Use Your Noodle! (W, 20, Blue, Triangle)

Our theme this week was "Use Your Noodle" and we focused on the letter W, number 20 and we revisited the color blue and triangle shape.

Our school is getting ready for our Art Show in the middle of April. When all the projects are completed I will take pictures and show you our super cool "Garden". I can't wait! For a little preview this week... Frogs! I got the project idea here. (Here are two of our "toad" class pets too!)

We read this week: Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
                               Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late by Mo Willems
                               Baby Beluga by Raffi
                               Tumford the Terrible by Nancy Tillman
                               1,2,3 Peas by Keith Baker

Our question of the week was "What do you eat with noodles?"Some of these answers myself and our class parents giggled at and questioned...

For our theme of the week, we counted 20 elbow macaroni and glued them on a plate of pasta with meatballs.

We also got to have some sensory exploration with cooked and uncooked spaghetti. This was a lot of fun. They touched and described the uncooked pasta first, and then got to play with some cooked pasta. We did this in three different groups, and they were all really great with explaining what they were feeling!

Our song of the week was "On Top of Spaghetti".. now there were some conflicting feelings about the lyrics of this song between the teachers in the school. I was taught the long version when I was little, so that was what we sang. Plus my kids thought it was hilarious to have a meatball tree.

"On top of spaghetti,
All covered with cheese,
I lost my poor meatball,
When somebody sneezed.

It rolled off the table,
And on to the floor,
And then my poor meatball,
Rolled out of the door.

It rolled in the garden,
And under a bush,
And then my poor meatball,
Was nothing but mush.

The mush was as tasty
As tasty could be,
And then the next summer,
It grew into a tree.

The tree was all covered,
All covered with moss,
And on it grew meatballs,
And tomato sauce.

So if you eat spaghetti,
All covered with cheese,
Hold on to your meatball,
Whenever you sneeze".... phew!

We talked again about the color blue. Since we already found blue items in the classroom. We played a little game called "Category Brainstorm, and tried to list as many things that we could that are the color blue. Then we turned our list into a class book!

We talked about the shape triangle and the kids loved singing our triangle song from this week.

The kids also practiced tracing and recognizing triangles. These came from the book Alphabet, Colors, Numbers and Shapes.

When we worked on our number activities, we practiced writing the number and word for the number 20.

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.

With my math boxes (check them out on this post- at the bottom), we counted out 20 items (we did the same activity for the number 17. Then I had the kids divide it into two groups. Using this worksheet that I made, we started doing and talking about addition to get to 20. They liked being able to make up their own groups to add. 

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

The students wrote in their journals for the letter W. It's really cool to see the children thinking about what they want to put in their journal. They love these books and always want to go through them when they're finished writing for the day.

We turned a W into a Worm! This book is great.

This book has great pages for helping the kids work on the letter recognition of both the capital and the lowercase versions of the letter, and they are always a little different, which is great!

The kids made a book full of the letter W called "What's in Walrus' Window?" from the Letter of the Week Book 2.

We acted out a Whale poem from the Letter of the Week Book 1.

For our alphabet wall we made whales! Now these were huge! We would have needed a very large ocean to fit all of our whales, so I randomly selected some to go on the ABC wall and sent the rest home. This was also from Letter of the Week Book 1.

Here are the words we came up with this week!

Up next week: "Spring has Sprung!" and a focus on the letter Xx, number 21, color pink and square shape.

Hanukkah: A Celebration of Lights! (K, 8, Blue)

Our theme this week was "Hanukkah: Celebration of Lights" and we focused on the letter Kk, the number 8 and the color blue.

The beginning of December means that we compared November weather from this year and last.

 

We read this week: The Hanukkah Mice by Steven Kroll
                                Latkes and AppleSauce by Fran Manushkin
                                How Do Dinosaurs Say Happy Chanukkah? by Jane Yolen
                                Hanukkah! by Roni Schotter
                            
Our question of the week was "What is your favorite color?" We finished talking about our shapes and have started colors, so I thought it would be nice to get the conversation started about colors.

For our theme of the week, we talked all about the tradition of Hanukkah. I brought in my childhood menorah to show the kids and for us to put "candles" in for each night.

We played dreidel.

 The kids used Hanukkah cookie cutters and painted with blue, yellow and black paint.

I have Hebrew alphabet blocks that I brought in and let the kids explore with. They like looking at them and building towers with them.

Using different materials like feathers and pastas, the kids made collage menorahs. I drew with glue the shape of the menorah and the kids used the art materials on the glue. I love the way this project turns out.

We talked a lot this week about the color blue, and we sang "We Love Blue."

"We love blue, we love blue,

Yes we do, yes we do.

We love the ocean and sky so blue,

We love blue ribbons and blue jeans too.

We love blueberries, so good for you,

Yes, we love blue."

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 blue. The tricky thing is that they have to bring different things, no duplicates allowed! Here is what we found for the color blue.

I gave the kids dots of blue, white and black paint to make shades of blue.

When we worked on our number activities, we practiced writing the number and word for the number 8.

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.

We colored a picture using a "color by number key" that I got from this book.

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

We also did this worksheet that helps work on letter recognition that I got from this book.

The students also wrote in their journals for the letter K.

We turned a K into an Kangaroo! This book is great.

With playing cards we tried to find the kings. Each turn children flip over a card and have to name what letter or number it was. If they turned over a king, they get to wear the crown!

We hopped like kangaroos during a dance party.


The class watched this video to watch how the kangaroos hop around. I found this cool one that like a real life "Kratt Brothers" which the kids love from PBS.

For our alphabet wall we made kites.

Here are the words we came up with this week!

My class starts to turn 5 with this birthday! Yum!

Up next week: "Candy Land", Ll, 9 and red.