The Five Senses! (Cc, Triangle)

The theme for week five of the school year was "The 5 Senses". We continued our Letter of the Week study, with the letter C. This week we also focused on the triangle shape.

This week we finished up our first month of weather! Every day at morning meeting we graph what the weather is. At the end of the month I put it together and we compare this year's weather to last years. At the end of the year, I turn them into a book!

This week we read: Corduroy by Don Freeman
                                       The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss
                                       Curious George Goes Camping by Margret and HA Rey
                                       Little Cloud by Eric Carle
                                       He Came With the Couch by David Slonim

Our question of the week was "What are you not so good at?"

The shape of the week: triangle was fun to talk about. At our morning meetings, we would talk about the shape and things in real life that are a triangle. We also practiced drawing triangles in the air. The children worked on their fine motor skills by tracing triangles, and reviewing our square shape from two weeks ago. I found these worksheets on Kidzone.

The children also worked on their triangle recognition. I got this page from The Original Summer Bridge Activities, for PreK-K.

For our song this week we sang "Triangles".  I found it at Preschool Express.

Triangles, triangles, Triangles I see.

Count the points and count the sides,

Count them 1, 2, 3.

Triangles, triangles, Just for you and me.

Count the points and count the sides,

Count them 1, 2, 3.

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

For our theme "The Five Senses", we focused on an activity for one sense each day.

For touch we made texture collages. I put glue all over a piece of black construction paper, and put out different materials, like crinkled paper, feathers, sponges, foil, etc. The children get to explore the different feeling of the materials and create their very own masterpiece!

For smell we painted with fruit teas! This was messy, but definitely a lot of fun! We examined the tea bags when they were dry, and sniffed them. (I bought the fruit tea sample box from Celestial Seasonings.) Once we had decided which one we all like the best, most liked the peach the best, we put them in bowls of warm water for a few minutes. Then the children used them to paint with! It was really fun to do, although I was a bit disappointed that when papers dried, they turned gray! That was an interesting outcome for sure. *Next time I do a project like this, I will definitely invest in some watercolor paper. The regular printer paper very quickly became too wet.*

For sound we took a walk on our schools nature trail. we stopped and sat at different places as we walked and listened for different sounds. When we came inside I made a quick map to show the class what things we heard in each place.

For sight the kids made binoculars out of toilet paper rolls. I stapled them together and the kids painted them. When they were dry we tied some yarn to them so that the children could wear them around their necks. Later in the day they took them outside and looked at things through them,

For taste we tasted lemons and limes! I was surprised how many of my kids loved it! I dod get some pretty great sour faces though. When we were done tasting, we painted with lemons and limes and made prints. I love how these turned out. The whole time the kids were doing it I was craving a Sprite. =]

The letter of the week: C activities that we worked on this were were Cool! 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 fill the cans with all the "C" objects.

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 book Sounds Like fun, Phonemic Awareness has great phonics activities for the alphabet. For the letter C, the children have to cut out and glue the words that "Begin like Cat". Together we talked about the beginning sounds of the words, and then they work on their fine motor cutting skills.

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.

The children turned a capital letter C into an caterpillar. 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 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 clouds! We talked about some of the different kinds of clouds there are, and then the kids painted on blue construction paper.

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.

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

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

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.