. I was so proud of my kids on this one, even though it was super tough, they stuck through and were really happy with themselves when they finished.

We sang the song "5 Little Ducks" by Raffi. When we do this we make little duck puppets and then act out the song while we sing. It's so fun to quack!

To celebrate New Years Eve, we played Bingo with a board that I created.

*I just had to share this project. Another class in the school did it and I think it's so cute!*
The teacher cut out the outline of an elephant for the kids to color, and then used noise makers for the trunk. What a cute project for New Years!

We also practiced counting backward from 10. To help with this I used my math "junk boxes". I got this idea from here. Basically I went to the dollar store and bought some small containers, then I filled them with small items: beads, legos, fun erasers, pieces of ribbon, etc. We pull these out whenever we want to quick count something or practice our addition and subtraction beginning skills. UPDATE: I changed the actual containers and they're so much more compact! See them here.

Singing "10 Little Monkeys" is also a fun way to practice counting back from 10.

We made Fruit Loop necklaces with some cereal and yarn. I taped off one end of the yarn so it would be easier for my kids to string the cereal.

To get the blood pumping, we practiced counting with hops! My kids had so much fun doing that they wanted me to call out 100 so they could hop 100 times! I was a little tired by that point so we only went as high as 30.

*Here is an update on our pumpkins! We planted them the week of Halloween*
I've been watering them , and I'm a little sad to say that the plants that sprouted out of the first pumpkin all died. =[. On the other hand, the second pumpkins sprouts seem to be doing marvelously. I just hope they can stick it out! Any tips?

Up next week, we're back in the swing of things: "Hibernation", the letter Nn, number 11 and brown!