Zoo!

The theme for the third week of July was "The Zoo". The children are having so much fun in our "summer camp" this year!

This week we read: The Perfect Tail by Mie Araki
                                        Splat the Cat and the Cool School Trip by Rob Scotton
                                        A Sick Day for Amos McGee by Philip C. Stead
                                        Put Me in the Zoo by Robert Lopshire
                                        Curious George Feeds the Animals by Margret & HA Rey

The older children that join my class for Summer Camp do not nap during rest time. They have time in the gym in a small group while my class does. To keep them working on their skills, I make them  packet to bridge their grades.

The games that we played this week at morning meeting were so fun!
We played "Find the Clothespin". I found this game on KindergartenSmorgasboard, and I thought it just sounded so fun! While the children are not peeking, I hide a clothespin one myself, on a child or somewhere close around us. When they look for it, they can't yell out where it is, they put their finger on their nose! They have so much fun searching.

We played "Crocodile Snap". I found the idea for this game last year and adapted it to be my own. I turned a box into a crocodile with bulletin and construction paper, then filled it with little cards that have a letter, number or shape on them. The children have to reach into the crocodile's mouth (while he's sleeping of course), pull out a card and name what's there. Also hidden in the belly of the crocodile though are SNAP cards (the crocodile wakes up and SNAPS his mouth shut!). Once we pull three SNAP cards, the game is over!

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.

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. If they drop it, we have to start back at the letter "A". This game helps us work on our communication, because the children have to let the person know that they are going to toss it to them!

We played "I have, who has?" which I originally saw being played in a Montessori class. It's so cool to see the children take over the game and help their friends follow along. Over the past year, I made a few different ones to add to my colors, shapes and Alphabet. I love having the different options now because it keeps the game feeling new and fresh!

The special activities this week were a blast. Bubble day is quickly turning into a favorite. This week we tried to make the biggest bubbles possible. It was so neat to see the Eureka moment when the children discovered that blowing gently created larger results. I created a bubble station with a plastic drink dispenser from Five Below and plastic cups that we rinse and reuse. For the bubble solution, I simply used Dawn dish soap from the Dollar Tree and water! 

Exercise is very important, so I thought it would be fun to have some kind of special exercise activity. This week, we did Yoga! Cosmic Kids Yoga on Youtube has great videos that the children love.

Every Wednesday my class has sprinkler day. This is always a fan favorite. The children wear their bathing suits and water shoes, run around in a sprinkler outside, and play in a water sensory table. It really helps beat the summer heat!

Since we are the oldest in the school, our class take over the little school garden. We spent time weeding it. Most of our sprouts did not make it.. so I purchased a few flowers and small vegetable plants to plant. Fingers crossed!

I LOVE having a movie day in the summer. It gives the kids a chance to relax, wind down and just enjoy themselves. Plus we have snacks and make it feel like the movie theater... who doesn't like going to the movie theater? This week we watched Monsters Inc.

Our question of the week was "What is your favorite animal at the zoo?"

For our theme "Zoo",  we talked about animals at the zoo! I made this zoo game with a large piece of construction paper. Add some small zoo animal figurines, a dice and some excited kids and we get a super fun time!

We sang "We're Going to the Zoo" to the tune of farmer in the dell.

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

On Pinterest I found this great zoo flap book that the children created!

I made pages of a few different habitats and three animals that live in each one. As small groups, the children worked together to correctly put the animals in their homes. The kids felt like the Kratt Brothers while they were doing this. Our class LOVES their show!

Using shapes cut out from different colors of construction paper, the children created their own zoo animal. I adapted this from this monster activity that I found on Pinterest. I love that it is a project that really is all about the process, and the kids were so happy with their finished products!

The children wrote in their journals about what they see at the zoo.

In the summer I have elementary children that join my class. While my pre-k students write in their journals, the older children work on a reading response page based on the book that we read at morning meeting.

For our third week of the  study "Buildings" we focused on the people that build buildings and how they do. The children made a class book filled with illustrations of Construction Sites.

My assistant teacher brought in a toolbox for the children to explore tools. They felt them, picked them up and asked questions about them.

The class had a discussion of who the different people were that built various parts of our classroom; plumber, electrician, general contractor.

I emptied out my sensory table and added unifix cubes and pieces of construction paper. The children worked in small groups to build different height buildings and create a Unifix city.

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Chicka Chicka Boom Boom (Pp, 13, Brown)

The theme for the third week of January was "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom". We continued our Letter of the Week study with the letter P. This week we continued talking about colors with the color brown, and we kept going on our number study with the number 13!

This week we read:  If You Give a Pig a Pancake by Laura Numeroff
                                        100 Snowmen by Jennifer Arena
                                        The 100th Day of School by Angela Shelf Madearis
                                        Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr.
                                        Curious George Makes Pancakes by HA & Margret Rey

Our question of the week was "What would you like 100 of?"

The color of the week: brown was a lot of fun to explore.  We talked about things that are the color brown and went on a hunt around our classroom to find things that are brown.

We sang "Three Brown Bears" to the tune of Three Blind Mice.

"Three brown bears, three brown bears.

See all their beds, see all their chairs.

The Mommy cooks in a big brown pot,

The Daddy's porridge was much too hot,

The Baby Bear always cries a lot,

Three Brown Bears"

For the number of the week:13 we started off by counting to and backward from thirteen. 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 thirteen. 

When I started in my class, I found a page like this from education.com, so I made my own for the number 13. 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 "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom", I have to be honest, that we really did not do a lot with it this year. In years past I have used this theme as an opportunity to review the letters in the alphabet that we've learned already. This year I decided to keep moving forward with our momentum, but feel free to check out last year  to see what we did!

A little off theme...
We made it to our 100th day of school! Along with reading the two 100 themed books named above. the children made "gumball machines" with dot painters and paper plates,.. We counted together either in groups of 10 or all the way from 1-100.

The letter of the week: P activities that we worked on this week were perfect! We started off the week reading Laura Numeroff's If You Give a Pig a Pancake and we made a retelling of the story! I gave each child a portion of the story to illustrate, then we put it together and read our retell.

We sang "I'm a Little Penguin" to the tune of I'm a little teapot from Perpetual Preschool.

I'm a little penguin, black and white,

I waddle to the left and I waddle to the right.

I can not fly but I can swim,

So I waddle to the water and jump right in!

We loved doing the actions for this song while we sang it. It is definitely a new favorite!

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 "P" pigs in the pond. All the other letters? No swimming here!

The children turned a capital letter P into a pig. 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 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.

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 penguins. The shapes were all precut and put out on the table so that the children could create their own penguins. And they all turned out so cute! The idea came from pinterest!

From a Mailbox Letter of the Week book, the kids made a booklet about "Panda's Pillows". I like doing these kinds of books because they can go back and look at the pictures to help tell the story, and they are also able to do the project mostly on their own. When they are finished coloring the pages, they come and get their scissors. When they are finished cutting, they bring their pages to me, put away their scissors and clean up their area of paper scraps. I love it!

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

On Pinterest I found these adorable penguin templates and ideas for games to make out of them. I made three games, a pompom color match, an alphabet match game A-P and a number match game 1-13. I split the class into three groups and they had 5 minutes at each game. They had a lot of fun with this! Sometimes they would match them all before the time was up, so I would challenge them to do more, like putting the numbers or letters in order, and counting the pompoms to find out which has the most or least.  And the penguins are just so cute!

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!

I found these short videos about "p" animals that we watched through the week. There was one about Pandas, polar bears, platypus, penguins and pigs. The kids really enjoy when randomly throughout the day we take a break to watch an animal video.

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

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