Up in the Sky!

 Our theme this week was "Up in the Sky"! The kids are loving summer camp! We have so much free time that we can extend play if needed/wanted, have longer discussions and go completely off task if we want!

During summer camp, we always have  Yoga day where the school  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 turtle... hello!

 (This turtle was rescued from the middle of the road by one of our teachers, and promptly returned to the woods after this picture :))

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.

We also have some older children that have joined our class for the summer. While my kids are having their rest in the middle of the day, these children have extra play time out of the room and they also work on some practice sheets that I got from the Summer Bridge Books for K-1 and 1-2. They are great worksheets to keep the older kids practicing their skills over the summer! I love the Pk-K book and I use it through out the year for their letter worksheets.

We read this week: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett
                              Little Cloud by Eric Carle
                              Duck by Randy Cecil
                              Polar Opposites by Erik Brooks
                              Up and Down by Oliver Jeffers

Our question of the week was "Why do you love the summer?"I tried this week to call them over one by one so that they had to think about the question, not just repeat what another friend said.

For our theme of the week,we used the ice paint again! We used it a few weeks ago inside, but decided this time to paint outside! It was a race against the heat!! The kids were challenged to paint something that they saw in the sky while we were out there. I love the way these turned out!

Using some dish soap, water and pipe cleaners we made bubbles! I challenged the kids to make a bubble that was not round, so they quickly got to work manipulating their pipe cleaner wands into new shapes. They seemed to catch on pretty quickly that they were only getting round bubbles, so then we started to observe the behavior of the bubbles; some went right to the ground, some floated, the colors we saw, how quickly they popped, etc.

Once we came back inside we sat down as a group and wrote up a "lab report". I talked about hypotheses, experiments and conclusions, and they loved being called scientists!

I like to keep working on our social play during the summer when we have downtime, so one of our afternoon activities was partner puzzles. I have a giant basket of small puzzles (mostly from the Dollar Tree) that are bagged. With a partner they pick puzzles and complete them. Very simple activity but they are working on so many skills like compromise, conflict resolution, sharing, taking turns and so much more!!

We brainstormed as a class different things that we have seen or could see up in the sky. After we compiled our list, the kids decided what they wanted to draw, then we made a class book! I make these little books a few times throughout the year and the kids really do love looking through them with their parents at pickup and throughout the day with their friends. I love when my kids are so proud of the work that they have done. Plus, it makes a great keepsake! I have all our class books from last year that I love to look through and so does my class this year.

We wrote in our journals about the places we would like in an airplane. England, here I come! :)

 While my class writes in their journals, the older children (K and 1st grade) write a reading response log about the book that we read that day!

Gazing at the clouds while laying in the grass is an awesome activity for an Up in the Sky theme! They had fun trying to see shapes in the clouds, and then wrote about what they saw!

We played my favorite game growing up... keep the balloon off the ground! So fun!

And our movie for the week was.... can you guess.... UP!

Our song of the week was "Great Big Rainbow" to the tune of I'm a Little Teapot.

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

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

We played "Body Drumming". Using only our bodies, we do different motions to make sound and rhythm. I model first and either make a pattern for the children to follow or I have them follow a sequence of 3 or 4 motions. Then I will pick a few children to be the leaders. I love this activity because it's something a little different, you can't get "out" and it's fun to see them trying to focus on when the motion is going to change.

"Pop!" is a really fun game, and definitely a favorite. We stand in a circle and each child says one number as we go around. But each round there is a pop number. Instead of saying that number, you POP! the person that would be next, out. We work very hard on having good sportsmanship, and the kids have fun even if they're out because they know they get to play again in the next round!

We played "I have, who has?" which I originally saw being played in a Montessori class. It's so cool to see the children take over the game and help their friends follow along. I currently have two versions that we play, but I am planning on making maybe a shape themed one, numbers and maybe a grab-bag of random things. That might be fun! This week we played Colors and the Alphabet.

"Just Like Me" is a great game when a child is feeling a little bit sad or just to get the class feeling like a group! I start by modeling with a few statements, i.e, I like vanilla ice cream. If a child also like vanilla ice cream, they stand up and yell, "just like me!" After I model a few statements like that, I will pick a few children to be the leader. It's so cool to see them thinking about what they want to say!

We played "Crocodile by the Lake". I found the idea for this game last year and adapted it to be my own. I turned a box into a crocodile with bulletin and construction paper, then filled it with little cards that have a letter, number or shape on them. The children have to reach into the crocodile's mouth (while he's sleeping of course), pull out a card and name what's there. Also hidden in the belly of the crocodile though are SNAP cards (the crocodile wakes up and SNAPS his mouth shut!). Once we pull three SNAP cards, the game is over!

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 had a visiting guest one day this week... Lincoln!