Red, White and Blue!

 Our theme this week was "Red, White and Blue" and the kids are really enjoying summer camp so far!

During summer camp, we always have a Yoga day where the school all together does a child centered yoga workout. The video we've been using is great because most of the poses are named after animals, like a bunny... sniff sniff!

We also have splash day, where all the kids put on their bathing suits and we play outside in water tables and have a fun squiggly sprinkler to run through.

The new month started, so we looked back at our weather from June and compared it to June 2013'2 weather! The kids make such great observations and we talk about similarities and differences.

We read this week: If You Give a Moose A Muffin by Laura Numeroff
                              The Pigeon Wants a Puppy by Mo Willems
                              Duck for President by Doreen Cronin
                              How To Make Apple Pie and See The World by Marjorie Priceman

Our question of the week was "What are fireworks made of?" I had them think about the question and then I called them over one by one to ask them what they thought. We got some very creative answers!

For our theme of the week, we used forks to make fireworks! They didn't believe me that they were going to paint with forks... it was fun! I found this project here on Pinterest (best invention ever!)

I also found on Pinterest this cute little star person that all the kids made!

We used marbles on paper with red, white and blue paint to make really cool art pieces.

I drew out a picture of the American Flag and the kids all painted their own. While they were doing this we talked about why our flag has that design and is those colors. It was a really cool discussion! (I found great facts here and here!) At this site, it shows the history of the flag and how it has changed over the years.

Using paper plates we made fun and festive Fourth of July hats. I originally found this project for Valentine's Day, which was so cute! It's an easy project to adjust for any special day.

Our Movie Thursday was... Frozen!! (Blue... get it?? =])

Our song of the week was "Flags Are Flying" to the tune of Frere Jacques

(C) 2001 - 2011 Jean Warren www.preschoolexpress.com

The games that we played this week at morning meeting were so fun!

We played "Alphabet Catch" with a beanbag. We toss the beanbag around the circle and the kids have to say the next letter in the alphabet. We started tossing it to the person next to use, once the kids get more comfortable with the game we'll stand in a circle and toss the beanbag across to friends.

"The Weather Changed" is a fun game. The kids decide on certain movements for weather, and we continually do the movements until the weatherman changes the weather. This week I started out as the weatherman, but I will have the kids be the weatherman too.

We played "1,2,3" which we have played before and is definitely a fan favorite! We stand in a circle and each child says 1,2 or 3 consecutive numbers starting with 1 up to 9. So for example: "1,2,3" "4" "5,6" "7,8,9" and the next child who would have to say 10 sits down and is out of the round. Then it starts back at one. My class really loves this one, and usually if we play it in the morning, I will hear them in centers or at their lunch tables playing their own facilitated versions of the game.

"Number Ball" is a lot like our alphabet catch in that we toss a beanbag to our friends. This game is a little different. The goal is to get to 30, but if the beanbag is dropped we have to start back at 1. I wonder if we will be able to get to 30 by the end of the summer?!

We are keeping up our work on our sight words! Every morning we go over around 10 of them. Once we've mastered them, they will go on our sight word wall! So exciting! We're working our way through the 220 Dolch sight word list.

We have a guest for a few weeks in our classroom... Stella the gerbil!