Flowers! (Z, 23, Triangles, Blue)

The theme for the first week of April was "Flowers"! It was a short week this week as we were off in observance of Good Friday, but we worked hard the days that we were in school! We finished our Letter of the Week study with the letter Z and continued our number study with the number 23! 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 blue and triangle.

With the beginning of April, we finished our calendar pattern, and we compared this month's weather with last year.

This week we read: Quiet Bunny by Lisa McCue
                                        1,2,3 to the Zoo by Eric Carle
                                        Easter Mice! by Bethany Roberts
                                        Happy Easter Curious George by Margret & HA Rey
                                 
Our question of the week was "What is your favorite flower?"

To review the color blue we colored pictures of blue 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! At our group times, we would also brainstorm things that are blue.

To review the  triangle shape the children practiced recognizing the shape and colored triangles. I created this little picture with hidden triangle in it. They needed to color the triangles blue and then the rest of the picture! At our group times, we talked about real things that are triangles... Mmm, pie!

For the number of the week:23 we started off by counting to and backward from twenty-three. 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-three. 

When I started in my class, I found a page like this from education.com, so I made my own for the number 23. 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 "Flowers", we went outside to search for flowers! It was such a simple activity, but the children love it and get so much out of it. We had some trouble finding many flowers, as the weather was still a bit chilly, but the search was the fun part!

In our structure book that I have in the block center, I added pages of creations made with flowers!

In the Plants and Animals book in the science center, I added information pages of flowers and flowering plants native to New Jersey.

We sang "Pretty Flowers" to the tune of Jingle Bells.

"Pretty flowers, pretty flowers,
Growing everywhere.
Here are some pretty flowers
For your coat or hair.

Pretty flowers, pretty flowers,
Gold and pink and blue.
Red and yellow, orange and purple,
I picked them just for you!!"

(C) 2001 - 2011 Jean Warren www.preschoolexpress.com

The kids played a quick flower sorting game that I made. I made a set of flowers that I "laminated" with contact paper. The set worked so that they could be sorted by color of the petals or number of the petals. They did so great!

Making flower art with yarn was a great way to the children to work on their fine motor control. I "drew" a flower with glue, and the children picked yarn pieces to put on the glue. 

The letter of the week: Z activities that we worked on this week were zany!! The book Sounds Like fun, Phonemic Awareness has great phonics activities for the alphabet. For the letter Y, the children have to cut out and glue the words that "Begins like Zebra". 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 the children had to give the Zebras their stripes!

We have now finished our Alphabet wall!!

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 "Z" items in the zoo.  All the other letters? Maybe there's room at the aquarium!

The children water color painted animals going to the Zoo! 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!

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!

The children turned a capital letter Z into a Zebra. 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 watched these cool videos about zebras! One, two, three and four.

I made a cube of cardboard and glued pictures of "Z" things one each side. The children say "Zebra, Zebra, 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 Z. Here is what we thought of!

There is our wall of alphabet words!!

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

Welcome to the School Year! Building a Classroom Community

The theme for the first week of school was "Building a Classroom Community". I wanted to really get to know my class and let them get used to the room and to our daily routine, so we focused on becoming friends and some fun activities.

This week we read: Llama Llama Misses Mama by Anne Dewdney
                                        Splat the Cat by Rob Scotton
                                        Miss Nelson is Missing by Harry Allard
                                        A Book of Friends by Dave Ross

Our question of the week was "What was your favorite thing about the summer?"

For our song this week we sang "The Wheels on the Bus". It was fun to let the children pick what parts of the song to sing each time.

The activities that we did this week really helped us to become a tight classroom community! Everyday we went over class rules that the children helped make. We sat in a group and I asked the children what they thought some rules to keep us safe and happy in the classroom might be. I fit in my own too! We also took tours of the classroom so that the children get used to where the centers are.

We played "Just Like Me" to help get everyone comfortable with each other. I start by modeling with a few statements, i.e, I like vanilla ice cream. If a child also like vanilla ice cream, they stand up and yell, "just like me!" After I model a few statements like that, each child has a chance to be the leader. It's so cool to see them thinking about what they want to say!

The kids drew "first day of school" pictures. These are fantastic to throw in their portfolios! I have mostly blank piece of paper that on the bottom says, "I drew this on the first day of school!" and the children can draw anything that they want. It's an easy project for them to complete, and it also lets me see how the kids draw, and how they hold the crayons.

