This week we read: The Rain Came Down by David Shannon
Bear's Busy Year by Marcia Leonard
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett
Little Cloud by Eric Carle
Bear Feels Scared by Karma Wilson
The color of the week: orange was a lot of fun to explore. We talked about things that are the color orange and went on a hunt around our classroom to find things that are orange.
We sang "We Love Orange" to the tune of 3 Blind Mice.
"We love orange,we love orange,
Yes we do, yes we do,
Crunchy carrots so good to eat,
Juicy oranges oh so sweet,
Pumpkins ready for trick or treat,
yes we love orange."
I got it from here!
Yes we do, yes we do,
Crunchy carrots so good to eat,
Juicy oranges oh so sweet,
Pumpkins ready for trick or treat,
yes we love orange."
I got it from here!
(C) Jean Warren www.preschoolexpress.com
For the number of the week:18 we started off by counting to and backward from eighteen. 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 eighteen.
When I started in my class, I found a page like this from education.com, so I made my own for the number 18. The children have to practice writing the number and then color in that number of squares. It's a great way to introduce graphing and helps them to work on their one-to-one correspondence.
For our theme "Weather", we became meteorologists! In the sensory table I made soap clouds out of Ivory Soap (microwave for about a minute until it gets puffy.) The children had fun breaking it apart and making dust. PSA: Ivory soap dust floats in the air and makes everyone cough! So I added some water into the dust to make a fun soapy water sensory table. The next morning, it mysteriously turned into a very slimy consistency. We played with it like this for a bit, and then I added some more water to loosen it up.
We painted clouds using shaving cream and glue. When it dries, it stays puffy the way that they painted it. I can't show you the final projects because this is something we will be putting into our Eric Carle themed art show in April, but here's a preview!
With colored water, pipettes, a glass jar and shaving cream, the kids made it rain! Each child had a pipette and one color of water. They squeezed their color into the shaving cream "cloud" until the could because full and began to "rain" down. They were so excited when they saw their color start to rain down from the cloud!
I thought that the coolest part of this project was that the final "storm" looked different for each group. Awesome!
We painted clouds using shaving cream and glue. When it dries, it stays puffy the way that they painted it. I can't show you the final projects because this is something we will be putting into our Eric Carle themed art show in April, but here's a preview!
With colored water, pipettes, a glass jar and shaving cream, the kids made it rain! Each child had a pipette and one color of water. They squeezed their color into the shaving cream "cloud" until the could because full and began to "rain" down. They were so excited when they saw their color start to rain down from the cloud!
The letter of the week: U activities that we worked on this week were ultra cool!! 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 "U" fish in the underwater tank. All the other letters? I hope there's another tank somewhere around here!
From this Alphabet on Parade book, I got the idea to have the kids practice the concepts of "over" and "under". I drew and umbrella and 12 small pictures for them to cut out and glue either over or under the umbrella. I let them pretty much do their own thing on this project and then tucked it away in their portfolios.
The book Sounds Like fun, Phonemic Awareness has great phonics activities for the alphabet. For the letter U, the children have to cut out and glue the words that "Begins like Umbrella Cockatoo". Together we talked about the beginning sounds of the words, and then they work on their fine motor cutting skills.
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 made sea urchins. The children crumpled and glued tissue paper onto white circles.
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.
The children turned a capital letter U into a unicorn. 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.
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!
My kids did a great job of turning shapes into an underwater picture! I cut out the different shapes for them ahead of time, they picked three, and then let their imaginations run wild! It came from this Letter of the Week book.
From Sounds Like Fun, I got the idea to buy little paper party drink umbrellas and say different vowel sound words. Anytime they hear a long or short u sound, they had to put up their umbrellas! So fun. Bonus, they got to keep the umbrellas and were thrilled!
From this Alphabet on Parade book, I got the idea to have the kids practice the concepts of "over" and "under". I drew and umbrella and 12 small pictures for them to cut out and glue either over or under the umbrella. I let them pretty much do their own thing on this project and then tucked it away in their portfolios.
The book Sounds Like fun, Phonemic Awareness has great phonics activities for the alphabet. For the letter U, the children have to cut out and glue the words that "Begins like Umbrella Cockatoo". Together we talked about the beginning sounds of the words, and then they work on their fine motor cutting skills.
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 made sea urchins. The children crumpled and glued tissue paper onto white circles.
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 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!
My kids did a great job of turning shapes into an underwater picture! I cut out the different shapes for them ahead of time, they picked three, and then let their imaginations run wild! It came from this Letter of the Week book.
From Sounds Like Fun, I got the idea to buy little paper party drink umbrellas and say different vowel sound words. Anytime they hear a long or short u sound, they had to put up their umbrellas! So fun. Bonus, they got to keep the umbrellas and were thrilled!
I found these short videos about "u" animals that we watched through the week. There was one about sea urchins. They went nuts for it! The kids really enjoy when randomly throughout the day we take a break to watch an animal video.
We also made a class book about people that wear uniforms. We brainstormed a list together, and then each child got to pick what they wanted to make their page about.
I made a cube of cardboard and glued pictures of "U" things one each side. The children say "Unicorn, unicorn, 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 for the letter A, 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 U. Here is what we thought of!
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