On the playground we met this guy. He was hanging out with us on the climber, so we moved him over to the other side of the fence.
This week, we also had a chance to go out and harvest some yummy things from our garden. The Snow Mass Melon was delicious!
This week we read: Career Day by Anne F. Rockwell
1, 2, 3 Peas by Keith Baker
Duck and Goose by Tad Hills
Duck, Duck Goose by Tad Hills
Curious George and the Firefighters by Margret and HA Rey
Our question of the week was "What does Dad do at work?"
The shape of the week: rectangle was fun to talk about. At our morning meetings, we would talk about the shape and things in real life that are a rectangle. We also practiced drawing rectangles in the air. The children worked on their fine motor skills by tracing rectangles and squares to make a robot. I found this worksheet on Kidzone.
The children used a key with the number 1 to color in a picture of a dragon. This was great because the kids were able to do this with very little to no help, and they were so proud of themselves when they finished!
In some papers in my room I found a random number page like this from education.com, so I made my own for the number 1. The children had to practice writing the number and then color in that number of squares. What a great way to really introduce graphing and what a great way for them to work on their one-to-one correspondence.
For our themes "Community Helpers/Fire Prevention", we played community helper bingo!
I traced the kids hands and the made faces and glued little fire hats to each finger to make "Five Little Firefighters."
We practiced "Stop, Drop, and Roll". This activity very quickly dissolved into lots of silliness and giggles.
Using dot painters, the kids painted 911 and we talked about when and why we would call that number.
The firetruck visited us! The kids got to go inside and sit, and the VERY nice firefighters told us about a lot of the really cool and important things that they have on the truck.
When we came back inside from the firetruck, the kids told me what they wanted to say thank you to firefighters about, and they drew pictures for them. I will be sending these over to the firehouse!
The letter of the week: D activities that we worked on this were were Dynamite! For his show and share, one of my students brought in donuts! Yum!
The book Sounds Like fun, Phonemic Awareness has great phonics activities for the alphabet. For the letter D, the children have to cut out and glue the words that "Begin like Dog". Together we talked about the beginning sounds of the words, and then they work on their fine motor cutting skills.
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 put the "D" objects in the doghouse. All the other letters? No admission!
From a Letter of the Week Mailbox book, I got the activity of measuring long jumps with little pictures of dachshunds. This was so much fun!
From the book Alphabet, Colors, Numbers and Shapes, the kids practiced letter recognition AND direction following. Some weeks certain letters have to be colored specifically and sometimes it's up to them. I love these!
We continued to work on our Alphabet Wall. In the classroom I taped up two trees. As we work through the alphabet, the children will make projects to go on the wall. It's a very fun way for the class to see the alphabet in a new way. This week, we made dogs! Using paper plates, the kids painted brown and black dogs.
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 D into an duck. 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 also had a disco dance party!
I made a cube of cardboard and glued pictures of "D" things one each side. The children say "Dinosaur, Dinosaur, 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 d. Here is what we thought of!
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