To help get the children playing with each other we used puzzles and treasure boxes to partner play with. They get to take turns choosing what they play with and work/play with new friends. To learn more about my treasure boxes and other ways they can be used, check out this post from last year!

We walked on our school's nature trail in the woods. All of the new children to the school LOVED it! Since our school is so connected to the outdoors and we are always looking at and talking about the seasonal changes that we see, I started us off by asking the children to look for different color flowers as we walked down. They were so excited when they saw purple, white, pink and yellow.

At morning meeting one morning we played body drumming, another game that helps the children become comfortable leading the group. I model 3 or 4 different motions, like patting the knees, clapping, snapping, and stomping while the group follows the change of the motions. Then any child that would like a turn (I do not force children to do something like this if they really don't want to) leading the group.

The children made paper plate snakes. Such an easy and fun activity. Either the teacher or the child draws a spiral on the plate, and then they color it however they choose. When they are finished coloring, they cut along the spiral that they drew, and voila! A snake!

I traced the children's hands and they colored them in. Again, a simple project to help the children get used to coming to the table to do projects and following directions.

We played "I Have, Who Has" with colors. We played a few times because the kids loved it. I have these games on hand that I made simply out of index cards. I have a shape and alphabet version as well.

The children made lions out of paper plates. They drew faces and the manes, and then growled for me!

We also played Simon Says.

We had a great first week of school, how was yours? Leave a comment below and let me know that you stopped by!

Flowers! (Y, 22, Yellow, Rectangle)

Our theme this week was "Flowers" and we focused on the letter Y, number 22 and we revisited the color yellow and square rectangle.

Our school is also getting ready for our Art Show. all the projects are completed I will take pictures and show you our super cool "Garden". It's getting exiting! This weeks little preview.... our Pumpkin Plant!

We read this week: Mortimer's First Garden by Karma Wilson
                               Arthur's Chicken Pox by Marc Brown
                               The Story About Ping by Marjorie Flack
                               The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle
                               The Pigeon Wants a Puppy by Mo Willems

Our question of the week was "What kind of food do you think is super yummy?"

For our theme of the week, we sorted flowers again. Since we did this last week as a group, this time I just put the flowers out and let the kids play their own sorting game.

Okay, so celery is not really a flower, but we talked about how plants and flowers drink their water up from the ground and I thought the best way to illustrate that would be the celery experiment!
SUPER SIMPLE TO DO!
I got 4 celery stalks (full stalks with the leaves at the top) and put one in plain water, and one in each dyed water blue, yellow and red. I showed the class the set up and we made hypotheses about what would happen to the celery. (I made the worksheet up for this one).

Then we looked at the celery that had been sitting in the water for a few hours t osee what actually happened. That was what we recorded on our papers.

Just for fun I kept the celery around to the end of the week and it looked SO COOL!

We made yarn flowers! Ahead of time I cut out pieces of string in different colors. When they came over to my small group table I "drew" a flower in glue for them to cover in the yarn. I thought it was a nice little variance on strengthening their fine motor skills.

Our song of the week was "Pretty Flowers" to the tune of  Jingle bells from here.

"Pretty flowers, pretty flowers,

Growing everywhere.

Here are some pretty flowers

For your coat or hair.

Pretty flowers, pretty flowers,

Gold and pink and blue.

Red and yellow, orange and purple,

I picked them just for you!"

(C) 2001 - 2011 Jean Warren www.preschoolexpress.com

We talked again about the color yellow. Bonus that it starts with our letter of the week!

We made a book about things that are the color yellow.

We talked about the shape rectangle. We made a list and walked around the classroom trying to find things that are the shape.

I also asked the children to practice finding and recognizing rectangles on a worksheet. It 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 22.

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.

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

The students wrote in their journals for the letter y. 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 Y into a Yellow Jacket! 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!

We made a book about things that we did yesterday! I love making class books, because they can go through and look at them later to see the great work that they and their friends did! I got the idea for the book from Alphabet on Parade.

They made a little flip book about a yellow yo-yo from the Letter of the Week Book 2.

For our alphabet wall we made yaks! I got the picture of the yak from the Letter of the Week Book 1. Then the kids glued on some yarn!

Here are the words we came up with this week!

Up next week: "The Week of The Young Child/Hop-a-thon!" and a focus on the letter Zz, number 23, color purple and oval.