Music! (S, 16, Black)

Our theme last week was "Music" and we focused on the letter S, number 16 and color black.

We read this week: Splat Sings Flat by Rob Scotton
                               Stellaluna by Janell Cannon
                               The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss
                               Sitting Ducks by Michael Bedard
                               Bear Feels Scared by Karma Wilson

Our question of the week was "What can you make music with?" I was expecting this to be a little more of a challenging question, but it seems that my class has a good knowledge of instruments!

For our theme of the week, we danced a lot. Every afternoon we had a little dance party by the computer, which is always a lot of fun.

Using the different instruments that we have the in our classroom (tambourines, maracas and a couple drums) we made patterns. We started with our hands, clapping and hitting the floor to different patterns and rhythms, then we added the instruments. The kids liked trying to follow and name my patterns, but they really had fun making up their own, like an A,A,B,C,C,C,C,C,C,C pattern that someone made up. =]

We talked about the color black, and we sang "We know the Color Black"

"We know the color black,
We know the color black,
Tires, Crows and Licorice too!
We know the color black."
I got it from here!
After we learned the words, we named other things that were black and sang those too.

When we focus on a color I love to do "color hunts" in our classroom. Each child takes a turn to walk

around the classroom and bring back something that they found that is black. Here is what we found.

Diluting black acrylic paint to more of a watercolor consistency, we made nighttime pictures. The kids colored a picture at the bottom of the page, then used white crayon to make stars. Last they brushed on the black to make the stars appear. They were so excited to see the "magic" happen!

When we worked on our number activities, we practiced writing the number and word for the number 16.

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.

For our letter activities, we used our handwriting sheet for the letter Ss from this book.

They practiced recognizing the letter S.

The students wrote in their journals for the letter S.

We turned a S into a Snake! This book is great.

We played with our letter S envelope game. putting the petals on the sunflower. To see the entire
alphabet of envelopes, check out this post from a few weeks ago.

The children colored, cut and put together their own books about sunshine. When looking at them I could almost feel that warm sun!

We acted out a poem about a sunflower growing from a mailbox book. we started out as little seeds, and then grew big and tall. They wanted to do it again and again!

"A sunflower starts as a tiny seed. (crouch down small like a seed)

soil, sun and water are what it needs. (pretend to pat soil around feet)

A sunflower sprouts from something small- (kneel with arms out)

To something strong and straight and tall!" (stand tall, arms straight out)

I made sock cards for us to play memory with. That game has always been a hit in my class. They love any version of it, especially one with some crazy socks.

For our alphabet wall we made snails!

Here are the words we came up with this week!

Up next week: "Weather" and a focus on the letter Tt, number 17 and color purple.