Duck and Goose, It's Time for Christmas! by Tad Baker
How Santa Got His Job by Stephen Krensky
Bear Stays Up for Christmas by Karma Wilson
Fletcher and the Snowflake Christmas by Julia Rawlinson
In our sensory table we popped popcorn! They had so much fun watching the popcorn air pop, and grabbing it as soon as it shot out. We played with just the popcorn for a little bit, and then I added some christmas finger puppets.
The color of the week: grey was a lot of fun to explore. We talked about things that are the color grey and went on a hunt around our classroom to find things that are grey.
We sang "Three Grey Mice" to the tune of three blind mice.
Three grey mice, three grey mice,
Oh how nice, oh how nice.
They ran around the house at night,
They found some cheese and had a bite,
The farmer's wife turned on the light,
As three grey mice, ran from sight.
For the number of the week: 9 we started off by counting to and backward from nine. They love doing this every day and when we get to the end of counting backward, they all scream blast off!! ;) The kids also practiced writing the number and word for nine.
When I started in my room I found some papers in my room I found a random number page like this from education.com, so I made my own for the number 9. The children have to practice writing the number and then color in that number of squares. What a great way to introduce graphing and helps them to work on their one-to-one correspondence.
From The Complete Book of Numbers and Counting, I found this picture to color using a key of the number 9.
For our theme "North Pole", we decorated Christmas lights to help make our classroom a little more festive. I drew the outline of a bulb and let the kids decorate them however they wanted.
We sang the song "Jingle Bells" a lot! and very loudly.... very loudly.
The kids also made reindeer art with construction paper, google eyes, q-tips and pom poms. I found the idea for this project here! On that page their is other great ideas for using triangles in winter art projects.
This week we started working on the kid's Christmas gifts to their parents. One of our teachers found the idea here, and we thought it would be great if all the classes made the same gift. To start this week, we made the salt dough and cut out the shapes. Then the children pressed their thumbprints into the trees and we baked them at a low temperature for a few hours. DONT FORGET TO MAKE A HOLE FOR HTE RIBBON BEFORE YOU BAKE. Narrowly avoided a catastrophe there!
The oven at school doesn't have a very accurate thermometer, so i just checked them constantly until they were not soft anymore, but before they began to brown.
For wrapping for our gifts, I drew the outlines of a gingerbread house onto a white paper bag that the children each colored. I thought that would be a festive, unique way to wrap the gifts for their parents. Check out last year's post, where we used brown bags to see which way you like the most!
We sang the song "Jingle Bells" a lot! and very loudly.... very loudly.
The kids also made reindeer art with construction paper, google eyes, q-tips and pom poms. I found the idea for this project here! On that page their is other great ideas for using triangles in winter art projects.
This week we started working on the kid's Christmas gifts to their parents. One of our teachers found the idea here, and we thought it would be great if all the classes made the same gift. To start this week, we made the salt dough and cut out the shapes. Then the children pressed their thumbprints into the trees and we baked them at a low temperature for a few hours. DONT FORGET TO MAKE A HOLE FOR HTE RIBBON BEFORE YOU BAKE. Narrowly avoided a catastrophe there!
The oven at school doesn't have a very accurate thermometer, so i just checked them constantly until they were not soft anymore, but before they began to brown.
Salt Dough
2 cups flour
1 cup salt
1 cup warm water
When the trees were baked and cooled, I used Modge Podge to seal the surface where we will paint next week.
The letter of the week: L activities that we worked on this week were were lots of fun! Usually to start off the letter, I would use a the page from, Sounds Like fun, Phonemic Awareness, but I actually found a page in a Mailbox Letter of the Week book that I preferred, because it had more words for the children to work with. They had to decide which pictures were of things that began with "L", color them, cut them out, and then glue them onto "Ladybug's Leaf".
While playing outside I yelled out some words. If it began with the "L" sound, the children had to leap across the area. It really got their blood pumping!
I created envelope games for each letter of the alphabet. I adapted them from activities from Mailbox Letter of the Week projects, both book one and two. The children had to place the "L" leaves on the tree. All the other letters? Fall came a bit early!
As we work through the alphabet, the children make projects to go on our "alphabet wall". It's a very fun way for the class to see the alphabet in a new way. This week we glued green tissue paper squares to construction paper and made leaves to make our trees extra leafy!
The children turned a capital letter L into a lion. I got the idea from the book Alphabet and Counting from Twin Sister Productions. They give tips for how to make it a glue and paste projects, but I like to give them crayons and the challenge to add the parts of the animal to the letter. It opens up room for more conversation about the shape of the letter AND the features of the animal.
We practice and work on our handwriting for each letter as well. The Original Summer Bridge Activities, for PreK-K has great handwriting practice sheets. The kids trace and write the letters and then have a little phonics practice at the bottom.
While playing outside I yelled out some words. If it began with the "L" sound, the children had to leap across the area. It really got their blood pumping!
From the book Alphabet, Colors, Numbers and Shapes, the kids practice letter recognition AND direction following. Some weeks certain letters have to be colored specifically and sometimes it's up to them. I love these!
I created envelope games for each letter of the alphabet. I adapted them from activities from Mailbox Letter of the Week projects, both book one and two. The children had to place the "L" leaves on the tree. All the other letters? Fall came a bit early!
The children turned a capital letter L into a lion. I got the idea from the book Alphabet and Counting from Twin Sister Productions. They give tips for how to make it a glue and paste projects, but I like to give them crayons and the challenge to add the parts of the animal to the letter. It opens up room for more conversation about the shape of the letter AND the features of the animal.
We practice and work on our handwriting for each letter as well. The Original Summer Bridge Activities, for PreK-K has great handwriting practice sheets. The kids trace and write the letters and then have a little phonics practice at the bottom.
Each child has a journal that they write in every week. When we focus on a letter, they write for that letter. On shorter weeks and during our review later in the year, they write to the theme. This is such a great way to get children excited about writing and reading. I start the children out by tracing, and once they are comfortable and controlling the crayon well, they move onto copying.
From a Mailbox Letter of the Week book, the kids made a booklet about "Lizard's Lollipops". I like doing these kinds of books because they can go back and look at the pictures to help tell the story, and they are also able to do the project mostly on their own. When they are finished coloring the pages, they come and get their scissors. When they are finished cutting, they bring their pages to me, put away their scissors and clean up their area of paper scraps. I love it!
From a Mailbox Letter of the Week book, the kids made a booklet about "Lizard's Lollipops". I like doing these kinds of books because they can go back and look at the pictures to help tell the story, and they are also able to do the project mostly on their own. When they are finished coloring the pages, they come and get their scissors. When they are finished cutting, they bring their pages to me, put away their scissors and clean up their area of paper scraps. I love it!
I made a cube of cardboard and glued pictures of "L" things one each side. The children say "Ladybug, Ladybug, what do I see.... I see a ____ looking at me!" They roll the cube and fill in the blank. This idea came from a Mailbox activity book, and let me tell you, it was a hit!! They loved it!
During the week we made a list of words that begin with the letter L. Here is what we thought of!
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