Showing posts with label bugs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bugs. Show all posts

Monday, May 25, 2015

Birds & Bugs! (L,M&N, 29, Grey, Hexagon)

The theme for the second week of May was "Birds and Bugs!". Since we finished our Letter of the Week study, we are now reviewing our letters! This week we reviewed letters L, M & N and continued our number study with the number 29! We have gone through our shapes and colors once, so from now until graduation, we will talk about two each week and do some small review activities. We worked this week on hexagons and grey.

Just for fun, I added water into the sensory table full of shredded recycled paper. It was awesomely gross!

This week we read: I Took a Walk by Henry Cole
                                        Little Hoot by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
                                        The Pigeon Wants a Puppy by Mo Willems
                                        Some Bugs by Angela Diterlizzi
                                        Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late by Mo Willems
                                        Duck & Goose by Tad Hills
                                        Duck, Duck Goose by Tad Hills
                                     
Our question of the week was "If you were a bird, where would you fly?"

To review the color grey we talked about things in real life, at morning meeting, that are grey. The kids also colored pictures of grey things. I found these pages on pinterest, and I love the concept! My general rule of thumb is that if the children can explain to me their reasoning for coloring an object, then I am all for it!

To review the hexagon shape the children practiced recognizing the shape and colored hexagons. I created this little picture full of the shape. They needed to color the hexagons yellow, the triangles blue, and the trapezoids purple. 

For the number of the week:29 we started off by counting to and backward from twenty-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 twenty-nine. 

When I started in my class, I found a page like this from education.com, so I made my own for the number 29. 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 "Birds and Bugs",  we walked outside and took special care to look for birds and bugs around us.

We sang "the Itsy Bitsy Spider". 

To the block center structure pages, I added pages about homes for birds and bugs.

To the science center binder, I added pages about some interesting bugs and birds.

In their journals, the children wrote about the type of bug that they would like to be.

The children played the board game, The LadyBug Game. Board games are always a blast, and the children really do well practicing math and social skills all at once!

The children made handprint bugs! The children drew and colored the background first, and then we put their handprint over!

How about a hand-print bird as well? We used feathers to make them fancy and even gave them a nest out of ripped up lunch bags!

While reviewing the letters L, M, and N, we are really focusing on practicing writing, having good control over letter formation, and having a solid knowledge of the letter sounds.

My children that are moving on to kindergarten next year, are working on sight words and this worksheet from Confessions of a Homeschooler are amazing! They challenge the children to think of the word in a new way and get creative. This week they worked on the word "like".

I created envelope games for each letter of the alphabet that we played the first way through the alphabet. My children that are staying with me another year played these again to work on their letter sounds.

We reviewed writing and finding the letters that we are talking about, L, M, and N. The pages for my younger group came from Letters for Little Learners, and I found these more advanced worksheets for my older children from education.com.






The book Alphabet and Counting that we used used  to turn our letters into fun animals, also has cute little tongue twisters for each letter. I printed them large and illustrated them, then I laminated them with contact paper. Using wet erase markers, we take turns finding the letters hidden!



On their own, they searched for the letters as well!

The letter of the week books have pages that you can make a book into. I picked from both to get my "favorites". Each week, we'll work on these pages, and each child will end up with an alphabet book at the end of the year. I like to do these pages, because not only do they get more practice writing the letter, but they also have to finish the sentence on the page, which is really cool. It gets them thinking!



There is a 15-20 minute span of time while the children are waking up from our rest time and afternoon snack. During this time, we talk about what they will be doing in the afternoon with their afternoon teacher, and what we did in the morning. We also spend some time learning about animals through videos. This week we watched one, two and three about lions, one, two about leopards, llamas, and lionfish. We also watched one, two, three about Meerkats, one, two about monkeys, manatee and moose.

I made an "I have, who has" game filled with L, M, and N things. I love this game because once it starts, the children completely direct it. I love seeing them help each other and play with each other.

 Leave a comment below and let me know that you stopped by!

Monday, June 30, 2014

Gardening!

 Our theme this week was "Gardening" and it was the first week of our school's Summer Camp!! Who-hoo!

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 lion... RAWR!

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 read this week: My Garden by Kevin Henkes
                              Mortimer's First Garden by Karma Wilson
                              Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman 
                              Living Sunlight by Molly Bang
                              The Story of the Root Children by

Our question of the week was "What do you want in your garden?" This worked really well after reading the book "My Garden", because that's what the little girl talks about, flowers that can change color, chocolate bunnies, a jelly bean bush etc.

For our theme of the week, found worms outside and made them a habitat. We will observe them over the course of the summer and then put them back out in the woods in August. The kids really had fun digging for the worms! Here is a great step by step of what to do.

On TeachersPayTeachers I found a great FREE worksheet that not only makes a cool project, but really helps kids with those tricky teen numbers!

We planted seeds for flowers that hummingbirds will really like once they can go outdoors, and we watched a cool video about hummingbirds that talks about how they fly. It has great closeups of the birds. Worth a look!


We made hand print flower pictures.

Using toilet paper rolls, peanut butter and seed, we made bird feeders!

We played The Lady Bug game.

We wrote in our journals about what we would like to have in our own gardens.
 This summer we have some older kids on our class with us. While my kids are working on their journals, the older kids work on this reading log where they respond to the book we read in the morning.

And for Movie Friday we watched The Lorax! Yum, we had popcorn!!

Our song of the week was "Planting Time" (Row row row your boat), I found it here.

"Dig, dig, dig the earth (make digging motion)
Then you plant your seeds (pretend to drop seeds)
A gentle rain (Flutter fingers down)
And bright sunshine (Circle arms above head)
Will help your flowers grow."
(Hold one arm parallel to ground and move other arm up behind it with
fingers extended to represent a flower growing)

We had fun with all things outside this week!




I had a leaf nose! =]

The younger class grew grass this week! When it was all finished, they let us give it to the bunnies for a snack! =]




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.

"Zoom" is a fun and quick game to play with a class of any age. First you need to pick a direction that the zoom is going to go around the circle. The person starting says zoom and turns their head the the person next, and it goes around the circle. Once the class gets comfortable with this game, I will record how long it takes us!

"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.