Where We Live!

The theme for the second week of the school year was "Where We Live". All of my class but one lives in New Jersey, one lives in Pennsylvania, so we spent the week talking about both.

This week we read: Wish You Were Here by Kathleen Krull (only the NJ and PA pages)
                                        Goodnight New Jersey by Adam Gamble
                                        Goodnight Philadelphia by Adam Gamble
                                        The Quiet Book by Deborah Underwood
                                        The Loud Book by Deborah Underwood

Our question of the week was "Where do you Live?"

For our song this week we sang "The Itsy Bitsy Spider".

The activities that we did this week were mostly centered around our theme. We did a few things that continued letting the class get used to the classroom and routines. Last year I made the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree and I love having it at the entrance to my classroom with everyone's name letter on it. We took some time this week to get that project done. I traced the letter and wrote their name on it. The children colored their letters and I cut them out.

We took advantage of the gorgeous weather this week and had went on multiple nature walks on our trail.

Partner play with treasure boxes, puzzles and my eggs boxes were definitely another hit this week.

Our school's back to school night is next week, and I like to have some kind of project out on the tables for parents to look at while they arrive. I found this project on pinterest and thought it would be cute to try out. The kids made their person, and I scribed one thing that they wanted to work on or do during this school year.

From the website HandwritingWorksheets.com I make a worksheet for each child with their full name, first and last. It has 3 lines for the children to trace their name and one line for them to write it on their own. I like to do these a few times throughout the year to see how their fine motor control really does improve, so I always stick them into their portfolios.

Alright, back to our theme activities for the week. Using pictures of New Jersey Symbols I made a New Jersey memory game that we played in small groups.

Since we're talking about where we live, I thought that I would challenge my kids to draw a picture of their house. Early on in the year I like to get my class comfortable with "trying". Immediately I get "I don't know how", or "I cant" which just makes me so sad. I love children's art, and as long as they are trying I love it, and I want them to be proud of their abilities and their accomplishments.

We made handprint state bugs. A lady bug for Pennsylvania and a Bumblebee for New Jersey!

I printed out the state flag of New Jersey (and one Pennsylvania) and showed the children pictures of it. We talked about the colors that are one the flag and the pictures. Then we painted our own!

Using dot painters, we painted New Jersey Violets.

To end the week on a super fun note, we had a Bon Jovi dance party. It was awesome!

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

CandyLand! (L, 9, Red)

So sorry for the delay in these posts, December always seems to get away from me. I hope everyone is having a joyful holiday season!

Our theme for the second week of December was "Candyland" and we focused on the letter Ll, the number 9 and the color red.

  

We read this week: Little Pea by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
                               The Berenstain Bears: Too Much Junk Food by Stan and Jan Berenstain
                               The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
                               L,M,N,O Peas by Keith Baker

Our question of the week was "What is your favorite thing about school?" Everyone pretty much had an answer right away... it was great!

For our theme of the week, we did some "sweet" activities.
We counted and compared candy canes. I had one regular size candy cane and the kids had to estimate how many mini candy canes would equal the height of the regular one.

We wrote a recipe for hot chocolate, made it and then drank it. Delicious!

It does not really go along with our theme of the week, but to get ready for the holidays we decorated snowflakes with puffy paint for a classroom mural. I pre-cut the snowflakes out of poster board and painted a simple background of snow and evergreens. The kids colored their snowflake however they wanted and then added the puffy paint. We had some left from another project, so i used store bought paint, but I did find a recipe that someday soon I would like to try.

Our director purchased different kinds of ornaments for each classroom from Oriental Trading, we got these cute snowman snowflake ornaments. The kids and I put these together, and then I had each of them give me a blue hand print that I glues onto the backs of the snowflakes. These will be the kids' gifts to give to their parents. Next week we're doing a really cool project for the wrapping!

We talked  about the color red, and we sang "We Love Red."

"We love red, we love red,

That's what we said, that's what we said.

Apples and cherries, oh me, oh my,

Tomatoes to bake on a pizza pie.

Red is the color and that is why,

We love red."

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

We made red collages with red paint, feathers, tissue paper and glitter. (No picture, sorry!)

When we worked on our number activities, we practiced writing the number and word for the number 9. (This actually went home for practice. We had a snowy day that day.)

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. (This actually went home for practice. We had a snowy day that day.)

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 Ll from this book. (This actually went home for practice. We had a snowy day that day.)

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 L.

We turned a L into an Lion! This book is great.

We made a short book all about "Lizard's Lollipops" that I got from this Mailbox book.

We leaped every time I called out a word that started with an "L". This was a fun one to combine listening for letter sounds and physical activity all in one.

For our alphabet wall we made leaves with tissue paper.

Here are the words we came up with this week!

Up next week: "Merry Christmas," the letter Mm, number 10 and color green.